Would you find it helpful?

I have two questions for you. 

So far I've written some short posts that are essentially a prompt for a spiritual practice you might try.  I've also written slightly longer pieces that are reflections of some issue related to spirituality. 

Do you find one or the more helpful to you?

I'm also wondering about the medium of communication.  Not everyone accesses information most readily through the written word.  I made an animated video a while back to explain the process of using the prayer beads I describe in my book Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life.  Several years ago I made a series of short videos addressing questions related to spirituality and, of course, today podcasts are all the rage.

Would you find one of these other media (that are not dependent on the written word) helpful?

 I'd love to hear what you think!  My goal for this site is to make it meaningful whether or not you decide to invite me to join your spiritual journey as a spiritual director.

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

The Great Question

If you have ever worked with a spiritual director before, or are doing so now, there's a question you've probably heard:

Where is God in this?

I suppose you could say that this is the question of the spiritual life.  Where is God -- in this experience, this relationship, this feeling, this crisis, this confusion, this moment.  I often try to describe the difference (in really general terms!) between a therapist and a spiritual director like this:

• When you visit a therapist while in the midst of a crisis, let's say, the therapist is going to try to help you to understand it and/or to figure out how to get through it to the other side.
• When you go to a spiritual director while in the midst of a crisis, the spiritual director is going to try to help you find where God is (where the Holy is, where the Sacred is, where Love is) right there in the midst of it all.

Hence, where is God in this?

A friend of mine from Japan once told me that there's no way to ask the question, "Where am I?" in Japanese.  He said that no Japanese person would ask a question with such an obvious answer -- "Where are you?  You're here, of course!"  According to this friend, the question you ask when you're lost in Japan is, "Where is here?"

Similarly, I suppose the question "where is God in this ...?" has a pretty obvious answer, too -- "Here!  Everywhere!" I guess, then, that what we're really asking is, "Where do you see, or where are you experiencing, God in this ...?"

This way of asking the question allows for an extremely common answer that some folks seem to think is an inappropriate one, no matter how true it is:  "Where do I see God in this?  Where am I experiencing the Sacred right now?  I don't!  God is nowhere to be found!"  That doesn't seem very "spiritually advanced" to a lot of people.  Maybe even you.

When the author of Matthew recalls the words Jesus spoke from the cross he includes these words in Aramaic, ""Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"  The author of Mark remembers this too, that while Jesus was dying he quoted the 22nd Psalm -- "My God, my God ... why have you forsaken me?"

If Jesus can look around and not see God, if Jesus can feel abandoned by that Holy Love which is the foundational reality, it should certainly be okay if you or I feel that same way.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Why Do I Need a Spiritual Director?

Two weeks ago I reflected on what the word "spirituality" means.  I suggested that it could refer to the difference Henry David Thoreau saw between living life and that which is not life.  Most of us, most of the time, live a sort of not-life in which we miss the moments of our living (most often because we're preoccupied with the past or the future, and not focused on the present moment).  Spirituality, then, has to do with learning to live life.

Last week I explored the question of why we would need to do any kind of practice, have any kind of discipline, if spirituality is simply about living our lives.  The lesson of Pablo Casals' commitment to the disciplined practice of playing scales -- even after he was an acknowledged master of his instrument -- offered an answer by way of analogy.  You can make sound if you pick up an instrument from time to time; you can make music if you're committed to practice.  (I'd not that Siddhartha Buddha is said to have continued meditating twice a day for the forty or so years following his Enlightenment, and Jesus is remembered as praying regularly.)

Let's say that these two posts have made sense -- spirituality is about living deeply and fully, and doing that takes practice.  Still, why would you need anyone helping with that?  What could a Spiritual Director offer that you couldn't find on your own?

The Personal Trainer - Eemnes, Netherlands, 2017
(© Floris Oosterveld, used under Creative Commons license)

Do I really need to say more?

A personal trainer is someone who knows how to help you on your way to being more physically fit, but they don't lift the weights for you.  That you have to do.  And people do certainly work out on their own, yet a qualified trainer can help you to avoid common pitfalls, and can check your form in the moment to help you avoid injury, and can suggest exercises you may not have thought of on your own.  Yet they don't know everything there is to know about fitness, they really know very little about you, and they can't do your workout for you.

I keep coming back to that point, don't I?  There's a story I've read about a Zen monk who had a brand new, overly eager student thrust upon him.  This younger monk pestered the elder with questions, clearly wanting to glean all that he could from the learning of the more experienced monk so that his own journey would be easier.  Aware of this, recognizing that his young charge essentially wanted him to do the work on the other's behalf, the senior monk looked the younger one in the eye and said, "I will do everything I can to help you on your spiritual journey, yet there are four things I cannot do for you:  I cannot eat for you; I cannot go to the bathroom for you; I cannot get into your skin and walk around for you; and I cannot live your life for you."  It is said that upon hearing this the younger monk attained enlightenment.  [I've adapted this story from Sōkō Morinaga's marvelous book, Novice to Master:  an ongoing lesson in the extent of my own stupidity.]

A lot of people seem to have an image of a Spiritual Director as some kind of medieval monk, dour and stern, telling someone how long they should stay on their knees (preferably on a cold stone floor), and how many prayers of just what kind they should be praying.  (With, of course, the threat of eternal damnation if one should disobey.)  And that is certainly one way this calling has been understood and, unfortunately, is no doubt still understood by some. 

Instead, the Spiritual Director -- like the personal trainer who keeps an informed eye on how you're executing the various exercises you're doing -- travels with you to help keep you focused on your desire to see, hear, feel, love, live more clearly.  A Spiritual Director won't -- shouldn't -- tell you what prayers to pray, but will help you to see what "prayer" means to you at this moment in your life, and to look for the ways you are connecting, and to discover new ways through which you might connect, with life's depths (which some call "Spirit," and some call "God," and others call "Inner Wisdom," and others need no names for).  

Pax tecum,

RevWik