Volume 19, No. 3-Fall, 1995
Table of Contents
Breath of God
by Jay McDaniel
Listen to the Mockingbird
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Healing Through the Seasons of Our Lives
by Bill Plitt
Angels At The Edge
by Gerald May
The Wholeness and Holiness of Our Planet
by Ellie Wegener
"Surprise Me!" - The Practice of Fundraising
by Connie Clark
Embracing Heaven in Our Midst
by Tilden Edwards
Breath of God
by Jay McDaniel
Can dogs and backyards and rivers and air and breathing offer spiritual direction? Can our concerns for justice, and our powers to help bring it about, be enriched by the "green grace" of nature?
Traditional Native elders--Sioux, for example--would have answered: "But of course." They sought guidance from the animal spirits, from the elements, and from pipe smoking. These were aids to "discernment." But Christianity and other book-based traditions have been more neglectful of such palpable bonds. In general, the classical religions (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, etc.) have emphasized human-human relations and human-divine relations, over human-Earth and human-animal relations. As a result, they-we-have neglected the revelatory power of the "other ninety-nine percent of creation."
I offer here an example of how I have received and am receiving spiritual direction from an animal with whom I have been bonded for some years; from my father, who recently died and with whom I am also bonded; and from a most intimate of earth-processes, that of "breathing."
As I write this, my dog, Nathan, lies listlessly in the veterinary hospital, suffering from an infection and anemia. These are his last days. I've had him ten years, and I love him. I've tried to be with him as he is dying: to touch him and to be present to him. Amid it all, I've paid special attention to his breathing. I've been "keeping watch."
Keeping watch is not new to me. For many years now, I've been keeping watch on my own breathing, understood as a portable icon. Every morning I sit in the half-lotus position and, as best I can, attend to the rhythms of my own breathing: in and out, in and out. I've learned this from Zen. For me, such attention is a form of prayer. Often I can't pray with words, but I can pray with breathing.
Now I'm attending Nathan's breathing, not my own. This is a different kind of keeping watch. Still, it requires zazen-like mindfulness. I cannot make Nathan breathe. I wish I could. I can only be present to his breathing, attentively. This is how I pray for him and with him. Surely God must pray in this way, too. Surely God, too, must keep watch on Nathan's breathing. Not a sparrow falls without God's knowledge.
Nor a person. Last month I found myself joining God in mindfulness of still another, even more intimate, struggle with breathing. The breather was my father. He was 81, and he had just undergone open-heart surgery--surgery which my family did not want but the doctors performed anyway. I was with him in an intensive care unit of a hospital in San Antonio. He was confused and in great pain. I could do nothing to help him, except to be with him, in a spirit of intimacy and prayer. I cried a lot. I prayed a lot. But I followed his breathing, too. With Dad, too, I kept watch.
It's too soon to write about my own experience of Dad's death. The experience seems as if it happened yesterday. I miss him, but he is available to me in ways not possible before. What I can say, however, is that Dad's breathing==and Nathan's and my own==have been occasions for great learning. By keeping watch over breathing, I've learned that each breath is a unique moment; that each breath is a living and dying; and that the last breath-in life as we know it==is an opportunity for still deeper trust in God, both for those who undergo that last breath and for those who witness it.
Can the Earth offer spiritual direction? Of course. Most of us already know this. Our souls have been nourished by sacred places we knew as a child, by animals we've loved, by parks we've walked in, by vegetables we've cooked, by wilderness areas we've camped in, by air we've breathed, by breathing itself. We've learned to feel the "green grace" of the Earth, its creatures and its processes.
But I've learned of late that the Earth's impermanence, too, offers us lessons. Nowhere is this impermanence more manifest than in breathing. In part the lesson is this: You cannot hold on, not even to breathing, whether your own or someone else's. But in part the lesson is also this: Even as you cannot hold on, you can trust, without clinging, in a Breathing that transcends breathing.
Who speaks this lesson? Some might call it the "inner teacher." I call it, as well, the breath of God, the Holy Spirit. I am grateful to Nathan, and to my Dad, and to breathing itself, for helping me hear Her voice. I sense that when we truly let go, even of our own breathing, we rest in the Spirit's arms.
Jay, a professor of religion at Hendrix College, is the author of five books on theology and the environment, the latest being With Roots and Wings. This article is taken from one of his Spiritual Guidance Program papers.
Listen to the Mockingbird
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Recently, I have been struck by the song of the mockingbird. I have one (the same one every day, I think) who sits in a tree in my backyard, picking up the song of other birds and singing all evening long. I noticed that even when my neighbor is playing classical music, the bird seems to pick up that melody. One evening at Shalem's summer retreat as we sat with windows open, listening to evening sounds, I heard another mockingbird. Later, in our sharing, a woman who had also heard the bird, told the story of a tenor singing The Wayfarer, composed by Gustav Mahler, in an amphitheater in her hometown. Midway through his performance, a nearby mockingbird joined him and stayed with him until the end. As the performance ended, the tenor turned first to the mockingbird and applauded it, then turned to the audience and bowed.
For some reason the mockingbird speaks to me of prayer and of love. There was a time when I thought I knew how to pray and how to love. I was good at sitting quietly and at saying the prayers I had learned as a child. I was good at taking care of people. But then I saw a quote from Thomas Merton that read, "Prayer and love are learned when prayer has become impossible and the heart has turned to stone." I also read John of the Cross who said something similar--that there comes a time when God needs to divest us of that which we have come most to depend upon (in my case my ways of praying and loving) so that God can teach us prayer and love, can teach us who we really are. I was sure Thomas Merton and John of the Cross must be mistaken. What they say may be true for some people, but when you have a good thing going, why would God take it from you?
Life has changed for me since my initial reaction to the words of Thomas Merton and John of the Cross. I no longer feel that I know how to pray. I know even less about it when I am supposed to be telling others about it or leading them in prayer. I also notice that I feel very little compassion and that my normal ways of caring for people just aren't available to me. Truly it seems that prayer as I have known it has become impossible and my heart has turned to stone.
For some reason I am not discouraged about this. In fact I am full of hope. It seems that something good is happening that is not in my control. The impossibility of my making prayer happen and the difficulty of caring for others as I would want to seem to be ridding me of the many ways I have tried to secure myself with God and others and ridding me also of the image of myself as a praying, caring person. Yet something more authentic is being given. Sometimes I notice that prayer is happening when I haven't set out to be praying. At other times I feel a nudge to say something to a person, or let what I would normally say go unsaid. I don't feel that I have to fix everyone. I am learning to trust God's prayer in me and God's care for the world through me.
Perhaps my heart is becoming a bit like the mockingbird, listening attentively to God's prayer in me and letting it be my own, hearing the song of God's love and echoing it to the world.
Healing Through the Seasons of Our Lives
by Bill Plitt
Two years ago, I faced a career change in education that forced me to look at numerous alternatives. One of those options was to return to classroom teaching after more than twenty years of administrative roles. I spent the next several months resisting the possibility of such a choice. After all, wouldn't this be a descent on the traditional career ladder of professional growth?
I felt conflicted. On the one hand, I was convinced that teaching young people is an important vocation, and why not me? I had been telling others it was important for them to do all these years. Why not "walk the talk?" On the other hand, could I still relate to young people? Might I have more impact on education performing some other function? These questions and others filled my reflective moments. I regularly sought God's will, but it was not forthcoming in words I could understand. I posed my dilemma with a group of Shalem friends that I had come to know well over a period of eight years. They had been there for me at other times.
During those eight years, five of us had been meeting for group spiritual direction at Shalem. The first year was led by Rose Mary Dougherty. Since then we have travelled down many of life's paths together: expressing joy in the births and adoption of children, enduring the trials of raising young adolescents, encountering career changes, giving comfort in the loss of family members, supporting members during serious illnesses, and journeying with a member during her last days--the whole life experience. The travel has become a healing experience through the middle seasons of our lives.
The group generally meets for approximately two hours each month, which allows for fifteen or so minutes of centering time, a brief meditation by the leader for that meeting, and individual reflection time of 20 minutes each. Music, interspersed throughout the meeting time in the form of chanting, singing and quiet instrumental play, has appeared as an important communications tool for us and as another channel for speaking with God. The meeting then ends with prayer and celebration.
The members of the group, who have committed to be present for one another during the reflecting time, listen prayerfully while each member reflects on the intervening days since the previous meeting. The long history behind the relationships bring both strengths and power to the insights shared, as we travel through our personal experiences together. The group walks a fine line between the caring for emotional needs of a counseling group and the spiritual need of recognizing God's activity in our lives as believers. Only a careful centering at the beginning of the meeting through a rotating leadership keeps the meeting from drifting away from its spiritual center and purpose. The group often revisits the need to maintain a disciplined approach to spiritual direction.
In my experience with the group, a sense of clarity about God's presence in events of my own life begins a few days in anticipation of our monthly meeting as I begin to prepare myself for the time of mutual reflection. But most times, clarity comes more fully when I begin to reflect during the meeting itself on some major events of the previous month that may or may not have had obvious connections with one another. Often, there are times of grace that I share with my intimate spiritual partners, which they definitely have become during these years we have been together.
It was, therefore, not only easy but essential to seek guidance about where to invest my professional energies in the future from a group of people who followed closely, through prayer, a significant portion of my life's journey. Not only did I lift up my struggle over career choice during these meetings, but I asked the group for additional time for their presence with me as I considered options. It was clear throughout all of the meetings with my friends that I had something to give young people and that God was calling me to do so. However, it was difficult for me to accept such an easy response to a seemingly complex set of choices.
As the final weeks closed down towards the opening of school, so did many of my choices. It appeared that God was going to take me kicking and screaming back to the classroom whether I was ready or not. However, there was a significant difference between how I felt when I first faced the possibility of returning to the classroom and how I felt on that first day in class with my students. I realized then that the opportunity to teach young people again was truly God's call to me for service. My friends helped me see such a distinction through their vigil with me. All my fears, anxieties, and feelings of inadequacies that had built for months dissolved when I was able to see each day as an opportunity to serve in God's world as a teacher.
God often works in subtle ways that surprise most of us control freaks. My own struggle to discern God's will for me in the work space is a good example. I kept trying to fit my own limitedly-defined square peg of understanding into the fuller realm of the round hole for which God intended me. On most evenings, I leave our Shalem group with both reassurances for the many ways God graces my life and a new set of questions to ponder further. I am learning to trust God's voice more in the challenges I face during my middle seasons.
Bill, an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, is a teacher at Falls Church High School in Fairfax, VA. The group he describes started in a Shalem Group Spiritual Direction group and continues to use that model of spiritual guidance.
Angels At The Edge
by Gerald May
It is impossible to thank everyone personally for all the prayers I am receiving. I hope these notes of my recent journey will serve as a small gift in return.
April 15, 1995, Holy Saturday. I put my canoe into the water for the first time this year, and I feel completely happy for the first time in my life. I used to be happy about some things but not about others. But now, even with the war in Bosnia and so much other suffering in the world, I am truly happy. I have such a sense of completion that I lightly wonder if I might be going to die soon.
April 21. The happiness continues steadily; I'm sure it's not hormones--it is joy. Memories of my trip to Bosnia last summer come to me frequently, and with them God's presence is so intimate and delicate that I am filled with gratitude.
May 4. I discover a lump in my right testicle. I go through a day of denial, refusing to think about it. Still the joy and sense of God's closeness remain.
May 15. My urologist says, "This needs to be removed quickly." I begin to say good-bye to my testicle and tell my family and friends that I might have cancer.
May 23. It is like a hernia operation, and I'm surprised at how much it hurts. Sometimes in the pain, I think of Bosnia, yet still there is joy.
May 24. I teach at the Spiritual Guidance Program residency, hobbling on my walking stick, forgetting most of what happens there.
May 27. The word is getting around; cards and phone calls are arriving from everywhere. I am overwhelmingly prayed for. My gratitude deepens and again I think of Bosnia. In the evening my sons ply me with margaritas and testicle jokes. Humor helps fear, but it hurts to laugh.
May 28. My incision hurts from all the laughing last night. I fear I've pulled my stitches--I cannot bear the idea of being incapacitated. For the first time, I am depressed. Yet the joy remains.
May 30. Pathology report: malignant lymphoma, diffuse large cell type. The urologist transfers my care to oncology. I spend a week thinking about putting my affairs in order and how it might feel to die. Fear grows, yet still I feel deep joy and gratitude. I am in God's hands. I can feel them holding me. And Bosnia.
June 6. My oncologist says, "You're fixable." He means I'll recover. All I'll need is some short-term chemotherapy. I tell my family and friends. Great celebration.
June 20. I intend to dig a hole in mother earth and get in it for a while. I've had this wonderful yearning-leading to get as absolutely close to the earth as I can for what healing She wants to give me.
June 21. I am suddenly touched by the two words "vulnerability" and "innocence". The first means literally "capable of being wounded" and the second means "not yet wounded". I don't know why they touch me, but it's very tender. Maybe it's because both speak of undefendedness, and I have had enough defendedness in my life.
June 22, Morning. My oncologist has shocking news. My bone marrow is not only positive for lymphoma, but it is a different kind: low grade, small cell. He has never seen such a double-diagnosis. He thinks I'm still "fixable," but the treatment will now have to be extremely aggressive: six months of high-dose chemotherapy, probably a bone marrow transplant and losing my other testicle. He asks if I want something to help me sleep. I walk out of his office unsteadily. I have to go immediately to another residency to introduce Jack Welch's seminar on John of the Cross. I only have time to call and tell my wife. "We'll make it," she says through tears. "You're still fixable; that's what counts." As I walk to the car I know being fixable is not what counts, not to me. "God damn it, I'm not going to go through all that! Here I am feeling better than I ever have in my life, and they'll turn me into a poisoned, hollowed-out, castrated shell. No way!" I rant as I drive, wondering if there's some statement I could make by sacrificing my life in Bosnia. "If I'm going to die, I'll choose the time and place before I become incapacitated." It feels so good to think about taking things into my own hands.
June 22, Afternoon. As I'm listening to the wisdom of John of the Cross, a radically different image comes to mind. I now picture myself lying on a hospital bed, completely passive, having surrendered my will entirely. Strangely, this image feels just as good as the opposite one I had entertained a couple of hours ago.
June 22, Evening. I talk and cry with my family. We promise to be there for each other. Later, I pray about my two opposing images. I quickly see that both are ways of trying to regain control; even the image of surrender is my picture, something I'd choose. But I know what I really want, what I've always really wanted, is God--and what God wants. For this I can only be present to what's given each moment. All strategies gracefully disappear. I am committed, neither to a noble death nor to a battle against cancer, neither to self-assertion nor to passivity, but to being as open and responsive to God as I can possibly be. All else will come from this.
July 14. After endless tests at NIH, I begin a six-month course of chemotherapy. I have a venous line in my neck and am carrying around a pack that pumps drugs into my bloodstream. It hurts, and the drugs are already making me feel bad. But joy and gratitude remain.
July 22. I felt worse all week, and now have been hospitalized for jaundice and GI tract paralysis. I am permitted nothing by mouth and feel I'm dying of thirst.
July 23. I dream of drinking from a clear mountain stream. I awaken, parched, praying for real water. I remember two little girls last summer in Bosnia, filling a bucket from the single working water tap in their Muslim side of town. Never again will I take water for granted.
July 24. In the night, in the midst of pain and thirst, I have a vision. God has placed me upon a promontory and has spread out before me a small version of the universe. It is a beautiful rolling meadow, and I am meant to see every part of it. All around its circumference I can see where the universe ends, where someone could wander off and disappear forever. But I see also that along the edges God has stationed angels to keep all things safe. I think there must be some place left unguarded, some unprotected precipice. I spend hours searching, yet the angels are everywhere; there is nowhere outside God's protection. The vision fades and words come: "So you see, God has everything covered, without exception. Because God overlooks nothing, there is never any need to worry about anything, ever. You can worry, and you probably will worry, but you never have to worry, about anything, ever."
July 25. I realize the difference between worrying and caring. Worrying comes from mistrusting God's grace, from believing I must cope with things myself. But simple caring is nothing other than my own love and grace. It is the place from which I become an active, privileged participant in God's grace, where I join the angels at the edge. No wonder such gratitude.
In the afternoon, I am given real water to drink.
The Wholeness and Holiness of Our Planet
by Ellie Wegener
One hundred kilometers from Moscow there is a gray town, Novasipkof, dotted with tiny old houses with deep slanted roofs. They are guarded by dull gray boxes of apartment houses. The people hurry to work or school, or to the shops, as in any other town. You cannot see tragedy here.
Nevertheless, the residents are stuck with an invisible foe. Seven years ago, Chernobyl's nuclear reactor cracked open and released its nuclear gasses to the world. Russian "experts" were pressed to action and came up with a deadly solution to save the ten million people of Moscow who were directly in the path of the winds blowing the residue: seed the clouds over Novasipkof! Let them rain the nuclear particles down! Sacrifice the people of Novasipkof! Save the millions in Moscow!
The plan succeeded. The only evidence today is the record of children with leukemia, the people with all kinds of cancer, the still-births of babies, animals, and birds. They surpass figures anywhere else. The ponds and rivers still look inviting, but you dare not swim there. The woods are green in the summer, and beckon, but you are forbidden to enter. The forests are the roots of local folklore, songs and recreation. But today, the invisible nuclear monster lurks there. The villagers must satisfy their longings by papering their living room walls with scenes of trees and forests, and gaze at them from their chairs.
Man-made misery? Joanna Macy, at her Shalem-sponsored lecture and workshop in May, shared with us her work with the people of Novasipkof. She offered them a space to grieve, to respond to the evil that had befallen them. She told us: "All is interwoven. It is not good versus evil. We all find both everywhere. Nor does evil depend upon you making it. It is in the ground in which we grow." We have invented nuclear power. We have seeded the clouds above Novasipkof.
The largest problem of today's world, according to Macy, is the degradation of our planet. The solution is its healing. Unless we can interpret this for ourselves, it is too big an issue for us to deal with. Macy described to us in her lecture four approaches to the problem, four images of ourselves related to the cosmos.
The first approach is to view life as a Battleground, a battle between good and evil. With this view comes the assumption that we can identify good and absolutize it. The Crusaders of medieval times are a good example. What they defined as evil, they believed God gave them the right to destroy.
In the second approach, the world is viewed as a Trap. When we see the world this way, we believe there is no good in it. We try to extricate ourselves from it. This inspires feelings of contempt for nature and the natural forces in us.
A third view is that the world is a Lover. When we believe this we believe we must fall in love with the world to heal it, even the broken parts. But can we as Americans love anything that is broken? For three generations, advertising has taught us to throw out that which is broken. We have learned to "worship perfection!" "buy a new one!" "buy happiness!"
Macy believes a fourth approach can save our world: World as Self. With this view the world is our body. Do we know it?
At the workshop, Macy asked each of us to give our name, and state something we love on the planet. So simple it took some thinking! Did we get in our own way? Did we carefully choose something we wanted our neighbors to associate with us: Love? Babies? Flowers? Peace?
A one-on-one exercise probed deeper. "If you cry about the world's problems, what would you cry about most?" We had to answer this to our partner. Suddenly we faced true grit! It's so easy to complain! What do we cry about most? What really matters? Are our little problems important? Or those that affect the world? Which is which?
The next one-on-one exercise seemed even tougher. "If God has a way for you in this world, what is it?" Do we dare tell anyone that what we do from day to day is God's plan? I risked stating that organizing neighborhoods to help people protect each other and perhaps save lives, just might be what God had in mind for me--maybe! It sounded sanctimonious.
The process of interaction with each other at the Macy workshop forced us to define compassion in personal terms. What am I compassionate about? How much do I really care about the world? or about myself? If evil is made by the human mind, it can be unmade by the human mind. So can love. If we can connect with our compassion, we move toward the view of World as Self. My own compassion reached out that day to embrace the people in the room. I cared about them and about Washington, DC. And about the United States. And my mind stretched on across the oceans. We must be involved in the saving of the earth for the next generations.
Alone, I feel helpless and sick. However, there is an interdependence in all creation. I don't want to hear its cries. But if I can share this with you, perhaps together we can feel what the world feels. Then you can move toward one more person who can reach out to still another. And as we connect with each other, we can move with love toward the world.
Ellie, a Lutheran laywoman, is a community organizer and long-time friend of Shalem. These are her reflections on Joanna Macy's workshop, "Spiritual Ground for World Engagement," held on May 19, 1995.
"Surprise Me!" - The Practice of Fundraising
by Connie Clark
At eight years old, while watching Captain Tugg--the local venue for Popeye cartoons--I became a fundraiser. Captain Tugg promoted Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) carnivals, backyard events children could run and host. Using a kit provided by MDA, kids could make a few dollars for the cause. With the help of my parents, I sponsored two neighborhood carnivals. We probably raised about $5.00 each time. I felt a sense of great accomplishment and purpose, just as I did when filling my "mite box" with pennies each year for the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief. I loved putting the penny-stuffed cardboard box in the alms basin.
The Gospel-based moral lessons I learned at church and from my parents became real for me when I raised and gave money. In giving to people in need, and encouraging others to do so as well, I found a rare area of consonance between those Bible lessons and "real life." There was, and is, meaning and joy in asking for money and in giving it.
Today I am a professional beggar, a fundraiser. As a communications consultant specializing in fundraising and marketing for not-for-profit organizations, I urge people to ask for money. I help them figure out how best to do it. And I craft letters, brochures, and other materials aimed at getting the best response.
While fundraising and charitable giving have always seemed good and natural things to me, it is not so for everyone. In 15 years of professional fundraising, I have run into scores of not-for-profit leaders stuck in a quandary. While they are responsible for the financial health of their organizations, they abhor fundraising. They hate to admit there is a need. They would rather chew nails than ask for money. They understandably want to uphold our culture's standard of being in control, effective, and above all, self-sufficient, corporately and individually.
Further, there is a kind of cultural recoil among many educated people when it comes to marketing and its philanthropic equivalent, fundraising. The money part of charitable activities can seem tawdry-- reminiscent of the high-pressured, fast-talking salesperson. Sometimes this is in fact the case: a small minority of fundraisers has made the rest of us suspect by using inappropriate and unethical tactics. But most often our discomfort with fundraising comes from a different place: our dislike of being vulnerable and needy.
I understand this, because I know that I prefer to give rather than to be given to, to be an agent of largesse rather than a recipient of it. As a giver, I have power and security. As a recipient, I have obligation and an outright admission of need.
When we ask for money, we cannot be proud. We are admitting need, whether it is our own need or that of others on whose behalf we are asking. We are admitting our limitations-- that we cannot, on our own, fulfill these needs. We are opening ourselves up for rejection and even anger, as we ask others to face their feelings about money, security, responsibility, and trust. In asking for money, we are blatantly not in control. Even with our professional techniques well-honed, we cannot predict results. It is a great opportunity for surrender of hopes, fears, and attachment to results. And therefore fundraising is a great occasion for grace.
Transforming grace breaks through when we risk asking and receiving--a risk significantly lessened when one undertakes these tasks on behalf of others rather than for oneself. This may be why so many people have started a fundraising task with fear and loathing in their hearts, only to find the work to be blessed and blessing.
Such a transformation occurred when a friend recently took on a fundraising assignment from her church. She was to visit several fellow parishioners and ask them for substantial gifts for the church's building program. Dreading these calls, my friend took them to prayer, not asking for specific results but for God to be with her and the people she was visiting.
"Those visits were so wonderful," she said. "People gave more money than anyone had thought they would, and it was 'found' money--a bond that yielded more than expected, or money freed up from refinancing a mortgage. Grace was definitely operating in those visits."
Another friend--a professional fundraiser who works for a church organization--told me she sees her work as a true calling. She knows that both amateur and professional fundraisers have the privilege of helping people identify their reasons for giving and ways to give; she believes she is helping them live out a spiritual calling sounded repeatedly in the Gospels. Through her exhortation and encouragement, people become willing to give up their money and to take part in an enterprise that aims to enflesh God's compassionate love for all creation.
What we miss so often in doing fundraising is that this whole business is aimed at giving to us, the fundraisers, too: When we are aware of our deep source in this risky venture, we become more joyful, freer to risk, freer to live out in prayer and action our roles in the priesthood of all believers.
My husband makes it a practice to give money to Washington's "street people" (a modern euphemism for the term "beggar"). One night as he prepared to give a beggar some money, the man held out his hand and simply said, "Surprise me."
As fundraisers, we are beggars, deprived of our comfortable self-sufficiency. We hold out our hands expectantly, knowing that our loving God is waiting to surprise us, if only we will ask.
Embracing Heaven in Our Midst
by Tilden Edwards
Sometimes we have a dream at night that seems more than the processing of our experience. Such a special dream can reveal a truth that belongs to more than the dreamer. I had such a dream recently, very simple in form. I was leading a liturgy in Advent, the season that anticipates the coming divine fullness, when a voice suddenly shouts, "You forgot the psalm!" Immediately the choir begins to sing it; but this isn't a human choir. It's an angelic host that sings with haunting, heart-opening sounds of praise. This "choir" is slowly moving, like a procession of angelic light winding its way through creation, heralding the immanence of divine fullness.
When I awoke I felt as though that heavenly host had made a "house call" on its way through the universe. I felt that I was being told that there is always a "rooting section" surrounding us, singing rousing songs of encouragement, love, inspiration, hope--whether we're aware of it or not. Beyond that I felt I was being invited to join that choir in praising God, letting that praise become the very ground of my thoughts and actions.
I have returned to that dream many times. When I do, it does not feel as though I'm escaping into something other-worldly, except in the sense of it being other than the normal world-view constructed by my normal narrow consciousness. Rather it feels as if it puts me in touch with the inside of reality, radiant with divine immanence, eliciting an end-in-itself appreciation, praise, and loving responsiveness.
Last winter I was co-leading a group at Shalem that included some special invitations to praise with sound, movement, and musical instruments. When praise became the intent of our prayer, at least some of us found that it became the wellspring of other forms of prayer, especially confession and intercession. Praise wasn't just another category of prayer. It showed itself as a root of prayerful consciousness from which spontaneously flowed images of particular people and situations in need of prayer. Praise also showed a power to reveal and release clinging attachments and fear, bringing a quality of greater freedom for God and for relating to others. It also led in time to a silence full of givenness to God.
Praise had not been a very lively dimension of prayer for me until this past year. Now, though, I feel as if we are truly made for praise, for affirming the glory of divine presence. We are made to be part of that heavenly procession that recognizes the end-in-itself loving playfulness of divine creativity in all its surprising and perplexing forms. When I take my place in that procession, it has a way of catching up all of my own and the world's suffering, injustice, evil, and delusion in its train. These lose their capacity to ultimately define life. They seem included in the great divine drama and the gift of human freedom, however mysteriously. I'm left a little freer to be affirmatively in the world but not of its separating-from-God power. I'm able to be in the midst of whatever seeming hell the world brings, but with a little more sense of freedom to bring to it a smile, an active resistance to what is life-denying, a helping hand for whatever opens the door to heaven in our midst.
Emily Dickinson once said, "Instead of getting to heaven at last/I am going all along." Perhaps we will "get to heaven at last" and join that heavenly throng in all its fullness, but the dream of heaven is in us right here now, and the Lord's Prayer asks for it to be manifest "on earth as in heaven." I know how often I forget the heavenly dream and live in the narrowness of a delusional nightmare. Spiritual practice is important to me as a way of reminding myself of that dream buried deep in me and in spiritual tradition. When the dream is empowered in me, I am drawn to join its confidence in a larger, exuberant spiritual reality pervading everything. Then praise wells up in me, is a stimulus to be available for my little place in the dream's realization on earth.
I'm sure we've all been given a glimpse of the heavenly dream in some form, however different its details may be from the one given me. When we connect with the end-in-itself radiance of life in God that it reflects, I think we can't help but join the procession of praise.