Recent reading ...

  After various interruptions and delays, I am getting back to the study of a wonderful book.  It is STREAMS OF LIVING WATER:  ESSENTIAL PRACTICES FROM THE SIX GREAT TRADITIONS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH by Richard J. Foster.

   Rather than reading straight through, I've been dipping into sections that are most interesting, or puzzling, or challenging to me.  Since I'm very interested in learning how to listen to God, how to hear what God would have me do; I started with the section on the Contemplative Tradition:...the prayer-filled life.

  In each section, Foster demonstrates that stream by giving 3 examples.  He tells of someone from the early days of Christianity, someone from the Bible, and someone more nearly contemporary.
As an adult literacy volunteer, I immediately recognized the name of the man who exemplified the most recent example of someone in the Contemplative tradition.  Foster writes about the experiences of Frank C. Laubach.  I know the name Laubach because of the adult literacy materials and methods with that name, and the connection of Frank Laubach's son Robert with ProLiteracy.

  What I learned about Frank C. Laubach is awesome, & has made an impression on anyone I've told about what I learned.  In the 1920s he was a missionary educator in the Philippines who helped establish Union Seminary in Manila.  He later worked as an evangelist on the island of Mindanao.  The area he served was isolated and dangerous.  He lived alone, with only his dog Tip, because malaria had claimed 3 of his 4 children and he left his wife and remaining child in a safer area.

   Each evening he and his dog would sit on the hilltop behind his house, where he would pray about his struggles and attempts to minister to the Moros. 
       One evening, God spoke back, telling him that he should stop feeling superior to these people, to think only of how God loves them, and that they would respond. 
     Laubach wrote that he then prayed..."Drive me out of myself and come and take possession of me and think Thy thoughts in my mind..."
     He wrote that God told him to learn about the religion of the Moros, to study their Koran with them.  After that he told some local priests that he wanted to study their Koran and they were excited about the chance to teach him.

  In his LETTERS BY A MODERN MYSTIC, written to his father, Laubach tells about the later reaction of the people.  "I do nothing that I can see excepting to pray for them, and to walk among them thinking of God.  They know I am a Protestant.  Yet two of the leading Moslem priests have gone around the province telling everybody that I would help the people to know God."

   In 1929 Laubach began learning the local language and developed a method to teach reading there.  When funds were cut during the depression, the literacy program switched from paid staff to volunteers - "each one teach one".  The Laubach Literacy Movement began, and later expanded to over 200 different languages & dialects.

   Read more to learn about Laubach's attempts and experiments to grow his own soul and learn more about the power of prayer.  Learn about:
   -The game with minutes - forming the habit of thinking of God each minute, being mindful of God and God's plan.
   -He wrote of how he heard God best when he listened while working.
   -He wrote of "flash prayers"; praying for strangers on the street.  He said that praying like that "drives out fatigue and thrills one with eager power."
  -He wrote about trying to learn more about intercessory prayer; how to offer himself as a channel for God to reach others.

  As I read, I learn about more books, and follow the trail to those.  I've also downloaded LETTERS BY A MODERN MYSTIC so that I can read what Frank Laubach actually wrote about his experiences back in the 1930s.  It was first published in 1937, and the 2007 printing is also available on Nook.