Volume 18, No. 3-Fall, 1994
Table of Contents
Confessions of a Dyed-in-the-Wool Capitalist
by Julia Collins
The Womb of Mercy
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Shalem's Pilot Whales
by Charlotte Moore
Of Violence and Forgiveness
by Gerald May
2 Corinthians 1: A Lame-Brained Meditation
by Eleanor Stonebraker
On Seeing Through the Bones
by Zoe White
Someone You Can Trust
by Tilden Edwards
Confessions of a Dyed-in-the-Wool Capitalist
by Julia Collins
I came to Shalem as a volunteer nearly a year ago. My motives were selfish. As a newborn's mother suffering from post-partum, I needed to get out of the house. Initially alphabetizing was a challenge, but soon I was up to copying, collating and the computer. I enjoy the rhythm of the work--the repetitive task which adds up to a complete project with results I can see. I like absolutes. But working at Shalem has confirmed my suspicion that there is more to work than work.
My husband and I own a house-painting business. Started from an old VW bus and just us, we now own three vehicles and employ seven painters. The business is very straightforward capitalism -- get the job; complete the job; get the check. Payroll, taxes, insurance, supplies, etc., direct most of the decisions in our business and our personal lives. As long as we make money, we easily lead ourselves to believe we control every aspect of our business.
But the bottom line at Shalem is spaciousness. Not personal space, which is what I thought when I first heard the phrase, but making room for God, inviting God's participation in daily work activity, allowing events to unfold, making Spirit-led decisions.
At first I was intimidated being surrounded by "spiritual professionals." It's a powerful thing to witness a group of people at work choosing God as a priority. Still, deep in my capitalist heart, I have the feeling if we could forget about God, things would be more productive. In those moments, I have no qualms about choosing productivity over God. This is not the kind of spiritual discovery I planned on making about myself.
Shalem recently started a new office policy. At 10 AM, 2 PM and 4 PM, a bell is rung for prayer. At first I tried ten minutes of silence. For the first four or five minutes, I looked at my desk, deciding what to do next. I spent a good 30 seconds, maybe even 60 seconds, being mindful of God's presence. I spent the last few minutes thinking about having a cigarette. Now I light a candle when the bell rings and ask God to help me be mindful during work.
Growing up we had a prayer plaque over our kitchen sink. It started, "O Lord of pots and pans and things." I forget the rest. My grandmother had it memorized. When I tried to convince her of the wisdom of air drying over towel drying, she would recite, "O Lord of pots and pans and things." All work should be done with a mindfulness of God. I'm still mindful of God when I do my dishes; now I try to be mindful stuffing envelopes, applying postage. But I'm not very mindful answering phones. Any task no matter the size can be an opportunity for mindfulness. It's a very relaxing way to work. More importantly to me as a capitalist, living in the present moment is a surprisingly efficient method of work. (You see, I can corrupt even mindfulness.)
Within my overriding sense of God's "allness," I have a grasping desire to consume this allness personally. I delight at each insight, not for its own sake or for the deepening of my relationship with God, but for the increase in my spiritual assets.
But I wonder if God gets bored waiting for us. I try to remember how much there is to life beyond goals and visible products to keep God from getting bored. I pray to step back from myself, step forward towards the wonder of life, and allow God to surround and infuse my life with allness.
Julia, mother of 15-month-old Maria, and a much-valued volunteer at Shalem, continues to copy, collate, work on the computer and still sometimes answers the phone!
The Womb of Mercy
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Recently I was speaking with a man from Poland who said he felt connected with no particular religious tradition. He told me about a dream he had had some years ago. In the dream he saw a hand blessing him and rays of light pulsating into his heart from the person who blessed him. He felt like he was in the light and being drawn to it at the same time. He felt warm and cared for and energized. As he moved through his day, the dream stayed with him. He found himself wondering, "Is this the Jesus person so many people talk about?"
Later he shared the dream with a friend and the friend gave him a book entitled, Divine Mercy. The book describes the vision and revelations of mercy received by a young Polish woman, Sister Faustina. It contains a picture depicting her vision which she associated with Jesus, the Mercy of God: a human figure, hand raised in blessing, two sources of light rays streaming from the chest. The vision drew her into deep compassion that found expression in intercessory prayer, especially for clergy. It also led her to speak of God's mercy to anyone who would listen.
The man immediately noticed the similarity between Sister Faustina's vision and his dream. He continued to ponder the significance of his dream and to read and re-read the diary of her experiences of mercy. He wondered about the meaning of mercy for himself, for others. If mercy came from Christ, could non-Christians like himself be drawn into mercy? And yet he felt he was being drawn; the dream had changed him. He felt more connected to other people and wanted to be part of their healing. But was that a sign of mercy?
After I left him, I thought about people who had had near-death experiences and what they had reported of seeing light. I went back to The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche where I had read a description of such experiences: "They [people in near-death experiences] see a light, at first as a point in the distance, and are magnetically drawn toward it and then enveloped in light and love ... like catching a strong glimpse of the first rays of dawn before the vast sun rises." I thought about these experiences and the common long-range learning for individuals interviewed by the author: the importance of transforming their lives now because life is inherently sacred and must be lived with sacred intensity and purpose. I was left with the questions: Is mercy what they experienced? and then What is the meaning of mercy for my life?
Had I asked my second question ten years ago, I would have had ready reply: "Mercy is that which I beg for when I know I have missed love's mark. Since I often miss the mark, I often beg for mercy. Mercy is related to sin and God's forgiveness." But I seldom beg for mercy anymore, even reflexively. Does that mean I seldom miss the mark? No, I know that's not the case. It's just that mercy doesn't mean the same thing for me now, and I know that for me to beg for it is somehow to betray my trust in the goodness of God. There seems to be no correlation between my sin and God's mercy. Mercy just is, as surely as God is. But what is mercy to me now?
There is a poem, " The Mercy of God," by Jessica Powers that helps me word my understanding of mercy:
Once when I was reading this poem for a group, I read womb in place of woods. The poem then read, "I walked into the womb of God's mercy and here I abide." I was quick to correct my mistake. Now I'm not so sure it was a mistake. Mercy has come to speak to me of nurture and unconditional love--a place where I have all I need and I am safe and loved. I was not surprised to learn then that Rhahmim, the plural form of womb in Hebrew, is also translated as mercy.
For me mercy is the womb of God's ever-present, non-selective (or all-selective) love--a place of hospitality where there is room for every part of me and for all creation. Mercy is our home, the place where we are who we truly are. We may choose to insulate ourselves within that home, cutting ourselves off from others and from mercy, but we are there.
When I imagine a physical location for mercy, it is at the Center of the Universe where all share the same sacred Source. Then the rays of light that people are given to see become external manifestations of interior realities related to living in that Center. Sometimes they are the centripetal force of mercy drawing me back to the Center. At other times they are the searing flames of love, burning away all that is not really me. Still at other times, and probably most consistently, the rays are mercy's ultraviolet energy penetrating my heart, igniting it with love for all Creation.
I may never see the man from Poland again. For now it doesn't seem important. He was there when I needed to hear his dream. His sharing seems for me a ray of light, the drawing of mercy inviting me to live more fully in the womb of love. Perhaps in that womb of love I will become what I am given for sustenance, God's unconditional love. Perhaps I will become, or perhaps am, without knowing it, a ray of mercy for others.
Shalem's Pilot Whales
by Charlotte Moore
The pilot group of Shalem's Personal Spiritual Deepening Program gathered in the spring of 1993 to explore the awesome freedom bestowed by its "emphasis on direct, loving awareness and subtle integration of imageless and imaged dimensions of God and self." We likened our journeys to those of pilot whales who swim freely with ability to add another dimension to their lives by standing vertically in the water with head and upper portion of their flippers visible to command a view of the horizon. We courteously switched our awesome title to that of Pilot Whales, a relief from the alphabetic PSDP!
Pilot whales exhibit strong social bonds. The adults are very devoted to their young and will not desert sick or injured companions. They stick together on the move but spread out for feeding. As their name implies, they are so accomplished at tracking and catching squid, herring, mackerel and capelin, they serve as pilots for dolphins, birds and even fishermen.
This freedom to explore the depths of the sea and to survey the horizon without losing caring, loving communication, seems to us to "embrace the interaction of different aspects of the spiritual life: thoughts, feelings, intuition, will, body, community and action in our world."
Each of us has been able to reach out to birds and fishes--fellow travelers who seek a pilot but shy away from a journey labeled, Personal Spiritual Deepening. The Pilot Whale concept lends itself well to the integration of different aspects of the spiritual life. It's a wondrous experience to be able to explore without the rigidity of imposed structure.
For example, during the eighteen months I have swum with my mentor, my spiritual director and close friends through deep waters, among the shoals, and risen atop the shining water to be caught up in the beauty of the setting sun. From that beauty came the suggestion of a picture journal. As we swam, we experienced a growing awareness of the symbolism of the water as the enfolding Love of God--and that cleansing, healing tears, too, are a part of that sea.
The idea of being a pilot whale sparks the imagination of those engaged in "formal" spiritual direction and those who reach out to others along the way. It can help lessen the pressure of shoulds, oughts and establishmentarianism. It enabled my daughter in Cheyenne to reach out to the minister whose wife had died of cancer.
We decided to gather these reflections to share with those who are currently engaged in the Personal Spiritual Deepening Program (and those who are interested in joining it) and above all to thank Rose Mary Dougherty who piloted us through the months of our creative, awesome journey.
Charlotte, an Episcopal laywoman, is a graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program and the pilot Personal Spiritual Deepening Program.
Of Violence and Forgiveness
by Gerald May
For years I have pondered over violence: the violence in people that seems so unnecessary and the violence in nature that seems so random. This summer I had the opportunity to be with people in Bosnia, listening to their stories, drinking coffee and plum brandy, sharing tears and smiles. Profound grief was everywhere, in everyone, as was deep fear and a grinding sense that the violence was far from over. I have the feeling that I comprehend less about violence now than I ever have, and yet, somehow, I sense a simple clarity about it.
Maybe it's simplistic rather than simple, but it seems to me that human beings engage in two kinds of violence. The first, which we share with other animals, is very immediate and direct. It's the violence of predator attacking prey, of bulls fighting each other in mating season. It's what makes a dog snarl when you try to take its bone away, and what causes a mother bear to defend her cubs. It's also the impulse you feel to lash out when someone does you wrong. This "natural" violence is immediately responsive to a real situation in the present moment.
The other kind of violence is distinctly human. Instead of responding directly to what's going on, we think about the situation, make concepts of it, and try to cope with it mentally. We work it over in our minds, maybe even obsess about it. If and when we do respond violently, we are reacting to our mental processes, our ideas and feelings about the situation rather than the situation itself. I think such "mentally processed" violence leads to much greater and prolonged destruction.
When someone tries to cut in front of you in heavy traffic, your immediate response might be to scowl and honk your horn, perhaps even shake your fist and mutter something nasty. Depending on how aggressive you are, you either step on the gas to head the person off or slam on your brakes and let them in. That's where natural violence ends. You and the other driver have been like two birds jockeying for the same perch. There was a flutter of feathers, maybe a little screeching, then someone won and someone lost. Your feathers may stay ruffled for a while, but it's over.
But we humans can have a hard time letting it stop there. We feel we have to make something of it. Maybe we have some idea of getting even, a taste for revenge. We make judgments about the other driver, what a moron or maniac they are. Maybe we even characterize them on the basis of sex, color, size, nationality. (As I write, I suddenly realize how prejudiced I am against drivers with diplomatic license plates here in Washington.)
The psychic effect is that our fear and anger don't disappear when the situation is over. They live on in our minds. And they grow. The initial feelings cause thoughts, which breed more feelings, which in turn spawn further thoughts. In the process, our consciousness goes away from the present moment, away from the real situation and the actual person. We are left in the world of our own mental creations and representations where we may reflect, obsess, strategize, manage, cope and even plot but are out of touch with the real. We become both preoccupied and prejudiced--a decidedly dangerous combination.
With all the violence in our world, this little example may seem irrelevant. But people actually do shoot each other over such minor conflicts. And I think it's the same dynamic--the way we make something of other people and situations--that has bred the greatest extremes of violence throughout history: family feuds, tribal genocides, crusades against "infidels," the Ku Klux Klan, the Third Reich's solution for "the Jewish problem," and what we now call ethnic cleansing. They are all reactions not to real people and real situations, but to complexes of feelings and thoughts about people and situations.
Our capacity to form intricate thoughts and feelings can and should help us appreciate other people and the world around us. But too often we use our thoughts and feelings as substitutes for other people and the world. We react more to our mental constructs than to real people and situations. The more we do this, the more likely we are to hold grudges, harbor resentments, believe rumors, and trust our own fantasies. We grow far away from real contact with our neighbors. We've made something of them, something that breeds fear and rage in us and beckons us toward destruction.
It is here that I think the contemplative option holds real practical promise. As I have defined it many times, contemplation is simply perceiving and responding to what is, just as it is, here and now. In other words, contemplation makes nothing of anything. In the immediate attentiveness that comes when you take a breath, open your eyes and really see and feel what is right here right now, there is immense freedom from paranoia, prejudice and self-delusion. Each moment is fresh, each encounter open, each touch profoundly real. When a contemplative moment happens in the midst of a conflict, it's like everything has suddenly been washed over by a flood of forgiveness.
Many people say that any lasting peace in Bosnia must be built not on strategies and policies but on forgiveness. I agree, and I think it applies to any conflict, large or small, anywhere. But how does forgiveness come? I used to believe it involved releasing bad feelings and generating positive ones, but now I think that would be just more mental gymnastics. Forgiveness now seems connected to just being there, being real with the real, pausing from all the strategies, judgments and pre-judgments. Now it even seems that forgiveness may mean letting go of all intent--for me, a huge relinquishment. Letting go of stereotypes and prejudices is one thing, but to relinquish my intentions to be loving, understanding, even forgiving?
But that's not all. There, where there's nothing left but what really is, you actually feel the other person's agony, much of which you may yourself have caused. Perhaps you also sense their fear of you, their hatred of what you stand for in their minds. And you feel disgust about what you have made of them. But there you are, making nothing of it, having nothing to do about it, just being, undefended, exquisitely vulnerable. And then maybe you catch a glimpse of the simple power and confidence of pure presence. In such a moment, forgiveness just is. It's more than given; it is a given.
Some Buddhists say that if you strip away all the mental clutter you discover that the world is made of compassion. For me, forgiveness is like that. In a contemplative moment, forgiveness seems to be the delicate essence of God's whole creation. It doesn't come from developing a new and better image of the other person. It doesn't come from empathizing. It doesn't even come from understanding. It is not something we can accomplish. Nor is it a special gift of grace given now and then. Forgiveness is the presence of grace, always present, shining through when we stop making something.
2 Corinthians 1: A Lame-Brained Meditation
by Eleanor Stonebraker
As I write this, in the late weeks of summer, Gary Trudeau is needling the White House in his Doonesbury comic strip by depicting Bill Clinton as a political waffle. We who are adept at the spiritual waffle will identify with the President and the critic.
When I drove to Bon Secours Spiritual Center in the spring of 1992, I was eager for the Spiritual Life of Spiritual Leaders Retreat. The week marked a transition between my being an associate in the Spiritual Guidance Program and my being a staff member in it. In the car with me, however, along with eagerness, rode fear; my four-hour drive to suburban Baltimore was marked by a decided waffle.
Introducing ourselves that first evening, I told the other retreatants that I was beginning a new (unnamed) enterprise and was excited about it but also scared. Since there had been a great pregnancy to my time of discernment and a sure sense of God's leading, I was not scared about being up to the enterprise itself: I was scared that the enterprise would change me. My resounding Yes was trailed by my realistic Oh No.
I confessed to several staff members that I was nervous joining them--not about the work but about its impact on me. I was feeling "weird," I said. It was weird that an hour before driving two hundred miles to Bon Secours, I had compulsively rearranged my theological library.
Having just left seminary with a major in theology and a ponderous thesis, my library and my theological system were in mint condition. The challenge now was to live from my heart, the reluctance now to live from my head. What if these, crystallized in and exacerbated by working at Shalem, had a rearranging effect on more than my bookshelf? I wanted the work, but what might God work in me through it?
I said to Jerry May, "It's just the fear that comes when you get what you thought you wanted." "Are you afraid that it won't be what you thought?" he asked. "No, that it will be! I'm afraid that it will be more rearranging of my tucked-in, patted-down theological system--unlearning instead of learning, unknowing instead of knowing, more of this very insecurity!"
Maya Angelou hadn't published it yet, but it felt like the story of her grandmother "stepping out on the Word of God." I wasn't stepping out on the words of my teachers, or the church mothers and fathers, or my own theological system. I was stepping out on an invitation to step and a desire to step, and nothing more.
"All the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus," writes Saint Paul. Yes. It was the Word of God I trusted to come up under my foot. While my head was saying No and Yes, at the heart level or the gut level, there was something else: God's invitation and my desire were ringing simultaneously. That deep-down sympathetic vibration, God's Yes bringing forth my own, was so steady and firm that it did support my step. Beneath my waffle was just one Word, the synchronous sound of Yes.
That retreat, with all the yeses that led to it and all the yeses that have followed from it, was life-changing. I was right to be scared! How many dyings and risings there have been in the past two years, and a lot of them have hurt! Yet the pain is so entirely surrounded by Love that I notice my heart saying over and over again, "Thank you" and my brain saying with less and less conviction, "Stupid!"
When I drove the two hundred miles back home, I left fear behind about joining the staff. But I still do the spiritual waffle! In my current (Sha)lem-brained condition, I am considering academia again. The joke, evidently, is on me. If Bill Clinton and I are cartoon characters, I, for one, am not disheartened. Each time I orchestrate another spiritual waffle, I rejoice to find God incapable of the same. I say Yes and No at the same time, but God does not. With God it is always and only Yes.
Eleanor, a lay theologian who preaches and teaches in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is a member of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program staff.
On Seeing Through the Bones
by Zoe White
I am an avid radio listener and especially enjoy listening to people talk about their lives and work. I was recently listening to a retired window-cleaner being interviewed. "Yes," he said, "I spent 30 years polishing-up people's outlook." As I listened, I knew that he had been doing a lot more during his work life than simply cleaning off people's windows. He also knew something about the secret essence of window-cleaning. His work had become sacramental. Somehow, through the many thousands of routine acts of washing and polishing, a transmutation had occurred and true enlightenment had come into the world.
Another program I remember was about a disused coal mine which is now a mining museum. An ex-miner was taking a group of school children for their first trip down a mine, and one of them asked if it was dangerous. "Well," said the miner, "you have to learn to listen for the talking beams." The children laughed nervously, thinking they were being teased. "You see these wooden beams holding up the ceiling?" continued the miner. "When they start creaking, you know there's too much weight, and the pressure's building up ... You also have to make friends with the rats."
"Ugh!" chorused the children in disgust. "Oh, yes," he answered. "You have to work alongside the rats. And if one day you don't hear them squeaking, that means they've left and you'd better get out fast because something's going to happen. The rats know things we can't know, you see." The children fell silent. Then the miner asked if they would like to see how dark it was in a mine without lights. He switched off the lights, and the children gasped at the thick blackness. "Now," said the miner, "when you're lost in a mine, in the dark like this, you can't light a match to help you see ... You have to smell where the fresh air is coming from and find your way out with your nose."
Again I felt that I was hearing some true wisdom being revealed through this man's experience. Just as the window-cleaner's work had let spiritual as well as physical light into the world, so, in the same sacramental way, this miner's years of hard physical labor, penetrating the blackness of the mine, gave him the capacity to mediate something of the mystery of spiritual darkness. Through a fairy tale language of "talking beams" and "friendly rats," he was able to lead the children safely into a vital dimension of their spiritual lives and help them feel an appropriate sense of awe and respect.
These two men were spirit-bearers, I think. Their years of work had been like the practice of an art, and through this practice, albeit mostly unconsciously, they had become co-creators; transformers; channels through which the great mystery of world conversion is taking place. So it is for all of us, I believe--in all of our jobs and professions. The process of creation and transformation happens in and through the practice of all work, regardless of any value we (or our society) may attach to it, regardless of any "good" we may imagine we are contributing to society, regardless of how we may feel about what we do. The work itself, and the faithful practice of it, is sacred, potentially sacramental, and therefore, in and of itself sufficient to mediate God's creative and redemptive purposes.
Yet most of the time we don't see our work in this light. We have become so accustomed to attaching certain values to certain kinds of jobs and creating hierarchies of usefulness and status according to the functions we perform (constructing our identities accordingly), that we are blinded to the true God-given nature of work. Thus there is a need for the "eyes" of our heart to be purified from the contamination of such idolatry. We have to practice looking at our work in a different light and from perspectives other than those given us by the society in which we live. We have to re-learn how to "see" what work is.
A piece of Shaker furniture is not only beautifully crafted; it is also a statement of belief which leads the eye to worship. It participates in this spiritual function because the people who made it have traditionally done everything "in the eye of eternity." Work is never "just work" to the Shakers; it is part of the fabric of their belief, a consecration. Mother Ann instructed the Shakers to "Put your hands to work and your hearts to God ... Do all your work as though you had a thousands years to live and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow."
I find the same bare-boned, single-minded intensity and passion in many of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings. She had the same eye for the essential, universal principle, and her work also sprang from the context of her calling. Her desire was not simply to create a work of art. Her desire was for God, for the "wideness and wonder of the world ... the distance [that has] always been calling me." Many of her paintings reflect this calling, this vision of the elegant simplicity of eternity.
What to my unpracticed, impatient eye might seem to be merely the empty pelvic bone of a dead animal, was to her a beautiful symbol of the living desert. She loved the bones because she knew how to see them; and because she knew how to see them, they revealed their true nature to her, drawing her vision out far beyond the bones themselves. What she was most interested in was "the holes in the bones--what I saw through them--particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky ... They were most wonderful against the Blue--that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all [our] destruction is finished."
So what do these artists teach me about seeing my work in a new light? How does their example help purify the eyes of my heart, help liberate me from the diminished and diminishing ways of regarding work which I've inherited from the culture around me?
I believe I am called to look at my work in the same way as O'Keeffe looked at the wonderful bleached bones of the desert. I am called to take all the bare bones of my work--the habitually performed, roughly related succession of routine acts and encounters--gather them together and hold them up in the sun. This is so that I can better appreciate the texture and grace of each individual bone, each individual act which comprises my working day.
I am called to do this so that I can see more clearly the luminosity of Spirit which shines through the bones, through the complex interlocking structure which is the skeleton of my working life. But most importantly, I am called to do this because through the gesture of lifting up the bones of my work in the sun, I place them in their true relationship with my primary commitment and my deepest desire, which is God, the eternally beautiful Blue.
Zoe, a Quaker woman from England, is a graduate of Shalem's Group Leaders Program. The Georgia O'Keeffe quotes are from Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern, Yale University Press, 1993.
Someone You Can Trust
by Tilden Edwards
Recently while leading a group of people into prayer with a classical holy icon of the Transfigured Christ, I found myself saying, "Here is someone you can trust fully--here is someone who won't betray or disappoint you."
As I said that, I realized how perhaps all of us at heart yearn for someone with whom there is absolutely no need for defenses--someone whom we can trust to understand our soul and draw out its truth. Spiritual traditions show us the paradox that we often need another person to reveal that deep soul within us where the divine and human meet, someone with whom we can have a soul-to-soul rather than just an ego-to-ego relationship.
When I pray with the icon, my soul often is freed to show itself more fully. I am not relating to the limited ego of an historical person; I am relating to the living presence of God which I trust was embodied in that person. When I suspend any doubts and fully trust that this is true, my normal defenses drop away and I become vulnerably open to the gaze of liberating wisdom and love personified. In grace's own time I mysteriously participate in what I see and am shown the radiance my true nature shares, through and behind all my willfulness and confusion. "When the Spirit of truth comes, (she) will guide you into all the truth (John 16:13)." I sense that Spirit alive in me before the icon, removing the scales from my eyes and heart and freeing me a little more to be who I really am in God's eyes.
In some Asian religious traditions you can also find pictorial icons of persons who have been experienced as realized spiritual beings, i.e., persons fully grounded in God through whom divine light pours for others with special steadiness. Once such a person is absent in bodily form, those whom that realized being has designated to carry on the spiritual lineage may have a pictorial image of the spiritual master prominently displayed near them when they are leading groups. People will devote themselves to the realized spiritual nature of the succeeding master as a way of helping reveal and stabilize their own true nature. In Western tradition we might call this a living apostolic or Hasidic succession. Just as in Asian traditions, though, we have a danger of idolizing spiritual leaders to the point that the whims and limitations of their continuing ego life become confused with the spiritually realized dimensions of their nature.
In the West we often have the opposite problem, as well; many of us feel like spiritual orphans. Our religious leaders often have not received a deep and tested spiritual grounding. We also do not have a careful oral tradition for mediating the depth of spiritual truth beyond its moral, liturgical, and theological dimensions. Thus, millions of people yearn for deeper spiritual parenting. Some are too easily deluded by charlatans, some are too suspicious to open themselves fully to anyone, a few are graced to be with someone who truly becomes a mirror of their own souls for awhile, even fewer find such a person for the deepest stages of their journey. We are sometimes left as spiritually lonely pioneers moving with what we sense and hope is the Spirit at work in us. If we're a little more fortunate, we may have a trusted fellow pilgrim (or group of spiritual companions) who encouragingly probes the divine mystery with us, the kind of companionship Shalem cultivates in its extension programs.
I think that God has mercy on our situation and raises up among us some true saints to help us along the way. These are not perfect people, but they have received an unusual abundance of grace that radiates the larger divine wisdom and love in such a way that our own souls are illumined. Most of them probably remain fairly anonymous in our secular and self-reliant cultural climate, so we need to keep our eyes open in unexpected places, and we need to have the humility to listen deeply to them when they appear, so that we can recognize our own soul's deep callings in their mirror.
One thing great saints repeatedly teach is that God's grace pervades life; everyone and everything can be our soul's teacher and revealer. It's wonderful when we are gifted to be with a saint long enough to help us fully incorporate such difficult sensitivity, but given the way real saints are not easily recognized, respected, or sustained in a spiritual teaching community in Western culture today, we may well be frustrated in finding a relationship with one. Where they might be recognized more publicly, they are often swamped with followers, leaving little opportunity for a direct or sustained personal relationship.
This brings us back to where we began: before the icon. We may not have a literal "living saint" to turn to, but we can have an image of God's Anointed. Before that image we can let the Living Spirit rise up in us and offer what we need, as only the Spirit understands. Indeed, Jesus as earthly living master said that he must go away for the Spirit to empower us, so we do not have to look at his physical absence only as loss.
Of course, the Spirit's guiding presence can be realized through many forms other than icons. The icon is not a called-for way for everyone nor was it ever meant to be the sole way for anyone. But the icon, as a personification of divine love-light shining into human form for us, can be a very intimate and powerful means for God to draw us into deeper realization of our true nature and calling. It can be an available teacher and inspirer for us whenever we are in need. There is no ego danger present but our own, and our projections and obscuring emotional states can slowly dissolve before the divine energy flowing through the icon's sustained and transforming gaze. Indeed, here is Someone we can trust.