Volume 27, No. 1-Winter, 2003

Table of Contents

Walking a Path of Peace
by Liz Ward

Going Deeper
by Patience Robbins

Cultivation of a Discerning Heart
by Rose Mary Dougherty

What Am I Doing?
by Tracey Marx

All of My Heart
by Ann Kline

In the Depths of Silence
by Gerald May

The Joy of Giving
by Doris Froelich

There is a River
by Gordon Forbes

Keep Staying Awake
by Bill Dietrich

God and God Alone
by Carole Crumley

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Walking a Path of Peace

by Liz Ward

The sun was warm on my shoulders as we walked two by two down the sidewalk away from the Washington National Cathedral. As we prayerfully passed honking cars and curious pedestrians-our white arm bands the only sign of our common intent for peace-the silence within me seemed to deepen with each mindful step. As we wove past the Greek Orthodox Cathedral and the British Embassy, I could feel my tension and stress over the impending war with Iraq melt more authentically into a gentle prayer for hope, love, and peace.

I had been immediately drawn to this Interfaith Peace Walk and hoped it would help me feel part of the larger dialogue going on in the United Nations and the streets of the world about the rightness of this war at this particular time. Remembering the deep prayerfulness of my barefoot pilgrimage across the sand to Lindisfarne or Holy Island, the rocky walk to St. Columba's Bay on Iona, and the yearly slow walks for peace at Shalem, I also hoped this walk could deepen my prayer in this time of personal, national, and international tension. For me there is something about silently walking in prayerful community that opens another layer of hope, freedom, peace, and love within me, and I knew I needed that deeper opening.

This Interfaith Walk began with inspirational talks and songs offered by an Episcopal bishop, a Muslim chaplain, the co-founder of the Washington Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and a minister of the Sikh religion. Each was dressed in attire that bespoke his or her commitment to a particular path of faith, yet together they seemed an image of hope for me. Somehow each embodied the respect and desire for greater awareness of our common values that seems the way to authentic co-operation in the face of worldwide starvation, oppression and rising international tensions. To be folded into a group so diverse, yet so prayerfully committed to a way of peace, hope, and love somehow drew me deeper into both the mystery and reality of a generous, loving God.

It was a little hard to stay centered, however, as we passed the police cars guarding the Vice President's mansion since their vigilance seemed so out of touch with the intent of our pilgrimage. It seemed sad that our group could be viewed as a threat to the life and limb of Vice President Cheney-even though we all know enough about history and politics to understand why this vigilance could seem necessary. Still, it was a visual reminder of the sharp divisions within our nation and our world today and how hard it can be to speak and hear with the spiritual heart.

Gradually the grace of the Holy One, the sunshine, and the respectful silence took me back to a deeper place of open, empty prayer. Then as I wove around the Khalil Gibran memorial and read the poet's words engraved in stone, I was reminded again of the many people through-out history who have voiced a longing for holy wisdom in the face of trials and challenges. Thoughts of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh flowed through my mind and briefly nourished my prayer.

Soon we were sitting in the rectangular courtyard just inside the iron gates of the Islamic Center. Again we heard the prayers and longings of diverse religious leaders. Again I took heart that, despite our differences, committed people from various faith traditions were looking for holy ways to honor what seems right and true in the face of difficult decisions and challenges.

I had to leave before all the reflections were over, but I walked away with a lighter step than when I came. My fear, frustration, and isolation had melted a bit in the midst of this prayerful walk and intentional community. My spirit felt freer for the Holy One within me and within and around those I encountered in my path that day.

Needless to say, this sense of freedom and peace have come and gone in the days since the Peace Walk, but I have discovered that walking on sidewalks can center and ground me in a new way now, and I have felt a growing sense of hope rising from within me. This peace and hope seem a little more detached from the external events swirling all around me.

In addition, knowing that so many others share my hope and intent for inner peace as a healing path has made me feel more hopeful about my own humble contribution during this time. Otherwise, my hope and intent can seem like such a tiny gift for the world today, so small and insignificant in the face of weapons of mass destruction and oppressive dictatorships. Yet on the Interfaith Walk I saw very clearly that I am not alone, that people from many faith traditions all around the world share in this path, and that each of our individual grace-filled gifts of peace can join the prayerful movement of the Holy One.

Liz, a Shalem Board member, will be co-leading Shalem's Quiet Day of Praying with the Poets on April 26, 2003.

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Going Deeper

by Patience Robbins

"Holiness is not in what you do, but what you allow to be done to you by the circumstances of your life." -Richard Rohr

At a recent retreat for Shalem staff, we were pondering the phrase: going deeper. This phrase emerged in conversations during the year about our desire for God and growing in our relationship with God. These are some of my reflections on this theme.

When I hear "going deeper," my first response is to think of some profound mystical experience - something dramatic, extraordinary, a striking revelation of God in my life. I usually associate this with something special that I do: a retreat, time of prayer, visit to a sacred place, attending a church service. But as I listen to others and reflect on my experience, I realize that going deeper into God happens in the very ordinary, nitty-gritty of my life. It is usually an ongoing process and does not occur with flashing lights or strong winds.

A symbol that emerges is a tree. A tree is solid, steady, rooted and true to its being. A tree lives through various seasons and time. Occasionally there are some spectacular happenings like a storm with heavy winds, lightning and hail, but usually, life is flowing: light, darkness, rain, sun, wind, snow - the ongoing, ordinary passage of time and seasons. The tree continues to grow, fed and nourished through its roots, true to its being and bearing fruit.

And so it is with us. Life is usually very mundane. But as we seek God and allow ourselves to be rooted in God, we grow and expand in the very ordinary circumstances of life. This rootedness in God is hidden and imperceptible - we are not necessarily aware of all that happens in the dark. As we continue to seek God, we too bear fruit and become more of our true self.

This 'being' or rootedness in God implies a choice, however. It requires a deep acceptance of the circumstances of our lives, which are unique for each of us. It requires that we trust that God is present in our lives and companioning us in our reality. The surprise may be that the painful, difficult or unwanted circumstances of life could be the very ones that enable the roots to go deeper into God and let us stand more firmly in who we are.

A story that comes to mind is the one from the Gospel of Luke in which two disciples were walking with Jesus to Emmaus. As they were walking, they recounted their disappointment with all that had happened the past few days using the words: "we had hoped...." Everything seemed to have gone wrong. The man Jesus whom they followed had been crucified as a common criminal. Their hopes were dashed-now what? And as they walked and ate with Jesus, he revealed another way of looking at all of this so they saw it in a new way. What a twist - a surprise - to view these events in a different way so that God was there but not in the way they expected.

And so it with us. The way of deepening our relationship with God may not be what we had in mind or the way we had hoped. Instead, going deeper may be about our openness to God's presence in all of the ordinary circumstances of life and saying yes to what is given - with joy.

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Cultivation of a Discerning Heart

by Rose Mary Dougherty

When Lynne Smith and I started leading workshops in group spiritual direction, we usually began by describing the process in its entirety. Then we would "unpack" each part of the process, sharing what it was that led us to do it this way. Finally, we would give participants an experience of the process.

This never really worked very well. It seemed to hook people in a shared vulnerability: a need to "get it right." We would be halfway through describing the process and someone reading from a notebook would ask, "Could you just go back a second? Was that three minutes or four minutes of silence after a person has shared?" We would be in the midst of an actual time of group spiritual direction when a person would turn to a facilitator and say, "Is this an appropriate question for me to ask?" Or, when commenting on the process after the experience of it, someone might say, "The silences weren't long enough. I didn't have time to think of what I wanted to say."

After several times of presenting the material this way, we realized that people were missing the heart of what we wanted to convey. We rearranged the parts of the workshop. Shortly after the beginning, we would invite people into an extended time of silence together, inviting them into a place of openness for whatever might be given them for their prayer for themselves during this time. We then moved people into the small groups they would be in for spiritual direction, where they could begin to share briefly and informally a little of their spiritual journeys. We suggested that they might want to share something that had come to them in the silence or something of what drew them to the workshop. We described spiritual community and posed the possibility that, for the few days of the workshop, the group might become a spiritual community. We encouraged them to cultivate an intercessory attitude, allowing spacious silence within their listening so they could make space for God's prayer within them for each person they were hearing. We also included a different experience of intercessory prayer.

Only after this introduction did we talk directly about the process of group spiritual direction and guide people through it. And, as much as we could tell, people really seemed to "get what it was about." We noticed a difference in the feedback on evaluation forms. When we asked people to tell us about one idea or question that they took with them from the workshop, responses to the original workshop format would usually center around details. We would hear things like, "I tend to lose track of time. I'll need to get a stop watch." "I liked the prayers you used. I want to find a book of prayers I can use to begin the silence in my group at home." People who participated in the workshop in its new form raised different questions and had different insights: "I keep wondering how I can live intercessory prayer at home the way I have lived it here," or "I'm beginning to pray about where I can find spiritual community at home," or "I know I need more silence in my life."

The learnings from those early days of group spiritual direction workshops have served me well. When I was writing the book, Group Spiritual Direction: Community for Discernment, some people said to me, "This book would probably be more popular if you would write it as a handbook, a 'how to' for group spiritual direction. At least you should include a 'question/answer' section which would tell people how to deal with problems in group spiritual direction as they arise." But I couldn't do that. I felt it would betray the very heart of group spiritual direction.

Group spiritual direction is not about getting someone else's answers or mimicking a process even if it doesn't fit for us. Rather, it is about the cultivation of a discerning heart in all of life, an intercessory stance, if you will. It's about finding a community of friends who are willing to be present to God for one another in the silence and dialogue of active listening. It's about finding out together what fits for us as the unique persons we are in God.

This article is an excerpt from the book, The Lived Experience of Group Spiritual Direction, edited by Rose Mary Dougherty and to be published by Paulist Press in the fall of 2003.

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What Am I Doing?

by Tracey Marx

Something happens almost every time I sit down with a directee for a spiritual direction session. Is it the one-on-one interaction in a quiet room? Or the directee's role as share-er in my role as listener? Is it my insecurity as a relatively new director? I'm sure all of these reasons enter into the process.

Something happens, and my neat, comprehensive and hopefully prayerful understanding of what spiritual direction is goes flying out the window. In its place is some sketchy and blotchy version of counseling, or even worse, "therapy."

The problem is, I'm not a counselor or a therapist. I was trained in a bit of pastoral counseling in seminary, and I've been to a therapist myself. But that's about it. Yet I have been astounded at how quickly this psychological paradigm takes over my spiritual direction paradigm- sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. But it happens in every direction session. I have found it to be my most integral spiritual discipline during a direction session - to remember and lift up God as the third participant in the conversation and to politely but emphatically keep Jung/Freud/etc. out.

"Mary" is a woman in her late 40s. I've been working with her in spiritual direction for the past two years. She is a strong, faithful woman and a person of deep prayer. Each month, she shares her life, her struggles and her reach toward God. Each month, I believe, she leaves glad to have had the spiritual direction time together, somehow blessed. I'm sure that she is not aware of my struggle at all.

In our first Shalem residency, one of the presenters described the different stance that a woman took during spiritual direction as compared to therapy. This director/ counselor sat back in her chair during direction and forward in her chair during therapy. This posture was indicative of the purpose of each and the difference between them. This has been a helpful distinction for me to make.

Over time, when I have found myself leaning forward, I have found that I am fully engaged in problem-solving. I'm not even sure that I completely understood that spiritual direction was not problem-solving until I read Gerald May's books. I guess I assumed direction to be solving spiritual problems, that a directee would bring a situation or a problem, and we would-together with God-come to some helpful conclusions by the end of a session. This was a background assumption and not something that I could have articulated. But no wonder I was exhausted!

Truly, during the session, my mind would tire from trying to think so hard. What dynamics were going on? What was not being said? What did this event have to say about that event and how did this relationship affect that relationship? And what helpful piece of advice or wisdom could I share? How could my perspective, as a disinterested party, help Mary, help her "make it all better?"

For me, it has been a distinct back-and-forth movement. There is seldom any in-between. When I remember God, remember the purpose of direction, and remember my role, I can surrender into the sitting back position and truly be in prayer for Mary while she is speaking. I can allow times of silence, poignant opportunities for the Spirit to be heard. I know that spiritual direction is happening at these times, and I am absolutely aware of the Spirit's role as the true director. However, at other times, I shift into a different gear-counseling-and although this gear grinds and sometimes doesn't take us anywhere, I press on until I can downshift once again.

What is happening for me? Is it lack of trust in God? Is it an egoistic desire to be helpful? A desire to take away another's pain, at all costs? Is it feeling uncomfortable in the presence of the holy? Lack of faith in what spiritual direction is? Is it my unschooled yet piqued "attraction to the power of psychological understandings and psycho-dynamic explanations?" (Care of Mind, Care of Spirit) Or is it the pervasiveness of the counseling paradigm in our society? Probably it is some of all of these things.

The good news, for me, is that I am not good at counseling. It is not my calling. And when I find myself slipping over into the counseling role, I am uncomfortable, unknowledgeable and pretty much inept. Being aware of this doesn't stop the paradigm shift from happening, but it does help me get back on track when it does. For I do feel called to the ministry of spiritual direction. And when I sit back and downshift into that role, something happens- something much better; something often quite beautiful.

I sense God's presence in the room when I remember what it is that we are doing, what it is that I am doing. When I remember to give God the room to be present, to listen and speak, I sense God with us in palpable and powerful ways. When I forget, for me anyway, it seems that I fill the room with my ideas, my thoughts, my conclusions. The room is full of me; my mind is full of me. Then, somehow, sometimes, something pulls me back - pulls me away - and the space again becomes sacred, filled with yearning together toward God.

Tracey participated in Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, Winter 2002. This article is taken from one of her program papers.

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All of My Heart

by Ann Kline

In preparing to address my fellow congregants at the start of the Jewish New Year, I was struck by this quote from Dag Hammarskjold:

For all that has been: Thank you
To all that will be: Yes.

Where does he get the chutzpah (the audacity) to say that, I asked. In a time of terrorism, corporate scandal, economic uncertainty and an increasingly escalating state of war, I wasn't feeling very thankful. And I certainly wasn't saying yes to more of the same. In fact, I was feeling that God needed a good drubbing, not praise and thanks. I felt a little of the heaviness I imagine Abraham felt walking up Mt. Moriah with Isaac, his heart. Did I, too, need to sacrifice my heart to survive in a difficult world?

As I studied the text of Abraham's walk, I learned a very interesting thing about the Hebrew. It seems God may not have been the one to ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. The Hebrew word for God that is used when Abraham hears his final "test" is not Adonai, but Elohim, a word that can also mean false gods or idols. It could have been Abraham's despair talking to him that fateful day, driving him up Mt. Moriah to rid himself of the difficult task of bringing forth a new vision of the future through Isaac.

What Abraham learns on Mt. Moriah, when the angel - his inclinations toward good - stays his hand is something we all must learn to live in this world with meaning and purpose: God wants our hearts. We cannot destroy love. Love is stronger than fear and despair. It is, as Abraham's story shows us, not an easy lesson to learn. Hearing about a woman shot a few blocks from my home in a series of random shootings, I wonder again if love has much of a role to play in addressing the needs of these hard times. But times have always been hard. If love has nothing to say to us now, then it never did. And Abraham is there to remind us otherwise.

A song by David Wilcox goes: "In this scene set in shadows like the night is here to stay, there is evil cast around us, but it's love that wrote the play. And in this darkness, love will show the way." I believe that. I believe that this world can be a place where we care more about what we do for each other than what we do to each other. Am I merely naive? I think of the words Etty Hillesum wrote during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, when her community was being stripped of their possessions and their freedom: "I believe in God and I believe in people and I say so without embarrassment. Times are hard, but that is no bad thing. If we start by taking ourselves seriously, the rest follows."

She volunteered to be among the first Jews sent to Westerbork work camp. Was she naive?

Maybe. Maybe Mother Teresa and Mohandas Gandhi were naive also. After all, India is still oppressed, even if the oppressor now is its own divisive hatred. And Calcutta's streets are still filled with the poor and sick.

That doesn't stop me from praying that I take my belief in this world as seriously as Etty Hillesum, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa. I pray to live into the difficult task of meeting the world's challenges not with doe-eyed sentiment or a bleak sense of futility but with the determined love of Abraham to be part of a more enduring vision. It is not the vision I see in the newspapers and television screens, but it is a promise I see in the faces of people who have not lost hope. What will it take for me to be able to say: For all that has been: Thank you. To all that will be: Yes?

It will take all of my heart.

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In the Depths of Silence

by Gerald May

"Silence is the language of God. It is also the language of the heart." -Dag Hammarskjold

The abyss of sheer silence has always been calling. It is not the stifled quietude that comes from inhibition or restraint, not an absence of words or noise. It is instead a place of presence, a deep region of being into which, with grace, one might sink, or drift or dive. Beneath surface waves and currents, silence is a dark landscape where stillness and solitude become one. It is a place for abiding.

I touched this place of sheer silence again in December, during Shalem's Winter Retreat. "Strange," I thought, "how desperately I need the supportive presence of other people to find this depth of solitude." We sat in our circle in a darkened room, looking out at snow falling in the woods.

Sheer silence is indescribable of course, but I kept thinking of Robert Frost's words, "lovely, dark and deep." And I remembered Mother Teresa's winter reflection: "See how nature grows in silence, how the moon and sun move in silence." And John of the Cross's beautiful soledad sonora, "resounding solitude."

I keep telling myself that I do not need to understand. There is no mapping to be done of this terrain. Silence simply calls and the heart responds and some delicate mutual surrender happens in breathtaking softness.

It is an end in itself, this being-in-sheer-silence. It has no object, is not for anything, serves no purpose. I am certain of that. Yet it does call, sometimes plaintively, sometimes with power, and it is somehow deeply needed. Sitting in that circle, guided into solitude by the simple stillness of others and the snow, another strange thought came:

"Here, in this darkened room, we are saving the world."

No, I do not need to understand, yet my poor helpless mind still wants to connect this silent abyss with contemplation. I am sorry that people so readily equate contemplation with silence, and that contemplation and action seem to be such different things. I am convinced this is wrong. For me, contemplation is a way of being that includes every possible degree of activity and quietude. It is centered in the here-and-now, honoring the presence of God, loving the Mystery, hopelessly in love and radically willing to be led. Some people feel that quiet meditation helps them be more open to this way of being. Others find themselves drawn to dance, shout, create and argue. Regardless, contemplation cannot be learned, earned or achieved. When it comes, it comes as a gift.

The experience of utter stillness comes as a gift also. As Hammarskjold put it, all I can do is say, "yes, to something, or Someone." The Shalem staff spoke of this recently. Some had the image of an underground stream, a nourishing aquifer in the inconceivable depths of being. It made me think of a deep flowing of God's very Self, where all things are One in Love. Perhaps it is beyond contemplation altogether.

Oh, I don't know. I don't know what sheer silence is, or where it comes from, or why it seems like it can save the world. I only know the feeling of its call and the tenderness of my "yes." And I know deep gratitude. In Thomas Kelly's words, I can "only breathe a quiet prayer to the Now and say, 'Stay, thou art so sweet.'"

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The Joy of Giving

by Doris Froelich

"Give 'til it hurts" is an old saying. I can't remember when or where I first heard it - just that I was very young and took such directions literally. As a child I had very little money to give, so whatever I did give away definitely did hurt, and my child's mind figured that it was good for me. I loved going to Sunday school and putting my pennies in the collection box. The best time was on my birthday when I stood up in front of the class and dropped one coin into the box for each year of my life. So I learned that sometimes giving felt really good.

And then along came GUILT. Most Sundays I would walk to church with my sister and brother. Before we left home, we would go to Mama and she would divide the weekly church offering of 10 cents between us-Sarah (age 13) got five cents, Gilbert (age 11) got three cents, and I got two cents. Then we were off to walk the six long city blocks to Epworth Methodist Church. One Sunday, Sarah had a different idea. She suggested a route to church that led us past a little general store. "Let's go in here and buy candy with our money and skip Sunday school today," she said. Gilbert jumped at the idea. I remember protesting, but I also remember eating the candy and playing in front of Eastern High School until it was time for us to return home "from Sunday school." Ah, me! Guilt was my companion for a good long while. Not only had I skipped Sunday school, I had spent the church offering on candy! About a year later I went to Mama, sobbing that I was a bad girl and telling her the whole story-my first confession. Forgiven - and not even punished - I promised Mama I would never do anything like that again.

Years later as an adult, I interpreted "giving 'til it hurts" to mean I should give enough so that I was consciously stretching my money to include a weekly donation to church. One church my family attended asked for a pledge of 3% of our income if we sent our children to the parish school. So now giving became a strict obligation, another bill to figure into the budget.

It was after coming to work at Shalem in the 1980's that joy began to creep into my giving. Like many people I previously very naively assumed that prayer and all things spiritual did not require money. Didn't they just fall down like manna from the sky?

As Registrar for Shalem's local programs, which included quiet days, workshops, retreats and long-term spiritual formation groups, I soon realized that there were expenses to be paid and tuition did not cover the cost of time, space, and so forth. I was introduced to fundraising from the inside.

Shalem's way of inviting people to give helped me realize another quote, "It's more blessed to give than to receive." So I began to pledge joyfully to Shalem's Annual Fund and to slowly increase my pledge each year. My attitude toward giving in general was affected, as well.

One of my other favorite organizations is the Christian Children's Fund. When they suggested paying electronically, I said "no." You see, for me, to do that would be to pledge and then forget it. To experience fully "the joy of giving," I want to write that monthly check to Shalem and to Christian Children's Fund. It makes me feel really, really good. Besides, dividing my annual pledge into 12 monthly payments is somehow much easier than paying it all at once or even quarterly. In the end, it's more money for Shalem and more joy for me.

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There is a River

by Gordon Forbes

I knew an ending was at hand and "handing over" was in the offing when I began writing memoirs of the four churches I had served more than forty years. In February of 1999, I announced my intention to retire from the pastorate of my church at the end of October.

The writing of those memoirs became a two-edged sword in my life. On the one hand, it was deeply satisfying. My mind filled with faces of beloved people, milestones of achievement, experiences, both painful and pleasing, that forced me to grow. My life overflowed with a sense of gratitude and grace. A silent, invisible, beneficent presence had accompanied me in my life.

On the other hand, I sensed all the potential losses facing me in this handing over of responsibility. Euphoria sets in for all of us when we first think of retirement. All our unfulfilled fantasies swell us with hope and excitement. Only as the time approaches do the realities of change hit us.

My apprehension grew. What would life be like? Would I really be able to do what I wanted? I sensed freedom would not only be a gift but a challenge. Was I up to it?

Two tensions asserted themselves as the retirement date approached. One was the tension between professional and personal life. I had spent such energy in professional performance - calling on people, relating to community concerns, preaching at least 40 sermons a year, managing staff, teaching classes, administering an institution, responding to crises of various kinds. None of those responsibilities would be operative any longer. When a professional ministry is over, a vocation still remains. What was the new call? How would I discern it?

A second tension surfaced - the tension between community and isolation. One of my children once said the coolest thing about being a minister's kid was the presence of instant community wherever you moved. It's true. Community is given to ministers and their families, for better or worse. However, my denomination requires a complete severing of ties with a congregation once you retire. How would I deal with isolation and the need for new community?

Early one July day, Shalem's flyer announcing group spiritual direction came in the mail. A vague feeling told me I should do it. I had participated in various Shalem programs. Despite my action-driven life, part of me has a thirst for the meditative - up to a point. So I applied.

Groups are very familiar to me. I have participated in scores of them-sensitivity groups, therapy groups, skill-enhancing groups, training and empowerment groups. Most of them have been "talk" or "experiential learning" groups. They have concentrated on skills - learning new ones and improving learned ones. They have been heavy on practical work, psychological insights, and combinations of confrontation and comfort. None of them gave more than lip service to prayer. They trusted in the adequacy of human perception. Something told me that simple human perception was not going to hold me up this time.

My first group spiritual direction meeting at Shalem was incredible. It began with a considerable amount of silence, fostering centering down into God. No introductions or group building: the telling of names, the reporting of "what you do," or what goals you had for this program. The introductions came after the silence and were minimal. More silence followed, with a brief meditation by a "facilitator."

The whole emphasis focused on one thing: What goes on between God and us individually and collectively? It required contemplation, not interaction. The power came not only in personal, inward meditation but also in intercession, holding each other in prayer, a major emphasis of all contemplative practice. To gather together in communal prayer and discernment can break any sense of isolation and provide a spiritual connection that is gentle and pervasive. It creeps into the individual like fog, filling up the nooks and crannies of separate existence without reliance on words. It also is a safeguard against the delusions possible in an over-individualized practice.

I still wondered if this was for me. I thought I needed harder stuff, like confrontation. I could handle conflict and controversy, but here I was being called to trust this gentle, seemingly passive, highly introspective way. I suspended all judgement and plunged in like a rookie.

And I entered a gentle whirlpool that started more like a soft current in our first small group meeting. Several group members faced circumstances that required a letting go. Two of us needed to let go of an adult child; another wanted to let go of the fear of letting go, of losing individual freedom. In the silence after each sharing, a common image emerged from our prayer for each other: God seemed to be calling us to let the river of His love carry us. The river image spoke to each of us powerfully. That month, between meetings, I had visited Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, on the first day of my retirement. It has always held a strange attraction for me. This poem emerged as a result of that visit.

This article is another excerpt from The Lived Experience of Spiritual Direction, edited by Rose Mary Dougherty. Gordon is also a Shalem Board member.

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Keep Staying Awake

by Bill Dietrich

Words fail me of late. For much of the past several weeks I've suffered from severe writer's block, much to the consternation of the newsletter staff patiently awaiting my next article. I write from my heart; anything else invariably comes out "all straw," to borrow a phrase from Aquinas. And I've realized my inability to compose largely relates to my growing sadness and pain about the coming of war, the growing reality of which has captured my heart.

Which is why the familiar words of the gatha (chant) have become my prayer. For it says simply what I want most to do in these times, what emerges as my hope for myself and the world. Let us not waste this time. Let us be present to it. Let us respond to it.

Gunilla Norris tells us that presence is a gift of our awareness, our willingness, and our participation. At times we only allow ourselves to get as far as that first movement, our awareness, without fully realizing its fruit in willing action. But presence, our waking up, demands a response to what is here and now. It may take shape in many ways, even small ways, outward and inward, as God's invitation is discerned. My own response has meant outward movements of attending prayer vigils, forwarding e-mailed antiwar petitions, being present to my wife in her own frustration over the craziness of war. It's meant expanding my Sunday worship to include attendance at Quaker meeting to honor and participate in their great witness to peace, a witness I wish I found in other congregations I attend.

And presence implies an inward movement, an awakening fully to the drama going on inside to see what's real there. It's meant being in my inward rage as I listen to ultimatums, sinking into the clench in my gut when I read editorials endorsing war, experiencing my often angry, judgmental reactions to the newscasters and pundits debating all the aspects of the situation ad nauseam.

I hope to stay with these feelings long enough to come out the other end with some deeper sense of where God is in this, or at least who I am. It's that latter awakening that's scariest. I'm painfully more aware of my humanity these days, of my deeper fear, the same fear I suspect is the symptom of that ancient pathology of victimization that lurks in us all. God help me claim my brokenness.

And help me be present to the realities of these times, including what I'd prefer to avoid, the things I don't want to hear or read. For months my family has been largely fasting from the media. (This hasn't been particularly hard since my wife has boycotted the news ever since the last presidential campaign.) But just as some have said "the time for diplomacy is over," we need to say that the time for avoidance is over. Despite whatever anguish or anger or frustration there may be for us there, we're called to be present to what's going on, awaken to it, be aware of its importance and not let ourselves become anesthetized.

The three bells that mark the beginning of a period of zazen (sitting meditation) say: "Wake up! Stay awake! Keep staying awake!" I pray we all take heed of the invitations to participate in co-creating God's shalom. Let's not waste time. Let's stay awake, stay with our anger, our anguish, our aching, our hope to know what sense God would make of it all. Surely we'll know more of who we really are. Surely we'll also know more who God is.

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God and God Alone

by Carole Crumley

Every year I attend the annual InterFaith Conference's concert here in Washington. This interfaith concert brings together nine different faith groups, each one praising God in its own tradition through music, dance or chant. It is the only time in the year when such diverse faith communities of this region come together for such a celebration.

As stunning and inspiring as the individual presentations are, even more so is the beginning of the concert when the various faith groups join together to sing an opening anthem. This combined choir is over 200 voices strong. Zoroastrians stand next to Latter-day Saints, Sikhs and Hindus are side by side, Protestants, Baha'is, Catholics, Jews are singing together. Imagine if you can what this looks and sounds like - 200 singers, all ages, races, nationalities - some in choir robes, some with turbans, others in saffron robes, some in tuxedo and gown singing with one voice. Differences, distinctiveness, particularity stand out and yet within all that diversity, there is unity and harmony. Oneness.

I enjoy the individual presentations, but it is this vision/sound/taste of Oneness that I long for and that ultimately feeds and frees my soul. For me it is a tiny glimpse of St. Paul's mystical insight that we find in his letter to the Galatians: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (3:28; NRSV)

In other words, it is no longer possible to divide up the world into separate categories. The divisions that seem so important culturally, religiously, nationally, both then and now, are no longer world-dividing distinctions. They are held together in God's saving work, St. Paul says - a mighty work accomplished through Christ. And so, it is already possible to live out of this truth, affirming that these divisions in the end are not the final word. It is already possible to live with an open heart that holds all as equal in God's sight and no one outside of God's loving embrace.

This stance, so radically free from cultural, religious and national divides, is a gift of the Spirit. It is this truth that I experience most often in contemplative prayer. It is with this stance that I hope to live every day and that I yearn for especially during these troubling times. Mostly, however, what I realize is how far I am from that vision and how far we are collectively from realizing that radical truth. This is not the way of the world. There is so much that tries to draw me away from living this truth.

Still I take heart. For the transformation and redemption of the world is God's work. A work that I can yield to and pray for. Perhaps that is why the words of the concert's opening anthem this year have held such power for me. Indeed, they have become my prayer. They have played in my heart continuously since the concert last fall as if on their own Moebius strip. "God and God alone," the choir sang, "created all these things we call our own." Two hundred voices acknowledged that "from the mighty to the small, the glory in them all is God's and God's alone." Diverse faiths sang as one "let everything that lives reserve its truest praise for God and God alone." And finally, powerfully together "God will be our one desire, our hearts will never tire of God and God alone."

As the words repeat themselves in my heart, I join my passion, my love, my highest praise, my heart and soul and mind and strength, my desire with all others who seek God and God alone. And from that place of being rooted and grounded in God and God alone, I know the truth of God's blinding love and saving grace for all.

In my mind's eye, I still see the choir. That sight gives me a sense of how it is when seeing with God's eye, realizing both diversity and unity. And in my mind's ear I hear them singing, a glorious expression of one desire, for God and God alone. When I have no words, no hope of living so freely, they give voice to my utmost prayer, singing/praying for me.

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