Integration

“John Wright Follette, a Pentecostal teacher, stayed with the Petersons for the summer when Eugene was fifteen. Follette, ‘a small, birdlike man,’ was a Pentecostal mystic, a teacher on deep matters of the soul and life with God. In awe of Follette, Eugene told his mother that he wanted to talk to him, and she encouraged him to go out to where Follette was lying in the hammock. Eugene timidly approached and asked, ‘Dr. Follette, how do you pray?’ 

The teacher didn’t even open his eyes. He just grinned and grunted. ‘I haven’t prayed in forty years!’ 

‘That stunned me,’ Eugene recounted decades later. ‘I walked off totally puzzled.’

Over the years, however, the shock of that moment unfolded profound wisdom.

‘He risked something to teach me what prayer was, and I’m glad he did. Prayer wasn’t something he did - it was something he was. He lived a life of prayer.’” (an excerpt from “A Burning In My Bones” by Winn Collier)

Integration is that wonderful experience when every part of our life belongs and connects to every other part of our life. It is when we feel the prayer in our feet as we walk. It is discovering that every time we breathe in, we are filling up with the Spirit’s life and so breathing out becomes a benediction.  It is understanding that when we speak someone’s name, we are calling out the image of God that we see in them. This is what young Peterson’s Dr. Follette was talking about. 

We don’t have a spiritual life, we have a life! We either live it with God or we don’t. We are in God and God is in us and that is everything.

‍