Volume 17, No. 3-Fall, 1993
Table of Contents
Musings on Truth
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Spirit-Led Leadership: More Questions Than Answers
by Steve Kallan
Letting God Lead
by Gerald May
Prayer Journaling? Finding Words, Giving Voice
by Carolyn Tanner Irish
Spacious Heart/Spacious Home
by Lynne Smith
Holy Meeting Grounds
by Tilden Edwards
Musings on Truth
by Rose Mary Dougherty
In reading about South Africa in preparation for some work I will be doing there with Tilden Edwards, I came across a story of a magnificent bird which some have seen and called "the bird of truth." This bird is said to be elusive, rarely seen by individuals, and never within their grasp.
The tale is told of a wise man who spent most of his life looking for the bird. Finally, as he lay dying, he caught a glimpse of it. A feather from its tail dropped into his hand. He could stop looking. He was free to go home.
As I read about this bird, I began to wonder about the nature of truth. I asked myself the question Pilate once asked Jesus, "What is truth?" And I realized that I had no real answer.
I thought of the times that I had considered the facts of a situation as though they were truth, only to find out that the truth somehow transcended those facts. I recalled times when I thought I knew the truth of a person, only to realize that what I knew was the tiniest glimpse into a mystery which lay beyond what I could know. I sometimes wonder if I even want to see the truth.
This summer I visited the Canadian Rockies. There was so much beauty there--the beauty of friends, of mountains, glaciers, lakes, and animals such as elk, mountain goat, and sheep. But it wasn't enough for me. I had my heart set on seeing a bear, a black bear or a grizzly.
A large ceramic bear marked the entrance of the last motel of our trip. I laughingly said, "Well, I guess that's as close to a bear as I'll get." But that evening at dinner, our waitress assured me that there were bears in the area. She said, in fact, that one had clawed her door the night before.
At dawn the next day, I started for a solitary walk. Going down through the parking lot, I saw the bear at a distance. I stopped, turned around, and quickly headed for my room. Then I remembered. That bear wasn't real; it was ceramic. I doubted that I really wanted to see a bear anyway.
My reaction to it, I suspect, is the same as my reaction to truth. I want it until I am faced with it. Then I run. How close will I dare come to truth? Can I ever come close to truth at all?
Sometimes I think that truth is indeed an elusive bird of South Africa or a hidden bear in the Rockies. We hear of its presence yet seldom experience it for ourselves. But then I recall the words of Jesus, "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free."
I heard those words as promise some years ago during a retreat. As I was praying over the death of Jesus, I felt enveloped by love. Then the words, "You will know the truth ...." Whatever else I know or don't know about truth, I believe it is inseparable from love.
I also believe that truth is related to solitude and community, though I'm not sure how. Is it that the seeds of truth are sown in community and nurtured in solitude? Or perhaps the seeds of truth are sown in solitude and nurtured in community. However truth is given and nurtured, its fruits are shared in community as we "speak the truth in love." (Ephesians 4:15)
No one of us has the fullness of truth, which is why I think Jesus' promise of truth is meant to be realized in community. Perhaps that is the reason he later prayed, "May they all be one." (John 17:10) And perhaps the fullness of truth is only a possibility when the oneness for which Jesus prayed becomes a reality.
As Tilden and I prepare to journey to South Africa, I pray that the bird of truth will visit the various communities of which we will be a part. Perhaps like the wise man in the tale, we, too, will catch a glimpse of it. Perhaps we will be given a feather from its tail and be graced with a little more freedom as we return home.
Spirit-Led Leadership: More Questions Than Answers
by Steve Kallan
Can leaders learn to live with ambiguities that cannot be resolved by traditional decision guideposts? Can we give our leaders permission to seek spiritual guidance? Can they have the courage to share their process of discernment with others and, in leading by example, encourage others to seek a different approach?
The nature of organizational leadership is not easily defined. Leaders are commonly thought to head groups or organizations as a function of their position. I prefer to broaden the definition to include those who, through example or action, shape the culture, mission and ethical underpinnings of the organizations of which they are a part. More and more we see leaders emerging who do not hold traditional positions of authority. The best organizations cultivate such growth and provide forums where the positive impact of "multiple leadership" can be harnessed.
The nature of the workplace also is changing. These changes invite us to explore what may take its place. How will it be shaped? How will it be led? With what examples and guidance will leaders form the building blocks of the new workplace? Can prayerfulness, spaciousness and discernment become a part of the culture of organizations?
Since this Spring, a small group at Shalem has been exploring the nature of how leaders in today's businesses and institutions are guided in their work and personal lives. Is there a place for Shalem to support leaders who are open to the Spirit in a process of discernment and contemplative presence? We hope to respond to the struggle leaders face as they try to reconcile how the Spirit leads them.
We believe that there are many leaders who struggle with the disparity between how they lead their personal lives and the expectations and norms imposed by their work world. There may be a path whereby leaders can tap the same sources for guidance in work that they seek for guidance in their personal and spiritual lives. In more traditional business terms, one might say that decisions are guided by profitability, goals, culture and a host of other factors. Can we blend these traditional factors with an openness to be guided by the Spirit?
The typical workplace is filled with expectations, traditions and patterns of expected behavior. Sometimes leaders can act to change these norms by example and by encouragement and almost always with risk. Suppose we added to those typical expectations the desire to discern a preferred course of action without the benefit of marketing data, budget pressures, past practices and the expectant eye of shareholders and peers. Would we ask leaders to take time to reflect on the "right thing to do?" Would we ask them to consider as paramount the ethical or human impact of their actions? Would we provide them with the spaciousness for contemplative prayer? How much do such concerns compete with the pressures and expectations of the modern workplace?
Leaders in today's businesses, unfortunately, must face difficult and often painful decisions about staff cutbacks. Under these circumstances leaders may look more broadly for guidance in their decisions than they may in more routine matters. There are several paths--all legitimate--that can be taken in accomplishing required savings in staff costs. How does the leader decide? To name a few possible paths, he or she can put a premium on being humane, being objective or being legally risk-free.
In taking legitimate actions, how do we define what it is to be "humane?" Does it mean protecting employment for as many people as possible in today's tough job market? Does it mean respecting the loyalty of those who have been with you for a long time? Does it mean paying more than generous severance packages if you must have layoffs?
A different viewpoint is seen from the perspective of the future staff and organization. Is it incumbent on leaders to create a work environment that nurtures human potential even if there is a human cost in getting there? If there were a way to measure gains and losses in human capital, how would they balance against this year's corporate earnings? If a path is cleared for new leaders to emerge, is that somehow more "humane" than preserving the employment of others? Are those choices mutually exclusive?
The point here is not whether one approach is superior to another but how we arrive at a conclusion. The typical guideposts don't always work or apply. Can leaders learn to live with ambiguities that cannot be resolved by traditional decision guideposts? Can we give our leaders permission to seek spiritual guidance? Can they have the courage to share their process of discernment with others and, in leading by example, encourage others to seek a different approach? Is there a path for a cultural change in our organizations or is it enough that some individuals are open to "spirit-led leadership?"
In the year ahead, we hope to continue to explore this type of leadership. Our sense is that executives are growing in awareness of--and comfort with--their spiritual yearnings and are feeling a call for some deepening of spirituality to be manifested in their work. Perhaps the personal example of openness to the Spirit will have the power of true leadership.
Steve, Chief Administrative Officer for Oxford Realty Services Corporation, has given Shalem guidance in personnel matters over the last few years.
Letting God Lead
by Gerald May
Driving into the mountains for my first time of real solitude, I prayed simply to be available for whatever God wanted. I had no idea how to let God guide me, but as soon as I arrived I began to see how different my self-contrived agendas, impulses and habits are from real willingness to be moved by God's Spirit. The difference is like night and day, but I cannot describe it in words. I encourage you to explore it yourself. Pray for it, and give yourself the opportunity to be taught what it's like to really let God lead. If you can get a day alone somewhere, sometime, explore what it means to have no agenda, no destination, no object or project in mind, no intention apart from a simple desire to be available for God's guidance.
In order to let God lead, you have to be relatively free from the things that normally determine your thoughts and actions. I find it best to be outdoors, away from the habits of household and civilization. Familiar surroundings always seem to demand certain activities from me. I sit a certain way in a chair, act a certain way in a room, think along particular lines in a particular place. Outdoors, especially in a fairly wild place, I'm much fresher, more immediately available for whatever inspiration might come.
Solitude is virtually essential for me. When I'm near other people I find myself habitually adjusting myself to them, concerned about their needs and expectations, or at least wondering what they're thinking. The simple possibility of other people, even strangers, seeing me makes me self-consciousness enough to censor my behavior.
You may be less restrained than I, but we all have our versions of self-control. The important thing is to find a setting that is as free of social and habitual restrictions as possible, a situation where you can be any way and do anything that strikes you, where you can be outrageous and wild or dull and vegetative and it doesn't matter. No one is going to suffer from your actions or think badly of you if you look foolish. Then you can say to God in your heart, "I really want to be yours for a while. Guide me, lead me. I'm truly willing." Willingness-in-action is born in freedom from restraint.
But then you also encounter your own internal restraints: your expectations, your private mental habits, the controls that arise from your ego. If you are like me, your mind is used to leading and does not relinquish the role easily. Even in wanting to be radically available for God, my mind still has ideas as to how this should happen and what it should look like. Most often I feel the particular discomfort of having no identified objective or occupation, no purpose, reason, goal or destination to give me a sense of who I am and what I'm up to. The mind needs to put such concerns in God's hands, and it may not be able to do so right away.
It's a little like practiced spontaneity, a contradiction in terms. I'm standing in a field and I want God to lead me. Immediately my mind comes up with ideas. "If God were guiding me, I imagine I'd walk over there and look at those trees," or "I think God would want me to sit still here and become very quiet." Or perhaps I just find something sort of holy to think about. At such times I need to pray for mercy, for God's grace to ease my habits of directing everything, to soften my demands upon myself, to "gentle" my needs to come up with something worthwhile to be doing, to replace my sense of responsibility with a spirit of simple responsiveness.
There is a huge difference, I have found, between acting as if God were leading--which is what I do when my ego tries to decide and implement what God wants--and really letting God lead, which happens when my ego stops filtering and controlling and begins simply to see and appreciate.
Being alone and free also relieves us from confusing self-questioning about discernment: Is this really God's leading, or is it just an impulse? Am I responding to the Spirit or just following a whim? I have found nothing more disruptive to my availability to God than my own arrogant attempts to figure out God's will. Perhaps we have to go through such gyrations in making important life decisions, but in this kind of setting, where we are free for a while to do anything or nothing, there is no great risk and no one but God and us to see what happens.
For the first time last Spring, we gave people an option to spend a day alone in nature at Shalem's Spiritual Life of Spiritual Leaders Retreat/Conference. My basic suggestion to them was "Let yourself be led." People's responses to the experience were profound. Some said they had never before been able to risk such abandon. Many described the clear dichotomy, and sometimes the struggle, between personal agendas and inspirations that were "given." Commonly, people found it difficult even to begin walking without having a specific destination in mind, some place to be going. Others would see a certain spot and think, "I'll go sit down there," only to feel themselves led on to another place that they would not have chosen themselves.
One man picked out a beautiful grassy area under a spreading tree but was almost pulled another quarter of a mile into the middle of a dump, where he had one of the most powerful experiences of prayer in his life. A chic, impeccably dressed woman wound up sitting in a mud puddle with a congregation of butterflies. A man who characterized himself as always having to see what is over the next hill found himself led to sit down half way up a hill. He struggled with himself and with God, finally saying, "God, I'm sorry, but I just gotta run up and see what's over the hill; then I'll come right back and sit down here."
Such experiences may sound whimsical, but if I were asked what one thing has been most valuable in my time alone in the wilderness, it would be this exploration of letting God lead. It has given me courage and a deep confidence in God's goodness and presence. The divine Spirit now seems so intimate, so immediately available and willing to guide that I have trouble thinking of praying to or discerning the will of a God "out there" somewhere. The holy other-ness of God remains, but it's like the promise of Deuteronomy 30: "The Word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart."
Prayer Journaling? Finding Words, Giving Voice
by Carolyn Tanner Irish
"What we need is a prayer book with as many blank pages as printed ones; a book in which we may write things that are of personal weight and concern; in whichwe make or paste pictures or poems or fragments of letters; in which we note the questions we find we must face." (Alan Ecclestone, Yes to God)
One of the college application essays my son had to tackle last fall was, "Why write? Why communicate?" It was a good question, though one I had never seriously asked myself. I have always loved words, language, thinking, writing, talking, and--appreciating others who do so as well--the general "why" of it seemed a bit rhetorical to me.
But the question does have interest in the context of contemplative practice. As I have begun to prepare for a short series of workshops on spiritual journaling in the coming year at Shalem, I do wonder what of spiritual significance might be at work in those of us drawn to "finding words and giving voice" in journaling. Shalem groups mostly encourage and protect silence, wordlessness, unknowing, though we usually offer a few moments for journaling as well, thus honoring the images and thoughts that may arise. But why? "Blank pages," yes, but why pages at all? What does journaling serve?
My deepest response to these questions comes simply from awareness and affirmation of the witness of all generations that spiritual life--the mysterious, life-giving interface of human spirit and Holy Spirit--quite naturally "has issue." We are not left unchanged, for it is in and through communion with God that spiritual community and communication are conceived, formed, birthed and nourished. Spiritual communion draws us together and to a variety of forms (including images) which may serve continuity and connectedness in our personal and common life with God.
Very simply, I find that the practice of journaling assists my desire and willingness to stay in direct, immediate communion with God. I know I don't always do so, but the journal reminds me that this is my best and deepest hope. Blank pages awaken my attention to what is real here and now, beyond and beneath all the coverings of pretense, illusion, egotism, fear, woundedness, unfaith and stinginess. Such pages--open, waiting, inviting--also remind me of my freedom for the possibility embedded in this moment. They challenge the dull comfort of automatic pilot, as though to say, "You are a person, alive on this planet earth; now look! listen! learn! live!"
Thus it is the engagement of prayer journaling, more than any particular issue or product of it, that is most helpful to me. Yet it, too, like so many other helpful means, has considerable potential for distorting our ongoing openness to God. It may take on a life of its own, for example, so that we become attached to our journals, enamored with our filled-up pages, hardly wanting to pray without them there to "overhear" us. Journals can become literary masterpieces, or at least the seed of a good sermon, letter or book, but this cannot be the primary intent of prayer journaling. Alternatively, the journal may demand our attention in such a way that we feel guilty if we haven't kept it up. Journaling is often part of a dedicated discipline, but all disciplines exist to serve, not to be served.
Realities and possibilities, burdens and attachments--all of these point to some of the struggles we face in journaling, as in life. But journaling is also about celebration. "Finding words and giving voice" are among the deeply joyful ways we are given to live out our vocation of "glorifying and enjoying God forever."
In the context of human and divine communion, "vocation" means what we hear of God's voice speaking to us through various mediating structures as well as directly. Vocation also names our response--in life, work, word, song. We find words and give voice in myriad ways because God's voice invites response.
There are familiar traces of ongoing struggle and celebration in the pages of my journal. Here I noted the questions I found I had to face and sometimes the few insights that came to me; there I tried to name and honor the Spirit at work in me--in my disillusionment, my liberation, my grief and my thanksgiving. Even with all the messiness and gaps--the missed days and weeks, the fragmented thoughts and irrelevancies--it remains a kind of witness to my life with-in-for God.
Who is it for? God knows. What does it serve? God knows. But Alan Ecclestone, an Anglican priest, seems to have a good guess:
...our business is not to invent a peculiar song of our own or make do with a hotch-potch of scraps got from others, but to discover our part in the song of the earth, the music of the spheres, the Lord's song, and the hymn of creation...and give it utterance. - (Yes to God)
Spacious Heart/Spacious Home
by Lynne Smith
"Show us the edge of Your dream for Shalem." With these words of prayer, Tilden named our common desire at a recent gathering of staff and Executive Committee members to seek together a vision of Shalem's future. Over the last two or three years, a growing sense of our own and our world's deep need for God's love has been causing us to wonder whether there is an invitation to a larger calling for Shalem. The Spirit has been moving in us and among us in many new ways. As one Board member put it, "Every part of Shalem seems to be in movement."
This movement, felt first in individual lives and hearts opening more fully to tenderness and wisdom, is moving also through Shalem as an organization: in the energy directed to rethinking and re prioritizing our staff structure and compensation. In the clear sense of trust from which Shalem could act facing deficit budgets. In the recent abundance of giving in the annual fundraising campaign, and the graceful ease of reaching the goal for the Shalem Fund. In the Shalem pilgrims' powerful encounter with the loving Holy One in the Egyptian desert. In the overwhelming response to Richard Rohr's Action and Contemplation Workshop. In our own deepening love for and trust with one another. In our willingness to claim the rightness of Shalem becoming more visible in the world.
An important part of this evolving process is the acknowledgement of Shalem's need and desire for a "home-space" more conducive to fulfilling our ministry. We have a deep sense that our offerings are for more people than have been reached. A long-time Shalem friend and member of our Advisory Council first prodded us three years ago to contemplate such a possibility, to begin exploring it with open minds and hearts before urgent need might press a decision. We have followed that advice, praying over many facets of the question, in many ways--individually, in various committee settings, from time to time in special working groups. Some of you joined Shalem staff and committee members last year in several "Spacious Quest" gatherings to be with these questions in an intentional way. Some have shared practical and fantastical ideas and desires in a "Dream Book," a communal journal of jottings, suggestions, longings, drawings. A number of Executive Committee meetings, with the participation of staff members, have focused on prayerful discernment about "home."
This past spring, a confluence of events seemed to be inviting us further along this path. Thanksgiving in Shalem's 20th anniversary has given fresh energy and trust that God is at work through Shalem, that this is somehow a watershed time for us, that perhaps Shalem is poised on the brink of a larger future. This suggests greater visibility, perhaps a more known identity. Early in the year, one of our Board members saw with clarity and grace the congruence of her personal ability and desire to provide a financial base for Shalem to create a space right for us now. As she shared that awareness with the Executive Committee and the Board, we felt powerfully the integrity of her calling, and her major financial gift to Shalem has become to us yet another sign of the invitation to keep moving forward, following patiently and openly the light that is given us.
The way has been both dark and light at different points, and each of us has received new learnings about willingness to live with mystery and ambiguity. There have been many other learnings as well: that discernment is often an evolutionary process, marked by periods of impasse and "dark night," and that we are closer to knowing God in that very unknowing. That our real task in all this--as in all things--is to grow deeper in love with God and with one another. That some of our resistance to looking for new space can be a desire that the looking--and the subtle allure of the new location's particularities--not distract us from the real work of love. That this process of discerning the possibilities of a new home can be a catalyst for sharing and respecting each other's fears, hopes, and unique expressions of God's love and wisdom. That the integrity of Shalem's heart does not depend on the details of physical space, that all places and times can be holy, that for all of us our true space is our presence to God with other people.
We are mindful of Jesus' sense of not having a home. We feel Shalem as a "heart-space," an inner home for so many, even for some who have never been physically at Shalem yet receive courage from just knowing Shalem exists. We trust that the One who loves us will ready our hearts for whatever home we find.
At the request of the Executive Committee, a staff working group has been developing priorities for new program and office space and has offered clarity on a number of practical points. They have suggested that:
- We should consider our next move as being able to meet our needs for the next 7 to 10 years.
- It will probably be better for us to buy rather than rent new property.
- Though we have considered the possibility of including space for overnight retreats and our residency programs, this may be a larger step than we are called to at this point.
- It is important to consider potential new programs and services in Shalem's ministry in the future, so that the space can be provided for these activities.
- We should look for at least 12,000 square feet (about double our current space), preferably within the Washington Beltway.
We invite your prayers, ideas, suggestions, and "leads" in finding a new home. As the staff working group expressed it, "The most important thing about Shalem space over the years has been and will continue to be its ability to help our ongoing discernment about how to be open to the Spirit at work in the present moment." We are confident that the Spirit is at work in this moment of Shalem's life, and as in all things, is gently leading us in this quest for a new home.
Lynne, currently President of Shalem's Board of Directors, is a long-time participant in Shalem programs.
Holy Meeting Grounds
by Tilden Edwards
My wife and I sat in the front pew of the simple "Santuario" in the small New Mexico village of Chimayo as a constant stream of people passed by, often touching or kissing the homely statues of Mary, Jesus, and various saints and praying awhile on their way to the side chapel. There they scooped some dirt from a hole in the adobe floor that they would take home for themselves or someone else to use for healing purposes. They were a mix of women, men, children, Hispanics, Native Americans, Anglos, and according to the Roman Catholic priest there, people of many religious traditions. They had come because people had claimed to be healed here--healed for centuries--healed when it was a Native American holy place, healed when a Hispanic or Pueblo farmer allegedly found a cross on the spot duplicating a famous cross in a Guatemalan healing shrine, which also had been built over a Native American healing ground. On Good Friday many thousands of people walk on pilgrimage to this shrine.
The simple faith and hunger for God of many of those passing before us helped open our hearts. I felt empowered to let go of my old critical mind that didn't like cheap plaster statues or credulous acts. I also saw the petty worries and grasping of my mind fall away. I felt available to the healing presence of those people's faith and of the One they had come for, who seems to show up most vividly in the presence of simple trust. My wife began to cry as she sensed a sudden powerful invitation to come closer to God. The early history of brutal exploitation of Native Americans by the Hispanics and later the Anglos that I had been reading about was somehow redeemed in this place as everyone laid their differences at the door and came hungry for the One who shows our lives as loved and connected. Only signs of the divine love of the past lived here, not the human exploitations. These signs included the many hope-- and thank-offerings of little saints' figures, rosaries, and hand-written notes stuck on the walls, along with thrown-away crutches.
Simple incarnate signs of present divine love could be felt at Chimayo, too, especially in its caretakers. Despite the waves of pilgrims daily, we were treated with the kindness due rare visitors. The gift shop lady after a long day of customers opened up for us well after closing time and treated us as friends. We gave her a copy of the day's local newspaper that recounted the story of the 83-year-old woman who each day for decades had devotedly swept and straightened up the shrine. The lone priest we approached generously took us around the church as though we were the first visitors in days instead of probably the five hundredth already on that day. As he recounted many unheralded local healing stories, he paused briefly many times to lovingly bless people and candles brought to him. The security guard wandered around unobtrusively with a smile that silently seemed to say, "I'm glad you're here. I want to respect and encourage your prayer."
Forgiveness and new beginnings are enhanced in a hospitable place like this. It's as though God always insures that there will be sacred spaces where we can find hope for the future and reprieve from the despairing cycles of human sin and fragmentation of the past. The symbols of faith at Chimayo were primarily from one religious tradition, but there they felt not so much sectarian as symbols of a divine loving reality to which we all belong.
In that sanctuary I sensed some parallel with our Shalem contemplative groups where people gather with a yearning for God, leaving much of their sophistication at the door in favor of a "second naivete," as Paul Ricoeur once put it. A simple trust of the reality and goodness of divine presence is the bottom line in those groups, through whatever practices and talks a leader may offer. The common willingness for such simplicity and the encouraging hospitality attempted by the group's caretaker can be very empowering of real openness to God.
People often come to contemplative groups seeking some kind of healing, too. They may come with some particular healing in mind, as people often do at Chimayo, but if they sit wanting God even more than they want a healing, they open to an even deeper healing, that of their relationship with God. As God offers that healing, they are freed more and more from the past, freed to embrace the fresh grace of the living moment. They show more signs of the radiant, compassionate souls they're meant to be. The contemplative group offers stimulus and support for this mysterious expansion of the spiritual heart. In a less self-conscious and more sustained way, I suspect that such a deeper sense of healing and spiritual nurture shows itself often at Chimayo, as well.
Most of us need special places and special groups where the clutter of our cultural and personal egos can lighten and we can see the divine again. In finding such support we discover an amazing array of companions. The least formally educated and theologically sophisticated person may well become our best inspirer. The most sophisticated may rely less on their knowledge and be open for simple trust. Persons of all kinds can be discovered as true soul-kin. Spiritual hunger and trusting willingness to be opened beyond what we know or understand can be the deepest human meeting ground, the place for the most hope for our fractured human family.
I believe God always is shaping such meeting grounds for us. Some of them are one-of-a-kind meetings that happen surprisingly amidst other things in our daily life. Others are more regularly planned and intentional. None of them is immune from temptations to exploit or misappropriate human spiritual hunger, so we need to be discerning in our responses, but these are worthwhile risks in our search for the real gold of spiritual place and companionship. Authentic spiritual meeting grounds are seedbeds of our true humanity and community. In them we learn to live humbly by the daily miracles ceaselessly flowing from the divine hand, shared with one another.