Volume 17, No. 2-Summer, 1993
Table of Contents
The Gentle Whisper
by Susan Parker
"Unless You Become As Little Children"
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Awareness
by John Lobell
Trying To Be Contemplative
by Gerald May
Gathering Grace
by Connie Clark
"The Journey and The Dream"
by Susan Dillon
God's Cleansing Voice
by Tilden Edwards
The Gentle Whisper
by Susan Parker
As I listen to directees, as I look at my own life, as I read and ponder, as I look into my own heart, the gentle truth of the Scripture seems very real. Much has been written about discernment. Some approaches emphasize steps that can be taken to discern God's will. Others emphasize looking at the fruits of decision-making to find clues as to whether or not the action is in keeping with God's desire. But I find myself most at peace with the words of the Deuteronomist, "No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to put into practice."
As directees talk I hear their desire for God. I often sense, as I listen, the persistent desire of God for them. And it affirms what I feel to be happening in my own life. The gentle whisper of Yahweh comes as the Old Testament writer describes. It does not exist far away in the heavens or across the seas. It moves in the mouth, the ears, the heart of each of us--so intimate, so faithful, so constant as to be inseparable from our very being. God has created us with a primary attribute of freedom. God does not compromise that freedom by making choices for us and by challenging us to discover what those choices are. Rather God calls us into intimate, loving companionship to be co-creators of our lives with Him. God's presence is reliable. God's grace is offered in every moment of our existence. It is a grace that promises to be "in your mouth and in your heart for you to put into practice."
What does this understanding bring to my view of discernment? It brings the real and comforting reminder that the call is to continually turn to God in the loving assurance that God is with us, that God's desire is to love us and to have that gracious love returned by us, that God does not compromise our freedom by choosing courses of action for us but that God will be present in all our decisions which honor a desire for Love. It is a willingness to fall back into that place of absolute trust that God is always making available to us. Decisions must be made; courses of action must be chosen by each of us, every day. Some are of real significance; some of not such real significance. In each, God is with us...in our mouth, in our hearts...so near, so persistent is God's gracious loving that we can trust when we turn with our whole heart, that God is there, not with answers but with God's own loving heart.
With my directees, this understanding of discernment draws me away from that place of needing to have answers, to "fix" the problems that are so persistent in our lives. It keeps me more firmly rooted in that place of awe and trust where I only want to watch God's desire and affirm its presence.
In my own life, I can only speak of the grace of this experience of discernment. It has been a time in my life of needing to make significant decisions as I move through my experience with cancer. Perhaps that is why this lovely passage from Deuteronomy became so firmly imbedded in my heart. It speaks the truth as I have come to know it in my own situation. I know the gentle whisper of the Holy One--not providing answers but always being compassionately present when I am willing to turn my heart in response.
A long-time friend of Shalem, Susan died in January. This article is an excerpt from one of her Spiritual Guidance Program papers.
"Unless You Become As Little Children"
by Rose Mary Dougherty
The leaders of our Spring Retreat asked us to pray that we might become as little children and to reflect on what might get in the way of our childlikeness. But that was hard for me. That day I had finished giving a four-day workshop and was still feeling very responsible. Also I had a cold; I was very tired. I walked around the retreat center just appreciating the beauty of its surroundings. The best I could manage was being there. Later that weekend we were asked to recall our child song. My mind came up with nothing. Still my heart began to sing, "Playmate, playmate, come out and play with me." I think that song became my prayer.
Several days later, on a rainy day, we sat around the lunch table at Shalem. Jerry May, who was to lead our weekly staff prayer, asked what we would like to do that day for prayer. I immediately said, "Sleep!" Others laughed, then agreed with me. Later, Jerry began our time by asking us to be alert and attentive, claiming our desire for God. Then he said, "Now relax and be comfortable." I chose a horizontal position. Softly he strummed a lullaby on his guitar and sang it ever so sweetly. I dissolved into tears, not hurting tears, but softening tears, the tears of being cared for. Somehow in that prayer time, God's tenderness for me, for the people there with me, for our world, became tangible. For that little while I became a child. Defenses fell away. I slept. And I slept well that night, waking with renewed energy. I had not been able to pray to become as a little child, but God had heard my heart.
Later, in a more rational mode, I wondered what it would be like to be childlike all the time, how I could make it happen. I thought of my nine-year-old nephew at his younger brother's birthday party, his skepticism when the magic of a clown found a bunny in an air-filled balloon. I remembered how delight edged out his skepticism when the clown placed the bunny on his lap. For a few minutes, at least, he was one with the five-year-olds. Then he returned to his questions: " How did she do that, Dad? How did she make that happen?" I recalled the three-year-old whom I had recently visited. He brought me his pennies, then asked, "Rose Mary, would you like to buy something from me?" I gave him four pennies for a plastic cup. He gave me three cents change. I thought of four-year-old Jesse taking a walk with me. She picked up two branches, handed me one saying, "These are our banners." Then she paraded down the street singing, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for my mother tells me so." I marveled at the childlikeness I had experienced. I wondered what it would be like for me to become as a child.
If I knew what it would be like for me to become as a child, I probably would strategize to make it happen. I would be just as caught in that role of a child as I am in the role of an adult. But I know I want to be a child, at least sometimes. The song of this child still sounds in my heart, "Playmate, playmate, come out and play with me." I want to delight in bunnies that appear from nowhere. I want to trust my pennies to others and then play store with them. I want to parade down the street singing, "Jesus loves me." I want to rest in the tenderness of God.
Will becoming a little child shield me from my pain, the pain of others? Will it numb my heart to compassion or lull me into carefree complacency? Perhaps it will. But for now I can only pray what is real in my heart. God hears what is real in my heart. God knows what is possible for me.
God tells me unequivocally through Jesus, "Unless you change and become as a little child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 18:3) The words are not, "Unless you can change, unless you work at becoming a little child, you will never enter the Kingdom." Rather, they seem to speak of something that is possible, possible for me, for us now. So frequently Jesus says, "The reign of heaven is at hand." He does not say, "The reign of heaven is my promise for the future." Instead he tells us that this reign is what is, here, now, God's presence among us. We will recognize that Presence when we again become as little children, when we allow the layers of defenses and false images to be stripped from us and become who we really are. Jesus also says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 5:3) Are they all the same? Are children the pure of heart who are empty of all pretense, depending on God? Are they the ones whose vision is unencumbered? Are children the ones who I expect to meet God where God is, in each moment? Yes, I think so. But where do children find God?
The words of Thomas Sheehan, a theologian, remind me of where God is. In speaking of the Incarnation, he writes, "In a burst of love, God disappeared into Creation." The God of children is right here, now, marveling at bunnies, trusting us with pennies and teaching us to share our pennies with others, parading the good news of love. The God of children cares for us and cares for others through us. This God sings us lullabies, "tenders" our hearts so we might sing to those who weep, delights to be with the children, and delights to be with us, here, now!
Awareness
by John Lobell
When meditating, awareness comes ... awareness of that which is not thought and not emotion but that which observes thought and emotion. Something behind or beyond thought and emotion. Something calm and unattached. Something that observes a truth without saying, "good" or "bad." Something that does not thrill with excitement about what it obseves. Something that clearly observes pain without wincing or screaming. Something that observes grief without becoming sad, fear without dread, happiness without elation. These words suggest that awareness is lifeless, inhuman. This is how awareness seems to my thought and emotion. But this is not how awareness seems to my soul, to that which perceives awareness.
For me, awareness is that state to which Jesus referred when he said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (John 12:24-25) If our awareness--the grain of wheat--stays only with our thoughts and emotions, it will not die but remains alone. If the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies to this life--moves beyond thoughts and emotions--it will bear much fruit. It will be able to live in eternal life, the now.
When I am caught up in "this life" of thoughts and emotions, self-preservation is paramount. Whatever protects and promotes "this life" is good; whatever allows it to die is bad. I identify with my thoughts and my emotions--and even at times with my possessions. I feel a desperate need to hang on to them. I need to win arguments. I need to be comfortable. I need my "things." I feel alone in an environment that remains threatening. It stays threatening because I know with my body's wisdom, below conscious thought, that everything is changing--always changing--and that I can't hang on to anything for very long. It is precisely to this way of life that Jesus calls me to die. And I am all but paralyzed with fear.
But as I continue to meditate, my soul's awareness grows. Whatever "success" or "failure" I experience during the time of my contemplative, silent prayer--whether my mind gets caught up in thoughts and emotions or not--the experience of watching my mind do its obsessive thing does happen. And watching this "show" slowly breaks my attachment to it. I am then more able to see it for what it is--a show generated by my ego-self, either comic or tragic depending on the circumstances. I can be amused by it, accept it for what it is, and be led more and more to freedom from the consequences of my old attachment to it. I can die to it. My soul can let the new life in, can more nearly live in the now, can live in the Kingdom of God. I can let the Christ live in me and through me.
To the extent that I allow this awareness to grow, my perception of life changes. My compassion for humans--myself and others--is deepened. Forgiveness comes more easily as I see us, and our deep yearnings for love, as distinct from our frequently horrible, distorted behavior. I see our ugly, destructive actions flowing from a fearful hunger: a hunger which is rooted in our communal identification with "this life" and which clouds our vision of what is truly nourishing. This fearful misperception not only leads to our soul's starvation but leads us into all kinds of cruelties and injustices towards our fellow humans. To feed our real hunger and change behavior, we must give up our attempts to force on others our thoughts, opinions and feelings about how things ought to be and feed others and ourselves with the compassion we need to clear our vision.
Justice cannot come without compassion. Compassionless justice is truly blind; it simply leads to a reshuffling of injustice. Real justice can only come as we practice awareness and compassion. And we need not wait for perfect understanding to act. Compassion flows from the awareness of the moment as we let that awareness guide our actions. Awareness is the road to letting egocentric desires die and be replaced by desires to serve God, neighbor and self.
John, an Episcopal priest, is a 1982 graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program.
Trying To Be Contemplative
by Gerald May
A Tibetan Lama was guiding a student through a visualization. "Now expand the image. Let it become very large," the Lama said. "I'm trying," the student replied, "but nothing is happening." The Lama shouted at him, "Don't try! Just do it!" Immediately, the image expanded.
Another Lama gave me similar advice. "When you sit down to meditate," he said, "stop trying to meditate. Stop meditating!" A Zen saying also warns, "The stillness you achieve by trying is always in motion." Another says, "Quit trying. Quit trying not to try. Quit quitting!"
It has taken a long time, but now I think I understand something about not trying. It is another thing nature has taught me. The first lesson, more than twenty years ago, went completely over my head. I had walked alone into the Sonoran desert in search of a perfect place to meditate. I found a flat rock in the shade of a small paloverde tree with a magnificent view of the desert, endless sky and gentle wisps of clouds. I sat on the stone, breathed deeply and closed my eyes, seeking inner stillness. The sounds of birds and insects invaded my consciousness, and my eyes kept opening to see the desert beauty. God forgive me--I thought those things were distractions and I fought them, my body tense on the rock, trying to be contemplative. I later wrote about that meditation as one of the worst of my life.
Over the ensuing years, I tried different ways to be contemplative. I also tried not to try to be contemplative. I tried to quit trying altogether. It all made me very tired. Then I began spending longer times in the wilderness alone. It gradually became clear to me that authentic contemplation is given, not achieved. In the wilderness, prayer just is, prayerfulness is the way things are. The trees do not try to be trees; they just are what they are. They do what they do.
In solitude in a mountain forest this past January, God drove the point home. I sat by the morning fire and thought, "It's time to make breakfast." As I rose to get the food, I was overcome with fatigue. It was as if I were almost forced to sit back down by the fire. After a while I thought, "I can't just sit here all day; I must do something." The same thing happened; I was taken back to just sitting. God was like a Zen Master saying, "Don't just do something; sit there!" Still agitated with nothing to do, I tried to pray. I sat up straighter, closed my eyes, and tried to turn my attention toward God. It was just like the desert so many years before. The harder I tried, the more distracted and tired I became. Finally a tender feeling came to me, like a voice saying, "Please stop struggling with yourself. I love you. I want you to just be who you are and let me love you." With that, trying stopped. I was finally just me. Prayerfulness was. There were no distractions because God was everywhere. My mind thought some things, my eyes sought beauty here and there, my body moved as it needed. Later, long into the afternoon, it was time for breakfast.
It would be easier if our culture did not so idolize striving. We are taught to strive for mastery everywhere, and many of us know no other way to express our desire. If we truly care about something, we feel we must strive for it. But to strive is usually also to seek mastery. For me, trying means getting behind myself and pushing, struggling against myself to make something happen the way I think it should. It means taking things into my own hands, even when I am trying to be open to God, trying to be contemplative.
As Rose Mary Dougherty points out, Jesus does not tell us to try to become like little children. Nowhere does he tell us to strive to love our neighbor, struggle to do good, or work at praying. He just says, "Do it." The theological point seems to be that truly good things come into our willingness by grace, "by a gift from God, not by anything you have done" (Eph. 2:9). This is not only a warning against taking things into our own ego-hands; it is also an affirmation of God's infinitely trustworthy goodness towards us. Jesus proclaimed it repeatedly in exhorting us to pray for what we need, to seek God first, not to worry or be afraid.
For me, trying is a fifty-year habit, not changeable by will power. Life had to teach me that trying does not work. I had to fail repeatedly in my strivings, even in trying not to try. Then God had to break through to me at a time and in a way of God's own choosing to really show me about not trying. Now when I am given the grace, I pray instead of trying. I pray for complete availability for God, for being love, for protection when I am afraid, for what I think I want or need. Sometimes, when striving starts again, I relax a little, just remembering God's presence and goodness. I come back to the here and now, being me just as I am, wanting God in the midst of--and more than--whatever else I want.
Obviously I cannot recommend trying to put any of this into practice! But lightly consider not adding any trying to what is already going on. Experiment with allowing yourself to be led. Might it be possible to put some of your striving energy into praying for what you want? Bring your desires and willingness to God instead of taking things into your own hands as if you were on your own. We are not on our own. We never have been. God's loving mercy is freely given here in this very moment, ready to be trusted. It is everywhere and in every moment--even in the greatest tragedies.
Maybe we all have to go through trying to be contemplative. It does express our desire, and maybe it teaches us something about what contemplation is and is not. It certainly teaches us about self-will. But there comes a time when trying is finished, a time that is given. This summer I'll be going into the desert alone again. I'm sure I'll want to be contemplative. I hope and pray that I won't impose my ideas and efforts about contemplation on whatever God has in store for me there. If my eyes seek the beauty of the sky, if my limbs want to move over the land, if my thoughts want to roam, I hope God will save me from the arrogance of calling such things distractions. I want to be who I am in the wilderness as it is, with God as God chooses to be. This is also what I pray for right here, right now.
Gerald May served on the Shalem staff for over 30 years before his death in 2005. His books and his newsletter articles continue to guide and inspire.
Gathering Grace
by Connie Clark
I walked to the door of the suburban house on a hot September day. Just returned from the Shalem pilgrimage to Israel and Egypt, I entered a different desert when Susan Parker welcomed me into her home.
Susan was the first person I interviewed for "the Shalem book," a history of the Spirit working in and through Shalem these past 20 years. Susan had cancer and was a few months from dying when I interviewed her. I had never met her, but I'd been told, "Here is a person who is dying, who knows it, who demonstrates remarkable grace. It's a gift to be in her presence."
Moving slowly, Susan fixed me tea. She asked about the desert pilgrimage and told me she felt she shared in it, since she was traversing the wild country of dying. As a nurse oncologist, Susan had accompanied many others on this journey. "But this is different," she said. "I keep asking, 'How do I do this? What's the next step to take, God?' "
Susan spoke of the Group Spiritual Direction Group she had been meeting with for years, a group that started at Shalem and took on a life of its own. "They are seeing me through this," she said. "I don't know where I'd be without them."
I left Susan's house greatly blessed by meeting her, especially now when my own mother was dying. Susan was the first dying person I'd known whose focus on God seemed to transcend the pain and fear that mark that landscape. When my mother died six months later, Susan's example helped keep me steady.
That extraordinary interview was just one of 30 or so I've done as I've collected treasures from lovers of Shalem. Founding mothers and fathers, staff current and past, friends new and old have shared their unique stories. But whatever the details of each story, there's one common theme: Shalem is home.
Shalem is home for the man who grew up in Orthodox Judaism and left it for transcendental meditation and Buddhist practices. At Shalem he continues to seek the face of God in the company of other pilgrims.
Shalem is home for the dutiful church-goer who one day was seized by an intimate knowledge of God's love "like a bolt from the blue." Feeling there was no room for that experience in her church community, she came to Shalem, "where people didn't think I was crazy."
Shalem is home for hundreds of ministers, lay and ordained, whose vocations have been supported and enriched by Shalem's Spiritual Guidance and Group Leaders Programs.
And Shalem is home for countless others. I'm sorry I could only interview a handful, and I pray that I can convey their experiences--our experiences--truthfully and clearly as I create this little book.
I began the interviews last September fresh from the desert, plunging into another desert momentarily with Susan Parker. I concluded them this April with Peggy Tucker, whom I met for dinner after the Sunday night healing service and Eucharist at the Washington Cathedral.
A Shalem associate staff and board member, Peggy is a medical oncologist at the National Institutes of Health. She too went on last year's desert pilgrimage. She patched me up physically and emotionally during the roughest spots on that trip, and became an instant soulmate through a conversation we had in a Cairo restaurant near the journey's end. In response to a question from a fellow pilgrim, I said, "My mom is dying, but what makes it especially hard is the cumulative losses--my sister died four years ago and my father and brother-in-law were killed in 1983."
Peggy stopped eating and stared at me. She told me that since 1983 she too had lost three of the people closest to her in the world, including her mother and sister. The factual parallels were astonishing, but what felt like a feast was that we shared our losses and our passionate desire for God, and that for both of us, they somehow fit together in mystery beyond our explaining. We didn't say much; our bond was cemented for us. In the ladies' room as we washed our hands, we looked at each other in the mirror. Then we embraced wordlessly, held together by a compassionate Love that "lured us into the desert and spoke tenderly to us," to paraphrase Hosea.
Only God could arrange such a journey, such a meeting--and God's creative love has been with me every step of the way as I gathered stories for the Shalem book. My final interview with Peggy came two weeks after my mother's death. We sat in a Thai restaurant and talked about the glories of God. Shalem is one of them. I praise God for it.
Connie, a free-lance writer, is also a member of Shalem's Development Committee. The Shalem Anniversary Book will be out in Spring, 1994.
"The Journey and The Dream"
by Susan Dillon
Both are important,
The Journey and the Dream,
The coming-out and the entering-in:
Without the Journey
The Dream is a futile entering into yourself,
Where you ride a monotonous wheel
That spins around you alone.
With the Journey
The entering-in is itself a Journey
that does not end inside you
But passes through the self and
Out the other side of you
Where you ride the wheel you found inside.
To remain inside too long
Makes the Journey a fairytale Odyssey
And the Dream becomes illusion.
The wheel must spin on the real road
Where your Dream leads you.
To remain on the road too long
Dims the Dream
Until you no longer see it
and the road replaces the Dream.
The Journey and the Dream
Are one balanced act of love
And both are realized outside the mind.
Murray Bodo, Francis: The Journey and
the Dream.
Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press,
1972.
Reprinted with permission.
Father Richard Rohr, head of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, began his lecture and workshop on Contemplation and Action, offered by Shalem May 6 and 7, with this poem, which succinctly expresses his basic message. Our spiritual lives, nourished and grounded in contemplation, give us the footing necessary for social action; our participation in the world grounds our spiritual lives in the graceful balance of suffering and joy.
Father Rohr described three stages of consciousness: Simple, Complex, and Enlightened. We are born into simplicity, unity, instinctiveness, similar to Adam and Eve in the Garden. But we carry within us the seed of the apple that will lead to our Fall, our Great Defeat, our wounding, no matter how loving our upbringing. We are compelled to move out of the Simple into the Complex: we begin to want to know, to judge, to distinguish, breaking up our unity with the whole. In Complexity our sense of separation is so painful that we yearn to return to Simplicity, but angels with flaming swords block our reentry back into the Garden. Instead, through grace we move toward Enlightenment, a state of knowing simplicity, in which we live in the present moment, in nowhere--"now here." The simplicity of Enlightened consciousness is no longer innocent. It has been wounded and healed, and the ego of one has been subsumed into the One.
Westerners are taught to live in Complex consciousness. We value its emblems: individualism, freedom of choice, controlling our lives, self improvement. The essential experience of this consciousness is suffering, however, because it is inherently a state of alienation. We must be willing to kill the Paschal Lamb, that part of ourselves that is right, beautiful, innocent, and surrender our egos and all that is good as well as bad that they carry, back to the One from whom we came. But our willingness alone does not move us out of Complexity; grace is the bridge we cross to Enlightenment.
Contemplation is the practice of that surrendering of ego, "meeting Reality in its most simple and immediate form." Although contemplation alone does not bring Enlightenment, it does change our desires and affects the way we act toward ourselves, our families, friends, enemies, community, planet. The inner life can begin to drive the outer life. The dream begins to guide the journey and the journey lives out the dream.
Periodically throughout its 20 years Shalem has questioned whether it should support social action in specific, deliberate forms along with contemplation. For example, we have considered donating part of our budget to activist organizations, and our leaders are often asked to identify Shalem with particular causes. So far it has been clear that our mission is in supporting individuals' contemplative practice and encouraging reflection on its implications for community and action. As one's practice leads to action in the world, Shalem is a place for grounding, balancing, renewal, and discernment as one lives in and responds to the real world. This dialogue about contemplation and action is so fundamental that it was an obvious issue for examination at the beginning of our 20th Anniversary. Who could better lead us in the discussion than Richard Rohr?
Susie, a Shalem Board member, has been a Shalem program participant for a number of years.
God's Cleansing Voice
by Tilden Edwards
The volunteer actors left the stage in silence one by one as the flutist wailed a haunting melody. The organizer laid a single red rose at the feet of the lone musician. Tears rose to my eyes. For two hours I had heard poems and dramatic dialogue dedicated to the enduring holocaust in Bosnia. For over a year I have felt this tragedy with special pain. At first it was because my ancestry is half-Croatian. But over time my particular concern has grown well beyond that identity "hook." I have increasingly felt that God is shouting a warning and a hope to the world through this war (as in every war): "See what happens when you forget that you belong to one another as my offspring! You create idols of exclusive, narrow identity for your security rather than the liberating inclusiveness that comes when you open yourselves to me. I grieve that you fail to see yourself in your neighbors and that you fail to see me in them. You are all my love manifest. Open yourself to who you really are. Remember my prayer for you in Jesus: that you realize your oneness in me."
A prophetic voice consonant with these words had been rising from Bosnian soil for a decade before the current war broke out. It came from apparitions of the Virgin Mary to six children in the village of Medjugorje. Millions of people have flocked there from every corner of the globe to be present at this particularly "thin" place between earth and heaven. More important than the controversies over the authenticity and particular content of the messages received is Mary's overarching plea for hearts aimed at communal peace and a God-centered way of life. Medjugorje as of this writing has been spared devastation despite repeated attempts. Perhaps it is meant to remain as a sacred place to remind the world of the call to its shared life in God.
We all know from personal and historical experience the complexity and difficulty of a call to an enduring and just peace and to a shared sense of belonging together in God. But it is a call that does not go away. It comes from One who loves us all and who opens the way for responsiveness when we have ears that listen willingly and long enough. The way is opened outside and inside. Outside we are shown particular ways to aid the victims of war and structures for a just peace. Inside we begin to recognize how we are subtly part of the horror of "cleansing the different neighbor" in Bosnia through the ways we unforgivingly maintain enemies, lord it over others, fearfully keep what we have at any cost to others, and overly identify with exclusive groups. Such behavior numbs us to the truth that all are our God-loved kin. Whether we like them or not, whether we can live with them closely or not, they are always worthy of our prayer and hope.
God has many ways of helping us respond to the call to recognize our kin and let God's Spirit, through us, shape a humane way of life together. Contemplative prayer, I believe, has a special place among these ways. My experience tells me that when such prayer has the intent of opening to the inclusive Love that daily carries us, we have more freedom to realize very directly our mutual belonging. All our boundaried personal identities--sex, race, family, ethnic group, nationality, religion, personality type, occupation, and particular interests--become lighter when we are opened to God's mercy in open contemplation. As the vast/intimate mystery of God's love is shown to be our true center, our psyches lose their need to cling to such narrower identities as a means of ultimate security.
These identities are not erased but relativized to the larger Love that delights in such variety as long as each difference remembers its common divine ground. Our many particular identities are shown as avenues through which we concretely live the love shown us, but they need to be subsumed to our larger identity with the divine Love itself. Contemplative prayer as an arena of intent for God has a way of helping reveal that shared ground. We can find emerging a deep quality of soul that does not need to define and protect itself. It simply is being itself in the moment, which involves a capacity to spontaneously, appreciatively, compassionately be with what is immediately present. Everything present is felt as part of a larger, interwoven whole, in which we personally have a given yet fluid place.
We are rarely given such deep soul-full-ness in pure or sustained form; however, even if we only have a brief flash of such awareness in our prayer and daily life, that flash often shows us how life is meant to be, indeed, how it really is in God. It shows us something of the real Home we yearn for. It makes the forgetful, willful world of narrow fear and grasping that much more painful to bear, and yet we are drawn more than ever to bear it in God and to see God hidden within it. We are goaded to prayer for the fullness of God's shalom. We are energized to join with others to support what we have tasted and to care for God's love in the world.
As we heed the calls to deeper love that God shouts to us in Bosnia, with the help of contemplative prayer and every other means of grace God gives us, we can take heart from the ways love wondrously shows itself through the cracks in the walls of hate, fear, and brutality. We hear powerful stories from Bosnia of courageous martyrdom for the neighbor who is different, of compassion that adopts orphaned children and cares for raped women and legless wounded, of sacrificial sharing of food and shelter, of resolution to find a way to live justly and respectfully with those who are different, and of deeper conversion to a God-centered life. I'm sure there are countless other stories of Spirit-inspired beauty that have not reached our public view. God's loving energies flow ceaselessly in Bosnia, in us, in the world, through the worst of circumstances, inspiring us to be who we are in the divine image.