Volume 31, No. 2-Summer, 2007
Table of Contents
Living Repentance
by Carole Crumley
The Imprint of God's Fingers at Shalem
by Bill Dietrich
Listening for God: Reflections on Shalem's Group Spiritual Direction Workshop
by Dave Emery
Living in the Peer Group Presence
by Kathleen Moloney-Tarr
Garden Communion
by Joan Paddock Maxwell
Why I Support Shalem
by Edna Noiles
Sheer Gift or Partial Gift?
by Cathie Powell
Prayer in the Midst of Darkness
by Tara Soughers
Living Repentance
by Carole Crumley
Kathleen Norris in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Autobiography writes about the meaning of repentance. She credits a contemporary Benedictine monk with suggesting that repentance involves two actions in the spiritual life. The first action requires turning away "from a stubborn and obdurate position that cannot accept what is new and different." The other action involves "welcoming and making room for the stranger, the other, the surprising, the unlooked-for and unwanted." Both actions are necessary for repentance. As we embrace both actions, Norris writes, we begin to "entertain God's mysterious ways."
In this sense, Shalem's Epiphany pilgrimage in January was a gentle school in repentance. Shortly before we arrived, there was an historic, unprecedented 15 inch snowfall in Albuquerque and the snow refused to melt. Our pilgrimage team had prepared and prayed over a detailed plan for the pilgrimage which included spending part of each day outside. Well, so much for that plan! Furthermore, every day of the pilgrimage brought additional surprises, unexpected ways that things, both small and large, had to be changed. Eventually every detail changed in some way.
I admit it was hard to let go of the old ideas. They were good ones and we had labored over them so long. But by God's grace, we had no choice. When I finally realized this, I noticed my heart becoming lighter, freer. There was a new energy, or perhaps, a release of the energy that had been confined in the pages of the old script. I sensed a new aliveness, being on the tiptoe of expectancy each day. How would this day be shaped? What surprises would come our way so that we had to change, reconsider, re-imagine or discover a different way?
To my surprise, in this two-fold action of letting go of a fixed idea and welcoming the new, I experienced an incredible freedom-freedom that was light, graced, full of laughter. It was downright exciting, even thrilling. Every moment a new moment. Every moment another opportunity to let go the old and welcome the new. Every moment, an opportunity to repent.
In this confusing, even dangerous time we live in, with dramatic change all around us, repentance is one way that God is forming people spiritually. It has ever been so. The Hebrew prophets called their people to repent. John the Baptist invited seekers of his time to make way for a new reality through repentance. Jesus reminded his disciples that life is fragile and unpredictable. They were to live in times of great uncertainty by letting go of preconceived notions of God and opening themselves to the living Love at the heart of life.
The Mystics and saints remind us that repentance can help us embrace Divine Movement as grace, the living dynamic of always-changing life. Repentance can help us live with the tension of being unsettled, the ambiguity of not knowing or having a final answer. Repentance draws us deeper into the realms of God's love and freedom. Repentance opens us to God's mysterious ways.
In the moments when my life is dulled by routine or shocked by surprises that are unwanted and unwelcomed, I pray to remember the freedom and joy experienced in living repentance while we were on pilgrimage. May God have mercy on my unrepentant heart.
The Imprint of God's Fingers at Shalem
by Bill Dietrich
"It is not you who shapes God, it is God who shapes you.
If then you are the work of God, await the hand of the artist
Who does all things in due season.
Offer God your heart, soft and tractable,
And keep the form in which the artist has fashioned you.
Let your clay be moist,
Lest you grow hard and lose the imprint of God's fingers."
These words, attributed to the second-century bishop Irenaeus and long used in Shalem programs, express much of what we understand about contemplative spiritual formation: it is foremost about God's work in us. Our role is to be supple, yielding, willing for and responsive to God's creative action. This is a radically counter-cultural proposition. We don't make it happen. It can't be controlled or forced, and it evolves in God's time, not ours. We get impatient with the slow work of God and want, often with good intentions, to make progress (as if we really knew what that meant). Or we get fearful and simply attempt to control what we don't know since, as Evelyn Underhill once wrote, "... mystery is horrible to us." And so we can easily "grow hard" and willfully resist or ignore God's ongoing formation of our hearts. Echoing Irenaeus' wisdom, twentieth-century Quaker Thomas Kelly counseled, "Don't grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, 'I will! I will!' Relax. Take hands off. Submit yourself to God. Learn to live in the passive voice-a hard saying for Americans-and let life be willed through you."
This understanding of formation-its invitations and challenges-is true both of individuals and of communities and organizations. At Shalem we have long struggled with questions of how we balance the practicalities and realities of life as an institution with our desire to be willing and responsive to God's action in us. Recently we've been focusing on these questions more intentionally as we consider Shalem's place in the current spiritual landscape and what the future might hold. I'd like to share with you some of our process and the clarities-and unknowings-that we've come to thus far.
Over the past several months, Shalem's board and staff have been praying and reflecting together on our vision, mission, and values, what we name as our unique charism: that essential shape that God has fashioned us to be. We've also sought to discern how God continues to mold our programs-the particular expression of our mission that God is calling forth now and into the future. While this process is still unfolding, we do have some clarity that our mission continues to be about nurturing contemplative living and leadership, supporting contemplative awareness in our world. This contemplative dimension, while sometimes hard to define and describe, seems nevertheless essential-that distinctive quality God has given us to offer to the world.
We are clear that our roots are in the contemplative Christian tradition, which calls us to a broadly ecumenical stance. We continue also to find enrichment in the contemplative wisdom of other faith traditions, which deepens our understanding both of those traditions and our own. And we can see now that, after more than 30 years of nurturing the spiritual life of people from all over the country and world, we are beyond being a small local organization based near Washington, D.C., but can now claim a national identity with a large constituency across the country and even around the globe.
We have a sense of the continued rightness of our present core offerings, our four long-term extension programs that provide in-depth, transformational deepening and support for contemplative living and for particular forms of spiritual leadership: spiritual directors, prayer group and retreat leaders, and congregational clergy. We feel called to explore how we might support other forms of leadership, such as those engaged in social activism and organizational leadership, and how we might offer what we have learned about contemplative awareness across faith traditions to further the cause of interfaith dialogue and understanding.
We also are praying to know the ways in which we've allowed ourselves to "grow hard"-whether there are some programs we need to let go. We want to be sure we are not offering programs simply because we've offered them in the past. Among other things, this has led us to focus on those short-term programs in the Baltimore-Washington region. These programs are the legacy of how Shalem started in the 1970s-small groups gathered around a candle exploring ways of being present to God in prayer. Many, myself included, came to Shalem through these programs and fondly recall those experiences. In the years since, however, churches and other organizations have begun offering similar programs (often through leaders nurtured at Shalem), and we have seen the number and attendance at our own programs diminish. At the same time, we have seen a large and growing response to our regional gatherings, which, while encouraging, requires considerable time and resources to support.
In response to what we have noticed, we will take the 2007-08 program year as a sabbatical time to allow space to discern what is called for in all of our shorter programs. One result of this decision is that, for our Mid-Atlantic region, our promotional material over the next year will be different and our offerings fewer and more focused on complementing our extension programs. We will continue to offer regional gatherings, meeting in Burlingame, California, and Indianapolis in the coming program year.
We also will continue to look for ways we might support our extension program graduates in addition to the Shalem Society begun last year. In particular we are exploring how we might celebrate and lift up the good work of the growing Shalem community, which has come into being after three decades of nurturing contemplative awareness.
We invite your prayers for our discernment in the time ahead. Please let us know of any reflections or insights that might help inform our process. And we pray that Shalem will continue to let God's life be willed through all we do.
Listening for God: Reflections on Shalem's Group Spiritual Direction Workshop
by Dave Emery
You may have heard the following story in one context or another. A person with a sincere interest in spirituality is given a book on spiritual awareness written by one of the great teachers in our faith. After reading it briefly, he or she hands it back saying no thanks. The person sharing this wonderful source of inspiration and Godly wisdom is dumbfounded and asks the recipient why this great book was returned. To which the recipient simply replies that anyone of faith knows if you really want to be spiritually alive and aware you don't open your mouth.
Many of us on the spiritual journey feel that this is exactly the case. It is a central reason why silence is so highly sought and eagerly embraced in any contemplative process. This is true in individual awareness of God and equally true in group awareness of God. Silence isn't golden per se; silence is merely a great gift from God.
Group spiritual direction, as outlined and shared by the Shalem leaders at the recent workshop in March 2007, helped us once again see the source of existence in God as being about listening for God. Some have found that life is possibly better, fuller, richer, deeper, greater when we constantly and regularly listen for God. This is an honorable "task" and the central purpose in spiritual disciplines of all kinds.
I love this. I love listening for God as I hear others speak. I love listening for God as I am in the midst of my everyday life. I love listening for God, period.
So it became clearly evident, as we were gathering and sharing in this workshop on group spiritual direction, that listening for God together may offer even more than listening for God on one's own, or even with one other person.
It is a joy to listen for God in the silence of one's own spiritual practice. It is a great joy to share this with someone else in listening together. It is amazing when three or four get together and listen for God in our midst. What a blessed and gracious experience this is, when the joys, hurts, doubts, truths, and the heart-full expressions are shared in a prayerful and respectful way.
There is a special way in which this is enhanced with much silence and response in respect, gratitude, humility, and joy in what may have been shared as we hear one another. Still, it is becoming more and more evident as I seek to faithfully listen with others for God's own presence that this in itself is good, and right, and faithful. There is a call to be with God, and there is a depth that is experienced when one gathers with others in this way.
Richard Rohr in his wonderful way of sharing about the dance of the mystery of the Trinity of God articulates: "With one there is POWER! With two there is love. With three there is joy, completeness and more!!!"
This may hold for the way in which we experience God, know God, hear God, and are with God as well. We may get private powerful insights, epiphanies, perceptions, and understandings by ourselves. We may find intimacy, affection, affirmation, and support when we gather with another. Still, when we gather with more than two others, we hear a whole chorus of God's voice, perhaps a great choir of love and wholeness arrives. Perhaps we just find that we are not alone and that others help keep us focused on the center of life in God, with God, for God together.
Dave is a Presbyterian pastor and a graduate of Shalem's Clergy Spiritual Life and Leadership Program, Class of 2005.
Living in the Peer Group Presence
by Kathleen Moloney-Tarr
"Relationships are all there is.
Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to
everything else.
Nothing exists in isolation.
We have to stop pretending we are individuals who can go it alone."
-Margaret Wheatley, Turning to One Another
Once again we get up from the sofa and chairs and step first into warm hugs, then to the full glass doors and back out into the world. We have shared another exceptional peer group meeting with colleagues who hold safe space for each other not just in the two-hour meetings but every day. When we are together, we see faces of God in each other. When we part, we feel connected still and deeply rooted in the Presence. Our coming together in silence, prayer and sharing is spiritual communion that magnifies the essence of each of our souls. We drop more deeply into who we are. We meet as companions on the contemplative path, seeing the holy in each other as we intend ourselves to the Sacred Mystery we call God.
We meet monthly in a comfortable home office where large windows frame cardinals splashing in the birdbath, chipmunks dashing on mysterious errands, and squirrels chasing up and down willow oak trunks. Some days the wind blasts leaves across the grass, rain beats against the glass doors or hosta flowers bounce in a light breeze; other days are still as a hawk rests on the cherry branch or daffodils spring bright yellow on the world. Somehow the movement of Spirit seems all the more real as we witness the sacred movements of the natural world surrounding our time together.
At each meeting we recommit ourselves to focus on the presenter's "spiritual concerns, experiences, feelings, faith, blocks, blind spots, gifts, discernments, confidence, and confusions in relation to the directee rather than on the struggles of the directee" as suggested in Shalem's peer group handouts. We conform to the original process as each presenter speaks to the following questions: How do I feel about myself in this relationship? How have I been praying for the directee, the relationship, myself as director? What seems to happen in this prayer? What is my sense of prayerfulness while I am meeting with this person? How do I sense/think/feel God at work in this relationship? Why am I bringing this relationship to the peer group?
When I began the Spiritual Guidance Program, I knew my spiritual director would be a source of wisdom and support, and I thought the peer group would be a place to ensure that what I was doing with directees was within the appropriate boundaries. What I read about peer groups reinforced this view, so I was not prepared for the discovery of just how significant the peer group experiences could be. I was not expecting the group to mean so much to me. I now cannot imagine being a spiritual director without the prayers, love, genuine care, non-judgment and patience of these people and our experiences together!
The first meeting came the day after a very difficult, hurtful experience of betrayal and disappointment in my life. The emotional debris stacked against my heart was like a moraine, the tumble of enormous boulders left behind when a glacier pushes rock for miles and finally withdraws. The pain made it hard to breathe. I geared up to meet the members for the first time, trying to put the pain aside and hoping I could focus on the process and not fall apart. We greeted each other and fell into deep silence. I presented, we talked and prayed, and something peaceful washed over me. By the time the second presentation ended, I felt healed, absolved, and able to forgive and love in spite of what I had experienced the day before. For the first time, I knew Grace. All was well.
Later we discovered that each of us had a devastating issue to deal with that day. We came broken and lost, hurt and fragile. No one spoke of this pain during the two presentations because the sources were unrelated to our direction relationships, and we were so committed to following the outlined process for the meeting. Only later did we confess how challenged we had felt before the meeting and how comforted we were by the Presence in and of the peer group. It was the process-the prayer, keen contemplative silence, listening to each other, sharing from that mysterious and holy place within-and the mysterious, sacred Presence that gave us such peace. This continues to be the case each time we meet.
Being together in the Presence allows us to bring our true selves forward. We are our best disciples when we are able to face the challenges our own spiritual development presents. To do so in the company of a group of contemplative peers is a blessing and a gift.
Today I am in awe of our peer group experience and the sense of Presence that attends the Spirit-based communion we share. Our times together are some of the richest hours of my month. Each meeting is a study in courage and risk-taking, patience and hope, will and spirit. We bare our souls to each other. Some days we witness, others we hear confession, and grace falls to us time and time again. We warmly engage in the most heartfelt and caring listening, careful to think less and listen more to the Presence possible in peer group.
Kathleen is a graduate of Shalem's Winter 2006 Spiritual Guidance Program.
Garden Communion
by Joan Paddock Maxwell
Last Christmas I was privileged to offer the Sacrament to patients and their guests in the Intensive care Unit (ICU) at the hospital where I serve as a chaplain. I feel a special connection to ICU patients. Back in 1989 I was hospitalized for a couple of weeks, and a good bit of that time I was in the ICU on the critical list. I learned first-hand that a person near death has no capacity for abstractions. I could see sunlight, feel the touch of a hand, and breathe, one breath at a time. Pain surrounded me like air. Meaning lay in just two sources: human love and the Holy One.
Sometimes a patient is too sick to take anything by mouth and yet wishes to receive Holy Communion. The Church teaches that someone can receive by "spiritual Communion," whereby all the spiritual benefits of Communion are received even though nothing is actually taken by mouth. For a gravely ill person, however, as I experienced, words do not have the same impact as touch. My Rector taught me a way to include touch in giving spiritual communion. We tell patients who cannot eat that, if they wish, the consecrated wafer will be gently touched to their lips and then wrapped in linen and taken away to be returned to the earth. Patients sometimes say they are grateful for this physical contact.
On Christmas Day, in three cases the patient received spiritually. The first was a person on a ventilator. The family was waiting for one more member of the clan to arrive before removing life support. They asked that they and the patient be able to share Communion one last time.
The linen I use to keep a Host in after it has been used for spiritual Communion is a handkerchief that used to belong to my grandmother, who died long ago. Unfolding the handkerchief by the bedside, seeing my grandmother's initials, and then wrapping the cloth around the Host enlarges the communion of saints by one for me.
The second patient was a woman I had been following for a couple of months. She had been in and out of the ICU several times. On Christmas Day she had just been readmitted, and from the deep furrows on her husband's face it was clear that things were not going well at all. They were grateful to be able to receive together for what we all knew was their last Christmas. A second wafer for the handkerchief.
The third patient was a wild-haired man who had recently been admitted from the street. He was able to speak just enough to say that he wanted to receive but could not eat. He was by himself in a large room, surrounded by monitors and IV poles. After he received he watched me closely as I placed the Host in the handkerchief, raising his eyebrows when he saw the other two that were already there. "You are not alone," I said, and he nodded, both of us aware of the other suffering people nearby and of the sustaining Presence the Hosts symbolized.
After I completed my rounds I went home, the handkerchief and its cargo light in my pocket. It was raining and growing dark. For some reason I decided I needed to dig the hole with my fingers. I went to a garden bed near the base of an old oak tree and knelt on the soggy mulch to dig. The cold water seeped through my trousers to my bent knees. I parted the mulch and the earth opened easily to my hands. As I unfolded my grandmother's handkerchief and looked for one last time through the raindrops at the three wafers, I prayed for the patients for whom they had served as tangible reminders of God's loving presence in the midst of pain. When I let the wafers slip from the handkerchief into the brown earth, the rain and my own tears marked not only the sorrow of the present moment but also the hope for what is yet to come.
Note: Patients' identifying details have been changed to preserve their privacy.
Joan, a Shalem Board member, serves as a chaplain at an acute-care hospital in Washington, DC. A version of this article is being published in PlainViews:an e-newsletter for chaplains and other spiritual care providers.
Why I Support Shalem
by Edna Noiles
One of our long-time donors, Edna Noiles, was asked recently to reflect on why she gives to Shalem. The following is her reply.
Because, at age 65, I found Shalem. It was what Earl Creps, in the Spring 2007 issue of "Conversations," calls a "sacred accident," and I began to learn what it meant to be a contemplative, allowing the transforming Indwelling Presence to permeate my everyday life. That was what I brought back from my first residency at Shalem: How to focus on what is real, eternal, sustaining and life-giving and how to offer a place of hospitality of spiritual companionship to others.
As I began to see people, I became aware of the special needs of our clergy. Their real need, as was true for others who came, was for someone to listen to them as a human soul. Psychiatry had not addressed the questions of their hearts. They came asking, in the words of Taylor Caldwell, "What happens when what you have depended on to hold you in place no longer works? "They came burdened by the demands we have burdened them with. They didn't feel they could raise their own questions as they tried to be all we asked them to be. Together, we found time in silence, and for some, the beginning of hope, a hope that shaped our days and ways of living with others.
For the most part, people who have sought spiritual companionship with me do not come until too much hope is broken and God seems silent. We take the question, "Where is God in all this?" into silence and keep faithfully asking that question until God begins to reveal himself through the ways we are changed by the answering silence. It does not happen quickly.
I have been companioning one man for about 17 years. He is able to identify the deep current that holds him in his life now, while also recognizing the times he is pulled out of it. He lives with the theme of the story of the village at the bottom of a hill, atop which a group of cloistered monks lived and prayed. The townspeople knew of the monastery but rarely had contact with the monks or knew anything about their daily lives. So, one day, a curious boy headed up the mountain. "What do you do here?" he asked. "What do we do?" replied the monk. "We fall down and we get back up. We fall down and we get back up." As this man and I meet, we make space where we are changed by the answering silence.
Twenty years later, as I approach 85, there is no loss of freshness for the ongoing formation and transformation the Spirit waits to bring. Why do I support Shalem? How could I not?
Edna is a graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, Extension Class of l989.
Sheer Gift or Partial Gift?
by Cathie Powell
"If you really see contemplation as 'partial gift,' just call it that-and let it be." Jerry's words were startling. I was caught off guard for a moment. I had used the phrase "sheer gift," believing that it was truly my frame of reference. But obviously (through this e-mail conversation) he was seeing something in my comments that I was not. I didn't write back right away-no need to defend-just let it sink in. I now mark that conversation as another turn on this wild ride, this adventure with God.
What is contemplation for you? We know it is a gift, but is it sheer gift as Jerry May, former Shalem Senior Fellow, so often said? Is there really nothing we do? Don't we contribute something-in some small way-toward that incredible experience of God?
Let me ask the question another way: If you want to connect more deeply with God, what do you do-or not do? Do you sit quietly, back straight, eyes closed? Do you pay attention to your breath, let your body help your mind slow down, with your hands relaxed and open in your lap? Then what? What does God do?
That was the issue I was unwittingly presenting to Jerry, not realizing the subtleties going on in me. I do this, then God does that...as if what I was doing somehow was a prompt, or even a cue, for God.
Our email conversation began after five days of "Gathered Silence," a Shalem retreat entitled "Letting God Guide," co-led by Jerry and Bill Dietrich. I had read Jerry's book, The Dark Night of the Soul, and was intrigued with how he categorized ways of praying: active, passive, mental, quiet, meditation, contemplation. I even made a chart in the back of the book, trying to grasp it all. So I asked him if what we were doing in our Gathered Silence was active recollection or meditation. And if you knew Jerry, you may already know his reply: "It was Gathered Silence."
His response brought a wry grimace to my face but didn't slow me down. I wanted more clarity. What is God's part? What is my part? I pressed on. After several more attempts on his part to clarify and on my part to understand, I began to hear some encouragement that I was seeing the difference between partial gift and sheer gift.
I hope he knew the significance of his patient dialogue with me that day as he waited for me. Not that I am fully free of the notion that something I do causes God to do something, but at least now I recognize it as untrue when I see it and am able to be patient with directees who get going down that "it's all about me" path.
If you understand contemplation as "sheer gift," please forgive this stating of the obvious, but it seems important to say it, just because I thought I knew and really didn't. What we do contributes nothing-absolutely nothing. It's not about us, it's about God.
I am not sure who gave me this helpful illustration, maybe Jerry, but I invite you to picture a house with bright sunlight shining down on it. Inside, the heavy drapes are closed, and the house is dark. Hear the person inside the house say, "I think I'll open the curtains so the sun will shine." That comment is similar to saying, "I think I'll sit quietly so that God will come." Partial gift is a good description of this mindset.
And, though God is consistent in character, God is also unpredictable in action and surprises us even when we are less still, less aware, less open. God shows up in a myriad of ways-from evening skies to the touch of a baby's skin, from the smell just after a rain to the sound of a drone. Experiencing God in contemplation is sheer gift as is encountering God anywhere, anytime. All sheer gift.
So why do we sit quietly, with the intention of becoming more still within and without? Only so that we can become less distracted and more available to this One who knows us and loves us beyond measure.
I have learned many other lessons from this skin-horse of a man, but we'll save those for another time. For now, since his words continue to say it so well, I'll close with some from The Dark Night of the Soul:
"In place of the striving, one finds a growing willingness, an increasing receptivity in the sense of welcoming with open arms. This is nowhere so obvious as in prayer, as the work of meditation eases and the flowing openness of contemplation takes its place...
In the context of prayer, contemplation always has a sacred quality as a sheer gift of grace.... With every step from meditation into contemplation, one finds oneself standing on truly sacred ground."
Cathie is a graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, Class of Winter 1995, and a minister of spiritual direction at The Anchorage in Greenville, SC.
Prayer in the Midst of Darkness
by Tara Soughers
"For you threw me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods closed round me. All your waves and billows passed over me; then I thought, 'I am banished from your sight; how shall I ever see your holy Temple again? 'The waters round me rose to my neck, the deep was closing round me, seaweed twining round my head. To the roots of the mountains, I sank into the underworld, and its bars closed round me for ever. But you raised my life from the Pit, Yahweh my God!" -Jonah 2:4-7 (NJB)
Trapped in the belly of the big fish, surrounded by its bones and flesh, enveloped in inky blackness, Jonah is forced to come to terms with his situation, his life, and his God. Although thankful that he has not drowned, his situation is still critical. He is beyond rescue, beyond remedy, out of sight.
What do we do in these situations? What do we do when we are lost in the darkness? What do we do in the belly of the fish?
How do we pray when we feel utterly separated from God? How do we pray when there seems to be no hope? How do we pray in the midst of great darkness?
I often begin with cries of pain and desperate appeals for help. Later, my prayers typically turn to prayers of anger, as I rail against the one who seems to be deaf to my entreaties. Why have you done this to me, God? In those times, answers rarely come.
Finally, there comes a point when I am empty of all words, all feelings, and all energy. There comes a point when all that I can do is sit and wait for whatever comes next. At this point, my only prayer is silence.
In those three days, Jonah presumably tried all possible ways to get out, even if that put him back in the same situation he had been in when he had been thrown overboard. He no doubt explored the fish's sides for any sign of weakness. He plotted and schemed. He tried again and again to do something, anything. He poured out all of his anger and frustration.
In those three days, Jonah has plenty of time to explore all of his options, and to find them all futile. There is time for him to try and try again, each failure weighing more heavily upon him. There is time enough for him to have been emptied-of anger, of frustration, and even of hope-until all that he can do is to sit in silence. Such times of silence are filled with great potential.
In that silence, Jonah is transformed. No longer is he the reluctant prophet fleeing an onerous calling. No longer is he the man asleep in the boat while others pray fervently to their gods. In that silence Jonah becomes what he has not previously been: a man of prayer.
It isn't a prayer of deliverance that pours from his mouth. No longer is his focus upon what he himself wants and needs. He tried that prayer and found it inadequate. In the darkness of the belly, he sees what he has not previously been able to see. His focus has turned from himself to God.
We might have expected that he would pray for deliverance. "Please, God, get me out of here" Surely resolution of that crisis is a necessary first step. That isn't, however, what Jonah prays. In the belly of the fish, Jonah is aware of all that he had lost, and chief among the things that he has lost is a sense of God's presence. In the belly of the whale, he feels utterly separated from God. The man who desperately tried to run away from God is now confronted with the consequences of his actions. In a strange way, he gets what he wanted, and he is bereft. "I am driven away from your sight," he laments. "I will never again see the temple. I will never be able to worship you in the place where you dwell. I have lost something beyond value."
How often we think that we know what we truly desire. If only this particular thing would happen, then all will be well. If only I get this job, I will finally be happy. If only a family member straightens up, all of our problems will be solved. If only I could buy what my heart desires, I will be content. If only a certain person would love me as I love them, we could live happily ever after. If only....
Our hearts are full of such longings. Some are stronger than others. Some are more important than others. All of these often conflicting longings war within us, seeking to be fulfilled. We are creatures full of desires.
As Jonah discovers, getting what we desire does not always make us happy. None of our desires can ever fill the empty place in our hearts, except for God. Without God, nothing else matters. Having learned this much, Jonah grieves his loss, a loss far greater than the loss of his freedom or even the loss of his life.
What do we do in times of grief? What do we do when we have lost someone whom we have loved? We tell the stories of the ways in which our lives and theirs intertwined. We tell the stories over and over again. That is what Jonah does as well. He recites the story of the last time that he felt the hand of God in his life.
As he had been drowning, at the moment when the seaweed was pulling him to the bottom of the ocean and his life was ebbing away, the One from whom he was running intervened. Through the hand of God, the fish swallows him. As strange at that is, and as problematical as his presence in the fish now is, Jonah has cause to be thankful, for God is powerfully present.
In the darkness of the fish's belly, Jonah is transformed. He can now see God at work in his life in new and peculiar ways. He can give thanks, even in the impossible situation in which he now finds himself. He has come through the darkness and is now ready to re-enter life. With this change in Jonah, another change happens. The fish, which had been keeping him imprisoned, now vomits him up onto dry land.
It is a new birth for Jonah, and as inelegant as births are. His life ends when he is thrown overboard, but through the love and grace of God, he is given new life.
Tara is a graduate of Shalem's Clergy Spiritual Life and Leadership Program and is currently in the Spiritual Guidance Program, Winter 2008 class. This article is a chapter from her new book, Fleeing from God, Cowley Publications, 2007, and is reprinted by permission of the publisher.