Volume 19, No. 2-Summer, 1995
Table of Contents
Reflections on Sacred Space
by Cally Irish
"She Who Sees is Responsible"
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Healing the Inner Platypus
by Julia Collins
CyberPresence
by Gerald May
Trust in God's Leadings
by Liz Parish
Images of a Pilgrimage to Ireland
by Elizabeth Ward
Valuing the Living Moment
by Tilden Edwards
Reflections on Sacred Space
by Cally Irish
Surely the Lord is in this place--and I did not know it! This
is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
(Gen. 28: 16b-17)
This is a place where 'prayer has been valid.'
(T.S. Eliot, of Little Gidding)
My chair (the scriptures, Shalem, my journal) are the place
I go to meet God.
(Journaling Workshop)
I keep returning here because it is such a holy place.
(Ghost Ranch, New Mexico)
We want the design and furnishing of this place to support a
prayerful intent.
(Cathedral Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage)
Our space will become holy as we pray here.
(Shalem's new home)
Each of these comments reflects some dimension of the many mysterious
qualities that seem to make a place holy or sacred. There is our direct
experience of God, the prayerful witness of others before us, the desire
of our hearts, our intent to support a prayerful atmosphere, to say nothing
of God's surprise appearances in the most unlikely of places!
For various reasons, I have spent much of this past year thinking about sacred space and noticing what it is that people say about it spontaneously, when they are not trying to define it. (The above comments are examples of that.) This in turn has led me to wonder why we do not always sense the holiness of place. Why do we wonder and wander and seek special places for our praying? Why do pilgrims go hither and yon to visit holy sites? Why did I spend so many years wandering into empty churches, completely happy there, grateful for their loveliness and openness, yet ready to flee in an instant if a service started or anyone spoke to me?
Two things about sacred space seem more or less clear to me now. One is that the "there" of holy or sacred space is really a kind of spaciousness in our own souls, a moment when we seem to be freshly open to the realities and possibilities of life with God. Special places and structures may serve to remind us of that, and to encourage our willingness for that, but they are not "it."
Some of the most wonderful comments I heard about sacred space were offered during the last Shalem program staff meeting in our old, church-basement home, where the pipes hissed and dogs barked, and the heat often failed. Folks noted that, notwithstanding all that, this was the place where our desires and our hopes were gathered; it was to us a sanctuary, a home, a laboratory of Spirit, a tap root, womb, seed bed, place to come to. It was to us a place of memory and growth and constancy--very, very beautiful in its way.
Our new home is lovelier to look at, but it may take time to become to us, and perhaps to others, a holy and sacred space, a place that reminds us of our own heart spaciousness.
A second clarity that comes to me is that sacred and holy places help to nourish us for the journey out from them. Our forbears in faith were wandering Arameans, missionaries, pilgrims and pioneers. They did not simply stay in special places but went out from there, forming new sanctuaries elsewhere, visiting the shrines that bore the witness of others, or accomplishing a ministry of service in places that were not, to all appearances, "holy"--hospitals, schools, civic spaces, impoverished neighborhoods, prisons.
The fact is that there are places that help us claim and honor the holy possibilities of our own hearts and the sacred intent of the communities gathered there. Such spaces become sacred in our eyes through their invitation to holiness. But sooner or later a call comes to us from "out there"--perhaps from a seemingly forsaken place in the world that needs our sacred witness, companionship, care. And that is the greatest mystery and challenge of sacred space--the one we bear within, to others.
"She Who Sees is Responsible"
by Rose Mary Dougherty
I can't remember when I first heard these words. I think I heard them in my early days of religious life. As I recall, they had something to do with keeping places in order. For instance, if you noticed dirty dishes in the sink or something spilled on the floor, it was your job to "tidy up."
The words seemed to put in perspective how I had been living my life for some time. Anytime I noticed the pain, the ill-temper, the problem of anyone else, I thought I was responsible for taking care of it. I had to "tidy up" the situation.
No one had really told me that in words before. I was probably just projecting expectations. But now people were telling me plainly: "She who sees is responsible." At the same time, however, the very same people were telling me about custody of the eyes. They were telling me to look at only as much as I needed to see to get where I was going so I could avoid unnecessary distractions. This, they told me, would help me keep my focus on God.
Many beginners in religious life, with me, had difficulty with this practice, but I took to it. Subconsciously I put together this corollary: "If I am responsible for what I see, then I am not responsible for what I don't see." So I chose not to see much of anything. I was tired of trying to figure out how to take care of so many situations. Custody of the eyes gave me a "holy" excuse to stop being so responsible.
Then I began to hear about discernment. For me, at least initially, it translated into, "be responsible" all over again. In the language of discernment I heard the imperative to open my eyes to all of life. God was there in every situation with something in mind for me to do. If I listened hard enough and long enough, God would tell me what the doing was.
As I look back now, I think the intent of discernment as it was introduced probably had something to do with hearing God's invitations in all of life, with joining God in caring for the world. But I was almost back to where I was before, being responsible for everything. Now, however, I had some sense that God was involved in that responsibility. Still, while I baptized my figuring out with some earnest prayer, I went on as though it was all mine to do. Not only did I have to figure out my life, I had to figure out everyone else's also. Often I brought to situations and encounters my own myopic view of what needed to be done and imposed that on others.
I'm not sure when this "fix it" attitude began to change. Maybe it began to change as I accumulated sufficient evidence to know that I wasn't doing a very good job of figuring things out, even with the best of intentions. But I suspect it began to change as every once in awhile I found myself meeting people and situations differently. I noticed that, when I wasn't looking for clues but could just allow people and situations to be as they were, I saw them with new eyes. It was as though just a simple openness in me evoked some truth from another which I had not known before. In turn, that truth evoked new truth in me. As the two truths merged, new possibilities were created. I was no less responsible, but response was given me as I participated in the truth of another person or situation. I didn't have to figure anything out; it seems as though the guidance was given in the moment.
The experience of simple openness still does not come easily for me. but when it is given, I notice I am different and it raises questions in me. For instance, I have noticed, especially in spiritual direction and other situations where I have a designated "giving role," that when I am drawn out of that role, when I'm just able to be present, one human being with another, for whatever might be given, I feel so palpably blessed by God through the other. No one of us needs to have any answers. Together we create new possibilities.
This makes me wonder about some of our "helping professions." What would happen if we dropped the helping roles and came from a place of mutuality? What would happen to the responsibility and accountability of the professional? Do the parameters and guidelines of helping professions free people for the dynamic interchange of truth and appreciation of the other's beauty or do they inhibit receptivity to truth and goodness?
I have also had some wonderings about discernment. and responsibility. I begin to understand my part in discernment differently than I had before. Discernment for my part perhaps has only to do with cultivating a disposition of openness, or at least wanting that disposition and praying for it. Responsibility shifts from a heavy, "I've got to respond, to do, to fix," to an easy, "I can respond. I have 'response ability', I share in God's creative response for the world."
Discernment and responsibility come together for me in the words of Thomas Kelly in which he reminds us that when we "center down" and live in that Holy Abyss that is dearer than life, our life projects, our sense of responsibility for the world are again and again revised. We know what to do and what to leave undone. Many of us enter that Abyss from time to time. We go to retreats. We have a daily prayer time. We might try, for a short duration, to be really prayerful when we are with a person or engaged in a project. But then it seems there is too much to be done for us to stay there. So we leave the Abyss to be responsible, to get on with life. Thomas Kelly's invitation is to live in that Holy Abyss.
To live in that Holy Abyss is to see the world with God's eyes and to live in God's prayer for the world. There in that contemplative space we come to know God's caring love. We don't have to create that caring love, or figure out its implications for our caring. As our vision clarifies, the very awareness of what we see contains authentic response. We are given "response ability" for what we see in that moment.
Healing the Inner Platypus
by Julia Collins
The platypus is often used as an example of God's sense of humor. Personally, I just look in the mirror--not only is God's sense of humor confirmed but also God's deep sense of satire and irony. Who I say I am and how I live rarely meet.
As an adult, more often than not, I approach life as a problem to be solved, details to be sorted out, time to be managed. I miss the sense of reverence I had as a child. Watching a maple seed helicopter felt the same as kneeling in church. I lived with God open-armed and fresh-faced. Now I come to God with at least one hand clenched around my cares.
I'm not sure when the spiritual stopped feeling natural. In adolescence, as a female and as a Roman Catholic, the spiritual started feeling more and more of a barrier rather than the most important thing in life. There was a shift from all of life is a dance to I am a dancer; the shift from being caught up in the wonder of life to following steps to create wonder in life.
My daughter does a happy dance when the mood strikes. Sitting in her highchair, she breaks into dance when she likes the taste of her food. Life is good. When good things happen in my life now, I notice how often I treat them as a reward; how often I convince myself I brought them about. I have little time for reflecting on God's grace, life's benevolence. Disappointments in life easily cloud over naturally occurring wonders. To know that I am alive by the grace of God and at the same time to pretend as if I alone am responsible for my existence is a contradiction I can't resolve.
Coming from a generation of self-healers and self-actualizers, it is hard not to lose sight of the fact that we are here for God not ourselves alone. When I think of the energy and prayer I've put into myself, I am ashamed. To believe that perfecting myself in an imperfect world is the purpose of my life is more than self-indulgent.
Praying for others has always left me feeling that I was in a position to hand out dispensations. I pray now, alone, but with others. When I am angry with someone I say a rosary with them in mind praying with me. I could visualize healing with them to benefit me, but I've found removing separateness is the healing. Any benefit to me comes from living with God, not jockeying for the healthiest position.
The rosary appeals to me because I'm a mother now and because it allows female attributes to be holy. My grandparents and mother said the rosary daily alone and silently. It was as much a part of their life as the morning paper and meals. I wouldn't sit near my mother when we rode the bus because she used her rosary beads in public. Now I find myself praying the rosary in public, too, but on my fingers. I can't yet imagine living my faith unashamedly and unapologetically.
I live faith as something that has a time and place. Prayer is something I set aside time to do, something I pride myself on remembering to do. Spiritual language and spiritual practices can give me the impression that I am with God, but in terms of living my life as a gift from God, none of these spiritual accoutrements defend me from secularity. I miss living my faith. I miss prayer being in every thought, word and deed as I find my way through life. I remember my grandmother's warning, "Life's not a game. It's a blessing."
Children come into the world easily sacred. This seems to be undone by life. The most we can hope for by adulthood, it seems, is to retain a speck of the sacred. Childhood is the easiest time to live in the Kingdom of God if we are surrounded by people who recognize the Kingdom of God.
I struggle daily, trying to catch sight of the Kingdom of God somewhere in this adult life I've created for myself. My mistake I find is looking outside for signposts in order to navigate my way towards the Kingdom. I forget to put God first. My journey really is a moot point. My companionship with God is not.
CyberPresence
by Gerald May
In 1989, Emma Ditman wrote an article for Shalem News describing her contemplative experience working with Shalem's computers. She told of the database that kept track of our mailing list, programmed to recite prayers for everyone each time it was run. That program has been rewritten many times since, but the prayers are still going round and round, silently blessing our ever-expanding community. Now, six years later, Shalem has taken another step in technological openness, one that has made the community seem endless. We now have a presence in cyberspace.
Even if I understood the technology, I wouldn't be able to explain cyberspace. It is simply too vast to comprehend. But I can say that "cyber" refers to computers and "space" is, you know, space. Think for a moment about the place where your telephone plugs into the wall: how that single point of contact is connected with billions of other points of contact around the world in a vast network of telephone wires, transmitters, and satellite links. If you try to picture that network of interconnectedness in your mind, with billions of threads of communication making contact in trillions of ways, you might have a beginning image of the physical landscape of cyberspace. I might compare it to the structure of the human brain, but it is so much bigger. And, like the expanding universe, its boundaries are continually unfolding and increasingly vague.
Everyone talks about the internet these days, but it is only one aspect of cyberspace (albeit the largest and most unruly). Begun in the late 60's as a fail-safe for Defense Department communications, the internet has now expanded to include countless universities, world governments, libraries, wire services, businesses, and medical, religious and other kinds of organizations. Between 25 and 30 million people have access to the internet now, with upwards of 80,000 new people connecting each month. Perhaps another 10 million use other cyberspace avenues such as commercial services or electronic bulletin boards. And, one way or another, it's all connected. Using this immense web of communication, people are able to access vast resources of information as well as carry on discussions with individuals and groups around the world--all at lightspeed. I smile inside as I recall the very first words Samuel Morse sent on his newly invented telegraph in 1844: "What hath God wrought?"
I have been thinking for several years about the power of contemplative presence in this unexplored expanse of people-connections. What new meanings might it bring to spiritual community, guidance, and support? How might Shalem be invited to participate? Last winter I began exploring in earnest. At first I expected to have difficulty remaining prayerful and contemplative in such high-tech territory, but the sheer immensity and ever-freshness of the landscape made it easy. Like mountain forests or ocean depths, cyberspace carries a feeling of unknown wilderness, full of mystery and endless possibility. With a little grace, I find I am just given an open, prayerful attitude in such an atmosphere.
At least for now, the internet-as-a-whole is a bit too wonderfully wild even for my adventurous tastes, like the Wild West might have felt, only much, much larger. So I decided to pitch my tent for a while on a commercial online service that provides a little organization and civilization, a gathering of three million people rather than 30 million. This has become a base camp where my heart can become acclimated to the cyberspace environment and from which I can make forays into the outlands as I wish.
In this environment I have found people gathering for dialogue and support concerning exactly the issues I was seeking: contemplative spirituality, mysticism, spiritual formation, the heart-journey with God. I have discovered that people in this setting often share more intimately and are more vulnerable with one another than in most face-to-face encounters. Some of us have chosen to call it "faceless intimacy." It reminds me very much of the intimacy of silence in old-time Shalem groups where people didn't know one anothers' names or occupations yet were so deeply aware of shared intent and common support.
I also have found spiritual guidance happening in rapid, surprising, and profound ways in cyberspace, both in group settings and one-to-one. There's something about this new means of communicating that seems to give the Spirit extra freedom to fly, though perhaps, as in any wilderness, people are more open to Her surprises. Whatever it is, She certainly seems to enjoy it. More often than I can count, I have been moved to tears by people's heart-sharings scrolling across my screen and deeply gratified that something I've contributed has touched them as well. People who have known me in other settings tell me I'm different online: more free, somehow more myself.
After a couple months of participation in dialogues and conferences, I was asked to become a section leader. It would take more of my time, but I didn't need to struggle with discernment; a clear, unquestioning Yes flowed through my fingertips onto the keyboard. So now I lead a section on recovery spirituality and co-lead another on spiritual formation. I've made many new friends there and, pleasantly, run into quite a few old ones. I've been nourished and supported in ways too numerous to count, too mysterious to describe. And Shalem has a presence in cyberspace.
In this vast and surprising land I have begun to name and claim what it means--for me, at least--to be a contemplative presence in all my interactions with other people and the world. It means to live in conscious love with the here-and-now Divine, to trust God's love no matter what, to know that God flows through us all continually, to believe that God so intimately pervades us and all creation that we can never, ever be really abandoned. It is to realize that the actual presence of Christ speaks to me through your mouth, sees you with my eyes; that there is no place, no creature, and no thing on earth or in the heavens that is not filled with Divine Presence. And it is to remember and be reminded that every moment of life is exquisitely precious, just as it is.
I know so little in cyberspace, which reminds me of how little I truly know anywhere. There is beautiful grace in this unknowing, a magnificent freedom birthed from mystery, the flowing compassion and charity that springs from simple attentiveness and availability. In this contemplative freedom I have no "how to's," no idea of what is helpful or even what to do next. What comes instead is a simple interior gift: a trusting, open, courageous presence of willingness.
In the wilds of cyberspace, as in the wilds of forests and mountains, I feel the free energy of contemplative presence, openly and unabashedly enjoying the endless flow of life divine, willing to laugh and cry, to be still and to dance, to be moved in any way and to whatever end the Spirit of God desires. That's how I want to be--and hope Shalem will be--in cyberspace and physical space, in inner space or outer space, wherever we find ourselves.
Trust in God's Leadings
by Liz Parish
This article concerns fear of and yearning for God, as felt by a directee I saw for about a year. I was glad when this woman approached me, wanting to talk about some spiritual issues that were troubling her. I had always considered her a peer, because we are close in age and we both have backgrounds in psychology.
Once I began meeting with her, it seemed to me that psychology was the largest stumbling block in her own spiritual development and that it also had the potential of being a stumbling block in our work together, because of the temptation to lapse into psychological language familiar to both of us. Fortunately we were aware of this temptation and were attentive to avoiding it.
Though this woman had a great desire for God, she also had a strong resistance to God and an overwhelming fear of death that pervaded every day of her life, entered every direction session. Her resistance to God was evident in two primary ways. One was in anger at God for certain adversities and for not giving her, she felt, the spiritual resources she needed to deal with them and with death. Second was that in her family she had been taught that a belief in God was for the intellectually and emotionally weak. This attitude was reinforced by her psychological training: any feeling of union with God, she believed, was regressive and pathological. The same was true of any feeling of love for and union with another.
She desperately wanted union with God and connection with others but was terrified of it. When she would have experiences in which she felt God's presence--experiences of comfort and connection to something "out there"--she would immediately remind herself that this was regressive and pathological. She called her doing this "rattling her cage" and noted the image of imprisonment.
In talking with her, I repeatedly sensed that God was actively working in her, calling her to greater life. She spoke of being more aware of events outside her in the world, more actively concerned for the world, and not wanting to be. She felt a greater connection to the world around her in nature, but at the same time, more aware of its beauty and its pain. She found herself unable to anesthetize herself with television when she wanted to avoid something. Her fear of union with God and with others seemed to be not only a fear of death but also a fear of truly living and of losing control.
My experience with this directee led me to see the tremendous disadvantage to spiritual development that psychological knowledge can be, and how splitting head from heart (as she complained of doing and as we do in our culture and in our educational system) can keep one from knowing God. In her I saw a more accentuated version of some of my own tendencies: the comfort and familiarity of psychological language, the avoidance of life. My "one sermon" (because I need to hear it myself) is to face life head-on and live it with passion. God is found in life and also in death--but perhaps not in deadness.
Even writing about this, it is tempting to lapse into a mindset common to psychological thought and to speak in terms of stage theories, analysis and diagnoses. But these are not what heal the spirit and save the soul. I moved from psychology to religion because I felt that psychology, at least as commonly practiced today, doesn't go deep enough and touch what truly matters to people. Yet perhaps for this very reason, psychology is much more comfortable, so we use its terms and avoid the language and motions of the Spirit.
In our last meeting, this woman had a kind of "ah-hah!" experience. The meeting followed a sermon I gave, in which I spoke about increasingly finding power, truth and meaning in the Gospels and in the Christian path. She said she could barely sit still from the energy and excitement she felt inside her and that afterwards something changed for her. My speaking what I truly believed, and her seeing my own belief in God, gave her permission to believe and to be different from what she had been. As we talked, she could feel something coming together inside her and finally was able to express it: that "faith is not the easy way out," as she had thought it was. She then felt so affected by this (as did I) that she just had to sit with it, unable to say much else. Even though the following summer showed her that growth in the spirit is not a once-for-all and immediate event, she continued to feel stronger and to have less resistance to the presence of God.
My experience with this directee made me profoundly grateful for the action of the Holy Spirit in us and through us and aware of and grateful for the transformative power of God's Word, even across lines of faith traditions. These can heal the spirit and save the soul, but we cannot control this action or even know when it will happen. What seems called for is continued trust in God's leadings, following the yearning through the fear, perhaps with a gentle persistence (plus humor and humility when we slip). I know I need this myself, trusting in God's grace, not fearing where God might lead me, even if I don't understand it completely.
Liz was a participant in the Winter 1994 Spiritual Guidance Program. She currently is living in Hawaii, where she is taking an interim year from parish ministry and learning the spiritual discipline of surfing.
Images of a Pilgrimage to Ireland
by Elizabeth Ward
When remembering Shalem's Celtic Pilgrimage to Ireland, my mind is flooded with images of lush woodland walks and sheer rocky crags, of towering crosses chiseled in stone and weathered by time, and of stark monastic sites whose stony remains speak of ancient glories, faded dreams, and an Eternal Presence that shines through it all.
It is easy to see the fresh faces of Anuna, a group of young Irish musicians offering ancient Celtic songs, and to hear their haunting harmonies cascading through the candlelit cathedral in Glendalough. It is easy to see Father Michael enticing us to Mystery through prayerful Gaelic poems as we thread through shady trees to sacred places blessed by prayer. Or to see our arms lifted high as the early morning sun pierces through the clouds and the gentle rush of water joins our bodies in our prayer. Easy also to feel the wind of Inis Mor, the warmth of a peat fire and a Eucharist shared with those giving new life to the older Celtic ways, to feel the rocky path of Croag Patrick and to pray with countless pilgrims who have struggled to its slippery summit through a tumble of gray mist.
These images are tinted, quite obviously, by my inner landscape and by the heightened sense of consolation that pervaded this pilgrimage for me. My inner landscape was a varied one, of course, but it was pervaded by a deep inner peace and a happiness that almost touched, at times, on joy. It was as if my feelings of peace, harmony, unity, and compassion were somehow strengthened by and resting in a larger flow of peace, harmony, unity, and compassion so that they were both my own feelings and part of something far beyond me. It was as if this cleansing wave of peace came from waters deep within as well as a mighty endless ocean. My tiny pillar of peace was anchored in a rock.
Probably as a result of this profound sense of graced peace, there was a sense of freedom to some small degree from the many tugs and pulls of ego. The needs of the ego could sometimes just bounce off the peace, like children rebounding on a trampoline, or sometimes they seemed to just sink in the peace and somehow be transformed. In either case, I could only feast on and savor the sense of heightened well-being and feel deep gratitude for the mysterious and deeply loving God who gives with such abundance. It is only through the lens of time that I can begin to prayerfully explore this experience.
Many moments of grace seemed to lead up to this time of heightened consolation. A place to begin could be the powerful tug I felt when reading of the pilgrimage. The words danced like a fountain in sunlight and opened up a thirst that little else could fill. They danced within my heart as the path for my departure opened wide before my eyes. I could only give thanks for the grace and support that made this pilgrimage possible.
The grace continued as I learned more about Celtic Christianity. It was amazing how many of the threads of my own spiritual life were woven into the fabric of the Celtic Christian tradition. I had long been a Christian, but this particular tradition had a texture that seemed somehow right for me. It seemed to redefine my Christianity while inviting further growth. The parts of me that have felt touched by God in the wonders of woods and gardens; in the words of poets, the images of artists, and the harmonies of music; in the lives of saints; in the worship of God as the mysterious Three in One; in the service of the poor; in the times of deep listening with friends; in the ordinary events of daily life; and in the incredible richness of silence and solitude all belonged together in a new and deeper way. It was as if a mother hen had collected her chicks together under broad protective wings, and they were all quietly nesting together for a time. It was as if my small lone voice were part of a larger chorus now, and the music of this chorus could heal and connect my inner life in new and powerful ways.
This was the path of my ancestors, and I had been touched by its various threads for years without realizing they were related in an ancient Christian way. The effect of this realization was profound. I felt so mysteriously connected to those who have gone before and so grateful for the legacy they have left for countless still to come. Even more important, however, was the sense of being held and guided through times of not knowing by a loving, trustworthy God. This was not a new sense, but one that always gives me pause.
It was as if God had patiently showed me the small pieces of a mosaic one by one and now was showing me a larger icon they could form. Moreover, this was an icon others knew; this was an icon my ancestors had known and in some mysterious wordless way had conveyed to me as well. This was an impression God had revealed in the past, was revealing in the present, and would no doubt further reveal in the future. It could vary and yet somehow be the same.
A design full of light and shadow, yet clear in certain ways; it was the welcome image of God reaching through my darkness with transforming rays of light; a picture of timeless closeness, and a guide for future days. It was an expression of God's goodness, and a hint of so much more.
Liz , a new Shalem Board member, joined 31 others on the Shalem pilgrimage to Ireland in August, 1994.
Valuing the Living Moment
by Tilden Edwards
The precocious comic strip character Calvin (in Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes) once said that he doesn't like real experience because it's too hard to figure out, you never know what's going on, and you don't have any control over events. He said he preferred to have life filtered through television. "That way you know events have been packaged for your convenience! I like a narrative imposed on life, so everything logically proceeds to a tidy conclusion! And if you don't like what's happening, 'click,' you change the channel and there's something different!"
Calvin's view reflects the dominant part of our psyche that T.S. Eliot was talking about when he said that human beings can stand only a little bit of truth. It is the part of us that presses for securing, clearly understood, controllable order. Much of the mass media caters to this side, because that's what most easily sells. Yet when I'm finished with an exposure to such media, something in me feels vaguely cheated and empty; it leaves my deep soul starved.
My deep soul, my spiritual heart, is not afraid of what the little boy Calvin called our "real experience." Staying with real experience is staying with what is given in the moment without rushing to take it over with our interpretive minds. Such staying-in-the-moment is an act of faith. It says that I can trust a larger Presence to be there, that it is not an empty moment needing to be filled by my preconceived ideas. It is a full-of-God moment needing my emptiness, my willingness not to bring anything but my desire for God to be God. Such an orientation frees me to dip into the moment's fullness with a sense of appreciation rather than dread, over-grasping, or restless boredom. I can feel the pregnancy in the moment, something that is lovingly alive yet hidden, positively affecting me though I don't quite know how. To me, this is the essence of prayerfulness: a willingness to be given in trust, without precondition, to the divine Far-Nearness ever-present in the living moment. (Far-Nearness is a favorite name for God of the 13th century Beguine, Marguerite Porete.)
From such givenness-in-the-moment, repeated hundreds of times a day, I know that I live into the happenings of daily life with a difference. Instead of sensing myself on my own, I sense myself as part of a larger divine reality incarnate in everything that is. In the moment of giving myself to that larger presence, something happens to my usual protectiveness and striving. These don't completely disappear, but they serve a different purpose. Instead of being heavy engines to support all I must do as I sense myself to be alone, on my own, they become what I think they were meant to be: functional facilitators for my living in the world as a divine off-spring. My protectiveness and striving become light, expedient friends, along with all my other ego functions. They then become useful in facilitating God's radiant life in and through me serving the ultimacy of boundless love rather than "bounded" self. Indeed, our whole being is an expression of that divine love. Everything that we are and do is meant to be a reverberation of the divine bounty that plays us into being.
But we don't find much support for this version of reality in daily life. We are pressed instead to treat ourselves as ultimate, the world as accident, and the moment as a vacuum to be quickly filled. This is why I find it so vital to intentionally lean back into God, trusting the divine Spirit to be flowing through everything, veiled in every thought, feeling, image, and sound. So many times I have found that such leaning draws me into daily living with new freedom for compassion, joy, and whatever may be authentically called for. What is most given is subtle, a sense of greater confidence in God's involvement in whatever is happening, a feeling of freedom to appreciate God's Heart/Mind mysteriously at work and play in me and around me. I also often taste something of the radiance of the moment just as it is, full of God.
Since we find so little cultural support for such leaning into God in the moment, it can be helpful to give ourselves some protected times for intensive practice. That can be one of the values of a retreat or regular spiritual group. We also can give ourselves a little time each day for a longer "sitting" in the immediate, open presence. Where it's possible, we might also practice at times a modern kind of fast, a media fast: fasting from the sensory overload and contrivance of what comes to us from the pervasive presence of mass media. We can put away reading materials and turn off our television, computer, tape deck, and all other processing media. Then we can let ourselves be given to God amidst the unpackaged, uncontrolled "real experience" of the living moment.
When Calvin grows up, I hope he will come to love the beauty of the immediate moment in God's hands. Everything of value flows from the moment that is given to God.