Volume 16, No. 3-Fall, 1992

Work & Human Spirituality
by Tracey Manning

Darkness and Light
by Rose Mary Dougherty

Money and Security
by Diane Wegener

The Freedom of Solitude
by Gerald May

Of Those Who Bring the Light
by Sarah Inglis

The Seed of Heaven in Us
by Tilden Edwards

Work & Human Spirituality

by Tracey Manning

One's spiritual understanding of God and self seems related not only to what one does as work but also to how one views the work one does. In my observations of myself and others in the process of becoming Christians, I believe I have seen change and development in a person's perspectives on and behavior towards his/her work as a function of commitment to Christ and experience of ongoing conversion. I would like to propose a theoretical model of work perspectives as they reflect broad states of Christian spiritual development.

Stage One: Spirituality Unconscious or Irrelevant
When God is viewed as cosmic and distant, uninvolved in present-day human affairs, it follows that humans don't consider God in their day-to-day decision making. For the nominal Christian or non-believer, work is probably a purely personal affair, however one approaches it. It may be drudgery ("the salt mines"), ordinary ("my job"), a source of feelings of competence or incompetence ("my career") or a selfless commitment or dedication ("my vocation"). What these perspectives have in common is the sense that God is relevant to neither one's identity nor one's work.

Stage Two: Spiritual Awakening to God's Invitation
Individuals become aware of a God who transcends their limited vision in as many ways as there are individuals. Once contact is made with the God who desires to be personal with us, the individual's awareness can become heightened to God's providential involvement in his/her life. The person often responds to this divine outreach by communicating in prayer, learning of God in Scripture and beginning to view God in a more relational way.

As people change perceptions of God, they probably also begin to change perceptions of themselves and of the world of work. They may begin to dichotomize "sacred" or "religious" from "secular" activities and to evaluate "religious" activities more highly. They also may feel the need to "do something for God," something "religious," of course, to respond to the love and answers to prayer they are experiencing from God. Many Christians I have met seem to be functioning with such a view of identity, God and work. This may be a relatively permanent stage for some, while a transient one for others who continue to respond to God's loving call.

People at this stage may become dominated by old "shoulds," perfectionistic or overscrupulous ideas about how one should live life, and may drive themselves into a frenzy trying to do them all. The underlying dynamic of "stuckness" at this stage may relate to the persistent issue of our inability to earn or deserve God's extravagant love--doing something "religious" may be an attempt to equalize such scales. Ironically when overwhelmed with such an attempt to earn redemption, people are less likely to make quality time to build their relationships with God or to realize what they are missing in their lives.

Stage Three: Initial Conversion
Through many fits and starts and much of God's grace, some people make a commitment of their lives to Christ. The person has had to accept him/herself as sinful and desiring forgiveness and then accept Christ's loving forgiveness and new life. At the point of conversion, Christians may radically change perspectives on life and work. With a new awareness that God has plans for individuals, new Christians often want to give up previous work identities to enter ministry. For example, I wondered if this call from God meant I needed to enter religious life; another woman I know joined the many lay people who go to seminary as a statement of their new commitment.

Other Christians view themselves as called, with certain gifts and talents and God as the originator of the call. For the first time, the individual tries to consult with God to make work decisions, though the dichotomy between sacred amd secular still holds sway. The differences between this stage and the previous one may be seen in the distinction between "God bless my work" and "God, direct me to your work for me."

Stage Four: Ongoing Conversion-Incarnation
As individuals develop stronger and deeper personal relationships with their God, they begin to know God better (and know also how little they know God). They begin to be more open to response from the Holy Spirit about their grace and disgrace, to trust God's work in each situation in their lives and to know who they are in God's sight. These movements are not accomplished without resistance in the human psyche, which does not like discomfort or loss of control. They are also accompanied, in my limited experience, by new perspectives on work.

As individuals allow conversion of more and more areas of their lives, they become incarnational. As Paul says, "It is not I who lives but Christ in me." The person at this stage transcends the earlier dichotomy between sacred and secular and sees the possibilities of living Christ in all situations. Beyond that, one is aware of being uniquely gifted and dedicated to work to which God calls him or her and for which God gives grace and takes much responsibility. The Christian who is becoming incarnational resembles Brother Lawrence who lived Christ in preparing meals at a monastery. The cleaning woman in my building also exemplified this perspective when she shared the reason she unfailingly greeted each passerby with a sincere smile: "God knows I can't do big things, but maybe I can make each person's day a little better with a smile."

"I am the vine and you are the branches," Christ reminded us. Through these hypothesized stages of spiritual development, two major things occur. The branches become more and more aware of being attached to the vine and in such awareness are able to grow more strongly attached and thus stronger. Work and spiritual growth are indeed linked.

Tracey , a 1987 graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, is a professor of psychology at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore. This article is taken from one of her program papers; a slightly different version also appeared in Jacob's Well, Spring 1990.

Darkness and Light

by Rose Mary Dougherty

"If I say, 'Surely darkness will steal over me, night will close round about me,' darkness is no darkness for thee and light is luminous as the day; to thee both dark and light are the same." (Psalm 139:11-12)

A friend and her son had dinner with me recently. After dinner, as dusk was turning into night we moved to the back porch. As we sat looking into the yard, I noticed that the gate to my back yard was open. I asked the little boy, Matthew, if he would do something for me. He smiled a proud big boy "yes," so I asked him to close the gate. I tried to point to where it was, but distance and dark diminished my vision. His eyes pleaded his response, "I'd like to please you, but please don't ask me to do that." Then he said quietly but with determination, "No." His mother breathed relief and as he walked away she whispered to me, "I'm not sure I would go out there alone this time of night."

Her words caught me by surprise. I had never thought of my yard as holding danger. I knew the contours of its trees and mounds and the night sounds of its varied inhabitants. Through days and nights of basking in the beauty of this cloister, I had come to feel secure. I knew there was nothing to fear, even in the dark. But my friend did not know that, nor did her son.

I wanted to close the gate before I forgot it. I sensed that Matthew, though he didn't know me well, might trust me enough to do this with me. So I asked if he wanted to come with me. Immediately he took my hand. My confidence walked him down the yard. As we walked I talked about the safety of the dark, nothing there to hurt us, nothing that wished us harm. I don't know if Matthew heard me; it was almost as though I weren't there. He was on his own walk, having his own experience.

As we left the gate his grip eased slightly and he asked, "Why close gate, Mosemary? "I want to keep the dogs out," I reply. "Oh," says he, growing pensive as we walk. Then, sitting on his mother's lap he says, "Let's go home, Mommy." "Why, Matthew?" He blurts, "I don't want the dogs to get us!" Quickly I intervene, "Matthew, the dogs that come here are friendly dogs; they like people. It's just that every once and awhile they mess up the yard." "Oh," says Matthew. Then, "Mommy, let's go home before the dogs mess up the yard and we have to wash our shoes like I did when I was little." Reluctantly, his mother gathered his toys. On the way out she said, "I'm so sorry he wants to go home. I think it is the dark. He's not often outside in it."

As I closed the door behind them, reality came in. "Of course it is the dark!" He's only two and a half! For a two-and-a-half-year-old, dark is no time to venture forth, especially not alone; it is a time for sleep, for the comfort of mother arms. Dogs messing up the yard, that's what he could name. He knows what that means, but it's the dark, it's what he doesn't know, that triggers fear. How could I forget what the dark unknown was like for a child? How could I be so insensitive?

The next morning I met with a friend for spiritual direction. We chatted for awhile and then moved into silence. Immediately the Matthew story came back to me. I said to my friend, "I know this doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I need to tell you this story before I can be quiet." I ended my narration by saying, "I knew he would be all right walking through the yard by himself, but he didn't know that. I can be so impractical sometimes!" We laughed and then became silent again.

In his sharing my friend, Tom, talked about his illness and about having to let go of the expectations of others around his response to his illness. He finally had to claim that he was tired of having to arrange his life around the demands of the disease and that he was afraid. He said that he felt there was an impenetrable wall of darkness between his desire and God's desire and that he had to move through that darkness to get to God's desire. He wanted to walk trustingly, but it was all new territory to him. He wasn't sure what he would encounter. Now more than ever he needed a hand to hold.

In the silence that followed I thought of Matthew. I doubted that his little boy fear was any more or less than the grown man fear of my friend. I could take Matthew's hand, however, encourage him and reassure him. I knew where he was going. I had been there. I could say with reasonable certainty that he would be O.K. Not so with Tom. I didn't know where he was going. My confidence couldn't walk him through the dark. I was afraid, too. It seemed as though someone else was doing the leading. I only could take his hand and walk behind him as he went into the darkness ahead of me. I couldn't say with certainty that he would be O.K. That assurance was not mine to give.

A hearty laugh erupted from the silence. "You said your story about Matthew had nothing to do with anything. What do you know? What do I know? Who knows what God is up to?" A pause and then, "I don't know whether you meant to say it or not, but you said you were so impractical. Well, God's impractical, too. Things just don't make the kind of sense we expect them to make." Another pause and then, "Somehow I trust this process more because you told me about Matthew. I want to take the walk."

I said good-bye to Tom, but he and Matthew were very much with me as I drove to our staff retreat. "Why does it have to be this way? Why does a little boy ever have to be afraid, especially because of another's thoughtlessness? Why does a grown man, in the prime of productivity, have to face the unknown of debilitating disease? Why darkness? Why not always light?

My "whys" continued through most of our retreat. Somewhere in the midst of them I heard my friend's words: "What do you know?" What do I know? Could it be that the thoughtlessness of another, the debilitation of disease are simply vehicles of a dismantling Love which beckons us more deeply into Love? Who knows when it's time for that Love? Is the darkness of that Love any less loving than its light? Are darkness and light both part of the same Love, each with its own season? Could it be, as the Psalmist suggests, that darkness and light are the same? I am beginning to believe that they are.

Money and Security

by Diane Wegener

"Like anything else in our lives, (money) can be an idol that enslaves, deflects, and destroys, or it can be an icon through which God blesses us, an energy of God that we are called to appreciate and circulate with joy." -Tilden Edwards, Living in the Presence

In the one and a half years since I was hired by Shalem to be full-time fundraising administrative help, I've learned some unexpected lessons about money.

It was actually a leap of faith that allowed me to take the job here in the first place. My previous employer was a small, very wealthy trade association. When I left, I had enormous benefits including a healthy retirement annuity. There was a perception among us in that office that we were secure and safe for life.

When I was interviewed for this job at Shalem, I was counseled by many friends to carefully consider my future in economic terms. I was told "yes, we know you have this thing about meditation, but what about your future? What about saving for a house and graduate school?" I promised my friends to think carefully.

But at my second interview, Patricia Clark, the Director of Operations at Shalem, began by saying to the group of five people assembled, "let's begin with silence so we can be open to what God wants." I remember catching my breath and forcing back tears. I was touched and astounded that any organization -- even an organization devoted to listening to God--would listen together for guidance in the hiring process. I knew then that, regardless of salary and benefits, this was where I wanted to work.

It was a new experience of security. It was a security of conviction that I was paying attention to my heart's deepest desire to be closer to God.

Shalem as an organization has faced similar challenges regarding money and security. This year we had our second overall deficit in a row. It is a shaky feeling when the budget doesn't balance. It forces us to confront some of our deepest fears such as, "what is our future and do we have a future?"

I have witnessed remarkable faith among the Shalem extended family--from people of close involvement like Board and Committee members to people who drop in for Wednesday prayer to people far away from Washington who write to tell us that they read Shalem News and feel a connection with Shalem. Many of you have told us about your conviction that Shalem is providing a ministry that is needed. And last year, when we told you about our first deficit, many of you responded with gifts that helped us to reach our contributions goal of $175,000.

Thus we planned our new fundraising campaign with a sense of trust that this year, as last year, we will reach our goal, which is $180,000. And we move forward with new programs, confident that they will again this year meet the needs of many people. We also experience this profound but scary feeling of security--that people of Shalem are listening to God and paying attention to their deepest hearts desire--to be closer to God.

The Freedom of Solitude

by Gerald May

Most of what I know about the spiritual life I have learned in relationships with other people, but there are some lessons that only aloneness can teach. I discovered this two summers ago when I found a place I could go for absolute solitude. It is on a mountain in a State Forest where almost no one goes when it's not hunting season. At the times I have camped there, I have never seen another human being. There I have learned that for me, at least in that setting, the essential value of solitude is freedom. When no one else is around, I am freed from my habitual social reflexes. There is no need for decorum, propriety, or tact, no fear of rejection or disapproval, no drive to compete or compare, no cause to endear, secure, protect, or define myself.

Freed from such interpersonal reactions, I find a different self emerging. It is young, exuberant, spontaneous, playful beyond restraint, courageous beyond my dreams. I do not act out fantasies or strive to fit images, because the reality of being free in nature's arms and God's love is more amazing than anything I could imagine. Along with freedom from self-images, I find liberation from my images of God. It is not a matter of replacing one image with another--instead it seems all the images disappear. God is not this or that, not me, not other, not within, not without; God just simply is. Similarly, prayer just is: no separation, no compartmentalization, no definition. At one point during my last visit to the mountain, I tried to pray the way I usually do at home. Immediately it felt wrong. It was, I recognized, an image of myself praying to an image of God. It seemed to put God at a distance and it made me feel separate from the trees and earth around me. When I stopped "praying," I relaxed into the deeper, truer prayer that had been given all along, a prayer without doing, almost without intent. In that letting-be of prayer I can sense the all-embracing intimacy of God: no need to reach out or even to seek.

I appreciate that intimacy deeply, even revel in it, but I do not want to think about it. To think is to label, to force categories, to separate this from that. With gratitude, I can say that solitude also liberates me from thinking. With no agenda except presence with God, there is no concern for plans, timing, or pursuing thoughts. Thoughts come, of course, but in solitude I feel no obligation to either follow them or fight them off. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories are all just part of experience, like the breeze shifting, clouds passing in the sky, squirrels playing in the trees.

The freedom of solitude also has taught me something about hospitality. My preparations for camping used to be obsessively organized. I would think through everything I might need, trying to foresee all possible dangers. On my first trip to the mountain I packed insect repellent, poison ivy medicine, pans to scare off bears, equipment for weathering storms, first aid and snake bite gear--everything I could think of. It makes sense to do a little thinking about such things, but focusing so much on dangers made me develop a defensive, almost paranoid attitude toward the wilderness that called me. But while driving there on that first trip, I felt a strange, comforting sensation. It seemed the mountain was not only calling me but also welcoming me. The foothills seemed to exude a warm personal friendliness, an almost maternal hospitality. As my paranoia softened, I discovered I was responding with my own hospitable attitude: a feeling of tenderness toward the earth and plants and creatures of the forest. Throughout my times there I have been very undefended; I have a gentle openness toward nature, and nature has been kindly toward me.

The freedom of solitude has taught me other things as well: something about the nature of my desire and the sources and limits of my fears. These are all lessons that I know I would not have been able to learn in the presence of others. If there were another person with me, even someone very close and empathetic, I would be looking out for them and changing myself because of them. In my normal social life, I so often feel I must try to make things different than they are. In solitude I am free to let everything--including myself--be just as it is. In other words, solitude frees me from having to try to accomplish what is already being given.

I have spoken of how solitude frees me from many habits and restraints, but true freedom is not only from something, but also for something. I do so wish to bring the lessons of solitude back into my daily life with others: the courage and exuberance, the simple playfulness and natural prayerfulness, the radical honesty and tender openness, the reverence for and responsiveness to things and people just as they are, the communion that exists when separating thoughts cease, and the realization of God's incomprehensible intimacy with us all. I keep feeling that if we could be that way together, the world would rediscover love.

In truly contemplative moments, I think freedom does happen. It happens in little tastes when our minds pause in their strivings. So contemplative practice helps. But freedom--which is the root meaning of the Hebrew word for salvation--is a gift, not an accomplishment. With God's grace and our willingness, both solitude and community can help us be more receptive to that gift. And we can work and yearn and pray for freedom together. I am convinced, however, that the fullness of freedom is in God's hands. It is, as Paul maintained, "something we must wait for with patience" (Rom.8:25).

Thomas Merton is reported to have said that spiritual community exists to protect the solitude of its members. If so, the protection of solitude is for the nurturance of freedom. It is too easy to think of community only in terms of togetherness and care-taking. It is much more difficult to claim our own needs for aloneness and to reverence those needs in others. For me, that is the call of the mountain forest--and I believe it is God's invitation to the freedom of solitude.

Of Those Who Bring the Light

by Sarah Inglis

Back in the mid-seventies, I was struggling with a particular situation that I could do nothing about. I prayed that the situation would change, but nothing happened. Finally I realized that I would have to change my prayer, so I prayed differently--not that the situation would change but that I would see it the way God wanted me to see it. The result of that prayer is this meditation.

The Light shines--and suddenly we see. Have you ever watched the sun rise at dawn, the light gradually filling the landscape? Or watched it set in the evening? Early in the morning some things appear in shadow, and at sunset the reverse is true. If we look at two pictures of the same landscape, one taken at sunrise and one taken at sunset, things aren't what they appear to be at all. The Light shines, and suddenly--we see. And what we see we just as suddenly label, categorize and judge. But the Light doesn't judge; it illuminates.

Sometimes the bringers of the Light are hated because what was in shadow is now exposed, and we react with fear. As the Light shines on those once-shadowed places, have you noticed how clear everything becomes? Watch and look with me. If we look carefully at what we see, we learn to understand--and what we understand we can choose to accept, what we choose to accept we can grow to love, what we grow to love we need not fear. Life is like a day with a sunrise and a sunset, and every event, situation, relationship is part of the landscape. The Light gives us the chance to choose the way we look at what we see. Without the Light we would have no understanding, and without understanding there would be no choice.

At times, when the Light shines on a particular part of the landscape, we get in touch with feelings about what we see, feelings that are not really part of the landscape but ones we put onto the landscape. Sometimes those feelings make us so uncomfortable we forget the purpose of the Light and concentrate on the feelings instead. And then the Light becomes an enemy, not a friend. When that happens we become anxious and afraid; to cover our fear we get angry at ourselves or at those people, events, situations we feel are to blame.

To become a Child of Light is to be reborn on a new level of awareness, and that new awareness brings us freedom to choose. Yet too often we choose to be unhappy about what we see, and our unhappiness comes only because we make a negative judgment about what the Light illuminates. If we chose to look with compassion on all that we saw, then there would be no need for forgiveness because we wouldn't have condemned.

The Light is our friend, and that friend loves us so much, believes in us so much, that we are given the freedom to choose how we feel about what we see. And that Love makes all the difference!

Sarah, a 1988 graduate of the Spiritual Guidance Program, lives in Merion Station, PA. For several years she co-led an introductory spiritual formation group and will be offering group spiritual direction groups in Pennsylvania this fall.

The Seed of Heaven in Us

by Tilden Edwards

True spiritual life grows from the spiritual seed planted by God in the deepest soil of our souls. That soil is so deep that it connects with the soil of all soul-full beings so that we can speak of a collective soul, a mystical Body, through which the Holy Spirit moves. The great depth of the soil also means that the spiritual seed is hidden from our surface view. We are so easily distracted by surface sensations and feelings that we often do not connect with our souls. We often do not hear or see the Spirit trying to grow that seed into full flower. But we can want to hear and see, and we can want to respond. That wanting itself is the Spirit's flame at work in us.

We can fan this flame in many ways. One way is to look directly at what we want that spiritual seed to grow into without any sense of limitation. This means looking at our vision of fulfillment in heaven, beyond all the confines of this life that have a way of eroding and numbing our vision over the years. When I think of what I would like that spiritual seed in me to become in its fullness, many, many things appear. I think, though, that they all converge in a quality of completely flowing relationship with whatever is of God. I think especially of the kind of relationship the early Greek Fathers of the Church spoke of concerning the Persons of the Holy Trinity with each other. They summed up this relationship with the word perichoerisis, which literally means dancing around. The Persons form a dynamic, pure dance together, so perfectly in step with each other that they are in complete, loving union without losing their distinctiveness.

I believe I have experienced rare, graced moments on the fringe of this divine dance, alone and with others, amidst work and in play, in stillness and in literal dancing. I yearn for these moments to expand to a steady dance that pervades and includes all sentient beings; that is my core vision of heaven. If we are made to grow from the image to the likeness of God, as those early Greek writers interpreted scripture to say, then this hope has been placed in all of us in some form.

When I think of this dancing vision, though, I am aware of how much must be left behind for its realization. And as I remember those rare moments when I have realized something of this vision, I have had to give up (or have had taken away) all that I normally would hold onto. What especially comes to mind is my having left behind a particular sense of self and of distrust. I have been willing to let go of a possessive, separate sense of self with its consequent fear of loss and calculated hope of gain. I also have lost a distrust of the moment's grace, the living presence of God here now, a distrust that keeps me looking beyond or before the current moment for God and my true self and calling, rather than seeing them here now in all their immediate potency.

When these hindrances are left behind, I am left with the beauty of the dance. In that heavenly dance I glide with the grace of the moment, God's hand effortlessly guiding mine, directly and through the hands of others. I am so emptied of the clinging past and the haunted search for a different future that there is little of "me" left. What is left is my empowered freedom to spontaneously choose in every moment to gratefully delight in the mysterious Leader of the dance and in all who have been made by God to share it. At its graced height, I join the dance so thoroughly that there is only the dance, wherein the self is emptied into God and all is filled with God--a dynamic communion of enlightened love.

As I look back at my life from the vantage point of this seed of heaven placed in me, I yearn for it to live more fully in this earthly form. I want this seed to be like the divine mustard seed Jesus said grows into full foliage among us. I know it cannot be complete in this life, but I trust with Jesus that God yearns with us for it to be larger than it is. I want to pray for that, dedicate myself to it, bear its slow growth, and collaborate with others as a nourisher of its roots and as a pruner of dead branches. I don't want to live for less. I want to let die whatever gets in the way of this vision of heaven in myself as God will empower that dying, and I want to foster such dying in others, personally as well as in unjust social structures.

Jesus asked many people who came to him, "What do you want?" Each of us needs to ask, What do I really want finally? What heavenly taste has God given me in this life that leads me to want that forever? For myself and everyone? What am I willing to pray for, dedicate myself to, die to, in order to foster that vision? Who can I talk with about this to help reinforce my true soul and its calling and to bear with me my pain in our misshapen society? And with whom can I foster my active response to the collective soul God gives us, the shared vision? Is anything else worth living for other than the nurturance of this seed of heaven placed in us?

Maybe this nurturance is the spiritual meaning of the Genesis command to "be fruitful and multiply." If we desire and seek to answer this call to nourish and multiply the seeds of heaven in our midst, as we are empowered each time we are given the opportunity, we will find ourselves better prepared to recognize and participate in the fuller dance that is promised in the next life. On the edge of our deaths, then, we can look ahead with hope and look behind with gratitude for the ways we have been empowered to collaborate in the earthly dance that raises the heavenly tree of life in our midst.

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