by Gerald May

In 1989, Emma Ditman wrote an article for Shalem News describing her contemplative experience working with Shalem's computers. She told of the database that kept track of our mailing list, programmed to recite prayers for everyone each time it was run. That program has been rewritten many times since, but the prayers are still going round and round, silently blessing our ever-expanding community. Now, six years later, Shalem has taken another step in technological openness, one that has made the community seem endless. We now have a presence in cyberspace.

Even if I understood the technology, I wouldn't be able to explain cyberspace. It is simply too vast to comprehend. But I can say that "cyber" refers to computers and "space" is, you know, space. Think for a moment about the place where your telephone plugs into the wall: how that single point of contact is connected with billions of other points of contact around the world in a vast network of telephone wires, transmitters, and satellite links. If you try to picture that network of interconnectedness in your mind, with billions of threads of communication making contact in trillions of ways, you might have a beginning image of the physical landscape of cyberspace. I might compare it to the structure of the human brain, but it is so much bigger. And, like the expanding universe, its boundaries are continually unfolding and increasingly vague.

Everyone talks about the internet these days, but it is only one aspect of cyberspace (albeit the largest and most unruly). Begun in the late 60's as a fail-safe for Defense Department communications, the internet has now expanded to include countless universities, world governments, libraries, wire services, businesses, and medical, religious and other kinds of organizations. Between 25 and 30 million people have access to the internet now, with upwards of 80,000 new people connecting each month. Perhaps another 10 million use other cyberspace avenues such as commercial services or electronic bulletin boards. And, one way or another, it's all connected. Using this immense web of communication, people are able to access vast resources of information as well as carry on discussions with individuals and groups around the world--all at lightspeed. I smile inside as I recall the very first words Samuel Morse sent on his newly invented telegraph in 1844: "What hath God wrought?"

I have been thinking for several years about the power of contemplative presence in this unexplored expanse of people-connections. What new meanings might it bring to spiritual community, guidance, and support? How might Shalem be invited to participate? Last winter I began exploring in earnest. At first I expected to have difficulty remaining prayerful and contemplative in such high-tech territory, but the sheer immensity and ever-freshness of the landscape made it easy. Like mountain forests or ocean depths, cyberspace carries a feeling of unknown wilderness, full of mystery and endless possibility. With a little grace, I find I am just given an open, prayerful attitude in such an atmosphere.

At least for now, the internet-as-a-whole is a bit too wonderfully wild even for my adventurous tastes, like the Wild West might have felt, only much, much larger. So I decided to pitch my tent for a while on a commercial online service that provides a little organization and civilization, a gathering of three million people rather than 30 million. This has become a base camp where my heart can become acclimated to the cyberspace environment and from which I can make forays into the outlands as I wish.

In this environment I have found people gathering for dialogue and support concerning exactly the issues I was seeking: contemplative spirituality, mysticism, spiritual formation, the heart-journey with God. I have discovered that people in this setting often share more intimately and are more vulnerable with one another than in most face-to-face encounters. Some of us have chosen to call it "faceless intimacy." It reminds me very much of the intimacy of silence in old-time Shalem groups where people didn't know one anothers' names or occupations yet were so deeply aware of shared intent and common support.

I also have found spiritual guidance happening in rapid, surprising, and profound ways in cyberspace, both in group settings and one-to-one. There's something about this new means of communicating that seems to give the Spirit extra freedom to fly, though perhaps, as in any wilderness, people are more open to Her surprises. Whatever it is, She certainly seems to enjoy it. More often than I can count, I have been moved to tears by people's heart-sharings scrolling across my screen and deeply gratified that something I've contributed has touched them as well. People who have known me in other settings tell me I'm different online: more free, somehow more myself.

After a couple months of participation in dialogues and conferences, I was asked to become a section leader. It would take more of my time, but I didn't need to struggle with discernment; a clear, unquestioning Yes flowed through my fingertips onto the keyboard. So now I lead a section on recovery spirituality and co-lead another on spiritual formation. I've made many new friends there and, pleasantly, run into quite a few old ones. I've been nourished and supported in ways too numerous to count, too mysterious to describe. And Shalem has a presence in cyberspace.

In this vast and surprising land I have begun to name and claim what it means--for me, at least--to be a contemplative presence in all my interactions with other people and the world. It means to live in conscious love with the here-and-now Divine, to trust God's love no matter what, to know that God flows through us all continually, to believe that God so intimately pervades us and all creation that we can never, ever be really abandoned. It is to realize that the actual presence of Christ speaks to me through your mouth, sees you with my eyes; that there is no place, no creature, and no thing on earth or in the heavens that is not filled with Divine Presence. And it is to remember and be reminded that every moment of life is exquisitely precious, just as it is.

I know so little in cyberspace, which reminds me of how little I truly know anywhere. There is beautiful grace in this unknowing, a magnificent freedom birthed from mystery, the flowing compassion and charity that springs from simple attentiveness and availability. In this contemplative freedom I have no "how to's," no idea of what is helpful or even what to do next. What comes instead is a simple interior gift: a trusting, open, courageous presence of willingness.

In the wilds of cyberspace, as in the wilds of forests and mountains, I feel the free energy of contemplative presence, openly and unabashedly enjoying the endless flow of life divine, willing to laugh and cry, to be still and to dance, to be moved in any way and to whatever end the Spirit of God desires. That's how I want to be--and hope Shalem will be--in cyberspace and physical space, in inner space or outer space, wherever we find ourselves.