Healing Through the Seasons of Our Lives
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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.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.