Volume 27, No. 2-Summer, 2003
Table of Contents
A Heart Full of Grace
by Gerald May
God is Active in Our Lives
by Don MacDougall
Peacemaking
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Rock of Ages
by Gordon Forbes
Contemplative Grounding for Social Policy
by Tilden Edwards
Morning Prayer
by Carole Crumley
Reflections of a Christian Zen Practitioner
by Kim Boykin
A Heart Full of Grace
by Gerald May
"You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree... [or] know Plato and Aristotle... [or] Einstein's theory of relativity... [or] the second theory of thermodynamics... All you need is a heart full of grace." -Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968
For two years, maybe longer, my heart, quite literally, has been hardening. The heart muscle has gradually been changing into scar tissue. It's a very rare disorder, with no known cause or treatment. So they treat my symptoms of congestive heart failure while I wait for a possible transplant. The symptoms, along with weakness and shortness of breath, include fluid accumulation: swelling of feet, legs, and abdomen. I was carrying around some 30 pounds of water that rightly should not have been mine. It made physical movement awkward and slow. Recently, thanks to the treatment, I've lost 20 of those pounds and feel much better.
In my last major illness, a lymphoma cured with chemotherapy eight years ago, I experienced a wealth of graceful encounters, spiritual teachings, and intimacy with God. Not so this time. Although I had plenty of reminders about the spiritual significance of the heart, I could not for the life of me discern any deeper meaning or significance to what I was experiencing.
However, I did begin to notice that conflict, antagonism and anger were hurting my heart. I suppose it could be the power of suggestion, but I definitely feel physical pain and restriction in my heart when I'm in such an atmosphere of negativity. It feels toxic. I first noticed it in personal conflicts, and found I simply had to remove myself from them. Then, before the United States attacked Iraq, I also found I had to avoid the frequent heated discussions about the war. I'd try to change the subject. Failing that, I'd just have to leave.
I've normally prided myself on holding my own in arguments and debates, so it was difficult to opt out of such situations, but it seemed I had no choice. Something from Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama whispered in my memory, something about not adding to negativity if you want to be a peacemaker. That gave me a bit of consolation, and for a while I tried to suppress my feelings of anger about the world situation. Then the war began. The next day I blew up.
I know enough psychiatry to understand that suppressed emotions can show up in ugly ways, but that didn't help in this case. I blew up with complete irrationality at a colleague who had never said an unkind word to me. I felt awful, but the explosion had happened; there was no way to take it back.
In the night I prayed about it, a wordless questioning that amounted to, "What in the world can I do with my feelings about the war if I can't express or repress them?" At first my mind went to what I teach so often, what I call the contemplative option: "Why not just have your feelings and not have to do anything with them?" Although normally that sounds like a workable thing, this time it felt empty and thin, totally useless. Then I became quiet.
In the quiet, a very clear sense came. In words, it was "Move with grace. Move gracefully." Simultaneously, I moved my right hand around in the air in front of me, and it seemed a truly graceful movement, in a way quite beautiful. Moreover, in that simple moving of my hand I felt a kind of healing, soothing balm spreading over my negativity.
I was fascinated. As always, my mind went to work on the relationship between God's grace and physical gracefulness; I'd never thought of them as related before. I won't bore you with what I came up with about that. But I was left with a further wonderment: How in the world could I, a frail, wobbly heart patient carrying over 3 extra gallons of water everywhere- how could I move with grace?
I still don't have an answer, except to say that for me, moving gracefully can only happen through grace. I remembered something the 17th century French theologian Fenelon said after meeting Brother Lawrence, the author of The Practice of the Presence of God. Fenelon commented that Lawrence was "crude by nature but made delicate by grace."
Brother Lawrence was an oaf of a monk, ridiculed by his Carmelite brothers for being so clumsy. I guess if grace could make him delicate, there's hope for me. In truth, I don't move gracefully most of the time. But I can still move my hands with grace and beauty, and when I do, that strange sense of soothing comes over me. Negativity is eased.
I think I understand just a little about this. It seems to me that the physical movements associated with negativity (violence, hostility, defensiveness etc.) are sharp, tight and jerking. They create an atmosphere in which "self" is very separate from "other." In contrast, it seems that movements associated with peace, justice and compassion are smooth and flowing, literally "graceful." One position melds into the next with ease, creating an atmosphere where boundaries between self and other become transparent, evanescent, and finally dissolve.
A final image has come to me, a mental video clip of an anthropomorphized God creating the universe. I watch God's hands working on forming the earth, and I am amazed at their beauty. The movement is exquisite: ultimate beauty, perfect goodness, absolute truth, completely grace-filled gracefulness.
God is Active in Our Lives
by Don MacDougall
Tilden Edwards has spoken of three assumptions necessary for spiritual direction: that God is; God loves us unconditionally; and God is active in our lives.
It is my experience that participants who have entered into group spiritual direction do not have much trouble with making the first and second assumptions-that God is and that God loves us unconditionally -as necessary for spiritual direction. They have plenty of difficulty and challenge in living fully into these assumptions, but they don't tend to doubt their validity. They do have trouble with the third assumption, however- that God is active in our lives-both in understanding it and accepting it, with specific reference to the experience of group spiritual direction.
This came up in a very concrete way in a spiritual direction group and was a source of confusion for a while, both for the group and for me. The matter nevertheless helped me clarify the nature and reality of God in general and what God seems to be inviting us in to, as seen through the experience of group spiritual direction.
One of the participants over a period of two years would routinely begin her sharing with a circumstance in the wider world that affected her profoundly. She would share the pain she felt, weep inconsolably about it, and ask repeatedly through tears "where is God in that?" Such events, and the pain they caused her, were the reality of her spiritual journey at that time.
One consistent theme that came up in the conversation with her, in response to her sharing, was that, for better or for worse, it seemed that God did not intervene to stop such terrible things. Also there was talk in the group that God did not function or act that way anyway.
The question then became, what does it mean to say "God is active in our lives?" If God does not intervene out there in the world in very urgent circumstances, which we can relate to and feel deep pain about, God is certainly not going to intervene in our lives either, unless we see ourselves as special in some way, an unacceptable assumption. To carry this further then, God is not apt to intervene in the concerns of this little spiritual direction group either, so what's this about? Why are we meeting? How can we assume, for purposes of spiritual direction, that God is active in our lives?
Some months later, during a spiritual direction group meeting, while someone was sharing, I was struck with the impression of creation taking place there right before my eyes in that person and in that group meeting.
I don't even know now what the person was talking about, but I could tell there was a profound deepening of awareness in the presenter and an enlarged capacity to see and to hear the movements of God in her own life and in the world she lived in. Along with this deepening of awareness in her, there was a relative dissipation of fear and judgment and a growth in compassion and tolerance. There was a new openness to the movements of spirit and grace and a creative energy leading toward openness, courage, strength, humility, gentleness, power, confidence, trust, outspokenness.
Along with these things happening in her, there was a deepening willingness in the group to walk with her and each other, expectantly and supportively, and share each others burdens, while continuing to confront each other vigorously when that was called for. It felt to me like creation-creation of soul, creation of spirit, creation of being-happening right there in the group.
It wasn't the creation of a galaxy or a solar system, a planet or a continent or a mountain, but it seemed to be the same creative energy that forms these things, taking place within the ongoing creation of a human being-in the womb of a group of other human beings-sitting around and attending together that ongoing birth. That was the sense I had.
The thought occurred to me: right there is "God active in our lives!" There was no sense of God "intervening" from outside, or needing to intervene from outside in some miraculous fashion, but of God active from within our lives, as individuals and as a group/ community, and as such it seemed completely natural.
So the God I am coming to know more fully, through and in spiritual direction, is a God of ongoing creation, who lives dynamically in the middle of creation, as well as outside it; in the middle of us, as well as outside us; in the middle of a spiritual direction group as well as outside it. Furthermore, God seems to "emerge" (rather than "intervene") more fully or easily within such being together, when the people concerned are willing to consent to that creative energy together, and to participate in that creative energy here and now.
All of this convinced me once again of the viability of that third assumption, and clarified for me the way that seems to happen, or the way God seems to "do" it. In fact, from this experience I have added a fourth assumption for spiritual direction: that God is not only active in our lives but also invites us into partnership in creation, in loving the world into being. Perhaps that is only another way of saying that third assumption: "that God is active in our lives, calling us into partnership in creation with God, ourselves, each other, and together loving the world into being."
It is through community life, like a spiritual direction group, that this seems to happen; and it seems to be through partnership with us that God is choosing to go about continuing creation, if we will simply show up, with some trust in the process. God does not seem to be limited to such partnership but seems to choose it if we are open to participation with something like our whole or true selves. This to me is a very exciting and energizing thought, and it renews and deepens the importance of how that happens in a spiritual direction group.
To partner with God in God's activity in our lives, within a spiritual direction group, is to hold and carry along with God the birth, the joy and the pain of ongoing creation.
Don is a graduate of Shalem's Facilitating Group Spiritual Direction Program, Class of 2003. This article is taken from one of his program papers.
Peacemaking
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Peacemaking has been on my mind a lot these days. I've been praying to know my part in it, to know what it means for me to give myself to deeds that make for peace. I'm beginning to get glimpses into this through reflecting on recent events in my life.
Several days ago, I woke up with a dream that continues to inform my prayer. The details of the dream are unclear to me, but the essence remains.
In the dream, some unidentified friend invited me to join a small group of women for contemplative dialogue with President Bush. I remember being surprised at the invitation but not hesitant in responding. I remember no content of the dialogue, only the seeming openness of those participating and the soft atmosphere that surrounded it. At the end of the formal meeting time, President Bush got up and walked behind a screen. Women got in a single line outside the screen. I asked what was happening. A woman replied, "Oh, it's time for confession." I said, "You mean we are going to confession to President Bush?" She responded, "Oh, it's usually quite beautiful. We confess what we see of ourselves in him and thank him for showing us that. We each see more of ourselves. We forgive one another."
For two nights before that dream I had been sitting with a gentle, peace-filled man, Basilio, as he was dying. Our time had been mostly one of silence. Occasionally he would open his eyes and take my hand for a few minutes, then let go into rest. Some time during the evening, in an attempt to move him to a more comfortable position, I touched his right shoulder that was riddled with pain. He jerked awake, looked wide-eyed at me, exclaiming, "Oh, mama!" I felt so bad. I kept telling him how sorry I was. In the process, I realized that I had moved my hand away from him, almost onto my lap. Basilio found my hand and squeezed it hard. He mumbled, "It's OK, mama; it's OK."
When I awoke from the dream, I didn't immediately see President Bush as the soft, open person who was in my dream. But then Basilio came to mind-gentle, peace-filled Basilio who needed to let me forgive myself for causing him such pain; Basilio, the seeming antithesis of everything I was seeing in President Bush.
In retrospect, I realize that there are many people who could have been the subject of my dream: people who act differently from how I think they should, people who evoke my judgment. Perhaps it took President Bush to get my attention.
It was much easier to be with Basilio; I liked what I saw in him. Yet there they were together, allowing me to see parts of myself I hadn't seen before.
When I thought of President Bush, I shuddered to think that I shared the underlying ego-driven motives that I have imputed to him during this time of war. I didn't want to see what he might have to tell me about myself. Instead I wanted to give my energy to justifying him, to coming up with a scenario that would justify him in my mind. That would make it easier for me to accept the President Bush part of me.
As I watched what I was doing, I saw this kind of rationalization showing in other areas of my life as well. I think I grew up hearing something like, "Always give a person the benefit of the doubt." And so I have. I've spent a lot of energy conjuring up "good" motives for people.
When I'm driving and someone cuts me off, I get really angry and utter a few choice words. Then I say to myself, "But that person is probably really running late or they have to do something that is really important." When someone hurts me or acts in an annoyingly obnoxious way, I get angry first, then say to myself: "But you don't know what's going on in this person or why he's doing what he's doing." I give them the benefit of the doubt.
I used to think this "giving the benefit of the doubt" practice was part of my charitable nature, contributing to an atmosphere of peace. Perhaps it is, at least sometimes. But in actuality, more often than not, I seem to be working things around in my mind until they look the way I want them to look, until they become acceptable to my heart. I'm beginning to see that peacemaking is about finding room for everything, just as it is.
That became clear to me last night at Eucharist as we sang the hymn, "All Are Welcome." Its first line is, "Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live." The image that came to mind was that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so expanded by love that it has space for all. That heart, my heart, all hearts one. Peacemaking- living in the reality of our oneness. May it be so!
Rock of Ages
by Gordon Forbes
The rock in my hand hides its story-
polished surface a facade.
Its beginnings a chip off rock wall-
tumbled, scraped, broken
by persistent glaciers.
It fell into ice-blue streams
ground into sandy beaches
its rough edges honed and washed
'til all sharpness disappeared.
It lay there for eons until
some hand found it, washed it,
loved it into a holy relic,
laying here in my praying hands.
At Shalem's Poetry Quiet Day in May, participants were asked to pick out three objects from a lush altar of flowers, fruit, branches, candies, rocks, and other signs of newness in the present. Gordon's poem came from that experience.
Contemplative Grounding for Social Policy
by Tilden Edwards
Over the years, I have been impressed by the active social concern of most people who come to Shalem. I have found this concern growing in the past year, not only among Shalem participants but among those in workshops and retreats I have led around the country. Action from a contemplative grounding is desperately needed in the world today. It's the deeper grounding to which many of us are being impelled by the world's turbulence and the radical turns of American policies.
One of those policies is overwhelming reliance on military force as a way to assert and maintain American dominance in the world and presumably protect American interests. Psalm 33 challenges any undue optimism about the fruits of a policy based so much on force. The psalmist says that "the war horse is a vain hope for deliverance; for all its strength, it cannot save." We rather will be saved by turning in trust to the divine loving power that lives in us and in the heart of all that is.
To me this says that the world will not change much for the better without being grounded in authentic spiritual conversion. Conversion leads to a new social compassion. Among other things, contemplatively grounded conversion from self- to God-centeredness shifts our understanding of the "we" that we want to be saved. The contemplative has tasted that "we" as God's "we," which knows no national, ethnic, or religious boundaries. The contemplative sees but one human family born of God and therefore prays, "God bless the world," not just "God bless America." That blessing is asked both for spiritual conversion and societal well-being.
From this sense of God's inclusive concern, we could deduce that our long-term security finally depends on everyone's assurance in the world's security and also in a sense of mutual belonging. Military force could then be used to support such a purpose, rather than the much more short-sighted and exclusive purpose of national hegemony.
Such a view means that a contemplative orientation to the world inevitably is a prophetic orientation. It is subversive of whatever is born of fear and greed in the social fabric of our lives. It is supportive of what the contemplative Jesus calls the Kingdom of God growing like a mustard seed in our midst. Jesus' vision of the Kingdom grew from his immediate intimacy with our divine Wellspring. He invites us to share this intimacy and vision with him.
Jesus doesn't offer us a static social vision; it's not a neat blueprint. Rather, it's an ever-evolving vision revealed and lived out in the moment's intimacy with God. There are certain steady signs of the Kingdom, however, such as Jesus' Beatitudes. Good news is given to the oppressed poor, and that good news is the revelation of God's personal presence for them, both for their spiritual and earthly well-being. All of us can see ourselves as part of the poor in the spiritual sense, but now as in Jesus' day, there are many materially and socially impoverished people who feel God's particular concern-a concern for what finally is the divine call for justice in a shared, human community.
Jim Wallis of the Sojourner's Community says that every budget is a moral document. Thus one question that needs to be asked of every governmental appropriation bill is: what effect will it have on the poor? As I write this article, Congress is about to approve, with very little scheduled debate, a massive $399 billion military budget (scheduled to rise dramatically further in coming years). This budget surpasses the military budgets of the next 20 largest nations combined and surpasses all other areas of federal discretionary spending combined. According to the Defense Monitor (started by retired military officers who were concerned for waste in military spending), very little of this money is going for homeland defense, for the transformation of the military's effectiveness, or for the Iraqi war (for which there is supplementary spending). The budget continues to waste huge sums for Cold War weapons systems that the Administration once admitted should be ended.
Especially in this time of a sluggish economy, large federal and state deficits, and tax cuts, we can guess what impact this budget will have on monies available for the poor, as well as for infrastructure and other societal needs of the nation and the world. The federal budget as a whole can only be called an unbiblical budget, with massive over-reliance on the warhorse and faint concern for the roots of poverty, injustice, and environmental degradation that Jesus and the prophets identified as crucial to God's peace.
I cannot advise you how specifically to respond to such social realities, but I can tell you that a contemplative response begins with a trust that God's radiant presence is in our midst, wanting to shape the world's true peace-in, through and among us. That trust can draw us to a direct and regular turning to God in listening prayer.
When we go into such prayer, we likely share a desire to see the beauty and preciousness of life through God's compassionate eyes and share a yearning to be energetic and willing vessels of God's shalom. Our own death becomes less frightening when we have tasted the deathless reality of the divine loving light out of which we are made. When we lose the fear of death, we are freed for more imaginative, Spirit-grounded responses to oppression in the world.
Morning Prayer
by Carole Crumley
"...maybe just looking and listening is the real work. Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem." -Mary Oliver
My morning practice is a simple one. I sit at my kitchen window and watch, actually gaze at, the world in our backyard. I watch the sun moving slowly across the grass, filtering through the branches of tall evergreen trees and slowly pushing the shadows of the night to the edge of the yard. Birds come in flocks to our feeders-sparrows, woodpeckers, cardinals and the yellow finches flashing their bright colors. And now humming birds are showing up. These little ones stop and rest briefly at their feeder before taking flight and disappearing faster than my eyes can follow. Sometimes the birds get along with each other but often they squawk and push each other out of the way, hogging the food for themselves. Even so, there is plenty for all.
The neighbor's cat is also there stalking the perimeter of the yard while fixing its steely eye on potential prey. One day when I glanced up I saw a squirrel die. Right underneath the bird feeder, it rolled over and took a last breath. I don't know why. The birds and other squirrels seemed to notice but then continued their morning feasting. A little shock ran through me, the surprise of being present at that threshold between life and death, the awareness that in the presence of death, life goes on.
Often there are deer in the back yard. Sometimes they sleep over, taking the high ground under the trees where the pine needles are soft and the lay of the land feels safe. Just recently a doe and her fawn have come around. The doe moves slowly, grazing quietly. The fawn runs and leaps like a puppy, exploring everything, charging through the birds' feeding ground, the squirrel's dying ground, now the fawn's playground. I watch it and laugh. Such dappled beauty and exuberant exploring make me want to run and play.
This is the way I pray - watching, gazing, and enjoying the beauty and complexity of the day as it wakes up and I wake up.
Today a friend sent me a poem by Mary Oliver, "Five A.M. in the Pinewoods." She writes about seeing the hoofprints of two deer under the pines, and so she went in the dark to sit there under the trees and wait for them. They came, stepping closer, Oliver writes, seemingly unafraid until "one of them...could have come to my arms." The other one warned against it, and they both took off through the trees.
This isn't a poem about a dream, Oliver writes, "This is a poem about the world that is ours, or could be."
Every day as I sit at the kitchen window waking up, I marvel at this "world that is ours, or could be." Watching, gazing, appreciating, opening my heart to the feasting, the dying, the slow and the quick, the shadows and light, the rambunctious and the cautious, I take the day, the world, into my arms.
This then is my morning prayer.
Reflections of a Christian Zen Practitioner
by Kim Boykin
"A big part of my struggle with my spiritual practice was that I had smashed up against the limits of my own willpower. The style of practice at the Zen monastery at that time felt willful, effortful, goal-oriented, and that was my own approach to Zen practice. I thought it was all about pushing for kensho-an enlightenment experience, or 'breakthrough'-but I hadn't had any breakthroughs. Buddhism is supposed to be about liberation from suffering, but I was still miserable.
"Both Zen and Christianity teach that our liberation is not something we can earn or create or achieve, but it was in the Christian tradition, through my retreats with Eleanor [my spiritual director], that I finally started to understand what this means. I had begun to recognize the vital importance of grace. I had begun to recognize that if my liberation depended on me or anything I did, it was hopeless.
"Gerald May's Will and Spirit...helped clarify my struggles and gave me some vocabulary for the 'willingness' of true contemplative practice as opposed to the 'willfulness' with which I had been practicing Zen. I had been trying to use my spiritual practice to get what I wanted, when spiritual practice is actually about being with reality as it is. I had been trying to satisfy my own will instead of opening to God's will. No wonder my practice had been such a struggle!
"With this new insight into spiritual practice, I thought that now I could get back into Zen and practice willingness instead of willfulness. But whenever I started to think about it, I would immediately get caught up in thoughts about how it would be good for me. That is, I would immediately fall back into making my Zen practice an instrument of my will. So I decided I'd better give my Zen practice a rest for a while longer, since it seemed only to exacerbate my willfulness.
"An insight I was missing at the time was that of course I would practice willingness willfully-that's natural and inevitable-and my willfulness could be treated like any other wandering thought that arises during meditation: notice the willful thought, and return my attention to the present moment. Notice, return, notice, return, notice, return-that's what Zen practice is. It was fine if I kept noticing myself thinking, "I will be willing!" But I didn't get that then."
"Having decided to formally become a Christian, I realized that although I had done intensive spiritual practice in the Zen tradition, which bears strong resemblances to certain elements of the Christian contemplative tradition, I had very little experience with the basic Christian spiritual practice of verbal prayer. I said all the communal prayers that are part of the Mass, but I had trouble praying on my own. I had a lot of inhibitions and questions about prayer."
"...Karl Rahner, one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, assured me that no matter the depth of my doubts about God and Christianity, I could still pray. 'If you think your heart cannot pray,' he says, 'then pray with your mouth, kneel down, fold your hands, speak loudly, even if it all seems like a lie to you (it is only the desperate self-defense of your unbelief before its death, which is already sealed)....' Although I couldn't will my heart to have a stronger faith, I could certainly will my body to take a posture of prayer and my mouth to say some words of prayer. Rahner assured me that not only was there no hypocrisy in this, but it was vital that I express my half a mustard seed of faith in this way.
"My favorite definition of prayer also comes from Karl Rahner, who says that prayer is opening our hearts to God. In the most familiar type of prayer, verbal or discursive prayer, we open our hearts to God using words. We talk to God, either aloud or mentally. But that's not the only way to pray. Christianity also has a tradition of contemplative prayer, in which we open our hearts to God without words or with very few words. We heed God's call in Psalm 46: 'Be still, and know that I am God.'"
The previous excerpts are from Kim's book, Zen for Christians: A Beginner's Guide, published by Jossey-Bass (A Wiley Imprint), 2003. Copyright (c)2003 by Kim Boykin. Used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Kim and her husband, Brian, are both graduates of Shalem's Group Leaders Program, which is now called "Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups & Retreats."