If you are here to explore working with a Spiritual Director, you may well be in the right place. Explore the site -- go to the GETTING STARTED (FAQ) page where many of your questions may already be answered; read the blog and listen to how you feel; follow some of the links to learn more; find out a little something about my background. If you'd like to contact me -- either to set up an appointment or ask a questions, there's a contact form on the right side of each page that you can use to MAKE A CONNECTION.
Most simply, though, the spirit of my practice can be summed up in these words (adapted from Robert Mabry Doss): For those who come here seeking God ... may God go with you. For those who come embracing life ... may life return your affection. And for those who come to seek a path ... may a way be found, and the courage to take it step by step.
A member of the congregation I serve just came into the office and shared with me this passage from In Love With The Mystery by Ann Mortifee:
Let everything we do be done for Beauty: how we keep our rooms, tend our garden, or prepare our food. They say the Spirits love Beauty. Let Beauty become your mantra and your devotion. Your inner life will bloom. Synchronicity will frequent your door. Wild creatures will come to call. And your own heart will grow bright and full with the same Beauty that you adore.
"Let Beauty become your mantra ..."
I find that a tremendously lovely thought.
What do you think? Does this idea of beauty as a "mantra" and a "devotion" speak to you? If it does, what do you think it calls you to?
Remaining (or becoming) aware of the beauty around you?
Becoming (or remaining) aware of the beauty within you?
Seeking beauty even in what appears anything but?
Striving to create beauty as you move through the world?
Even more fundamentally,
What do you think of when you hear the word "beauty?"
What makes something "beautiful?"
Where do you find beauty most often?
Conversely, where have you never, or rarely, found it?
If you journal, these could be excellent prompts for your exploration. If you meet regularly with a Spiritual Director, they could provide a partner to play with these questions. (And if you don't dance with a Spiritual Director, why not?!?!?)
At the end of Children's Worship at the congregation I serve, the chalice flame lit at the beginning of the service is extinguished as everyone says together, "It is finished in beauty." This has now been added at the end of the benediction the congregation in the sanctuary says each week.
"It is finished in beauty."
It's a lovely, dare I say beautiful, way to bring an end to such sacred time. On it's own, though, it's incomplete. That's because, in addition to being finished in beauty, it is also begun in beauty. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's sustained in beauty.
Last week I raised the classic question of a spiritual director: where do you see God in this? It's a question that can be asked no matter what the "this" is. Whether we're in the midst of joy or sorrow, clarity or confusion, anger or grief, hopelessness or hope, celebration or concern ... wherever we are in our life, God is with us. This question is designed to encourage us to listen for God's voice, look for God's fingerprints, feel for God's embrace.
As I've written about before, of course, that word -- "God" -- is extraordinarily problematic for some of us. It has been so misused (as I would say) that for many it is simply irredeemable. There are others for whom the word "God" isn't at all problematic -- it's absolutely meaningless. Like "purple dancing unicorns," the word points to nothing. It quite literally has no meaning.
Nonetheless, the question is worthwhile. I would contend that whether or not you find the word "God" palatable, or meaningful, it points (like a finger at the moon) toward a quality of life that is sustaining. Perhaps that's the reason that word is often replaced with the phrase, "Spirit of Life." So asking where you find God in your current situation is really asking, "where do you see something sustaining in this?" Or, to put it yet another way, "where do you see beauty?"
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes, and there are lots of things that can be counted as "beautiful." I've heard that Einstein was once asked how he knew his General Theory of Relatively was correct and he answered, "because it's beautiful." (If that story is apocryphal I'd rather not know. As the theologian Frederick Buechner said of the Christian story, "It's too good not to be true.") There's even a Wikipedia page for "Mathematical Beauty," which contains this quote from the writing of Bertrand Russell:
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry."
Sublime. Delight. Exaltation. Where are these right now? Can you see anything that elicits any of this? Wherever you are in your life at this moment, whatever is happening in and around you, can you see/feel something that lifts you up, reminds you of the "more than," and which can be a touchstone for you? That's a big part -- maybe really the most important part -- of what I'm asking when I ask, "Where is God for you in this?"
And here's a little something paradoxical -- beauty isn't always beautiful. By that I mean only that the "beauty" that will sustain us in some situations doesn't "look" all that "beautiful." We'd be hard pressed to ... well ... to press it into any of the well-established categories society has agreed to call by that name. Even Russell's "cold and austere" description of mathematical beauty could be recognized as "beautiful." Yet there have certainly been times in my life -- and perhaps in yours as well -- in which there was simply nothing that I could, by any stretch of the imagination, describe as "beautiful" (at least, as people generally use the term).
Nonetheless, when encouraged to really look -- really listen, taste, touch, smell, feel -- I found that I could always find an answer to those questions: "Where is the life-sustaining beauty in this?" "Where is God in this?"
What do you say?
Pax tecum,
RevWik
P.S. -- The great bop pianist and composer Thelonious Monk wrote a piece titled, "Ugly Beauty," and contemplating that paradoxical juxtaposition has always been helpful to me in my spiritual growth. I also bring this up because it's a really cool tune (apparently the only waltz Monk ever wrote). Enjoy:
I was taught to eat fire by an ordained Methodist minister, the Rev. Margie Brown.
The 1970s and 80s were the heyday of what was called "the clown ministry movement." People made use of a variety of performance arts as vehicles for sharing religious messages. It seemed to me to be most common for Protestants of one sort or another to be involved, although I know that this movement also had adherents among Catholics and Jews as well.
For several years there was an annual event known as The Clown, Mime, Puppet, and Dance Ministry Workshop. Imagine clowns, mimes, puppeteers, dancers, magicians, ventriloquists, and other folks, taking over a college campus for (as I remember it) a week of workshops, performances, worship services, and more.
It was at one of these workshops that I met Margie. She was an extremely well-known clown/storyteller, and was a much sought after workshop leader. She said that she had one condition for accepting an invitation. In addition to whatever it was she was being paid to do, she requested time each day to teach a fire eating class (which she would do for free). As a twenty-something at the time, how could I miss something like this? I signed up for her class right away, and met with her and a handful of other students every morning for a week.
As I've said, Margie was an ordained Methodist minister. She had learned to eat fire from a Catholic priest, Fr. Ken Feit. Margie told us that Ken had told her that every religion we humans have ever developed has used fire as one of its sacred symbols. Also, every religion has some kind of a shared meal as one of its rituals. It only make sense, then, to eat fire as a religious practice!
Margie taught us how to make our own torches; how to bring the flame into our mouths; how to put it out, or keep some of the vapors in our mouths so that we could breath some fire. She taught us to never breathe in while the torch was anywhere near our mouths. And she taught us a bit of wisdom that has stayed with me, and guided me, to this day -- "you always have time to put out your sister's prom dress."
In the context of these Lessons From -- and for -- the Circus of Life, there are two things I'd like to lift up. It took us a little while before Margie thought we were ready to actually bring the flames near our faces. (She really did teach us to be safe!) Several people asked her whether it was going to be hot. You might think this a rather odd question. The answer should seem so obvious. Yet it's one of the first questions people ask me about this art/craft. Margie's answer was simple, "It depends on what you're expecting." People who anticipate excruciating pain are usually incredibly surprised -- and relived -- that it's nowhere near as hot as they were afraid it would be. On the other hand, those who thought it'd be no big deal were generally the ones running for a glass of ice water. One thing fire eating can teach us, then, is that our expectations are often closely linked to our experiences.
More importantly, though, is what Margie said to us on the last day of our class. She noted that some of us would keep practicing and maybe go on to perform, while others would never pick up fire eating torches again. She wanted us all to know -- whatever we did with this new skill from there on out -- that she'd only been teaching us to eat fire to show us something much more important. I don't know if I remember her words exactly, but this is what has stayed with me.
Whether you eat fire ever again, you've done it now. And that means you've taken something frightening and dangerous, and instead of running from it you've brought it right up close to yourself. And by doing this, you've turned it into something beautiful.
That's a lesson worth learning, no?
Pax tecum,
Rev. Wik
One more thing: about a year or so ago a friend of mine sent me this video. It blew my mind. The artist is doing things that I hadn't even known were possible. I've since reached out to him, and he's not only an amazing performer, but seems to be a really nice guy, too. And talk about turning fire into something beautiful:
I hope that anyone who's been reading these reflections has found something helpful in them. I know I got a lot out of writing them. There are few things in this life that I find so soul-satisfying as the opportunity to explore ... well ... the myriad pathways of spirit that move in and out of our lives and that we travel even when we don't know it.
At the same time, though, there is a saying that I've always loved that says, in essence, the more you know God, the less you want to talk about God (or, at least, the less you need to). The first line of the 1st Chapter of the Tao te Ching puts it like this (from the translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English):
True words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not true.
Of course, in between there are 80 chapters of beautiful words telling about the Tao. Go figure. The Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton was aware of the paradox of his life -- he was part of a silent order, yet he was also a prolific writer. This tension was something he danced with from his earliest days as a monk. The more words, the less quite. The more time and energy he devoted to his conversations with the outer world, the less time and energy he had for his conversations with his inner world. In our culture we are so concerned with our busy-ness, with our productivity, with what we're doing in our hours and minutes. Yet the wise ones who have preceded us -- and those living among us now -- have always maintained that it's not in the doing, its not in the noise, that we'll find the deepest truths we seek. Instead, it's in the spaces, the in-between. The 11th Chapter of the Tao te Ching puts it like this:
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful.Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there.
It was, after all, in the "still, small voice" (or "gentle whisper") that the Prophet Elijah recognized his God. According to the book of 1 Kings, it wasn't in an earthquake, or a raging fire, or roaring winds, and most definitely not in an extended dissertation. It was in the quiet, the stillness.
To be sure, there is something that we could call "extrovert spirituality." Not everyone experiences their most rich encounters with the sacred inwardly; for some, it's in reaching out that they connect most fully. There is a dearth of attention paid to this type of spirituality. In fact, Nancy Reeves wrote her 2008 book Spirituality for Extroverts: and tips for those who love them precisely because she'd never seen the topic addressed at all. I will admit that I still have a lot to learn about this approach to the spiritual quest. Perhaps someone reading this will share their experiences with me.
For myself, though, I recognize the same paradoxical tension as did Thomas Merton. I love words, my stock and trade is words, yet I know that I need the silence. To paraphrase the Psalmist, "As a deer pants for water, so my soul longs for silence." And perhaps I need to remember advice St. Francis is remembered as telling his companions, "Preach always. When necessary, use words."
by Walker
