Volume 22, No. 2-Summer, 1998
Table of Contents
The Light of God
by J. Stewart Hardy
Gambling for Love
by Rose Mary Dougherty
To Hell with the Devils
by Gerald May
Money as an Icon for Spirituality
by Jessica Marshall
The Deer
by Charlotte Maxson Moore
The Heart of the Matter
by Tilden Edwards
The Light of God
by J. Stewart Hardy
When I began the Shalem program in spiritual direction, I had been thoroughly steeped in the development psychology of Piaget and Erikson. This was later reinforced in the counseling courses I studied while at seminary.
I felt that my own spiritual growth was to be understood in a similar fashion and never thought to question what I believed. It staggers me now that I was so cognitive in my understanding and completely unaware of any experiential aspect in regard to my own spiritual development. In fact, I was suspicious of any form of experiential learning, regarding it as hopelessly subjective. Thus, when I began the Shalem program, I expected to learn the appropriate steps and states of spiritual development in individuals. That would, I then believed, be what would occur in my own spiritual development as I progressed in the Shalem course. I entertained the idea that I was, in fact, pursuing my own spiritual development in terms of growing, bigger and better, in faith. That thinking colored my early meetings with Lila.
Lila is a doctor who teaches an adult class at my church. When she heard I was participating in the Shalem program, she described it as "Stew's latest kick." Prejudiced by her comments which had been reported back to me, I regarded her as somewhat limited in her spiritual development, considering the gigantic strides I was taking with my own by entering the Shalem program. But when she approached me in a hesitant and apologetic manner and asked if she might enter into spiritual direction with me, I agreed. Like the naive, fledgling director that I was, I fantasized about arranging her spiritual growth.
Was I alert to the presence of God in our meetings? Hardly. I was too busy playing the spiritual director. There was also an added complication. Lila tended to couch everything in empirical terms, as though she were dealing with a medical event. Our encounters quickly dissolved into an intellectual discussion of science vs God, with me playing the role of the fatherly saint. I wasn't, however, aware of this at the time.
About six meetings ago, Lila said to me, "You know, it is so hard to find the words to talk about my faith and my faith experiences. The language I have isn't up to it." Suddenly I was aware that what I had taken for chats about science and religion had been numerous attempts on her part to wrestle her faith into words. All along she was grappling with the real experience of faith and attempting to integrate it into her total life experience. She also was struggling to articulate that integration in a coherent narrative. She confessed how immature she felt when trying to give verbal expression to her spiritual experience and understanding. She was concerned that her scientific training had handicapped her not only in grappling with faith but also in encountering her patients as children of God.
Since then, our meetings have moved to a different plane. It is as though we meet in an entirely new and different context. We certainly are meeting in the presence of God, and now I am aware of that. Thank God for Lila's patience with me. But the strange thing in all of this is that there has been spiritual development for both of us in and through our meetings, though it is not the sort of development that is compatible with Piaget's stages of development. It is not cognitive so much as it is experiential.
The experience, I think, is best described as moving into and out of light; something like what one experiences walking through the woods on a bright, sunny day. There are times when one's journey moves through deep shadow, times when one walks in the dappled mixture of sunlight and shade, and times when one is walking in bright, unbroken sunlight. Then there are times when one is completely free of the deep shadow and light shade. But one is never completely out of the sunlight, and one is never completely out of the woods.
Lila and I are like travellers in the woods, each making our own way through them. Our paths are quite different, but the journey enables us to relate to one another. As we move along, our attitudes and assumptions, beliefs and projects act like the branches and leaves filtering and sometimes blocking the sun, never quite fully drowning out the light. The shade and shadow we create for ourselves prevents the full light of God touching us, but the light still shines and is unaffected. It is in those unguarded moments of grace, when one finds oneself open and free, that the shadowing assumptions and beliefs are put aside and the light of God shines through.
We move between light and shade all the time. But just as it is when we walk through the woods, we first become aware of the difference and then we become more and more perceptive of the experience of both. The depth of the shade is diminished as our exposure to the light makes us more sensitive to all that we see and prepares and equips us to perceive, in the shadows, that which was previously invisible to us. Not only does this experience increase awareness of and deepen our relations with God; it also broadens and enriches our understanding of God and ourselves. It is not a lock-step, linear pattern of development but a process which is as infinitely varied as are the children of God. Thus, as we experience our own spiritual journey, we are better able to be open to the experiences of others. It is in that openness, as we accompany others on their journey and they accompany us, that we are drawn gently and ever more intimately into the full light of God.
Stewart is a graduate the Spiritual Guidance Program, Summer 1997; this article is an excerpt from one of his program papers.
Gambling for Love
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Recently, in a walk with an old friend (an 80-something youngster with lots of wisdom), he shared with me a conversation he had had about vocation. Someone had told my friend what he considered his vocation to be, now that he was retired. He asked my friend about his own sense of vocation in these later years of his life. My friend talked about his response, what he thought gave meaning and purpose to his life. Then he turned the question to me, "So, Rose Mary, tell me: What's your vocation now?" Up to that point, I had been content to be listening to my friend. I hadn't seen the conversation moving in my direction. The question literally stopped me in my tracks, but only for a moment. Without much hesitation, I responded: "I think my vocation has something to do with hanging out with God and seeing what shows up that invites my involvement. I'm not sure there is anything special I think I have to do."
My response took me by surprise. Surely it was more spontaneous than thoughtful. Had I thought about it at all, I would have talked about my choice to live as a vowed religious within my congregation, and the work with individuals and groups that I do through Shalem. I might even have mentioned the writing on discernment I hoped to do. But none of this came to mind. What came to mind as I later tried to think about my vocation were the events, circumstances, tasks and relationships that I found myself involved in the immediate past. Many of these, in retrospect, seemed almost serendipitous. They had no particular significance that I was aware of. They didn't seem to flow from, or provide insight into, some great scheme of life. My involvement in them didn't require a lot of forethought or discernment. It just seemed right at the time.
This reflection on my immediate past seemed to support my spontaneous response about my vocation. I realize that for me now, vocation has more to do with an invitation to a quality of being, rather than any particular role or work. "If this is true," I asked myself, "how does being a vowed religious, how does my work at Shalem or my writing fit into my vocation?" Hopefully my life as a vowed religious supports the quality of being I feel called to; hopefully my work at Shalem, my writing, or anything else I do flows out of my vocation, but neither my vowed life nor my doings are the essence of my vocation. My vocation is to be.
This realization about vocation as being, while growing inside me for some time, is relatively new for me to claim. At times it is unsettling, especially when I try to think about the concept abstractly. When I think about it too long, it can seem like an excuse for irresponsibility, or a lack of commitment to any project or relationship. I fear it could keep me living just on the fringes of life. I am also aware that while it seems to rid me of the burden of unreal "shoulds" that can so easily dictate my actions, it also removes the security of clear parameters that a particular life project might give to my choices. In my thinking state, I'm left with concern for confusion and lack of direction. Yet in my living state, there is deep trust.
There is a freedom and expansiveness that comes with this sense of vocation as being. It allows for very few absolutes in my life, few certitudes. Without the parameters of a particular role or task, it invites a panoramic view of possibilities for choices/responses to Life. Seldom offering anything clearly "now" about what I must do "then," this vocation as being invites what Thomas Kelly calls "continuously renewed immediacy," over and over and over again, renewing my desire for God and my openness to the present moment. It's not that I have stopped "doing" in any present moment or that I no longer perform particular duties and tasks. It's just that what I am doing no longer seems so very important. It's just what there is to do in this moment. I can do it with lightness of heart, without a driveness or a sense that I need to do it all myself. I can be a little more present to all of life while attending to a particular part of it. At least for the present, I can give up trying to measure the results of what I do. Failure is not a great concern right now. There seem to be no clear norms for determining either failure or success.
I mentioned earlier that this new sense of vocation is unsettling at times. It is also invigorating. It seems as though it is both inviting me into and simultaneously gifting me with the freedom and spontaneity of Love. The poet Rumi speaks of "gambling everything for love." Maybe after all my years of measured living, I'm finding I'm a gambler at heart.
To Hell with the Devils
by Gerald May
In the twenty years before her death at age 67, Teresa of Avila spearheaded a controversial reform within the Carmelite order, authored four classic contemplative texts, gave spiritual direction to John of the Cross and countless others, and commanded the respect and obedience of priests, bishops, and civil authorities including the King of Spain.
I have often wondered how Teresa, a vowed religious woman of poor health and living in sixteenth-century Spain, could accomplish so much. In those twenty years, she was fearless of the turbulent and often vicious powers around her. She was "amused" at being examined by the Inquisition, and said to the devils, "Come now, all of you ... I want to see what you can do to me!"
It was not always that way. During the first two decades of her religious life, Teresa was besieged by self-doubts and fear of the devils. She strove to conform to the rigid expectations of outer authority, but her prayer was irrepressible and spiritually incorrect for a woman of her times. She heard God speaking to her, and she saw inner visions of Christ. Her experiences seemed valid while she was in prayer, but afterwards, reflecting on them with others, she was terrified they might be the work of the devil.
Her early spiritual directors confirmed her fears. They were certain the voices and visions came from the devil and sent Teresa from one counselor to another. She was told to abstain from quiet prayer and solitude. Obediently, she tried never to be alone. But then "the Lord made me recollected during conversation and, without my being able to avoid it, told me what He pleased." One director even ordered her to make the "fig," a contemptuous hand gesture, at any vision of Christ she might experience. She obeyed, even though "Making the fig at this vision of the Lord caused me the greatest pain." The fearful concern of her friends and advisors left her feeling abandoned, dreading that "all would run from me."
What empowered Teresa to transcend two decades of struggle with herself and her advisors? Teresa describes what happened. She finally surrendered, not to her own judgments nor to those of anyone else, but to God alone. She quit trying to control her prayer and simply put it in God's hands. Thereafter, instead of blindly trusting the opinions of others, she tested them against her own interior experience of the Divine Presence.
Repeatedly she affirms it was God's sheer grace that enabled her to surrender and, thereby, find her strength. She also mentions three experiences which were vehicles of that grace. Two were words she heard God speak in prayer; the third was meeting a human being who finally understood her.
One powerful word from God came at a time when Teresa was feeling especially abandoned by her friends. "They were all against me;" she wrote, "some, it seemed, made fun of me ... others advised my confessor to be careful of me ..." Praying in her loneliness, Teresa heard God say, "Do not fear, daughter; for I am, and I will not abandon you."
"By these words alone," Teresa says, "I was given calm together with fortitude, courage, security, quietude, and light so that in one moment I saw my soul become another. It seems to me I would have disputed with the entire world that these words came from God. Oh, what a good God!"
Another time, God's words dealt with the importance Teresa had been giving to the opinions and perceptions of other people. God said, "No longer do I want you to converse with men but with angels." Her interpretation was that she no longer needed to give energy to relationships with people who weren't genuinely dedicated to "loving and serving God." "From that day on," she wrote, "I was very courageous in abandoning all for God." There is some indication that she also attempted to apply this to some of her less-than-helpful spiritual directors, but God seemed to insist that she continue to obey them.
Then, just before Teresa began her monumental works, she met Peter of Alcántara. Peter had initiated a reform of his own Franciscan order and encouraged Teresa in hers. He was a man of deep prayer and devotion, widely respected for his asceticism. Teresa bared her soul to him, and "Almost from the outset, I saw that he understood me through experience, which was all that I needed."
Peter so trusted Teresa's inner experience that he shared "his own concerns and business matters" with her and asked her to pray for him. To make things even better, Peter then went to Teresa's spiritual directors, assured them, and, in Teresa's words, "gave them motives and reasons for feeling safe and not disturbing me any more." Some of these directors became Teresa's beloved friends and colleagues in later years, and "the one who had troubled me most" finally became her directee in a time of crisis near the end of his life.
Being able to surrender her prayer to God alone, being reassured that God would not abandon her, and being understood by one prayerful human friend: these were three powerful vehicles of grace that enabled Teresa to tell her devils to go to hell. As she began the great works of the last twenty years of her life, she proclaimed of the devils, "I pay no more attention to them than to flies ... A fig for all the devils, because they shall fear me ... Without doubt, I fear those who have such great fear of the devil more than I do the devil himself ... 'The devil! The devil!' we say, when we could be saying 'God! God!' and make the devil tremble."
I have given only the barest sketch of Teresa's empowerment here, but perhaps it will help illuminate these words from one of her most well-known poems: Nada te turbe, Nada te espante ... Sólo Dios basta. Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing make you afraid ... God alone is sufficient.
Quotations are from "The Book of Her Life," Ch. 24 ff, Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1987).
Money as an Icon for Spirituality
by Jessica Marshall
Spirituality and money have been related in my thoughts for many years. But for me, as for others, the thought of money can arouse profound anxieties and conflicting emotions. If I operate unconsciously in this area, the natural tendencies I have inherited from a complex family and societal history can grip me with a fear of losing what I have or not getting what I want, which has a tremendous impact on my relationship with God.
The Shalem group on Money and Spirituality offered a place to renew my thoughts and examine my recent actions related to this topic. Little did I know that six months later I would make a quick and dramatic change in my profession, taking a salary one-third my previous one. It seems that one of the ways God was preparing me for this change was by offering me the time to reflect, pray and share with others about spirituality and money.
For example, when we discussed "Money and Abundance," I was reminded that the words I use in reference to money frame my attitude and thus my spirituality. I use the term "spending plan" in lieu of "budget." For me, a budget, along with the phrase "I can't afford," connotes a locus of control outside myself. It is important for me to remember that it is largely my choices that generate what comes in and what goes out in my financial life. The resources available to me come with the dual nature of both gift and free will.
Our culture undermines this sense of choice and responsibility, while at the same time giving us the message that our value lies in the amount of money or things we have. "You can have it all," "I am worth what I make at my job," "I need that thing in order to be acceptable to myself and others"--all of these messages can be overwhelming. But by staying in active awareness of my freedom to make choices, I am reminded of how much in my life is not about what I've earned but what I've been given.
Money is a gift that allows me to bring beauty into my life and the lives of those I love. But I get into trouble when I resist honestly acknowledging my fear of not getting what I want or losing what I have. This is when my sense of security begins to creep away from God and towards financial security. The best antidote to this is using money as an icon. Here I am using the word icon as we do in the 90's--as the computer screen symbol on which we click and find that evermore is revealed. Very useful information about my spiritual life is revealed to me when I venture behind the dollars and cents into the feelings, choices and prayers I have.
Using money as an icon, I take my everyday financial questions, concerns and choices into prayer and spiritual direction, looking behind the facts for the inner-prompting of the Spirit. If I must go into debt in order to have something right now, perhaps this is a kind of "red light," indicating that I need to go deeper into my current life instead of reaching out. And conversely, if I notice what I am not spending on items, such as regular health care, entertainment, or to support a spiritual organization such as Shalem which supports me so lovingly, I can bring this awareness to prayer. I can ask questions about places in my life that I feel are worthy of self-care and nurturing, where I am experiencing leisure or beauty, where I feel prosperous and generous--all of which are qualities of God. This is how I use money to ground my prayer and infuse it with real meaning.
However, this infusion of meaning brings valleys along with the peaks. Several of the weekly topics focused on possessions, money and the global economy. For many of us, it was very difficult to acknowledge how much we have and how desperately little others have. How do we celebrate what we've been given and at the same time live in solidarity with the poor? It makes me squirm to read Old Testament passages which suggest that riches and prosperity are tangible signs of divine favor, whereas poverty and adversity are the outcome of divine chastisement. It can be so difficult to reconcile these two extremes that unless we really focus we don't even try. My discomfort peaks every time I pass a person on the street who is asking for money. Immediately those mental gymnastics start, my thoughts and feelings ricocheting between sorrow at being able to give so little, guilt for not giving enough, self-aggrandizement for giving to "charity," and the strange, deep fear of not having enough to give. The only peace I have found after years of struggling is to accept and live into the struggle. I try to do so by accompanying every dollar with the phrase "in Jesus' name" and looking the recipient right in the eye.
Again, words make a difference for me; instead of "tithing" or "charity," I use "contribution." This reminds me that I am giving back only what I have been given, and it helps me struggle with whether I am giving enough and what good this small amount can do in the face of such need. If I am truly living out my spiritual life, my part is to honestly acknowledge all of the conflicting emotions that accompany giving away my money and to use every possibility of giving as an opportunity to live with the struggle, to live with Jesus in that act.
These are only a few of the ideas and prayers that were stimulated by the Shalem program, and I am so grateful to my fellow seekers who willingly and honestly shared their reflections, struggles and inspirations with me. I am drawing strength from all of them as I move into this period of my life that has entirely new financial parameters and therefore entirely new aspects of God to discover.
Jessica recently left her "secure" government job to teach fifth grade in a small Catholic school. This year she has participated in Shalem's Money and Spirituality and Group Spiritual Direction Programs.
The Deer
by Charlotte Maxson Moore
"Back home" for the Shalem summer retreat last August, I quickly dropped my bags in my room and set off for a walk toward the woods. As I walked, I drew from my pocket the crumpled paragraph from the retreat acceptance letter: As you prepare for this time, please be encouraged to approach it prayerfully. Our theme is "Letting God Guide."...Insofar as you can and in whatever ways you feel most authentic, allow God's Wisdom in you to lead your preparations.
I stood, at a loss, devoid of any authentic feelings of God's Wisdom in me, with no focus for the retreat I had so much wanted to make. Wearily, I stuffed the paper back into my pocket and trudged on. I looked up just as a deer was emerging from the trees on the crest of the hill. Seeing me, she stopped. As we gazed at one another, my lackluster mind was flooded with the same reverence and awe I'd felt when I was a guest at the Sacred Deer Dance of Tewa Indians in New Mexico in January. Again I was standing in the snow on that frosty morning, awaiting the moment when the rays of the sun would touch the top of the hill. There was a long, drawn-out Aaaaah as the first costumed deer bent over the willow stick to the compelling beat of the drums and began to dance. Down the hill, through patches of ice and snow, the rest came, in winding, snake-like patterns--coming to offer their lives that the people might have food. When they reached the bottom, they paused among the shawl-covered people to receive their blessing before returning to the Kiva to complete their four-day prayerful retreat.
The little deer roused me as she sauntered back into the woods. It would soon be time to join the group for introductions and supper. With a sense of joy and greater readiness to let God guide, I returned to "walk in beauty" with fellow retreatants.
During our first gathering, we were asked to explore our hopes for the days to come, to consider the questions, Where am I right now? and What is my prayer? We were invited to ponder the words of Scripture: I alone know the pattern for you. When you seek me, you will find me. Make your home in me as I make mine in you. Peacefully, as we entered the silence, I began to examine the path through my God-given years among Native Americans. The quiet, unassuming little deer had blown away clouds which had protected an essence of those years until the day when I was ready to let Wisdom share more deeply with me. I gave thanks to the little deer. Somehow I knew she had been sent across my path to help me explore--during those days of silence and during the weeks I've been home--how my gift of becoming "at one" with Native Americans has been one of God's ways of awakening me to the Love that passeth understanding.
When I was about twelve, my mother and I were invited to attend an Onondaga Indian Tribal Ceremony during which we, too, were purified from sin for the year to come! As a member of an Episcopal confirmation class, I couldn't quite believe that we actually were purified, but there was still a ray of belief strengthened by the holiness of the occasion, and I received a glimpse of another of the myriad paths to God.
In 1941, I boarded a train to go "way out to South Dakota" to teach Dakota Indian girls at St. Mary's School. I rebelled when I discovered that we teachers were automatically to be missionaries. I had all missionaries stereotyped as black-stockinged, puritanical, straight-laced creatures. But humor, love, prayer and forgiving brought understanding which dissolved images--mine of a missionary and theirs of a ramrod Easterner. We had much to learn about ourselves and from one another. Again and again, I turned to God, saying, "You will have to handle this, I can't."
As the scheme of Dakota life unfolded, I caught deeper and deeper glimpses of the wonder of learning gently to let God guide. I became a part of the St. Mary's family and eventually, through the children, was adopted into the all-important Dakota kinship relationship system, in which the same word, Wicekiya, is used to address a relative and to pray; praying is understood as relationship with God.
During the summer retreat, we broke our silence each afternoon and gathered in small groups to consider, explore and perhaps to share the meaning of oneness with God or the amazing concept that we, mere people, could be manifestations of the Spirit of God. A very dry season had turned the thirsty meadows brown. We likened it to our own dry seasons when the reality of a loving God seemed remote. The aridity was, perhaps, God's tool for letting us take our rightful places as a part of rather than masters of creation. We were comforted by the knowledge that the roots of the grass were alive, awaiting the healing of the rain. Much as I missed the lush, green grass, the deer had guided me into reflection on the spiritual gifts of the Tewa. The brown meadow took me back, in spirit, to the brown sea of waving grass on the Dakota prairie and, much later, to the high desert in Arizona where I spent seven years "walking in beauty" with the Navajos at Good Shepherd Mission.
The path of Shalem's summer retreat, strewn with spiritual gifts bestowed during my life among Native Americans, has left me singing with the Navajo: You see, I am alive. You see, I stand in good relation to the earth. You see, I stand in good relation to the gods. You see, I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful. You see, I stand in good relation to you. You see, I am alive, I am alive.
Charlotte, a graduate of Shalem's Personal Spiritual Deepening Program, has attended several of our Summer Retreats.
The Heart of the Matter
by Tilden Edwards
Recently a woman told me how much her Christian fundamentalism had freed her energies for all sorts of things. She no longer had to use up so much energy worrying about what was true and what to do. For her the "heart of the matter" was revealed through a literal interpretation of scripture and a community that supported those interpretations. As she said this, it struck me that contemplative tradition also can provide such an energy-freeing "surety," but it sees the heart of the matter in a very different way.
When I pray with or without scripture or other spiritual resources, I'm wanting to open myself to "the heart of the matter," not in terms of a pre-set rational understanding but as a living, mysterious reality that shows me the liberating truth deeper than my mind can grasp. I want to befriend that heart that is in me and in the heart of all living beings, in the heart of every living moment. I want to live and share from that heart in each moment as the very essence of my identity. I want to place all my trust in its living source: that larger Heart our spiritual tradition declares alive in and around us, the Holy One who forever is breathing life and direction through our hearts.
My unshakable trust (however qualified by surface defenses in a given moment!) is in the substantial, benevolent presence of this Presence every moment. Scriptural and other words about this Presence surround, support, and ground this trust, but they are not at its center. The center is a vast intimacy, a "far-nearness" as the medieval Beguine Marguerite Porete put it, that is the wellspring of all true words and all loving truth that is beyond words. My primary action is to lean into this ineffable "heart of the matter" every minute and to live from what flows out of it. This action, when truly graced, can be enormously liberating of my energies from all sorts of worrisome mind and psychic rumblings. The central ground is cleared of clutter, and I can be left a more ready vessel for the true heart of the matter at hand.
Twenty-five years ago, a small band of 22 people gathered together in the District of Columbia to lean into the "heart of the matter" from such a contemplative perspective. We gave one another prolonged protected space in our nearly year-round weekly meetings and a weekend retreat; we sought to be more vulnerable to the true heart through many particular practices; we encouraged and supported one another as many surprising depths were touched that profoundly affected personal identities and opened new senses of freedom and vocation in God. That group was the seed that has grown into all that Shalem has become for the world today.
Much spiritual concern has been growing in the larger cultural climate since that beginning time. We live in a period of increasingly visible spiritual hunger and groping. We may be witnessing a profound cultural shift from largely segregated "religious" and "secular" worlds to a more integrated world that is discovering a bridging spiritual ground. This common ground holds the promise of cultivating both deeper personal spiritual life and a more spiritually grounded institutional life and public discourse. The Spirit appears to be calling forth a resacralizing of the work place and all of daily life in a fresh way.
There are many dangers in this new opening, including the tendency at one end to narrow spiritual reality into a securing, rigid and exclusive fundamentalism. Then at the other end there is the tendency to broaden spiritual reality to the point that it loses all specificity, depth, and sustainability. But I think there is much hope, too, in what is happening, and the contemplative contribution at its best can bring a special spiritual sanity, depth, and inclusiveness that is especially valuable for our time.
Shalem is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year through a number of special events that are listed inside this newsletter. The theme for this year is "Listening to the Spirit." We want to listen through all of our offerings with particular attentiveness to what the Spirit is trying to show Shalem about our future mission. We invite you to share many of this year's events as a way for you, too, to listen more alertly for how the Spirit may be drawing you into the future. Together we can continue what that small group of people began 25 years ago: exploring and deepening into the true heart of the matter. We need that for ourselves. The world needs its fruits through us.