Volume 24, No. 3-Fall, 2000
Table of Contents
Reflections on My Soul of the Executive Experience
by Margaret Jane Porter
Personal Spiritual Deepening Program: A Channel of Grace
by Lawrence J. Ostuni
Professionalizing Spiritual Direction
by Gerald May
Crossing Over
by Ann Kline
A Season of Prayer
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Leaving Well With Unfinished Business
by Patricia Gibler Clark
Going Without Leaving Home
by Tilden Edwards
Reflections on My Soul of the Executive Experience
by Margaret Jane Porter
"Afire"
Burn your channel wide and deep
With blowtorch from the campfire's flare.
No mere candle's hot enough
To sear away the pain-scarred flesh.
Burn your fire bright and deep
Until it rekindles at my core
The love of you in flames once more.
(written during the SOE pilgrimage)
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When I told my executive coach that I was in the Soul of the Executive Program (SOE), he exclaimed, "that's perfect for you!" He was right; it has been. I'll try to explain why, though my experience has been so deep it is hard to capture in prose.
I am a government executive who has devoted my twenty-six years of professional life to Federal civil service. I was raised a Roman Catholic, the eldest child in a large Irish family, but left the church soon after college. By the time I chanced on SOE, I had developed a number of ways to support and sustain my leadership, including personal therapy, executive coaching, and membership in the Washington Ethical Society, and I was obviously searching for something more. SOE has been for me a continual movement towards greater spaciousness and serenity that has transformed my life experience and my sense of purpose.
At first, I was very skittish of any spiritual formation program. I assumed all such programs to be limiting, coercive, and unaffirming of my feminine equality. I found in Shalem and SOE a freedom to be myself and to explore my spiritual self in the context of the mystical classics and the best current thinking about spirituality and work. This classical approach gave legitimacy to the integration of the poetic and the spiritual with the world of work and service. I was able to pick and choose among those sources for inspiration and guidance, as I saw fit. My mentors also made it crystal clear that I was free to seek any spiritual tradition that supported me. As I went through the readings, I came to understand that good people, holding positions of responsibility in the world, have struggled for centuries to integrate their individual spiritual lives with their leadership. I came to understand that the two can be naturally integrated in me as well, if I will but allow them to be.
The initial retreat was my first transforming experience. It laid the foundation for a daily practice that has become an indispensable part of my life. I did not have a well-developed spiritual practice when I entered SOE, but the permission I got at the first residency quickly led to one! The experience of waking each morning to greet the sun rising over the mountains and reflecting on this indescribable beauty drew me irrepressibly to want to recreate this experience when I returned home. Many in our group remarked on the value of our practice and the difficulty of sustaining it once we returned. It was not hard for me. I have a condition known as seasonal affective disorder, which requires me to sit in front of a light box for an hour each morning for about nine months of the year. Prior to the retreat, I would do work from the office or read the paper during that hour. Now I do a morning spiritual practice inspired by the desert with centering prayer, music, candles, incense, readings, connecting to nature (I do my practice in a greenhouse that is open to the trees and sky), reflection and journaling. A panoply of delight! That practice flowed unstoppably from our desert work and the yearning of my soul to hold onto what I had found there.
SOE also gave me my first spiritual communities. At the initial retreat, we worked in peer groups part of the time and we were encouraged to continue our peer group work. Our group has met by phone monthly, continuing and sustaining the support for our spiritual development and leadership. In addition, a number of us were fortunate to live in the Baltimore-Washington area, and we have continued to meet monthly for dinner, personal sharing, and group discussion on such topics as the SOE readings, leadership issues, the Enneagram and the labyrinth. This support has been invaluable to me. Both my phone peer group and our local group plan to continue our meetings even though the formal program has ended.
We also were urged to find and rely on a spiritual director, and my director, Isabella Bates, has become an invaluable part of my spiritual support system. Her exuberant emphasis on the integration of body and soul has ideally suited my journey.
The challenge for me in the second part of the program was to build on my individual experience through a required leadership project. Since I am a Federal government executive, the program challenged me to find my authentic voice in my leadership in a way that was appropriate for the institutions and individuals with whom I work. The critical point of this part of the program for me was coming to understand that I could do what mattered to me in the workplace, that my leadership could be an authentic expression of who I was and still be entirely consistent with the secular constraints of government work. Parker Palmer's work on authenticity and my reading his new book, Let Your Life Speak, were the foundation for my understanding.
I came to appreciate more and more the importance of self nurturance and of interest in the development of others. My SOE work inspired me to apply for a position as Executive in Residence at the Federal Executive Institute. I will spend a year's sabbatical there starting in the spring of 2001. My dream is to develop ways of supporting individual Federal executives that draw appropriately on the wealth of wisdom and practice I have acquired during SOE.
The culmination of our two-year program was the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Sinai desert. I am obviously still integrating the meaning of this experience, and there is no question it was life-transforming. It was the first time I can ever remember when I spent two weeks without role or responsibility, not as eldest daughter, spouse, lawyer, government executive. The only role I assumed was a new one for which I volunteered: a pilgrimage poet. Inspired by the close connection between mystical experience and poetry, I gave myself full permission to write and feel. My Sinai experience built on and deepened my spiritual awakening at the first retreat and opened my heart. The glimpses of spiritual freedom I had gotten through my readings and previous experiences opened to infinite spaciousness and beauty.
The gifted leadership of Carole Crumley and Bill Jamieson modeled for me repeatedly that a spiritual journey can be an entirely free one and that I can be fully supported to follow my journey wherever it leads. The inspired leadership of our pilgrimage guide, Marcus Losack, taught me a lesson I will never forget: that there is truth and beauty and reverence in each spiritual tradition and that my soul is free to embrace fully what calls to me. I placed my self completely in their hands, surrendering to the experience of letting someone else lead and opening to the experience of simply being.
I leave the program regretting it is over and strengthened for the journey ahead.
Margaret is a graduate of Shalem's Soul of the Executive Program, Class of 2000.
Personal Spiritual Deepening Program: A Channel of Grace
by Lawrence J. Ostuni
The impact of Shalem's Personal Spiritual Deepening Program on my life has been more like a push on the journey than the achievement of specific objectives. When I applied for the program, I hoped the program would facilitate my transition to a retired but active life, and it has. I was eager to explore the interaction of what I saw as four major forces--spirituality, creativity, physics and business--and this integration is a continuing area of study and fascination. But the overriding impact has been a growing awareness of how the Holy Spirit guides my life. That awareness influences my daily behavior, and with the psalmist, I hear the phrase repeating in my heart, "Be still and know that I am God."
The greatest personal benefit of the program was the realization of my desire to make my remaining life a prayer. The readings, the availability of individual spiritual direction, and group spiritual direction have each been instrumental in a unique way in shaping my path in this direction. And although I did not take advantage as much as I might have, I feel the mentorship concept is an important key to the success of the program.
Probably my greatest area of growth occurred through group spiritual direction. On the first day, I gave a good portrayal of how not to behave in a group, not by intent but by ignorance. I had a hard time responding without giving advice. However, once I switched to mostly non-verbal reactions, it became a more powerful experience than I could ever have imagined. I even felt a closeness develop between myself and others in the group during the silences. Initially I objected to starting my own group spiritual direction group back in my home church, but in the end, the requirement increased my appreciation for the value of this process, as well as my sensitivity to the ways in which the Holy Spirit touches all our lives every day.
In recent years, I have had the distinct impression that something very close was guiding me. I was concerned because I didn't know what was required and whether I had what it takes. I now ask, "God, what do You want me to do in this situation?" This has created an enormous freedom-freedom to become junior warden of my church, to mediate in the local courts, to do volunteer work in the inner city, and to accept an invitation to give the invocation at the House of Delegates of the Medical Society of New York. All this leaves little doubt that the Shalem program has served as a channel of grace in my discernment of God's will for this phase of my life.
While on the program's second retreat, which focused on contemplative prayer, my experiences became even more deeply spiritual as the time progressed. During this retreat, I had the thought that I should live my life as a prayer, and that thought is gaining energy. Sometimes I wonder why God bothers with me, and I believe I was given my answer during my second walk through the labyrinth at the retreat. I seemed to be getting nowhere until I realized I was humming a line from a song I hadn't heard in over ten years: "my love has no beginning and no end."
It was a nice way to end the retreat and also provides a good description of what I obtained from Shalem's Personal Spiritual Deepening Program.
Larry is a graduate of Shalm's Personal Spiritual Deepening Program, Class of 2000.
Professionalizing Spiritual Direction
by Gerald May
Recently a spiritual director e-mailed me asking advice. He suggested a newsletter article and gave me permission to excerpt our correspondence, though I have changed both his identity and that of the institutions with which he's associated.
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Dear Jerry: I have been working as a spiritual director out of The Center ever since I retired from The Other Center nearly ten years ago. Today I got a "Covenant of Ministry" that I and each of the ten people I listen to must read, sign and send to The Center for their records. I also was sent a two-page "Code of Ethics and Conduct for Healing Prayer Ministers and Spiritual Directors" plus a two-page "Guidelines for Spiritual Directors." This is all new stuff, and I don't object to the principle of the new arrangement. But I do have a couple of issues about which I would like some advice.
First, I have never revealed the names of the people I listen to. I am troubled by this requirement and will say something to the people at The Center. How do you feel about this practice? The Center says they want to know just how effective this ministry is. I think I could give them a head count to satisfy that. Maybe it is about insurance. I'll ask.
The second issue is that I am supposed to seek "agreement from a therapist or counselor when spiritual guidance is to be provided to a client." And I am supposed to encourage the directee to release the therapist so that he or she may speak freely with me. I am currently listening to two people who are in therapy, and the issues are tough. I don't feel the need to ask about anything my directee tells the therapist. Should I need permission to continue spiritual direction for fear of disrupting the therapeutic relationship? I think of this as such a confidential relationship that I tell no one about it. It seems I am being asked to change. Is this something new in spiritual direction that is needed for one reason or another and I should do it?
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Hi, Chris: I'm sorry to hear about all those "professionalizing" changes. I feel very strongly about such things. My own advice-and what I would do-is to have no association at all with any of the policies you are questioning, nor with any organization that institutes them. They are not only a violation of the confidentiality that has always been a part of Christian spiritual direction, but they violate the very essence on which spiritual direction is based-namely, that the Holy Spirit is the true spiritual guide. Further, they contradict the basic operating principle on which I feel spiritual companionships are based: that the "locus of discernment" is in the directee, not the director. In other words, the spiritual life of the directee is the business of that person and God, and no one else's. If the directee chooses to invite me to be a temporary companion in that process, then that's a privilege the directee is giving to me. My only discernment should be whether or not God is also inviting me into that companionship. No one else should be involved in any way.
I do understand where the professional stuff is coming from. People and organizations are afraid of lawsuits and are burned by all the horrible stories of abuse,etc. They also think of it as a business, which they want to conduct responsibly. But they seem to have no models for spiritual direction other than that of the modern counseling professional. They can't help but think of spiritual direction as a "service" provided by some kind of "qualified expert." This is often complicated when the directee is expected to pay a "fee for service."
But understanding does not constitute agreement nor, for me, even tolerance. I think this modern movement to professionalize the ministry of spiritual direction should be resisted in whatever form it takes. So I'd distance myself from any such commercializations of this precious, ancient, and sacred ministry.
As for speaking with therapists ... could I take off on that one! I've refused to talk with therapists even when the directee has asked me to, on the basis that I must protect the confidentiality of the relationship even if the directee doesn't! Instead, I would offer to assist directees in prayer and reflection on what THEY might be invited to discuss with their therapist about their spiritual lives.
And as to getting permission from therapists, what in the world does that communicate about the role of spiritual direction? If anyone need ask permission, it should be the therapist! And of course they'd be asking the permission of the directee, not of the director.
I've battled this professionalization long and hard, and I sure haven't won-nor will I. It reminds me of what the clinical pastoral movement went through; how it wound up losing its spiritual grounding entirely in favor of "being professional." Only now is it beginning to recover a slight sense of its true nature. I battled that movement too, to no avail.
Such are the ways of the world, I guess. I'm afraid this professionalization is going to continue, and as it does, it will create some major distortions of spiritual direction. Perhaps those distortions will be of some help for some people; I hope so. I pray they will not damage people's spiritual lives by making them think their souls are some kind of object to be fixed or made more efficient. Meanwhile, I guess real spiritual direction, the honored companionship of the tradition, will stay where it always has: on the outskirts, out of the mainstream, in quiet and humility.
You probably neither expected nor wanted such a tirade from me, but you did ask! I wish you all grace in your own prayer and wisdom as you discern what your responses should be.
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Dear Jerry: I am overjoyed at your reply. I woke up more than once during the night praying about it as I dropped off to sleep again. I had decided not to comply with the signed "Covenant" and naming the directees. But I wondered if I was simply willful, obstinate and/or stubborn. Your message gives me a light of freedom. I was so excited, I had to make a special effort to quiet myself so I could read today's lessons.
Thanks again for the support and peace you've given me. You should write an article for the Shalem paper on this subject.
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Hi, Chris: I wrote an article years ago for a larger publication, but the consensus was that it was too aggressive. So I toned it down, and it came out in the Shalem News as "Varieties of Spiritual Companionship." It's on the web site at http://www.shalem.org/sn/22.1gm.html
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Jerry: I wrote the two people in charge, expressing my concerns and got affirming replies. I am not going to be drummed out of the corps. They are willing to accept a maverick like me. I am going to accept their offer to continue to be one of the adjunct spiritual directors while maintaining my own style. Thanks so much for continuing to be a guide for me.
Crossing Over
by Ann Kline
The Kotzker Rebbe was asked by his students, "Tell us, rebbe, where is God?"
Came the Rebbe's response, "Wherever you let God in."
Each new beginning requires that you open new doors. -Reb Nachman of Bratslavbr
I can still remember how it felt, as someone Jewish, to walk through Shalem's doors for the first time. It wasn't that I thought lightning would strike--exactly. But I felt as though a thousand eyes were watching me, a thousand voices asking, "who do you think you are?" I clutched my Jewishness like a stone in my pocket, ready to toss it at anyone who looked at me cross-eyed. I had no idea what I was doing but, darn it, I knew who I was.
Why did I walk through that door? What drew to me Shalem? There were other places I could have gone. The Buddhists were right down the street and I had no fear they would try to convert me. I thought I was looking for a group of people to pray with. I had only recently begun meditating and taking a more intentional approach to my spirituality. It was a new world to me, and I knew I wouldn't get far in it alone. The Jewish sources that I knew of at the time weren't able to provide what I was looking for-I wasn't interested at that time in praying "as a Jew," that is, learning Jewish liturgy. I just wanted to learn how to pray.
Maybe it was dumb luck that, instead of getting information on the Buddhists, an acquaintance handed me a Shalem brochure. I think that perhaps God has a sense of humor. For as sure as God sent me into Shalem clutching whatever I thought I knew about myself, God was setting me up.
That first event was a daylong overview of what Shalem was all about, a little body prayer, a little chant, a little silence, etc. We went around the room telling a little about ourselves. Shivers of recognition went through me when a woman said, "I didn't dare tell my priest I was coming here. I feel like a heretic." Did we all feel the way I did that day, that there was something a little subversive about what we were doing, something that would change the order of things as we knew it? My Jewishness made hardly a splash in those waters. We were all, it seemed, in some way afraid of what would become of us.
A portion of the day was spent on lectio divina. Just as I feared, the reading came from the Gospel. Talk about being addressed by a mysterious Other, but for some it was, perhaps, a deceptively familiar story. Jesus asks his disciples to cross the water and while they are crossing a storm comes up. Though the disciples are afraid, Jesus calms the storm and chides the disciples for their fear. If my retelling of this is sketchy, it is because on that day I couldn't get past the first lines. "Let us cross over," Jesus says. Let us cross over.
Does everything subversive start just that simply? I thought I knew what it meant to cross over--wasn't I doing that by being a Jew at Shalem? Couldn't I congratulate myself on crossing over cultural conditioning that said, Jews don't pray with Christians, it just isn't done?
It will come as no surprise, I'm sure, that God wasn't handing me a prize for broad-mindedness. If anything, God was telling me that I'd missed the point. Those lovely labels--Jew, Christian, spiritual seeker, any sense of my own goodness or lack of it--weren't things I could take with me like a slicker to keep me from getting wet. They were what I was being asked to leave behind on the shore as I crossed over to something unnamed and unimagined. I could not become who God had in mind by clinging to the firm ground of who I believed myself to be.
"Let us cross over." To me, it has been like God's call to Abraham, "Leave your father's house, your friends, relatives and property, and come into the land that I will show you." Or, as Thomas Keating has expressed it, "To be free requires a journey away from expectations, stereotypes and mindsets into an increasing trust in the goodness and power of God." I find myself coming back to this story time and again. It seems especially poignant as I see Shalem invited to "cross over" as it prepares to welcome a new Executive Director.
Since I walked through Shalem's doors four years ago, I have donned and shed many ideas about who I am. Some of these "identities" have not come or gone willingly; some have been pressed on me by the amazing associations and opportunities that have come to me through Shalem and to which I could not say "no." Would the disciples tell Jesus they weren't coming? My association with Shalem has challenged me to see myself as God might see me rather than my community or my limited set of expectations.
Yes, I am still Jewish. God willing, I will become a bat mitzvah (about thirty years late) next May. Did I find what I was looking for at Shalem? Have I learned to pray? I don't know. Every time I think I have, I find myself climbing back into that darn boat.
Ann is a mentor in Shalem's new extension program, Facilitating Group Spiritual Direction.
A Season of Prayer
by Rose Mary Dougherty
In an article on intercessory prayer, Quaker Douglas Steere refers to what he calls "seasons of prayer" in our lives: times when we are called into prayer on behalf of specific circumstances or people. In reading the article, I realized my life has been marked by various seasons of prayer. One such season began recently.
In early June, I participated in the Merton Retreat 2000--an international, interfaith gathering of political and spiritual leaders who spent five days in prayer and dialogue together at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. The invitation to the retreat read, "You are invited to gather with a distinguished group of political and spiritual leaders to engage in reflection, quiet conversation and deep dialogue on the challenges of leadership in the new century. Here you can examine the forces that have shaped your own life experiences. With others you will explore ways that contemplation and spiritual practice affect political and social action. The wisdom that emerges from the Retreat will contribute to peace and justice in the new millennium."
Space allows only a sampling of the participants: Indira Chakravarty, New Delhi-based Regional Advisor on Nutrition for the World Health Organization; Father Dan Coughlin, newly appointed Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives; Bongani Blessing Finca, member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and Provincial Electoral Officer for the Eastern Cape; Senator Barbara Milkulski, recognized as a national leader on the issue of women's health care and one of the originators of the National Service Concept; Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; and Leticia Shahani who has served as President Pro-Tempore of the Philippine Senate and as United Nations Undersecretary for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs.
As we introduced ourselves the first day and talked about our reasons for being there, many people told of their fatigue and the urgent agendas concerning the well-being of their people which they brought with them. Some of the questions voiced were: How can we live on the planet in a way that nourishes the universal spirit? How can South Africans gain access to the medicine needed to combat the AIDS epidemic? How can one join justice and reconciliation? What will be the effects of globalization on our world as we know it? What leadership is the United States exercising in the responsible use of all the information we now have available to us about other countries? Does the world care about the oppressed or does the world need the oppressed to have something to talk about? As leaders, what are the most important things we need to be doing for our people and for our world?
Listening to the pain and poignant caring of the political leaders among us, an old self-consciousness entered my life again. I wondered what I was doing there, what I could possibly have to say to these people to let them know I understood them, what I had in common with them, and what I had to offer. Underneath the self-consciousness was a profound sense of emptiness, a poverty of experience and of knowledge. I realized that, in fact, nothing I had to offer was enough. I turned to God in my self-consciousness, letting the self-consciousness, the emptiness become my prayer.
"A season of prayer," says Steere, "must be long enough, and the one praying must be open and malleable enough, to see his or her initially stated concerns refashioned." I felt a refashioning happening to me within the week. I began to sense that what I held in common with these people was precisely my sense of helplessness in the face of such critical concerns. Whatever my being at the retreat might be about, it was not about having political savvy or facile solutions. They, too, had no answers. I came to the only place I could authentically stand, the place of solidarity with my confreres.
I also sensed a refashioning of our community as the week progressed. Through dialogue, times of silence alone and together, and unstructured times of just "being" together, the focus of our gatherings began to shift. We moved from discussion around issues and concerns to dialogue related to the ground of authenticity from which we address issues and concerns. We began to share deeply around a variety of questions: Is it possible to govern without being corrupted by power--to live and speak truthfully, with integrity? What is essential and what is expendable to empower ourselves to empower others? How can I attend to my being so that my doing will flow out of my being? In future, what will help me come home to myself? What will help me remember to drink from the well of silence deep within me?
Toward the end of the week, as we thought about the public forum that would conclude our time together, one among us reminded the group that we had a responsibility to our publics for the time we spent together. But how would we organize our manifesto? After a morning of sitting with that question, we came to the conclusion that our being together without agenda, with nothing to show for our time but a shared longing for all that is best within us was our manifesto. Our time together had brought us back home to ourselves. It had deepened our response-ability. Indeed what had happened among us would "contribute to peace and justice in the new millennium." This was our statement at the public forum.
People ask me what I learned at this retreat and whether it means anything new for my life. I've asked myself the same questions and continue to pray the questions. I also continue to pray in solidarity with the other participants as they too pray their questions. (Knowing that many of us join in prayer together at the same time each day enriches this time of prayer.) As the season of this prayer unfolds, I ask to be faithful to the being and responsive to the doing that shows itself for my involvement.
Leaving Well With Unfinished Business
by Patricia Gibler Clark
On July 17, my stepson Dan Clark passed away. He was 36 years old. He had worked as a highly skilled and highly sought-after computer consultant until he discovered he had cancer about a year and a half ago. This is a little bit of the story of his dying, which he did with dignity, struggle and courage. It is also a story of the wealth of his resources, which he channeled to good through his dying process.
Dan discovered his cancer on a sort of pilgrimage to Southeast Asia. He had a massage while visiting his sister Dana in Thailand last February and wondered about the lumpy massage tables in this strange country. It turns out the lump was in him.
When Dan got home, he began the next stage of his pilgrimage. His family watched him walk the tightrope between fighting the disease and preparing for his likely death. Family issues surfaced immediately as we struggled to offer Dan, who lived alone in New Jersey, care and hope. Each surgery, each new diet, each strategy that didn't lead to cure pointed Dan to the unfinished business of his life and to the limited time he had left to handle it.
What was unfinished for Dan somehow soon dovetailed with the larger struggles of our world. He talked to us about the second half of his life, how he had planned, after making a lot of money in the computer industry, to "make a difference in the world." He had planned to retire at 35...had told us that for years...and here at 35 discovers cancer, has a lot of money, and the second half of his physical life is almost over.
On the day of Dan's final surgery, Dana, along with a large group of highly dedicated activists, celebrated their victory of convincing the World Bank board of directors to reject its management's proposal to relocate 58,000 Chinese farmers into Tibet. Dan couldn't join her protest, but he supported her with his personal prayers from the hospital, and in reciprocity for Dana's help, the Tibetan community showered Dan with prayers.
Suddenly, there seemed to be no separation from spiritual practice and the nitty-gritty mess of dying. What touched me most during the next 11 days, as we sat with Dan for 24-hour vigils to minister to his needs, was the incredible balance we all maintained in this path of suffering.
We made an altar in his hospital room, hung prayer flags and banners of the Buddha there, and brought in fresh flowers each day from his garden. Dan remained conscious. We offered qi gong in the still of the night and repeated to Dan the words of a Tibetan rinpoche who had come to visit-"just stay in the present moment." He struggled to let go. People began to whisper about the details of the estate, asking if he had done everything he wanted to do. Dan fretted, trying to remember. The practices wove themselves like incense into the practical. It became clear that it's only things that are unfinished that we are called to let go of, and we all go out, with God's grace, holding on to something.
Each of us in the dying process, including Dan, discovered that the process of dying was actually our entrance into the second half of our fuller life. I think the greatest difference Dan made in the world would be this life-changing experience of awareness we all shared with him.
But what humbled and overwhelmed me most was how those of Dan's generation who watched him die-Dana, my daughters Eryn and Tami, Dan's friends-all embraced without question the one-ness of action and contemplation. Nothing separated them from loving Dan, meeting his needs, touching each other and praying for God's will to be done. Nothing. They possessed an incredible capacity to embrace the depth of hard feelings in one moment and, in the next, to phone a friend at work who needed to fill them in on an important project. In moments of family disagreements, they talked about mindfulness and about walking meditation as a way to be with their anger, fear and pain. No escape. No mercy except that relentless path to God. God now. God with and in Dan. They believed this.
Dan's estate, Dan's legacy is now with us. One friend places food on his altar every day for Dan. We in Dan's family now bend a little lower to listen to our heart questions about the balance needed to protect our inner and outer environment. A small non-profit called Earth Rights, which supports the environmental movement in third world countries, benefits from Dan's significant financial bequest. God smiles to have Dan close, and we like knowing this. I invite your prayers for Dan and for his generation that sets an example for all of us for generous giving and generous living. And may our consciousness expand to include God's love in this and all things.
Going Without Leaving Home
by Tilden Edwards
For 27 years I have been learning and teaching this truth in many of its nuances. I have passed on and sometimes evolved practices that I have learned from spiritual teachers I trust, living and dead, practices that invite our full presence and givenness in the moment to the One whose dark radiance pervades life too finely for our minds to grasp yet whose love awakens our spiritual hearts.
I have wandered from this loving truth many times in my blindness and willfulness, but I have never left the orbit of its hope. I have been brought back to it as "home base" by countless people at Shalem and through other graced experiences in my life. When I return, I often find that my sense of spiritual home has enlarged, paradoxically becoming more vast and intimate at the same time.
My role as Shalem's Executive Director has often been a particularly demanding and challenging arena for my desire to stay home in God. It has taught me empathy for executives in other organizations, as I have traversed the spiritual and managerial pitfalls, mistakes, and never-ending decisions about programs, policies, staffing, and crises over the years. I have tried, not always successfully, to trust the Spirit's aliveness in our evolving organizational life: in its dilemmas and actions, joys and pains, surprises and predictabilities. The job has been a fierce teacher of humility, listening discerningly, learning when to act and when to wait, and the necessity of self-examination and courage related to the kinds of personal presence called for amidst many organizational interactions. I have not always been a good student. Thanks to Shalem's wonderful board and staff over the years, and to our many supporters and to the Spirit's hidden hand in what happens, when my own limitations have shown themselves, others' strengths have stepped in. It's been a blessing to see how the complementarity of our strengths and caring together has allowed us to collaborate and carry forward Shalem's ever-growing ministry year by year.
"Going without leaving home" is the name of a practice that some of you have learned at Shalem: a slow walk where we try to be mindful of the Presence in all we experience, step by step. We're moving, but in our intent we remain home in God through the movement and through all that appears in our minds. We could expand that title to encompass our whole spiritual journey: our shared calling is to walk through life and all its experiences ever more fully grounded in the Holy One, our true and lasting home. We all know that this isn't easy. We search for the home of enlightened love many places before finding it at the bottom of our own heart and in the heart of all that is, moment by moment.
At age 65 the time has come to lay down this role. But I have much energy and motivation for spiritual leadership still, and for at least the next three years, I will remain on the staff part-time, with a new title: "Founder and Senior Fellow." I will continue to do the kind of work that most feels like a calling to me: being a staff member of the Spiritual Guidance and Group Leaders Programs, as well as of the new program for clergy in congregational leadership announced in this newsletter. I will also continue to lead a few days of local events each year.
Beyond this ministry for Shalem, I will be available as time permits for contractual work with organizations around the country and beyond-especially for leading retreats, workshops, and consultations related to such themes as contemplative orientation to life, the spiritual life of spiritual leaders, the leadership of contemplative groups, spiritual direction, connecting Buddhist and Christian mindfulness and interfaith contributions. Finally, I hope to continue writing in the years ahead and to increase my attention to prayer, meditation, and study.
As I step out of executive leadership the end of this year, I am very happy to say that someone has just been chosen to step into that leadership, after a long and careful process carried out by the board's search committee. That person is the Rev. Dr. Nancy Eggert, who is introduced to you on the next page. She will begin work at Shalem in December, overlapping with me in my last month as Executive Director. I have great confidence that Nancy can listen well to the Spirit's leadings for Shalem, along with the rest of the staff and board of directors, for the next phase of Shalem's mission. Beyond continuing our current work, there are many other possibilities for Shalem's future mission that I'm sure will unfold under her leadership over time, as they are called forth. I plan to support the new Director in every way I can, and I hope that you will do so, also.
My final word in this, my last newsletter article as Executive Director, is one of deep gratitude to God and to all of you who have been part of Shalem's world-wide community over the years. Big and small miracles of grace have happened among us, and I trust they will continue into the distant future. May God's liberating Spirit continue its ever-miraculous work through Shalem, keeping us home in the Gracious One as we move through the mind-moments of our lives. And may that same Spirit lead us, individually and collectively, into many vital ways of contributing to the great Peace for which all creation yearns.