Volume 32, No. 3-Fall, 2008
Table of Contents
Innocence
by Bill Dietrich
Be Still and Know that I am God
by Kathleen Moloney-Tarr
Surgery and Prayer
by Joan Maxwell
Crossing Borders: An Interfaith Visit to Israel and Palestine
by Charles Stephens
Voting From Our Spiritual Heart
by Tilden Edwards
Radical Presence: The Ground of Spiritual Leadership
by Larry Fourman
Battlefields by Moonlight: A Shalem Odyssey
by Carolyn Metzler
Why Shalem Matters
by Shannon Howard
Innocence
by Bill Dietrich
The Great Way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose. When preferences are cast aside the Way stands clear and undisguised. But even slight distinctions made set earth and heaven far apart. If you would clearly see the truth, discard opinions pro and con... When all is seen with "equal mind," to our Self-nature we return. - excerpted from Affirming Faith in Mind by Zen Patriarch Seng Ts'an
We sat each day in the solarium of a great Tudor mansion that now serves as a retreat house. The spacious room, our Zendo for the Zen/Christian retreat I was attending, was walled on three sides with glass doors opened to cool summer breezes. In the stately trees shading the house, cicadas sang to us throughout the day, as if to encourage us: "Be here now! Just this moment, and the next, and the next?just this!" They became my friends through the retreat, an anchor for my desire to relinquish my thoughts and to just be.
I had come to this retreat seeking much-needed rest yet sensing that what I needed most was to clear away the internal clutter from an overly busy work schedule. I yearned to wake up to what was most real, most alive in me and hoped this might be the right place to let that happen. The retreat, all in silence, offered several hours of Zazen (sitting meditation) interspersed with kinhin (walking meditation), meals, and periods of rest. Teachers exhorted us each day with Zen teaching informed by Christian wisdom. They encouraged us to let go of dualities, even our views of right or wrong, so that our true self-nature, our Christ-nature, might emerge.
After lunch one day, I sat resting under a huge oak tree, gazing across an expanse of lawn sloping gently down to woods perhaps a hundred yards away. It was the fourth day of the retreat, and after three days of sore legs, a sore back, and seemingly incessant thoughts, my body was relaxing and I was sinking more easily into the rhythm of the time. As I sat, I became aware of a still silence in the trees: no cicadas were singing and the wind seemed barely moving.
After a time I heard a soft "thump" and became aware of a fluttering sound nearby. I turned to see a cicada upside down on the ground rapidly flapping its wings as if in distress.
As I approached, I realized it was being attacked by a huge wasp, over an inch long, black with large yellow bands on its body. I felt a rising horror as I watched the wasp crawling frantically over the cicada, which, though several times its size, seemed helpless to the wasp's attack. And while my impulse was to rescue this innocent creature, I felt something deeper urging me to resist and continue watching. What was real here? Was I projecting my own image of innocence and guilt and somehow missing what was really going on?
Soon I began to recall what I'd learned before about this type of wasp, called a cicada killer. As I remembered more, I began to realize what was about to happen: the wasp would lay its eggs in the cicada, which, paralyzed but still alive, would serve as food for the emerging wasp larvae. Again I felt revulsion: this was like the story line from a well-known sci-fi horror movie I'd seen and been frightened by years earlier, a horrible fate for such an innocent creature. Once more I felt the urge to rescue the cicada, but again a deeper sense told me to resist, to be unknowing and look even more deeply at what was before me.
As the scene unfolded, the cicada soon became motionless even as the wasp continued attacking. After another few minutes, the wasp began dragging the cicada along the ground. Over the next twenty minutes or so, I watched in amazement as the wasp, cicada in tow, moved steadily towards the trunk of the large oak from which they had fallen. As the tiny procession moved along, some nearby cicadas began singing softly, almost hymn-like-or was I projecting again? Even as I felt pity for the cicada, making as it were a sacrificial offering of itself, I could not condemn the wasp, simply following its instinct to propagate. There was no good or evil, no cruelty or courage inherent in these creatures-each was simply being itself, living into its inner nature, the Tao of cicada and wasp, life just as it is. There was a perfect innocence in it all.
Upon reaching the tree, the wasp climbed straight up the trunk, cicada slung underneath, beating its wings periodically to help with the climb. When it reached the lowest branch, some ten feet up, it moved about on the limb as if to trying to get its balance, only to fall all the way to the ground again. Undaunted, it began climbing again, cicada in tow, this time even faster with wings assisting its ascent. Reaching the branch again, it found a resting place, seeming to ponder its next move. After a minute or two, the wasp, with its prey slung underneath, suddenly launched across the expanse of lawn as if shot from a cannon, soaring towards the trees beyond.
As I watched them disappear, I was struck by how easily my projections, my own distorted images of these creatures, had shaped my first impressions, and I was grateful for the grace not to know and thereby see more clearly. In my impulsive anthropomorphizing I had nearly missed what was really happening-the cycle of life in all its mystery and beauty. It reminded me how much my preferences, my fond opinions, can affect the way I view the world-"good" and "bad" as I would have it, not life as it truly is. I could see again how easily we can all let the distinctions we make between us and creation come so easily between us and our true nature, between us and other people, between us and God, the ultimate reality.
And as I move forward into the coming election season of hard choices for our nation, I'll be taking the lessons of the cicada and wasp with me, a touchstone for how I want to be. I pray for the grace to be aware of and hold lightly my opinions, my preferences, my likes and dislikes. I pray to be more unknowing, to look deeply and to see truth more clearly. May it be so for us all.
Be Still and Know that I am God
by Kathleen Moloney-Tarr
On this second day of a silent retreat, alone in the North Carolina mountains, a line circles over and over in my mind. "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10) This becomes the prayer of my day. As the words turn inside my head, they become a ribbon of comfort, an invitation to well-being. My heart opens; I feel more spacious.
I first heard these words at a Taizé service in 2003 when they were read to introduce a time of silence. I noticed them because my body immediately relaxed when they were spoken. Now I think about the meaning of the words and consider different ways to approach them. I list them one by one down the left side of my notebook.
Be - just be, be in this moment. You don't have to do anything or accomplish tasks or move forward. Just be present, be you, be here now. Accept this moment for all that it is.
Still - quiet, silent, without movement or sound; separate from all activity; aware of nothing and everything. Nothing is required in mind or body. Filled with quietude that opens space and wonder.
Be still - ah, these two words ring together. Often children hear them when their parents are settling them down at the restaurant table or easing their argument with a sibling. Is this invitation to each of us any different? Put away your activity, stop talking and thinking, let yourself settle down, let go of whatever you are doing. Become smooth and clear like glass and continue to be even now...and now...and now in this moment. Continue just to be; be still.
And - connect, join, bring together. This word that joins two equal thoughts now signals to us that once you are quiet, motionless in mind and body, something else may happen. Being still is a beginning, a setting of the context so that something important can follow.
Know - accept what is true; see the reality of the situation; surrender to the truth. Perhaps true knowing comes only when we cease our business and busyness; perhaps truth needs the context of silence to be known.
That - Here is a signal that a fact is coming; something is going to be pointed out to us.
I - Who? You? The Divine? God? Only one, a singular presence, not a group or we, but someone I have a relationship with, someone of presence.
Am - The second form of the verb "to be" exists in this phrase. When we say, "I am something," we state our reality either in roles, "I am a doctor, I am a daughter, I am a teacher, I am a seeker," or in expression of our current state of being, "I am happy, disappointed, in awe, hungry." Either way we cross the threshold of belonging in some way.
God - The name of something larger than anything; that which connects all of life, the divine force or energy of life, the great mystery, the creative force, the divine unknown; the mystery which is ever present.
Be still and know that I am God. These words alone and in combination invite me to reflect, to have faith, to let go of what I think I must do and to surrender to something far greater than myself.
Could it be that when I am still I can better know that God is in me? Is the invitation nested in this line to know more certainly the presence of God? Could I find communion with the sacred when I am willing to let go of what I think must be done?
The writing of these words and some thoughts about them affirms that which lies in the undercurrents of my being. A smoothness settles in my soul. I breathe deeply and draw gratitude with each breath. Here, then, is the gift of silence. We are invited to listen carefully and to open to things differently than when we think of them. Wonder expands our inner spaces and then fills us, letting our spirits hum with renewal.
Kathleen is a graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, Class of 2006.
Surgery and Prayer
by Joan Maxwell
As a hospital chaplain, I have had hundreds of patients tell me that many people are praying for them. A while back I took to asking them if they have noticed anything particular which they attribute to the prayers being offered on their behalf. Sometimes they have no answer, in which case I invite them to think about it and let me know the next time I come by. For other patients, an answer comes quickly. My two favorites are: "I feel as if I'm being held by an invisible hammock" and "I am floating on clouds of prayer."
Recently I had the opportunity to expand my research into what it's like to be prayed for as a participant-observer. I was diagnosed with cervical radiculopathy, meaning a degenerating disc in my neck was crushing a couple of nerves, resulting in considerable pain and increasing weakness in my dominant hand. After trying a number of alternative approaches - acupuncture, Reiki, osteopathy, physical therapy, and denial (my favorite) - I consented to undergo a surgical procedure called cervical laminectomy, fusion, and instrumentation.
Now was my chance to see for myself, in the moment, what it was like to be prayed for while hospitalized. I've been the fortunate beneficiary of considerable prayer over the years but never consciously around a particular surgical event.
The thought of what was going to be done to me was remarkably frightening. The surgeon was highly recommended, the surgery was viewed as routine but also as "major," and it was my neck they were going to cut. So I asked everyone I knew to pray for me. And I asked people who were not believers to "send positive thoughts." When the specific date and time were set I put the word out, encouraging people to pray for me and the surgical team especially around the surgery.
I found I increasingly enjoyed asking for prayer. I've asked for prayer in the past, but never in such a focused way and never from so many people. I grew used to saying, "I'm scared," and "Please pray for me." I was touched by the softness that would come over the other person's eyes, often accompanied by a touch on my arm, and the eagerness with which they would promise to hold me in prayer. I noticed that the more people I asked, the more other people would volunteer even before I had a chance to ask them. It was as if I had created a little field around myself silently asking for prayer support.
Finally the day came when I had to go in for the surgery. It was in a hospital where I had done some of my chaplaincy training, and a seminary classmate was now one of the senior chaplains. I asked her to please come see me in the pre-operation holding area, and she graciously did. It was a wonderful reminder of the greater Reality to see her smiling face in the midst of anesthesiologists, surgeons, and nurses. I asked her to read me the Psalm she usually read on such occasions, and she picked my favorite, Psalm 63. Hearing the words that had been prayed for thousands of years gave me a chance to catch my spiritual breath.
After she left, the stream of medical people continued coming in and out of my room. Bolstered by the Psalm, I tried to monitor my inner state as I answered questions, had an IV line inserted, and saw the time of the surgery coming rapidly closer. I found my fear, which had been intense, so much so that I had hardly slept the night before, had ebbed away. I looked at the IV pole, but the only drug there was an antibiotic. Yet my blood pressure, which had been unusually high when I first arrived, was chugging along at its usual normal level.
Shortly thereafter a tech came and said, "Are you ready?" It was a powerful question, giving me the awareness that I could say, "No" if I wanted to. I took a deep breath and said, "Yes." I kissed my husband goodbye and was rattled down a long corridor to the OR, where my arms were strapped to boards in what seemed very like a crucifixion position...and I woke up in the post-surgery area. After wiggling my extremities to see whether there had been an "oopsie" on the table, and finding to my great relief that there had not, I was flooded by a wave of pain, hot, increasing, total. Total...and yet not quite total. Somehow there was a little space between me and the hot pain. I turned my attention to that space, and woke up as I was being rolled into a hospital room.
My hospital stay was medically uneventful. I did a good deal of sleeping, but when I was awake I spent a lot of time observing my inner state. What I noticed, consistently, was that little space. Thanks to that little space, the edge was taken off of anything unpleasant. It was between me and the pain, between me and the dizziness when I first got out of bed, between me and the tech who shouted her way down the corridor at 2 in the morning. I myself wasn't able to pray in any focused way, but that little space seemed to be alive with silent prayer.
From time to time I had flashes of different people whom I knew were holding me in prayer. I would become aware of a dear face in repose-for some reason, almost always seen in profile-and my heart would open in gratitude and love. And the little space abided.
Now I am out of the hospital, shortly to return to work, my research accomplished, at least for the moment. I trust that my experience will make me a better chaplain. My prayer is that the little space will accompany me into many hospital rooms and evoke a similar space for the patients it will be my privilege to encounter.
Joan is the palliative care chaplain at an inner-city hospital in Washington, DC, and a graduate of Shalem's Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups & Retreats Program. A version of this article will also appear in "Plainviews: The Email Newsletter for Chaplains."
Crossing Borders: An Interfaith Visit to Israel and Palestine
by Charles Stephens
It was 4 a.m. and at first I didn't quite realize that I was waking up to the crisp sound (over loudspeakers) of the Muslim call to prayer. We had flown all night to get to Israel and spent all day touring Old Jerusalem. Soon it became clear: I wasn't dreaming. I was in the Muslim Quarter of Old Jerusalem, staying at the Daughters of Zion Convent.
We were in a land long called holy by Jews, Muslims and Christians and clearly a place of intense and divided faith among religious cousins. All claim Abraham as their spiritual ancestor, and all worship the same God. Yet they live in fear, frustration and anger, and thus there are many tall and foreboding borders erected to identify various claims to this land. We saw the cement wall that is being built to zigzag throughout the lands of Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. We saw tall wire fences topped with razor wire around refugee camps.
As a member of an Interfaith Compassionate Listening Delegation, I heard inspiring stories from Israeli Jews, Palestinian Muslims, and Palestinian Christians, and witnessed some of what their lives are like. Our diverse delegation consisted of Rabbis, Imams, Christian Ministers, Roman Catholic Sisters, a Buddhist, a couple of lay leaders, and me - a Unitarian Universalist minister. Our goal was to listen compassionately to the stories of individual leaders on all sides of this divided land.
We heard from Israeli and Palestinian parents who had lost loved ones in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and who are now working together as brothers for peace and understanding. We heard from a woman whose parents died in the Holocaust and who in 1948 fought as a young woman to create Israel but was now a leader in an interfaith women's peace group. We heard from former Israeli and Palestinian soldiers who have become combatants for peace, from an Israeli Government spokesperson and from Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. We heard stories of Palestinians who have been living in the Al-Arroub refugee camp since 1948 and from Rabbi Menachem Froman who helped found the Takoa Israeli settlement in the West Bank area.
Our hearts were touched and our minds were opened by these courageous and compassionate people. All have experienced painful wounds, and around such wounds, it is human behavior to build defensive walls. Compassionate Listening is a discipline that helps us listen from our heart, not from our wounds or the defensive barriers we have built up to protect ourselves.
The basic theory behind Compassionate Listening is that each of us has an internal heart essence at the very core of our being. But then each of us experiences emotional and physical wounds in life. As protection we develop physical and emotional scar tissue that defend us against future dangers. Normally we communicate from the place of the defenses we have developed. Sometimes we go deeper and communicate from the place of our wounds. But Compassionate Listening challenges us to go even deeper, to the place of our heart essence - below our defenses and deeper than our wounds. When we communicate from our heart essence to the heart essence of another, we tap into the rich potential of true person-to-person communication
It was the practice of Compassionate Listening that helped us connect on a personal basis with people of different faiths, both those we met and those with whom we were traveling. No matter our belief, the most difficult task we face is finding a way to pass through walls that have been built up between ourselves and those we fear. The twenty religious leaders who made up our delegation began to learn how very important it was that we come together as people of faith.
I was touched by the similarity of the Compassionate Listening process and Spiritual Guidance as understood by Shalem. We tried not only to set aside our personal wounds and defenses but also for a moment the symbols, words and ways we personally have been touched by and understand that which is holy and divine. For a holy moment we could hear the still small voice out of the depths that could unite us and guide us to a new understanding of one another and that which can be a Holy Land. I attribute my experiences within Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program for readying me for Compassionate Listening.
Following this remarkable journey, we returned home, united in our love and respect for one another and our experience of the love that Jewish, Christian and Muslim people have for the Holy Land. It is my hope that as we tell our stories we will be able to channel some of that love and might become, in some small way, part of a united dynamic force for greater nonviolence in our area as well as in Israel and Palestine.
Charles, a minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing in Titusville, NJ, is on Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program staff.
Voting From Our Spiritual Heart
by Tilden Edwards
From where inside do we listen when we decide for whom we will vote? From where do the candidates listen?
The greatest contribution a contemplative orientation can bring to such a question is its invitation to listen from a deeper place than those that might first show up, the most likely of which is our ego mind. In our ego mind we feel a sense of personal fragility - ourselves as contingent beings, dependent on many unassured resources for our survival and for our physical and mental well-being. Our ego self tries to cope with these fearful circumstances, to protect us from harm and to accumulate resources that allow for as much safety and satisfaction as possible.
When we listen to a candidate with our primary identity rooted in our ego self, we listen for policies and values that will bolster our sense of power and well-being. We bring to the candidates the underlying question: "What can you do for me and mine?" This is a legitimate question, but it narrows and limits what we hear.
Another place from which to listen is our objective rational mind - listening from the accumulated knowledge and values of our conceptual mind and beyond the subjective filter of personal/family security to the larger political situation and common good. We bring to the candidates the underlying question: "How do your views connect with my cultivated, rational views of the political situation and of needed policies?"
What we hear from the rational mind is an invaluable contributor to our discernment, but it is subject to the limitations of the mind's conceptual categories and partial knowledge. When the concepts are held too tightly, they are in danger of taking on a quality of ultimacy: they become the final truth that must be frozen and defended; they become idols that lose their openness to the larger truth.
We might identify a number of other places from which we listen, but I will single out just one more: our contemplative spiritual heart - that faculty of intuitive awareness that appears when we are present to deep reality before our thoughts and fragile sense of self arise. There we touch life more directly as it is, in its dynamic wholeness. There we are most directly available to the larger, gracious Presence. With our contemplative heart, we listen from the deepest place of compassionate wisdom in us. Just as when the early desert fathers and mothers encouraged people to let their minds sink to their hearts and when Jesus spoke of the centrality of the single "eye of the heart," we hear the invitation to listen from that deepest place.
Listening openly in that bright cloud of unknowing, the silence we hear is not empty; it is pregnant with every possibility. Graced space is opened for fresh, compassionate wisdom to seep into the rational mind. And our ego mind can find itself drawn toward its deepest calling: to uniquely and practically live out the radiant Love shown us in the heart.
Listening from the heart can bring us to special underlying questions for political candidates: "Do you listen from more than your ego and rational self? Can I detect any sign that you are open to your contemplative spiritual heart, even if you never use such a term?"
A politician who is ready to return again and again to that deeper place of openness to loving Spirit wisdom is, I believe, the most trustworthy. We live in a time of such complexity and challenge that more than ever we need leaders who draw from a deeper well than ego needs and established understandings. We need leaders who can remain open to what they do not know, making room for fresh vision to continually evolve in our local, national and global communities. We need leaders who carry enduring hope through all the corruption, horrors and failures to love they encounter in the world; leaders who can inspire people to stretch beyond their narrow self-interests - embracing and, if necessary, sacrificing for a larger shared vision of the common good. We need leaders who care more for the integrity of the visions shown them for the common good than they care about re-election.
We won't find any spiritually pure candidates in our kind of electoral system and in our fallible human condition. However, sometimes between the lines of candidates' political words and biographies, we might sense whether or not they are at least sporadically listening and responding from the deeper place of the heart. We might sense those who have been touched by the underlying message emerging from the contemplative spiritual heart in a myriad forms: i.e., that we are part of an inclusive family invited to water the seeds of justice, love, beauty, creativity, and community with one another and the earth, and we are unique if forgetful images of the gracious One whose energy fills those seeds.
I ask you to pray for such leaders. Pray for them to be given ways to awaken and sink deeper into their contemplative spiritual hearts, however buried to our consciousness. Pray also for voters to listen from the same deep place, so they can encourage and affirm it in leaders. Do not vote primarily from the fears of your ego mind. Inform your rational mind as best you can, but go deeper still. Vote from the eye of your heart.
Radical Presence: The Ground of Spiritual Leadership
by Larry Fourman
As the Midwest Shalem Gathering concluded in June, the words most commonly heard describing the experience were love, hope, agape, and Shechinah. The variety of experience represented in these words grew out of a truly graced time together. The schedule which looked common on paper became uncommon as through it all we were drawn into the open, loving presence of God and experienced a bit of that radical presence which grounds us as spiritual leaders.
I came to the Gathering distracted and tired, with my contemplative practice badly in need of reinforcement. As I listened, I was hearing mostly things that I had heard or read before about contemplative presence. Then quite by surprise, which is usually the way real Presence is experienced, Tilden's gazing exercise and Stephen Mitchell's rendition of Psalm 93, shared by Ann Dean as invitation for the days of silence, awakened my consciousness and I woke up. For me, it was in these experiences that a journey into contemplative awakening began creating a listening focus for the following days of silence.
First, Stephen Mitchell adapts Psalm 93 from the Hebrew saying,
God acts within every moment,
and creates the world with each breath,
He speaks from the center of the universe,
in the silence beyond all thought.
Mightier than the crash of a thunderstorm,
mightier than the roar of the sea,
is God's voice silently speaking
in the depths of the listening heart.
These words invited me to listen deeply through all that I was in the present moment for God's voice, with the promise that in this listening God will speak. As I stayed with this Psalm through the days of silence, it shaped my reflection on what had happened in the earlier exercise led by Tilden on radical presence.
Toward the end of his presentation on Radical Presence, Tilden invited us to choose a partner and sit facing him or her. At this point I am usually very apprehensive. I am paired with a person whose name I have just learned and whom I know absolutely nothing about. We are invited to begin to look into each other's eyes. I recognize being uncomfortable. I usually do not look into another's eyes this long, though it was probably only a few seconds. Then we were invited to not so much look at the other person, but to look through their eyes and just stay with that gazing for a while. I noticed myself becoming very uncomfortable momentarily and even a bit terrified as I realized that as I was gazing into another's eyes they were gazing into mine. My eyes began to moisten. Then I noticed a tear drop running down the face of my partner. Suddenly and quite by surprise I was overwhelmed by a sense of loving Presence. No longer uncomfortable or terrified, I just sat and allowed myself to remain in the moment until our awareness was called back to the group.
This experience of gazing surfaced several insights about spiritual leadership. The first is that spiritual leadership is iconic. It grows out of not just looking at others and the world around us so much as fixing our gaze on them in such a way as to see their inner nature. As soon as the gazing exercise concluded, I recollected experiences I have had praying with icons in which I am drawn into a deep interior awareness of the icon. This comes not so much from analytical dissection of the exterior reality of the icon as from a radical openness to its total reality, received in the depths of one's being. When the gazing exercise ended, I had this weird sense that I knew the person with me even though in fact I knew absolutely nothing. So, spiritual leadership begins with the eyes, with a way of seeing others and the world around us, which goes beyond the surface to the center of reality.
A second insight is that spiritual leadership grows out of living fully in the present moment. I realized how all that happened in the gazing exercise occurred because of a simple intent to remain in the present moment and not be distracted even by thoughts about what was happening. When we keep renewing our intent to simply be in the present, we give space for the Spirit to work in and through us.
A third insight which came through the days of silence is that leadership, when it is truly spiritual, leads to the cross. Our plenary room was encircled by a host of icons - Martin Luther King, Jr., Teresa of Avila, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, and others. I would stand and look at these when passing through the room. It soon began to dawn on me not only how contemplative these individuals were but how many of them had been persecuted, if not martyred. So, it seems that living in the fullness of the present moment leads not only to the crucifixion of the false self but to such radical presence in the world that one is ready to give all - even one's life - to stand with others in the ongoing stream of God's reconciling love.
Larry is a part-time associate pastor at the Union Center Church of the Brethren, Nappanee, IN, and a member of Shalem's Society for Contemplative Leadership.
Battlefields by Moonlight: A Shalem Odyssey
by Carolyn Metzler
When I started Lent by offering a conversation about mortality to my congregation, I did not know how close I was to the subject! Subsequent events reshaped me spiritually, brought me face to face with the frailty of the human body and resilience of the human spirit. I was invited into a dark blessing, a holy surrender, and emerged alive and grateful for it all.
Between residencies of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, I became increasingly out-of-control regarding my work. I tried repeatedly to slow down, break the pattern of manic work, without success. I love what I do and couldn't stop doing it. I was unable to let go of details, and all the demands that never ended nibbled away at my soul. I stopped praying, treating God more as a colleague with whom I went over the day's schedule.
Within a day at the second residency, the full scope of my compulsion and the egotism behind it was unbearable, so I entered the sacred ground of confession with another colleague. After that, I felt I could see more clearly what needed to happen, but I still did not know how I would actually make the changes that I needed to make. I was healed, forgiven, freed, but not yet truly converted.
The program lectures gave me a little window, and the phrase "contemplative freedom" was a key. If I could come to a place where I could choose to act or not to act, and not just be compelled to action, I could be free. I spent a great deal of time with this concept, which was a lifeline for me. Another conversation gave me the words "Be a beggar to God." And so I prostrated myself in front of the Icon of Christ of Sinai and begged, "Change me. Do whatever it takes to change me. Make me your priest. Free me." And the eyes of that remarkable icon pulled me in and held me in their compassionate knowing.
The next day I awoke to some belly pain but figured it was from food eaten the night before. By evening the pain was quite severe and continued to intensify until I could hardly walk. Finally I let myself be taken to the local emergency room. On the way, I sank into the pain that now engulfed me. At one point I opened my eyes and realized that we were driving through the Gettysburg battlefields. The moon was full, the eclipse imminent and the light was extraordinary. I saw the silhouettes of the jagged-toothed fences, the statues of men and horses, cannons against the far hills. For an exquisite moment, I was out of pain, almost out of body, on those battlefields in the moonlight. There were no words, no music, nothing but the amazing space of that hallowed ground. I hung there with it all, suspended in silence that was full of the remembered pain of that place - a peace that was wrought in suffering.
And then we were turning into the hospital where they prepared me for a barium enema, took X-rays, and eventually put me under anesthesia. I awoke in a room surrounded by people, hearing myself moaning and tossing and feeling more pain than I thought I could bear. Then began the dreams, the uncertainty of what was real and what was not. People came and went. IVs were adjusted and in my dreams I was back in the battlefields. I saw the soldiers with their bodies far more broken than mine, without benefit of anesthesia or antibiotics, no hospital beds, no catheters to relieve the call of nature. I felt the terrible pain and the screaming, and also the more terrible silence. I have never been a Civil War buff, and it is strange that this is where I went in those early days. Those fields by moonlight were not empty. There was helplessness to it all, which mirrored my own powerlessness and also a renewed horror at the evil stupidity of war.
The next morning my husband walked in, and with his presence, I was grounded again. Getting my system moving was a challenge, and I suffered more indignities than I can tell. It turned out my insides had never finished rotating in the womb, and so when they looked in with the scopes, it was like navigating Chicago with a map of Detroit. Everything was somewhere else.
So - how do I understand this? Did God knot my colon in response to my prayer to slow me down? I don't believe that. As a wise old priest said to me recently, "The only thing we know for sure is whether or not we are being open to God." And - sometimes - I'm not even sure of that. I like to think I am, but then - sometimes - even ministry can be a barrier to God.
We are only earthen vessels, only able to breathe as God gives us breath. And yet God calls us, invites us, empowers us, uses us. God breathes God's very breath into our nostrils at birth, and when we die, the last breath out is what God breathes in. Who can understand it? At the end, we only hang in the moonlight with the Body of Christ broken and know that, by exquisite grace, we are whole.
Carolyn, an Episcopal priest, is a graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, Class of Winter 2008.
Why Shalem Matters
by Shannon Howard
After working at Shalem for the past year, I took the opportunity to reflect on what Shalem has come to mean to me and why I feel that nurturing contemplative living and leadership is so important in our world at this time. I have lived in several countries and have worked with organizations doing international work on the issues of ending hunger and transforming conflict. The following is my personal perspective, informed by many years in public service.
As we move forward into the 21st century, it is clear to me that the issues confronting humanity have reached a point of great urgency - at stake is our existence and that of the planet we inhabit. What underlies these issues, I believe, is a fundamental moral crisis: our inability to recognize ourselves in one another and our lack of empathy. In the face of divisiveness that permeates all levels of the social order, unity, both experiencing and magnifying it, is the most pressing need of our time.
In order to meet these challenges, to realize this unity, we need to reach into the spiritual dimension. Contemplative awareness can enable us to experience the simple truth that we are at one with Spirit, our own being, one another and all living things. When we are grounded in the gift of contemplative awareness, it transforms our inner life and our outer expression in the world. It empowers us to transcend the boundaries that separate us, to transform apathy and human cruelty into compassion. This awareness is the place from which inspired social action arises.
Contemplative orientation is not dependent on knowing a particular spiritual practice or method. While Shalem is deeply grounded in Christian contemplative tradition, it has always embraced a variety of contemplatively-oriented practices that anchor one's life in living in Spirit, moving us out of our heads and into our spiritual hearts. I believe this grounding is the underlying point of interconnection between all authentic spiritual traditions, and as such can further interfaith understanding at an experiential level.
When I look at Shalem and imagine the future, I can envision the organic unfolding of a supportive network of diverse, contemplative spiritual communities around the globe - indeed, this is already happening. I can imagine partnerships with other like-minded individuals and organizations as part of this process and a growing movement of leaders, secular and non-secular, who share a deep contemplative understanding as expressed through their own faith traditions and practices.
In Shalem, I see an ever-present dedication to supporting individuals and communities in living in contemplative awareness and focusing on the sacred. And I see a continued commitment to providing programs and environments in which all are empowered to work on their inner life and follow their own path of spiritual growth and formation.