"Music is What Feelings Sound Like ..."

Isn't that a great quote?  I haven't been able to find out (definitively) who said it, but whoever it was really kind of nailed it, didn't they?  Music can get our bodies moving; it can inspire us to dig deep and pull out our courage.  A song can help us to really feel our sorrow, or can perfectly express our joyful exhalation.

On her blog Notes from the Far Fringe, my friend, the Rev. Kimberly Debus, has a section called "Hymn by Hymn," in which she posted a daily reflection on the hymns in the Unitarian Universalist hymnals Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey, one hymn each day.  I know several people who always seem to wake up with a song stuck in their head use it as a kind of journal prompt, reflecting a little each day on why that particular song might be on their mind.

I had a musical practice for a few years, when I was living on Cape Cod and working in Boston.  The commute by bus was about an hour and a half each way, and I took to listening to one piece of music, repeated, for the entire trip.  By the time I arrived at South Station it had become a part of me, like my in-breaths and out-breaths.

What's your relationship with music?  Is it part of your spiritual practice?  Might it be (without your even being aware of it)?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

This was one of my favorite song-prayers during those bus ride commutes:

What is prayer?

A couple of weeks back I wrote about a woman who has had a real impact on my spiritual life -- Sr. Rose Mary Dougherty.  I had both the good fortune and the true blessing of meeting and learning from her during the Spiritual Guidance program I did with the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.

I just began reading her 2009 book Discernment: a path to spiritual awakening.  Her Introduction includes this powerful paragraph:

"[I]f you were to ask me what prayer is, I would turn the question back to you:  What is prayer for you?  What honors your desire for God?  What expresses the desire of your heart?  Who are you?  What allows you to life the fullness of your being?  Allow your experience of prayer to be your guide as you move through these reflections."

I think we could invert her last thought, also -- allow these questions to be your guide as you move through your understanding of prayer.  I hear her saying that prayer:

• honors our desire for God
• expresses the desire of our hearts
• grows out of and informs who we are
• allows (and encourages and perhaps even requires!) us to live the fullness of our being

I encourage you to take some time to sit -- or walk, or dance -- with these questions.  They are great questions to bring to spiritual direction.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Seeing Something New in the Old

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Trappist monk whose writings speak to so many people -- progressive Christians and progressive non-Christians alike.  His Center for Action and Contemplation offers daily meditations, brief reflections on a theme like "From the Bottom Up," "Unknowing," and "Transformation."  He explore each theme for a week, and on Saturday he offers summary of the week's reflections.

This past week's theme was, "This Is My Body."  He was exploring the traditional Christian concept of "incarnation" in what for many would be a highly provocative way.  That's one of the things I absolutely love about his writing.  It puts me in mind of phrase I learned during my chaplaincy training (about which I wrote back in May), "Tell me about this God you don't believe in.  I probably don't believe in that God either."  Rohr seems to me to be saying, "Tell me about this teaching you don't believe.  I probably don't understand it that way."

What is the meaning of the word, "Christ."  It's often been said, "'Christ' isn't Jesus' last name."  It's often understood as signifying Jesus' God-hood. Yet what if you don't believe in those teaching?  What if you believe that Jesus was a man, a human person, who was not God but had, instead, 

"[an] identification with God so complete, [a] relationship so intimate, that they seemed to be one and the same.  Jesus saw the world with God's eyes; he loved the world with God's heart; and his acts were ultimately the acts of God.  Those who looked at Jesus saw God's face, and they met God directly through him."  [That's from my first book, Teacher, Guide, Companion: Rediscovering Jesus in a Secular World, p. 38.]

What does this do to the concept of "the risen Christ"?  There is a spiritual way of understanding it that does not require the overthrow of the human experience of life and death.  John Dominic Crosson notes that the word "resurrection" is different from the word "restitution," and that one need not believe in the later to believe in the former.


In the meditation "The Universe is the Body of God," he quotes the theologian Sallie McFague:

"The resurrected Christ is the cosmic Christ, the Christ freed from the body of Jesus of Nazareth, to be present in and to all bodies."

That certainly changes things!

So often we get stuck with a particular understanding of a word, rather than experiencing a reality.  So often we refuse to see anything in a particular teaching because of the way we were taught to think of it.  Yet at least equally as often, to quote Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."  And if you take that new meaning with you back into the rest of the text and the teachings, whole new meanings open up.

Christianity is by no means the only way we humans have tried to make sense of that space between being born and having to die.  Yet for those who have left behind that Christian tradition in which they were raised, or who have never even explored it because of what they've heard it's about, I offer an encouragement to look again, and to look anew.  You might be surprised by what you find.

This is one of the ways a spiritual director/companion can help you with your journey.  They provide a space in which to dance with questions of meaning.


Pax tecum,

RevWik

Rest in Joy

I had the immense good fortune, and true blessing, of having the opportunity to learn from this amazing woman. She was a nun in the order of the Sisters of Notre Dame, a sensei in the White Plumb Asanga, one of the founders of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation (through which I met her), and one of the gentlest, fiercest, most spiritually profound, and delightfully mischievous people I have ever met. My friend Ethel Hornbeck describes her as, “a kind spiritual badass.”

Two stories stand out for me as I think of Rose Mary.  During one of the residencies in Shalem's Spiritual Guidance program, it snowed overnight -- a lot.  My friends Ethel, Scott, and I were sitting at lunch, wishing that we'd brought sleds, or ski, or something (because there was a perfect hill outside).  As I remember it, Rose Mary must have overheard us, because as she walked by to bring her dishes into the kitchen she leaned over and said, quietly, "I think that there are some really big trays in the back of the kitchen."  She didn't tell us to go out and have fun sledding, yet she did remind us just how playful the Spirit can be.

The second story is one I think of often.  During one of her talks on spiritual direction she told us about the time she walked with a directee on the grounds of the convent.  The sun was warm, the air was still, and she was exhausted (from traveling, as I recall).  Along the path there was a large tree with a circular bench around it.  The two sat, with the tree between them, and as the directee talked, Rose Mary fell asleep!  She woke up, noticed that their session was up, and brought their time together to a close.  

She said that she felt awful, and was trying to figure out how to apologize to the man.  But he called her ... to say that it was one of their most powerful sessions!  She was a little relieved to know that he apparently hadn't noticed her extended silence, yet was also a little chagrined that one of this person's most helpful sessions with her had been one which, for all extents and purposes, she wasn't present for.  Cautiously, so as to give nothing away, she asked what about the session had been so important to him.  He said that it was her ability to listen to her without getting defensive, and she learned that he'd been talking about his feelings about women, authority figures, and the Catholic church.  As a female authority figure in the Catholic church, she might well have become defensive, yet because of her "absence" he had been able to speak freely.

After telling us this story she said something like, "Now, I'm not recommending that you fall asleep during a session ..."  It was a great reminder that, ultimately, the mysterious, mischievous, playful Spirit which comes and goes as it will is the most important element in this work.

Rose Mary died last week.  I thank God for her life, for the chance to have known her even just a little, and for the truth that (as I say at memorial services and believe with all my heart) -- life is stronger than death, and love is stronger than anything.  I would say, "rest in peace," but I do believe that that would get too boring for this remarkable soul.  So, instead, rest in joy, Sister.


Pax tecum,

RevWik