Volume 18, No. 2-Summer, 1994
Table of Contents
A Fine-Tuned Instrument of the Spirit
by Pamela Falkowski
A Space to Call Home
by Peter Ellsworth
Please Come Back
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Why She Wrote a Will
by Diane Wegener
I Met Her on the Mountain
by Gerald May
20th Year Envisioning
by Lynne Smith
The Holy Quality of Restlessness
by Brian Beckett
Home
by Tilden Edwards
A Fine-Tuned Instrument of the Spirit
by Pamela Falkowski
God speaks to us in every situation of our lives; if we listen, we can actually hear God speaking. This is about a phone call I received from God one day via a directee. It came about fifteen minutes after she was due for an appointment. She explained that she was late because she had scheduled a meeting immediately before ours and didn't realize that it would take as long as it did. She asked if I could still see her; I said, "yes." She also informed me that she was expecting a call from her sister at my number. She arrived shortly thereafter and asked to keep the answering machine off so she could receive the call from her sister; there was a family crisis. Neither of us commented on what she was doing to herself by trying to do three things at once; that's just the way it was and often is in a society that chases itself right into delusion.
This call was not only to inform me of this woman's tardiness and familial complications; it was a call to alert me, once again, that I do the very same thing. Her experience of being caught in the crossfire of her own doing reminded me ever-so-clearly that I, too, clutter my life with projects, appointments, meetings, "important" busyness of all kinds with little time for the imperatives, primarily my relationship with God. In spite of my desires to live the sacred balance, I invariably sabotage my efforts, cheapening their value and wearing thin my integrity as person and director.
I am always creating; one idea spawns another, and soon I am in over my head. Time for recreation, relationships, nurturance and sustenance are short-changed. I find myself filling in my time with more and more projects so that there is little or no space for the in-breaking of God, of the Spirit. Unbeknown to me, God is ever honing, shaping and transforming me even as I approach my self in a rather violent fashion with unrealistic expectations, allowing myself to be carried away with the rush of life.
Living this way assumes, first and foremost, that I am not listening to my self, to the signs of the times, to God who loves me and whom I love, and to a tradition I value. It assumes that I can do everything, that God will always be here for me, that my part in this relationship with the Divine Lover is minimal and less important. It also leads me to believe that I will come to some level of expertise and trust by osmosis: just having the thoughts, reading the books, or passing on the information to an unsuspecting directee.
What the phone call was really about was choice--God finally being able to break through and putting the hard questions to me. What is important to me? What do I really value?
There is no hesitation: it is my relationship with God that is of utmost importance, beckoning me to be an active and creative participant in my own transformation. It also involves a non-violent stance in life, fidelity to prayer, reverence and gratitude, compassion and love, and an attitude of contemplation and sabbath. It is the combination of contemplation and sabbath that will bring forth fruit and bear inner wisdom in my life as a woman religious before God and as spiritual director. Sabbath builds and strengthens my integrity by challenging me to stop and listen, to choose, and to come home to myself in God. It nurtures me, the play and rest, time for relationships. Contemplation kindles the flame of love and devotion, satisfying the heartmindbodysoul, the whole person.
Where sabbath calls me to rejoice in or mourn for what is, contemplation grounds me in the source of my being, Jesus Christ. They both nourish me and prepare me for the next person with whom I will meet. But contemplation hones me as the fine instrument of the Spirit in direction, gives me the patience I need to be with the person in a difficult space, the courage to challenge when necessary, the depth I need to move more deeply with another into his or her experience of God.
So why the resistance? Simple--fear! To give reign to these essential elements is counter-cultural, not just in society but within the church and within my own religious congregation. The rewards of over-extension and compulsive yeses cloud that which might be gained by fidelity to prayer, times of contemplation and sabbath, and well-discerned commitments; they cloud the strength and fortitude necessary to live in the countenance of the Holy, being a steadfast companion to Jesus Christ, a fine-tuned instrument for the Spirit.
Pam, a member of the Religious of the Cenacle, is an Associate in the Spiritual Guidance Program, Class of Winter 1995. This article is taken from one of her program papers.
A Space to Call Home
by Peter Ellsworth
I have become obsessed with space. Perhaps I have always been obsessed with space. In fact, aren't we all obsessed with space? I have long believed that it is an unquenchable thirst for a complete love that characterizes human existence. Now I also realize that love is just another word for no space. Lovers strive to have no space between themselves and the beloved. My wife is in her 8th month of pregnancy. She loves the life within her and she also has virtually no space left within her or her clothes. The beginning of life is characterized by no space. Another example is Lin Ludy's hugs which leave no space between her and the lucky recipient. Her hugs are very close to being a perfect expression of love.
We spend our lives pushing and pulling the limits of space. As a hormonally initiated teenager I spent endless hours, mostly fruitless, on the dance floor, in the car, and on my parents' couch trying to reduce the space between myself and my date. I thought I was in love. I wanted no space. Eventually I discovered a woman who also wanted no space and we married. Our marriage vows could easily have said, "In sickness and health, to have and to hold, with no space."
Shalem is searching for new space to house its programs and operations. What might come as a surprise, however, is that Shalem is also searching for no space--that is, between ourselves and perfect space. Everyone at Shalem has his or her idea of this perfect space. The descriptions of perfect bring with them such necessities as private parking, a reasonable price, lots of light, plenty of room, a Jacuzzi which could accommodate the entire Board of Directors, and a safe neighborhood. This property does not exist in the Washington metropolitan area. I have propelled many real estate agents into fits of hysterical laughter by reciting this list to them. Undaunted, we continue to search for nonexistent space because we all want no space between us and what we love and desire.
During our search for no space over the last several months, I have discovered that real estate brokers are in fact love brokers. They spend their days struggling to find their clients some space which will be the right space. Their language of love gently bespeaks the many degrees of space. Everything they describe spatially is spoken of in square feet. Wanting to be a more loving person, I now measure all things in square feet, such as to the street vendor, "I'll have the one square foot hot dog please," or to my wife, "The party Friday night is about 20,000 square feet from our house." I now also realize how small my office really is--it's about the same square footage as my pants after they have been through the dryer. Indeed, I proudly acknowledge that I have the smallest office at Shalem. In fact I have virtually no space. This is why I am so happy and can write an article such as this.
Many of the issues concerning space are brought up during Shalem's infamous committee meetings. Committee meetings are very important at Shalem. We use them to reach critical decisions, share intellectual discourse and to justify eating several pounds of imported cheese while staring at a slowly melting candle.
One of the more influential Shalem committees is the Space Committee. The primary purpose of this committee is to discuss the ongoing search for perfect space, which I have mentioned does not exist, and share creative ideas around funding the purchase of this nonexistent space. The concept of JerryWear, for example, was the brainchild of one of these committee meetings. For those of you who don't purchase used clothing from contemplative spiritual organizations, JerryWear, named for its founder Jerry May, are clothes designed for the sensitive though uninhibited guy who isn't shy about wearing a tee-shirt under a sports coat. I have conducted an informal market survey to gauge interest in Shalem's soon-to-be-released summer line of Jerry Wear. I took the liberty of slipping a picture of Jerry sitting in a full lotus position smartly modeling his layer-look ensemble into the last Shalem News mailing. I included a brief questionnaire where I asked such informative questions as, "Would you buy these clothes if we charged outrageous prices for them?" and "Do you like to fish, smoke a pipe and recite a mantra simultaneously?" The response to the survey has been overwhelming. I have received cards expressing positive interest from such parties as M. Gibson, K. Costner, the Moose Lodge of Greater San Francisco, my aunt in Kentucky, Patricia Clark, and the St. Alban's Boys Choir. In light of this apparent hysteria over Jerry's threads, I have enlisted the help of a well-known perfumologist to create a special scent to go with the clothes-"Blissed-Out by Jerry." It would smell like a mixture of wet cowhide and liturgical incense. We'd advertise in distinguished spiritual journals with one of those seductive black and white glossy photos of sweaty entangled bodies--sort of like the body prayer class out of control. Of course all this would have to be approved by the Shalem Board of Directors and the EPA, but I am certain that the financial rewards Shalem would reap would allow us to buy one of Tilden's many houses which are currently on the market.
The search for no space has been progressing somewhat slowly, and some might say this is due to the way Shalem reaches decisions. Committee decisions are generally reached using an unique organizational behavior technique developed at the Rogers School of Humanistic Industrious Psychology in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This technique, known as the "consenseless decision-making process," is based on years of research and scientific fabrication. The members of Shalem have been strongly committed to engaging in senseless acts of beauty ever since someone read a bumper sticker on the way into work one day 21 years ago. The "consenseless process" complements this mission goal perfectly. Basically, when using "consenseless decision-making," we go around the room during a committee meeting asking for each individual's feelings around a particular subject. When an individual starts making sense they are struck with a meditation pillow and politely asked to leave the room until they can stop making sense. Typically, answering our phones for 5 to 10 minutes will do the trick.
I realize that this concept of no space might be hard to grasp at first, but then so was the idea that I would some day be participating in a hedonistic Shalem event called Pie Day where responsible adults spend several hours wildly eating a couple dozen pies until they collapse from insulin shock. Many Shalem members have had recurring dreams of a new space infused by blue light and enclosed by one big circular wall. What does this mean, besides the probability that these individuals are in need of a full-body Reiki massage? I think it means that Shalem is seeking an expression of an infinite love, the no space of life. Some day, maybe soon, Shalem will find a less than perfect building and fill it with a new generation of dreams, laughter, hugs and silence. We will breathe out our spirit breath to fill up the space until there is nearly no space left.
Please Come Back
by Rose Mary Dougherty
A wooden heart hangs on my office door; one side says, "Welcome," the other, "Please come back." Sometimes I forget to turn the sign and to leave the door open after my appointment has gone. Other times I choose to close the door and leave the sign turned, because I'm not in a welcoming mood or I need space for myself. Eventually someone knocks and says, "Are you still busy?"
In many ways, that wooden heart has become a symbol for my own heart. I suspect that years ago, when life's circumstances appeared too threatening, I shut some doors of different parts of my heart, almost without knowing it. My psyche hung the sign, "Please come back."
Sometimes, when I was feeling most alone in one of these rooms, especially in prayer, God would emerge from a corner and sit with me. Eventually, God would say, "Can I open the door?" I'd say a shaky, "Yes," and the door would open slowly. I would sense a hospitality for whatever might come in. I could be with God for awhile, looking at everything, even my fear. I was not overwhelmed. I knew I was safe and loved. Then, reflexively, I would close the door again.
There are other doors which I consciously chose to close. I wanted protection against rejection, intimacy, feelings which I'd rather not have, and maybe even protection against God. I posted a sign which said, "Please come back when I am ready to deal with you" and added, "God, this means you, too."
Life and friends have respected the signs; even God has respected them, it seems. But lately I hear God knocking on some of these doors and saying, "Rose Mary, are you still busy?" I hear the knocking in times of silence in the tenderness of friends, in the drawing to compassion, in the welling up of gratitude. It reminds me that maybe it is time for me to open these doors. There is no reason for them to remain closed forever. I want to say, "God come in," but I'm not sure I'm ready for that. Even if I were, I doubt that I could open them easily. Regardless of how they got closed, they are stuck. Their hinges have become rusty.
But I'm also tired of living behind closed doors, of going though the motions of opening and closing them, of posting signs of welcome then quickly changing them. When I close out part of life, even that which I fear, I close out freedom and love.
Sometimes lately I just sit quietly in my desire to have them open. At other times I pray with deep passion, "Oh God, invade my heart! With chisel and hammer remove its many doors! Leave only a welcome sign for all to see!"
I ask this knowing God will not invade. Instead, God will change the signs from "Come back later" to "Welcome," gently opening each door. Then God will wait with me to welcome freedom and love. Perhaps, in time, when my trust is solid enough, God will remove all the doors.
Why She Wrote a Will
by Diane Wegener
An Interview With Susan Bell
Susan Bell noticed a flyer about Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program one day in the mail when she was working as a consultant for the Diocese of Washington back in 1981. She was drawn to it. It was "like someone had finally named what I was looking for my whole life." Susan was then both working and in graduate school and had no time for a new organization or program in her life. Another flyer that came in the mail gave her the same intrigued feeling. She tried to ignore it but found it compelling. Still, she threw it away. When the third notice of this program came she called the contact person at the bottom of the page. The name was Tilden Edwards, and she left a message for him to call her. She hoped she could meet this man and that he would say oh, no this program was not for her and thus end the distraction and let her get back to her life-at-hand. Tilden called her back during dinner, she remembers, and they made an appointment. Once she had met with him, Susan knew that this program was going to be a priority in her life.
After completing the Spiritual Guidance Program, Susan felt the tremendous loss that is natural at the end of an intensive program. The leaders did address this issue. Program participants were asked to consider how they might find support in their lives for their spiritual journey. How could this level of nurturing be continued? Susan was not certain. Well, fortuitously for her and for Shalem, she was asked to serve on Shalem's Board. "I thought I was a strange choice, but accepted because it allowed me to stay connected." Very quickly, she was asked also to serve on the Development and Communications Committee. After her first meeting she received a call from Susie Dillon, the Nominating Committee chair, telling her that the Development Committee chair had resigned and asking her to assume leadership of that committee! With help from Patricia Clark and others on the committee, Susan learned about fund-raising and remained the chair for two years. "Serving on the Board and on the Development Committee was a wonderful way of staying connected to a community of people who had become important in my life."
Although Susan knows that there has been much change and growth at Shalem in the 13 years of her involvement, the most important thing for her is the way Shalem has stayed the same. "There is a continuity of leadership. People involved are from very different places but share something; that something is the support of our desire and attention to and intention toward God. Shalem supports and nourishes this desire."
Susan believes that Shalem offers freedom for each person to find what they need and work it out in their life. "Shalem's strength is offering freedom for individuals for following the directions they need to go in their own life." This is offered with the support of community. Susan explains that community is very important because so much in our culture does not support our values. "We need and depend on each other. We weren't meant to walk this walk alone."
Four years ago, Susan made out a will. She explains that she put Shalem in her will for the same reason that she put her children in her will. "Shalem and my three children will be the inheritors of what is left when I die. Shalem and my children are what I care about for providing ongoing support. You put in your will what is most important in your life. You want to continue to support what you care about."
The Development Committee, under Susan's leadership, began an endowment, The Shalem Fund. The purpose of the fund is to provide for the long-term ministry of Shalem. Susan notes the connection between her work helping to start The Shalem Fund and providing for Shalem in her will. Her work with The Shalem Fund included letting people know they could make gifts to this fund through their wills. This was not a short-term fundraising campaign to help with immediate expenses for a project or program, so bequests from wills were appropriate. Susan explained that because of her work with the fund, she knew that giving to Shalem in this way was possible. "People don't generally think about wills. When I realized that my kids could inherit (my estate) at the age of 18, I was motivated to write a will! I feel better having a will." She adds, "a will is an important responsibility. It is another way of taking care of the people and things that are important to you."
Susan is now a social worker with a private practice in psychotherapy in Alexandria, Virginia. Asked if she has any specific hopes or visions for Shalem's future, she replied, "My hope for Shalem and my children is that they will grow in the ways they are called into. Money supports this in this world. I would want Shalem and my children to have the resources to follow their mission as this mission unfolds."
I Met Her on the Mountain
by Gerald May
For the past two years, my Shalem News articles have been about learnings from the wilderness. Now I want to say why solitude in the wild has been so important for me. I felt encouraged to do this last March listening to Constance FitzGerald sharing her groundbreaking work on Wisdom. I am sure I have met Wisdom in the mountain forests, Wisdom not as just an attribute of God but as an actual presence of God's very self.
I do not know why, but ever since I was a little boy I have been seeking a real, substantial, palpable sense of relationship with God. When I was very young I tried to have such a relationship with Jesus. I asked him to come into my heart, to be with me in a way I could really sense. I pictured him, pretended he was with me, and had imaginary walks and talks with him. But even at that young age I knew it was mostly my imagination. As I grew older, I became increasingly frustrated and finally downright angry with a Jesus who promised to be with us yet never actually showed up for me in a direct way. I quit trying and gave myself instead to beginning my career and starting my family.
But the desire never left me, and by the time I was thirty I was back to searching. I tried many meditation practices, most of which just confronted me more and more with my longing for direct, felt relationship. My desire only deepened. I also learned some theology. In Christianity and other faiths there are countless experiences--from mystics at one extreme to fundamentalists at the other--of direct, here-and-now encounters with the Divine. God can and does become manifest in an immediate and personal way to some people. Yet mystical theology also says the Original First-Cause Being, the Naked Godhead, is utterly beyond all apprehension, completely mysterious. God is "Nada", no-thing. Some theology interprets this by saying we cannot expect to see God directly, but only in hinted-at ways, through a glass darkly. We must wait until death for the real encounter. Yet, even if my mind might have accepted that theology, my heart could not.
I did have many indirect experiences. First as a physician and later as a spiritual guide, I saw grace abounding in people, in their healings and in their capacity for love. Time and again I was awed by the intricate just-rightness of nature, the power of Spirit in human community, the whole marvel of creation. I felt God's love for me coming through other people and flowing through me for them. But I wasn't satisfied.
As wonderful as these experiences were, they still were mediated rather than immediate. They were radiant expressions of God's Spirit but not the direct person of the One I knew was hiding behind them. It was not that I wanted to prove God's existence; I had seen too much grace to have a need for that. I didn't want to put my hands in Jesus's wounds to make sure he was real. What I wanted was to put my arms around him, feel his around me. I still wanted the direct encounter, the tangible relatedness.
Then I went to the mountain. In truth it is not much of a mountain, just an Appalachian ridge. But it is very wild, and it was there I had my first direct encounters with God's immediate presence. At first I felt strangely welcomed, as if by a palpable hospitality, and I sensed myself responding with a depth of friendliness I knew I alone was incapable of. At times I felt a physical touch, as if someone were taking me by the shoulders helping me be still or guiding me here and there, gently but powerfully showing me things, teaching me, even healing me in ways my mind could not understand. The very same presence simultaneously arose inside me as a slowing, centering, urging energy in my belly. It was at once me and not-me, transcendent and immanent, a presence both with me and incarnate inside me as me. The first name that came to me was "The Power of the Slowing," probably because the presence slowed my mind and body and opened my senses to being there more completely than I had ever felt before.
But the presence was far too personal to call "It." Nor was this the Father-God or the Son-Jesus I might have expected. Instead, I found myself thinking of a "Her." In my experience the presence has been consistently, undeniably feminine. At first I thought of the Holy Spirit, but this "Her" was far more substantial than anything I would call spirit. Slowly I recognized Her from scripture as Wisdom; "Hokmah" in Hebrew, "Sophia" in Greek, the dynamically touching, guiding, creating, urging, and distinctly feminine presence of God in us and in the world. I cannot deny that these experiences might be hallucinations. But I also cannot deny that they are completely real for me, in many ways more real and certainly more intimate than any encounter I have ever had with anyone or anything.
It is not surprising that my theology is changing. I still see the primal Godhead as being beyond all attributes, including gender. And I still have my tender images of the historical man Jesus. What has changed is my understanding of the real presence of God in the world, the risen Christ, the One who fills the whole creation. In this One, the masculine "Logos" and feminine "Sophia" are not only Immanuel, God-with-us, but also God incarnate in us and, astoundingly for me, God as us.
Thus my anthropology is changing as well. I used to think the human spiritual heart consisted of desire and intent. Desire, the passion of the human spirit, is fundamentally a yearning for God and is God's birth-gift to each person. Intent, the freedom to claim our desire and dedicate ourselves to it, is empowered by the Holy Spirit of God within us, the incarnate presence of the risen Christ. So we are very much ourselves and free to choose, yet both our desire and our choosing are gifts from God. In other words, our choices are very important but it's still all grace. I continue to believe this, but now I see that desire and intent alone do nothing but increase one's longing and dedication--the story of my life before the mountain forests.
A third quality is necessary, namely receptivity. This is a real openness, a radical willingness for the desire and intent to be fulfilled. Like intent, our receptivity is to some degree a matter of choice, but it too must be empowered by grace. We cannot achieve it on our own. I sense now that empowerment of intent is a Logos gift and empowerment of receptivity is a Sophia gift. And instead of neither male nor female there are both male and female in the incarnate Christ. And instead of a wholly transcendent God relating to separate human beings, this entire flow of grace and freedom is the way God loves God's self as us. Sophia and Logos, Wisdom and Word, are simultaneously God's gifts to us, our gifts to God and to one another, and God's gifts to God. I am overwhelmed with gratitude to be a part of it. I feel more whole and more confident than ever before. Most of all, I feel deeply free. But my desire is not satisfied. Not by a long shot.
20th Year Envisioning
by Lynne Smith
Last fall I wrote about our desire, in Shalem's 20th year, to look in an intentional way at various possibilities for our future. At that time, we were already looking for new home space and were beginning a process of envisioning. We sensed God's invitation to open ourselves to God's vision of us, of Shalem's meaning and purpose and life, expressing our willingness to see how God can now reveal even more love and goodness to us and the world through Shalem.
Throughout this process, much has been unclear and at times some of us have felt at an impasse. Perhaps for all of us, as for me, it is hard to be truly willing to invite God's movement in us, to be open to that fundamentally alarming, disruptive, extraordinary Life. What I usually mean when I say, "Thy will be done" is, "God, please reassure me that my will here is your will." But I think that occasionally--invariably in a moment of passionate craziness!--my heart has truly asked and I have truly been given. And for me, the ensuing experience has always begun as alarming and disruptive and, indeed, painful.
God's love for me is so huge that its freer movement in my life necessarily knocks down all kinds of carefully-built expectations I've come to depend upon. Something like a springtime creek--boiling along, uprooting dead trees, carving a larger channel, carrying away the winter's debris. But always, when I've been able to keep my heart's gaze somehow on God's face, the initially alarming disruption has eventually shown itself as groundbreaking for a much larger self and only in this way am I enabled to receive and offer to others greater love.
This is also my sense of Shalem's experience in our envisioning process. I believe we truly asked God to help us see Shalem in God's loving vision and that God is showing us to the fullest extent that we are willing to see it. I am painfully conscious of my own habitual desire for stasis, for predictability, for the familiar face and manner of things. At times during this envisioning, I've felt the disruption that we can experience when we agree to God's transforming touch. And I deeply trust that it is in that very disruption, right in it, that our transformation is taking place.
During the fall and winter, our envisioning group met three times. It was, in a way, a microcosm of Shalem's life: at various times exhilarating, frustrating, imaginative, spacious, anxious, hilarious, confusing, loving, surprising. Miraculously, out of the many threads and fragments evoked in our discussions, a number of clarities and transformations emerged, which we are now developing into a mission statement and specific intentions. (Copies of our draft mission statement are available on request.)
As a further follow-up, a smaller group began meeting to focus on the future of Shalem's local program offerings. This turned out to be a rich experience, and several significant recommendations emerged. As a result of one of this group's recommendations, we are surveying a large number of participants about their experience of Shalem programs and their suggestions as to how we can deepen our ministry within the contemplative tradition. To date, we have received a 45% response to this questionnaire.
This 20th year has brought much to celebrate. Last spring, Richard Rohr's workshop on action and contemplation was a blessed success in every way. In March of this year, Shalem was honored to provide the opportunity for a large group to hear Constance FitzGerald discuss her exciting and timely illumination of the feminine God-aspect, Sophia/ Wisdom. Our work with these spiritual leaders, and our expanding contacts with other spiritual centers and faith communities in this country and abroad, deepen our sense of unity in the One who loves us and our commitment to support them in prayer.
We also celebrate the great generosity of our many financial supporters. In addition to the gifts, large and small, that we gratefully receive through the annual campaign, a special appeal this anniversary year allowed us to complete the initial goal of our endowment fund. And this year Shalem was given two incredibly generous new gifts which make it possible to move ahead in freedom.
When I think back over this anniversary year of envisioning, I am reminded of the experience of the lowly caterpillar, who -- having done all it knows to do as a caterpillar -- wraps itself snugly in a cocoon to dream, only to endure a gradual (and perhaps to it, horrifying) loss of its very self, later to emerge transformed to a new self: freer, even more beautiful, a pollinating agent for many plants. I believe we are being invited to such a transformation into a new Shalem-self: more obvious, with a larger ability to move freely and easily in the world, naturally effective in serving God's purposes of life and beauty. I think we are being shown many opportunities to give ourselves over to this transformation. My heartfelt prayer for myself and for Shalem is that we will let God lead us into and through our transformation.
The Holy Quality of Restlessness
by Brian Beckett
"Does the restlessness ever go away? I mean, does it ever, does anyone get to the point where the desire is fully satisfied? Does anyone?"
These are the words of a woman in her mid-30's, married with two active teens, who works full-time as a receptionist at a group medical practice and is active in church affairs. Our get-togethers every four weeks are for her "an oasis...the one safe place in which I can rest." In my opinion, this restlessness with restlessness is one of the primary characteristics of spiritual growth.
I think we all are created with this desire for love, belonging, and acceptance. This desired-for love can only be received as gift; yet much of our life-energy is spent trying to secure this unsecureable love, to nail it down. Much of our personality development can be seen as rising from this desire for unconditional love and especially our response when this desire is left unfilled.
We try to secure love by attempting to please others or maybe by demonstrating how efficient we can be. Or maybe we tell the world to go to hell, deciding we can secure the love we need without anyone else. But we know down deep that this love we are earning, while certainly better than nothing and at times rather sweet and tasty, is--in the final analysis--conditional. This earned-love does not respond to our deepest longing.
To me, the spiritual life is a restless life; a living between the desire to trust and the desire to make love happen. Months ago I thought we were supposed to live as completely as possible in this desire to trust. But now I'm not too sure. Maybe to listen only to the desire to trust voice to the willful exclusion of the desire to make this happen voice is to accept the tempter's challenge to be our own master; an unwillingness to hear the whole story. The voice of loving acceptance loses its saving power if we do not come to an awareness of our striving to put conditions on that which is unconditional. In other words, to receive the unconditional love of God we need to claim our own strivings toward manufacturing this love.
All of our attempts to earn rather than receive love are precious. They will, one day, fail. They can not respond fully to our deepest love-desire. But when they do fail, we are blessed with a listening ear that hears clearly the voice of one crying from the wilderness, calling out attention inwardly to the source of love. Our efforts to grasp love become the springboard upon which we can awaken to the true giftedness of God's love. As Jerry May writes in Simply Sane, "Trying is not such a bad thing. It will not achieve what we most desire, but it does express our desire--and that alone is an act of human beauty."
Spiritual development is concerned with entering into the restlessness of unfulfilled desire. It attends to the listening, nurturing and respecting holy quality of restlessness. And somehow, amazingly so, here is rest. Yet the sense of incompleteness, the yearning and desire, are ever present.
Brian, a United Methodist pastor, is an Associate in the Spiritual Guidance Program, Class of Summer l994. This article is taken from one of his program papers.
Home
by Tilden Edwards
Recently my wife and I gratefully moved to a different house. It's a beautiful house, full of light inside and nature outside. It also provides what we all look for in a place to live: a sense of familiarity, safety, and the opportunity to be creative arrangers of a particular space. Something in me is content and would like to just be there all the time. Something else in me, though, gropes for more. I'm reminded every day that I have a lot of company in this unsettledness by the frequent roar of airplanes flying over the house and the whiz of cars passing by on the street. What are these travellers looking for, beyond such necessities as earning a living and buying food and clothes? What else am I looking for when I leave the house?
Perhaps my house gives me a taste of whatever this "something else" is. I would call this something else my sense of the fullness of home. My house is not home. It is part of home, though, where I can let down my defenses and let in a sense of some larger, hidden shelter that is infinitely beyond my house. My house is a physical sanctuary that feels basic to my welfare and to everyone else's. I think every human being has an intrinsic right to such sanctuary. This makes its provision an issue of human justice, and justice is constitutive of the full spiritual life. Yet housing in itself will never provide a sufficient home for the human soul. Many well-housed people are spiritually homeless. Our yearning for the fullness of home stretches us further.
I find another part of my home with other people, with nature, and in the service and creativity of my work. All these help show my connectedness and particular place in the web of creation. They are opportunities to participate in the ongoing settlement of creation. I want to explore, cultivate and celebrate creation and find part of my identity in it. I have new ways of doing this on the technological "information highway" today that let me touch a lot of the world without leaving my residence. But whether I touch the world from where I live or by leaving it, there is a place in me that is left incomplete. In fact, on their own these connections with other creatures feel like floating fragments of life without a common mooring, a common ground. They point toward something larger still. My soul remains adrift, waiting for the common bond to be revealed.
Two disciples asked Jesus where his home was (John 1:39). He told them to come with him and see for themselves. Later (John 14:23) he said that everyone who opened their love to him and the One who sent him would find themselves becoming a home to God, and they would know the peace, the fullness of home, that the world cannot give. He summed this up with the exhortation, "Make your home in me as I make mine in you." (John 15:4)
When I am given glimpses of this foundational home, all the other dimensions of home in my life at last find their mooring ground. This grounding home is not a place. It has no walls. It is not really any more inside me than outside. It is right in the middle of wherever I am at the moment, a kind of radiant ambiance beyond the mental boundaries of "inside" and "outside." It is the reality of at-homeness in God's hidden home in our midst. I can set down all my baggage in this home. I am offered relief from all the things I try to hold onto and carry alone. Then I find myself wondrously free to roam in the vast but intimate home of Love. It proves to be a home big enough to accommodate every creature.
Spiritual history and my own experience make it clear that people without good physical shelter can still be a beautiful home for God, despite the great human indignities they suffer. In fact, God gives us a humble, receptive homeless family making do with a cave as the setting for the special birthplace of Love Incarnate. God makes a home in every willing heart regardless of our outer circumstances. I think that's the real spiritual equality we share with one another. That's why anyone on the street can be my teacher--can tell me something about at-homeness with God in the cave of the heart. That's why I could lose my beautiful house and still trust that my home in God will not be lost.
This larger home in God can easily be lost to my view amidst the pressures of daily living. I can forget it, just as I can forget the sky, but like the sky it is always present, inclusive, expansive. Several things help me remember this home each day. First of all, there is that incomplete feeling God leaves in me that no walled dimension of home can satisfy. That divine dis-ease sharpens my openness to this Home of homes. Second, there are my intentional responses to this incompleteness: my reaching out to others who share it for spiritual company and encouragement; my reaching in to pray and watch through and beyond my ego rumblings for the wall-less home of divine love to become manifest and empowered in my life. In graced glimpses of that appearance all houses, all people, all nature shine with the divine indwelling that passes understanding; the world shows itself to be at-home in God.
Tilden is Shalem's Founder and Senior Fellow. He remains active in Shalem extension programs, regional programs and the Shalem Society for Contemplative Leadership.