Volume 20, No. 2-Summer, 1996
Table of Contents
The Icon
by Felicity Wright
A Healthy Regard for the Stupid
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Ask Hildegaard
by Hildegaard
A Wink Out of Nowhere
by Gerald May
Praying as a Partnership with God
by Susan Dillon
On the Summer Retreat
by Jinnie Draper
Touchstones of Memory
by Tilden Edwards
The Icon
by Felicity Wright
In January, I went to a Shalem open house, found I had missed all the stuff on meditation--which is what I was most interested in --and realized there were only two sessions from which to choose: one on being a spiritual guide and another on using icons for meditation and spiritual contemplation.
The first one interested me, sort of, but not now. I've got to get myself straightened out before I can help anyone else. And the second--not me, not hardly. I've enjoyed Russian and Greek Orthodox services, and I recognize icons as art forms but not as objects of adoration. To me, they bespeak the worst kind of belief: graven images; sacrilege; heresy; not the true God. To worship anything physical is to constrict and contain its spiritual majesty. The only icon I'm willing to consider is the cross, and frankly, I even have serious problems with that.
While debating whether I should go to one of the workshops--or whether I should just head home--Rose Mary Dougherty came up to me, answered some of my questions about Shalem, then asked which workshop I was planning to attend. I told her my dilemma, and she laughed. "As a leader of the spiritual guide workshop, I encourage you to go to the other one," she joked. "But seriously--I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Just be open minded--who knows what you'll discover."
Being open-minded is, I believe, one of my strong suits, and so I went. Carole Crumley, the workshop leader, did a nice introduction and then asked our reasons for coming. Everyone chuckled as I answered humorously but honestly, and she said she knew exactly how I felt, that it was very hard for many Protestants to accept the value of icons for meditation. "But just try--it may work or it may not."
We did some deep breathing and relaxation, then she displayed a slide showing a sixth-century icon of Christ, who had a beautiful, almost handsome face that seemed open and kindly disposed. His eyes were powerful and magnetic-like Mona Lisa, they seemed to track and look directly at (or, in Jesus' case, through) you. I could enjoy a sense of peace and calmness while looking at the icon. But when Carole asked us to close our eyes and feel his presence, I felt nothing special. I felt the warmth of having a loving older brother nearby--but it seemed contrived. I had to work at it. I had to will it to happen.
In the second icon, Christ still had the magnetic, all-seeing eyes, but there was a roughness about his face unlike the first depiction. This was heightened by time-damage, so that there almost seemed to be a scar descending from Christ's chin. But this guy could really see into my soul--still loving and compassionate but not gentle like the first. This big brother was older, judgmental and more like God the father, more masculine and rigid. Meditating on this icon left me cold--or even scared.
When the third icon was displayed, it was breathtaking. I had to will myself not to cry aloud, as hot tears of searing pain escaped from my eyes. This one was of Mary with Jesus in her arms. As Mary looked lovingly at Jesus, she also saw his future and his death. She loved him so powerfully, and she suffered for it. I had been accustomed to think of Mary as wimpy and passionless, but not this Mary. She had a rare expression of suffering tainted by acceptance that was quite unlike anything I had seen before.
Jesus, probably seven or eight months old, was looking at her but also past her, and his face showed an infant's contentedness mixed with playfulness and joyful anticipation. It was as though he was looking at his mother with love and satisfaction, but he was also looking beyond to something else. And, naturally, I surmised that the something else was God and that Jesus could see God and also see into a future filled with love. It wasn't clear that Jesus could see his role in the future, but there was a definite sense of child-like curiosity and enthusiasm in his face. He was content, he felt God's love, and he knew that everything was going to work out just fine. That was enough.
But my happiness for Jesus came nowhere close to mitigating my abject sorrow for Mary. When Carole asked us, once again, to close our eyes and listen to God's message to us, all I felt was unbearable sadness and longing.
The mother in me still gets teary, my hands still tremble and I still get choked up when I recall the look on Mary's face. She saw her only child suffering on the cross, while she watched, impotent and despairing. I cried for her and for Jesus and for Caitlin and for me. (Caitlin was my first child, who died at the age of three months. Although that was fifteen years ago, I will never fully recover from my helplessness and grief and love.)
I could feel my throat tightening and my breath becoming shorter. I almost bolted from my seat to the door, my car and home. Safety lay in getting as much distance as possible between me and Mary's grief, for it only served to remind me of one of the most painful episodes of my life.
At first, as I tried to concentrate on God's message to me through Mary and Christ, I identified so much with Mary that I couldn't feel anything else. I could hold Caitlin in my arms as she held Christ and know that all I could give was my love-- that it might not be adequate but it was all I had, and I prayed that, in the end, it would be good enough. I knew that Jesus would think so, although I still had my doubts. But it was also clear that Mary was accepting of her suffering while I still wrestled with mine. She had faith in God's grand design, while I was trapped in my personal inadequacy.
Then, suddenly, the image was transformed--Mary became God and I became Christ. God held me close and loved me and yet was unable to protect me from the pain of the world. But there was never any question about God's love for me and the suffering that he/she felt on my account. It was all-consuming love, just as I felt for Caitlin, however helpless and pain-filled my love may have been.
So with the sadness came a strange and wonderful calm. God held me, saw all my known and unknown sins, and loved me tenderly and completely nonetheless. It was overpowering. My shoulders relaxed, my heart rate slowed, and I could breathe deeply again.
As a loved child, I was vulnerable, I was exposed, but I was accepted. I was valued beyond all reason. As a loving mother, my suffering united me with God and Jesus and Mary into a persona and force that was tantalizingly inexplicable--but awesome and transforming. And it was wonderful, for it brought peace.
Felicity, an Episcopalian, is a technical writer and trainer. She is the mother of two and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
A Healthy Regard for the Stupid
by Rose Mary Dougherty
In a 1925 article, theologian Evelyn Underhill speaks of a man who had come to her with many questions about his seemingly ailing prayer. After dealing specifically with some of his questions, she said to him, "I think what you lack, Sir, is a healthy regard for the stupid."
At first glance, this response can seem condescending. This erudite woman, however, rather than proposing to tell the man what he did not know about his prayer, challenged him to relinquish his need for knowing, to honor his stupidity. She said that in renouncing knowledge the soul draws "from this absolute ignorance a knowledge which the understanding knows not how to attain."
John of the Cross has something similar to say. He tells us that eventually we will be purged of all our habitual ways of knowing, of all "particular knowledge" and be left only with a "vague, dark knowledge." Eventually, he says, the intellect is illumined with divine light that transcends the natural light of our knowing. When the time is ripe, we know just what we need to know, no more or no less, without knowing how we know. My experience tells me that while we are waiting to know, we can be left feeling very stupid. We can even look very stupid in the eyes of those, including (perhaps especially) ourselves, who look to us for knowledge and solutions that once seemed readily available to us.
Perhaps that is why I have gone in and out of a willingness for this stupidity. I don't like the sense of helplessness, of powerlessness that accompanies it. At times my heart has given its assent to the unknowing of stupidity. Yet when it seems that stupidity is going to diminish my effectiveness, when it threatens my self-image as one who knows how to be present with others or what to do for them, my head has resisted the willingness to which my heart has said yes. So I have gone through the charade of acting as though I know what needs to be done or at least thinking I should know.
Recently, however, I've come to be at home in my stupidity, to find a freedom in the powerlessness of not knowing. My sister in her dying helped bring me to this place.
Dorothy was in the hospital, dying of end stage liver disease. At first we were told she probably had six months. Then her doctor narrowed it to a few days. He said, in fact, that she would probably not last the night, but if she did, she would need to be moved back to the nursing home for insurance purposes. Four of us sat with Dorothy through the night. As morning came, her husband, daughter, and my sister went home to rest. Soon after they left, a physicians' assistant, Diane, came in to check on her. When she asked me how Dorothy was, I said I didn't think she was doing well and that I didn't understand, with so little time left, why they needed to move her in three hours. Diane looked me square in the eye and said, "Have you prayed about that?" I was so taken by surprise that I didn't know what to say. She said, "I'm going out to the desk to work. I'll pray out there. You pray in here."
I didn't ask God about Dorothy or her situation. I didn't ask God to care for her. Instead, I began to tell God what God should do. Dorothy had suffered enough, as had her husband and daughter as they watched her. Now, adding to the suffering was the impending move. God could take care of all of this by just taking Dorothy now.
I wasn't content with simply giving my advice to God. I began talking aloud to Dorothy who now appeared to be in a coma-like state. I told her I hoped she knew how much we loved her and that I wanted her to know it was okay with all of us if she let go now. I was telling her that it would probably be better for her if she could let go now just as my words seemed to stick in my mouth. Questions formed in my heart. Who was I to be telling her what she should do in this very sacred process? What did I think I knew? After a few minutes, I said to Dorothy, "I'm acting as though I know what you should be doing. I need to keep still and let you do it your way." She had the hint of a smile as she nodded a firm, "Yes." I made a pact with her that I would be there but that she had to let me know what she needed and when she needed it.
I sat with Dorothy in the quiet of an inner freedom after that. I didn't need to figure out anything. I only needed to be there. I somehow knew that God and Dorothy would do what needed to be done and that I would know what part, if any, I was to play. As the time for moving her approached, the nursing home called to say they did not have a room. I was able to chuckle to myself and later to the physicians' assistant as I acknowledged my limited vision of how God might solve the problem.
Dorothy stayed where she was until she died two days later. Four of us stayed with her through the nights, and I took the morning shift while the others rested. Early in the morning as I sat next to her, I was moved out of my chair to stand beside her and take her hand. Her breathing changed and she died very peacefully. God and she had kept their bargain. Her spirit connected with mine, and I knew what to do and when to do it. I, too, had kept my bargain. I was there, waiting.
The Tao te Ching asks: "Do you have the patience to wait till your mind settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?" I think perhaps now, because of my experience with Dorothy, I can more easily say yes to the waiting to know. I can even live my life with a healthy regard for the stupid.
Ask Hildegaard
by Hildegaard
Answers to Spiritual Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask
These are questions that have circulated through the Shalem office for several years; we hope you'll find them, and the answers that follow, helpful for your spiritual journey.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
What should I do with my shoes during meditation time? I'm too embarassed
and nervous to leave them outside the meditation room with the others.
~Embarrassed
Dear Embarrassed,
This is really quite simple, you know. You can leave them in Rose Mary's
office.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
I used to know a woman who always put lipstick on before she went in
to the meditation room to pray. She was a very spiritual person, and I've
wondered about this practice. Is this something I should do, too?
~Plain Jane
Dear Plain,
This is quite a coincidence, because I know someone who does this, too.
Perhaps this is a trend or perhaps we're paying too much attention to other
people's prayer lives? My guess is that it gets her ready for God and prayer
and anything else that just might come along--which might be appropriate
for you, too.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
It's so dark sometimes in the prayer circle -- what if I trip over the
candle in the middle?
~ Feeling a Bit Clumsy
Dear Clumsy,
By all means pick up the candle and put out the fire. Then take your
seat with that same attitude of prayerfulness that led you into the room.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
Whenever I get quiet and start to pray, this same image keeps coming
to me, but, well, it has to do with a beach, a woman and me. And it doesn't
seem appropriate for prayer. What should I do?
~ Just a Dreamer
Dear Dreamer,
Well, really, it's important just to relax, don't try to control your
thoughts too much. But beyond that I just can't comment; I really need
to have more details.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
I've been seeking, seeking, seeking for God all these years but without
much success. What's my problem?
~ Still Lost
Dear Lost,
Maybe you need a better map. Or you might try staying in one place for
a while. Who knows -- you might just get found.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
If you give up wanting, then do you get it?
~ X
Dear X,
It depends on what "it" is. But seriously, wanting goes with loving
and loving goes with living, and how do you give that up?
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
What is the relationship between God/Dog and the void?
~ Y
Dear Y,
You simply can't be serious. But if you are, see answer to the following
question. Perhaps it will help.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
How come left and right are reversed in the mirror but top and bottom
are not?
~ Simply Asking
Dear Simply,
This is a great spiritual question for which there really is no answer--we
accept the ambiguity and live in the paradox. However, if you need something
further, I'd like to suggest that you embrace the question and become one
with it by picking a quiet room with a full-length mirror. Then just stand
in front of the mirror for a while. Every half hour alternate by standing
on your head in front of the mirror. Soon you and the question will become
one.
-----
Dear Hildegaard,
Why doesn't God speak to me more clearly?
~ Listening (or Trying To)
Dear Listening,
I wish I knew. God seems to like us to pay attention every single moment
of the day. We have to watch and wait and be ready--particularly hard in
the summer--and even then God seems to mumble sometimes. I really think
there's no harm in asking God to speak up and speak distinctly.
Love, Hildegaard
A Wink Out of Nowhere
by Gerald May
In the last newsletter I spoke of my most abject, despondent moment of suffering in chemotherapy. I was lying on the floor, coughing and sobbing, when I heard a voice say, "What we're really here for is fun."
I was as certain as I could be that it was God's voice. After an instant of shock, I was overwhelmed with uncontrollable giggles which, combined with my coughs and tears, nearly choked me. After I had caught my breath and quieted, I thought again of Bosnia--the place with which I felt strangely connected throughout the chemotherapy. "Fun?" I asked silently, "If we're really here for fun, what about Bosnia? Surely you can't expect me to see any fun in that! Maybe if you had said 'resurrection' or even 'joy,' but what you said was fun!"
My memory, as if responding to my own question, went back to a day during my visit to Bosnia two years ago. Our little group of American pilgrims were visiting an elderly couple who had lost nearly all their children and grandchildren in the fighting. The old woman was bedridden, but she sat up to tell us their story. Her husband sat silently next to me, wiping his eyes with an old bandanna as he relived the tragedy with her. We were all profoundly moved by the depth of their suffering; we cried with the old woman as she spoke. When she finished, we sat in silence as she tried to ease the sobbing from her breath. Then she looked up and caught the eye of one of the men in our group. He winked at her and later said he had no idea why he did it. She responded with a wink of her own, a great toothless grin, and a stream of words that the translator could barely keep up with. She said the man was flirting with her and she thought he was pretty good-looking himself, but they should behave themselves because her husband was there in the room.
Within moments, everyone was laughing and crying and having such fun it was impossible to tell what our tears were about. I felt the old man's hand pat my knee. Grinning widely, he nodded for us to follow him outside. He showed us how he sharpened scythes for a living, and had great fun showing off his tools and his craft. And I had great fun with him.
As I thought back on it, I remembered times I'd visited sick friends, or more recently when friends visited me when I was sick, and what fun we had together. It wasn't the superficial fun that comes from denying suffering, but the full-bodied delight that arises from facing the totality of what is, as awful or as beautiful as it may be. Then something happens, a wink out of nowhere, and the fun begins. Or perhaps we join the fun that's always going on.
Since hearing that voice, I have thought a lot about the meaning of fun. "Joy," the word I would have expected from God, comes from roots that imply pleasure about something, as in rejoicing over a victory. Fun also means pleasure, but its roots imply play, as in the fun children have dancing and pretending. The difference is clear: joy is pleasure because of something, but the pleasure of fun has no special cause. It just happens.
Scripture is full of references to joy: rejoicing over healing, salvation, or any of God's other many blessings. Fun is a different matter. The word didn't even appear in the English language until the early 18th century, and is rare even in the most recent translations of the Bible. But I find the essential meaning of fun in the Hebrew root shaa, which forms words translated as both "play" and "delight." A superb example is in the eighth chapter of Proverbs, where Wisdom describes Herself at the time of creation as God's "delight day by day," "ever at play in God's presence," "playing on the surface of God's earth," and "delighting in the children of God."
From this description it seems clear that creation was great fun for God and God's Wisdom, and the voice I heard in my suffering tells me that creation is ongoing and still great fun. It reminds me of the ancient Hindu notion of chidvilas, the vast play of consciousness, the cosmic delight that continually creates and destroys. To put it another way, nowhere is there any evidence that creation is serious business.
I believe we truly are here for fun. I don't expect to comprehend God's fun any more than I can comprehend God's love, but one thing is clear. No matter how much pain, abuse, or injustice we may suffer or cause others to suffer, a certain delightfulness remains within us that can never be destroyed. And somehow, at some point in every situation, there is always an invitation to join the play.
Sometimes I wonder how religion got so serious. How have so many of us become what Quaker scholar Thomas Kelly called "dour old sober sides" in matters of the spirit? Why do we restrain our celebrations and plan them so carefully, making sure they are always tasteful, appropriate, and most importantly, always about something? I could speculate on the reasons, but right now it doesn't feel like fun.
Instead, let me share another memory. I was nine years old when my father died. I remember the trouble he had breathing in his last moments, and how my mother asked me to call an ambulance because she couldn't leave his side. I remember how I felt when our minister confirmed that my father was dead. "We lost him," he said, and that's exactly what I felt. I had lost my dad, would never hear his laugh or feel his hand on my shoulder again. I missed him terribly. I cried from a grief I could barely understand.
When we came back home after his burial, all our relatives gathered there. Everyone was being very nice to me, and I began playing with cousins my age that I hadn't seen for a long time. I was having fun. I had so much fun, in fact, that one of my aunts called me aside and whispered sternly, "You'd better calm down or people will think you're happy that your father died." I immediately went over and sat by my mother and began to cry again. This time the tears were not from grief but from shame.
Now, 47 years later, I rejoice that I have been largely delivered from such shames. Like Thomas Kelly said, "... one tries to keep one's inner hilarity and exuberance within bounds lest, like the people of Pentecost, we be mistaken for being filled with new wine." I find, however, that I am no longer very concerned. In a way, it is new wine.
Praying as a Partnership with God
by Susan Dillon
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matthew 7:7-8)
These familiar and thrilling words have taken on new meaning in the Development and Communications Committee. For the past few months we have been praying in a different way. We have always had a candle in the middle of our circle to remind us of God's presence throughout our meetings, and we usually have opened and closed with a brief invocation and chanted "Shalom," and often one or more people at a meeting would mentally withdraw into silent prayer. These ways of bringing prayer into committee and Board meetings have helped keep the focus of the business more on God than on our egos and personalities. If we were to express this silent, general form of prayer, it would be something like "Thy will be done."
Now the Development Committee is taking Matthew's words more literally and is praying in very specific ways in an effort to understand better how we can do God's will. We have gone from the rather passive "Thy will be done" to the active "What do You want us to do and how should we do it?" This new approach started when we were discussing how best to publicize the Spring programs offered locally--quiet days, retreats, workshops, etc. After spinning our wheels for awhile with one bright idea after another, we decided to pray for guidance. Before doing so we spent some time agreeing on what we wanted to ask God. Being specific about what we were asking was harder than we expected! Eventually we agreed that one of us would pray aloud something like this:
Dear God, Please show us the best way to let people know about Shalem's local programs. Shalem is offering these programs with the intention of supporting people in their relationships with You, and You know who is ready for such support. We have limited resources for publicizing our programs, and many possible ways of doing so, and we do not know what is the most effective way of reaching those You had in mind when You helped us plan these programs. Help us now know how to reach them. Please be very clear with us as we listen in trust for Your guidance.
We then sat in silence for a few minutes and were amazed to find that clarity about the issue emerged within each one of us. We reached a quick consensus on how to proceed. An issue that could have taken many hours and that we might have been tempted to revisit throughout the Spring seemed suddenly answered! We were so grateful, not only for the answer, but for how clear it was. We felt that asking for specific guidance from God and then listening in the silence to what emerged was how we were being invited to conduct all of our meetings.
We now conduct our Development Committee meetings as though we are a long-term contemplative group focused on Shalem's fundraising and communications issues. We begin with gentle body work, then a brief prayer or reading, and silence for about ten minutes. The leader then presents two or three general issues that need our attention. Examples of such issues might be our immediate fundraising needs, some long-term financial planning issue, the design of our program booklet, or how to publicize a specific event. Sometimes it is obvious which question should be addressed first, but if it isn't, we ask in prayer if it makes a difference from God's perspective. Once we begin focusing on an issue, we try to assume that we know nothing, and we begin asking God's advice from square one.
For example, we recently needed to know what to do about the $50,000 in contributions that we still haven't raised for this year's budget. Before asking what we should do to raise it, we asked whether we should do anything. We got a clear Yes. Then we asked if we should do anything more than we would normally do in April, May and June. Again, Yes. One answer leads to the next question. If we are to plan another event, what is it? Whom should we invite? How should it be publicized?
What happens in our meetings is a mystery to us, but this process feels like a partnership with God. Together we are bringing Shalem from the mysterious unknowable Source of All into physical form here and now. In our partnership, we ask God to offer (along with everything else) the plan and the know-how for Shalem, and we offer our physicality--our human form--to manifest what we're given. Through all this, we sense God is informing us and we are "in-forming" God!
Susan, a Shalem Board member and long-time Shalem participant, is a lawyer and mother of two.
On the Summer Retreat
by Jinnie Draper
As usual, it seemed that I was doing things backwards. This retreat would push me outward as well as inward--toward people, schedules, unfamiliar places and routines, and despite the silence, a background of activity to which I was unaccustomed. The timetable, although not in the least demanding, always seemed to make me feel like a breathless Maria von Trapp--"she's always late for everything except for every meal!"
I had tried so diligently to approach the week without expectation, with a truly receptive heart and mind that might allow for a more delicate and discerning attention to the inner guidance that I know I all too often miss in the course of everyday life. Yet this attempt disguised the pressing hope and questioning that were burning inside--evidenced by my increasing sense of disappointment when no answers rained upon me after the first few days. My attitude toward God was becoming decidedly belligerent! Anything God wanted me to know was going to have to arrive with penetrating intensity!
I'm used to being alone, to hours of silence and to the endless communion with the natural world that provides my constant nourishment and grounding. All too easily, though, I rely on this and compartmentalize it, crashing my way through the day and looking forward madly to this time of replenishment, fiercely protective of my ultimate tryst.
This is a practical approach perhaps, but surely my inner tranquility is not just an idyllic, solitary state distanced from the confusion of daily life. And perhaps it was time to move through that confusion to the God who too frequently was most accesible in my quiet times or in particular places--my ocean walks, the shadows of our spruce woods or special churches which manage to reflect just that ambience my relentless, demanding soul seemed to need.
It was during one of our daily sharing periods that my first lesson descended. I'm appallingly judgmental and arrogant, exceedingly intolerent of any "nonsense" or "frilliness" in myself or others. One of the participants was speaking in a particularly dramatic fashion, and to my surprise, although I could feel the irritation begin within me, I was unexpectedly plunged into a very profound sense of compassion--true "being with" compassion and not emotional pity. This astonished me. Certainly this compassion is not a stranger to me, but it seems to be evoked most easily in regard to people I know and like or in a more global sense where distance softens the possibility that personality differences might intervene. I liked this person no better than previously and would probably have judged her harshly, yet somehow it didn't matter. The act of judgment itself was curiously less significant, and I realized how in the past I'd always feel that little mosquito bite of irritation, judgment and dislike for someone, then quickly catching myself, trying to work through it (even manufacturing reasons for doing so if necessary), I tried to reach this frame of compassion.
But it was there all the time! I had it backwards! Any relinquishing of judgment would occur only as a result of some inner transformation, not from relentless, intrepid struggles with my recalcitrant attitudes. Always I had read, understood and revered the Dalai Lama's "my friend the enemy" on an intellectual level, but now I perceived from within the words I'd so revered.
Toward the end of the retreat, another lesson occurred during one of those short breaks between gatherings and meals. As I wandered the surrounding paths, I repeatedly met other retreatants walking, writing or meditating, and I was astonished to find myself smiling at each person, then quickly catching myself, feeling rather self-conscious and a bit ridiculous. After all, these people were not even looking at me, were most deeply occupied, respectfully protecting my privacy, and usually unaware of my smile. This then was no smile of greeting but an active, spontaneous and sincere blessing upon each one of my fellow retreatants--something I could no more do on demand than fly--and I managed only with difficulty to still the unruly internal voice that labelled such behaviour "silliness."
It must have been six or eight weeks after the retreat that the next stage of learning came. I was sitting in meditation when a palpable crystallization of my learning attacked with such intensity that even I could not ignore it! Always I try to work through my faults, my weaknesses, to get through to the tranquility, the gentleness of my central still-point. Yet always I seem to fail--and no wonder! Here again I'd been working backwards, flying in the face of what I already possessed. It was my compassion lesson again but this time in the context of my individual journey. It was only from my center that I could see clearly, from a state of self-acceptance that the personality flaws and tendencies diminished in their hold over me. And only from this place could they be transformed.
Apparently the agenda for learning is not mine to choose (although I still seem to believe that it should be!). But my commitment to listening has deepened as I feel paradoxically humbled by my arrogant railing against this situation. And I appreciate so profoundly the imperative that living in the moment provides the sole opportunity for catching each lesson as it flies past.
Jinnie, a veterinarian currently on leave from her practice, lives with her husband on a small farm near Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Touchstones of Memory
by Tilden Edwards
Recently, at the second residency of one of Shalem's extension programs, a busy pastor told me that he kept a picture of his program class on top of his office desk. He did this, he said, to remind him of the excitement he experienced in that first residency. He also has added a holy icon to his wall, which has become a reminder of the kind of excitement he felt as he prayed with an icon.
Normally I avoid the use of the term "excitement" to describe spiritual awareness, because it so often connotes a contrived bubble of emotional hype. But I think this pastor was speaking of something much more substantial. As I would put it, such spiritual memories remind me of the effulgent Divine Sea in which we swim, our mutual involvement in a Life so much larger than our own. Sometimes we're given a special glimpse of this Largeness. We stutter to word our particular experience in many different ways. My own experience finds me speaking of such things as divine love, radiance, freedom, call, and a stripping away of narrowing attachments.
Our deep souls want to remember and be grounded in this awareness in daily life. But such spiritual memory I think is different from more temporal memories. Deep spiritual memory is too fine for the descriptive capacity of our normal consciousness to do it justice. It's so fine that it slips through the cracks of our word-forms. Sometimes it's so fine that we can begin doubting that anything real has happened. At other times our minds can reduce what's happened to too-small categories: we think we understand more than we do. The paradox to me is that the fineness of spiritual awareness can lead my normal mind to feel that what I'm experiencing is too intangible to be real, while at the same time a different faculty of knowing senses that it is the most substantial reality in my life. It's just too fine for my mind to grasp. If I remain open in trust to the larger Truth showing itself in these memories, though, and don't over-grasp for comprehension, then those remembered touches can become touchstones that draw me to the Real One.
Since our words for this permeating Reality so easily fail us, sometimes I think it's best to remain silent and just trustingly, alertly bask in its presence-beyond-words. Sometimes, amidst all the temptations of daily life that would narrow our consciousness and wills away from this Presence, a picture or some other reminder helps show us our larger home, as for that pastor.
At the heart of ancient Christian tradition (and in a different way in Jewish tradition) stands a special intimate collective action based on a touchstone of memory that also can draw our wills and consciousness to the living Presence. At the center of the Eucharistic prayer Jesus' words are remembered, "Do this in remembrance of me." Then those so willing eat and drink, ingesting in faith divine love incarnate.
I think every attempt to reduce this sacred meal to an act understandable by our minds is like trying to domesticate our personal spiritual touchstones to what our minds can grasp. Yes, our minds will have their due in trying to make some sense out of this remembered invitation of Jesus. But the results can reduce God to our minds' comprehension rather than opening our souls to a mystery so much larger than our minds can grasp. After its valiant attempts to apply the gift of our minds, theology at its best will remind us that its final function is to guard the holy mystery from attempts to capture it in mental categories. This is theology's great act of humility: its willingness to recognize the limits of the mind's way of knowing sacred reality.
Each of us has particular touchstones of spiritual memory in our lives. Some belong to us more personally, others we share in a larger spiritual tradition. I think these are not memories of the divine that are frozen in time and cut off from the present, drawing us nostalgically backward. Rather, they are manifestations of an eternal divine flowing that forever seeks to open us in the present moment to its enlarging grace.
The grace of the present moment probably will not involve dramatic openings or callings. More likely we will experience the faintest sense of desire for divine presence that opens us a little to God amidst our immediate thoughts and actions. Remembering the more impressionable touchstones of our spiritual life can help us notice such faint-to-our-consciousness grace that's always at hand. Confidence in an always-grace-full presence can give us a certain fearlessness and, in the truest sense, excitement, as we walk through the day.