by Rose Mary Dougherty

The topic of spiritual community has been an interest of mine for many years. I remember writing about it in the newsletter when I first came full time to Shalem. I think I was trying to articulate something of what I was learning from Shalem's regular program participants about the value of a spiritual community as support for one's "hanging in there" with practice and prayer.

About six years after that, in attempting to bring together my learning and convictions about group spiritual direction in written form, I found that the very first topic I wanted to address was that of spiritual community, because it was pivotal to my understanding of spiritual direction and thus group spiritual direction. I wrote about what I learned from those in group spiritual direction of the value of spiritual community. I described spiritual community as the person or group of people with whom my desire for God comes alive and through whom I am supported in honoring that desire. I talked about the differences between spiritual community and others kinds of community where like-minded personalities, a common mission/task or support for the successful managing of life are often the norms. I suggested that it was possible to be in spiritual community with people I didn't particularly like or didn't even know much about in terms of the human specifics of their lives; I also suggested that the very structures which ensure the success of other kinds of communities could militate against spiritual community. They could divert attention from a group's reason for being together. I suggested that potential spiritual communities look together for the structures which would honor and reflect their reason for being together.

At the end of my book, Group Spiritual Direction, I wrote about what I sensed was the value of spiritual community beyond itself. I spoke about how our presence together with God for one another could effect change, not only for ourselves but for our world. I truly believed that when I wrote it, but I hadn't really appreciated it until I came to participate in group spiritual direction myself.

After completing my book, I was so inspired by what I wrote about the value of group spiritual direction that I decided it was time for me to be in a group. I prayed about the possible members for such a group and kept coming up with three other people, two of whom I knew only minimally from a gathering we had been in together. I was sure I was "tuned into the wrong station" when I got these names. From what I knew of us, we couldn't have been more different, not only in denominations but also in personalities, interests, and work. As I thought about the likelihood of our "succeeding" as a group for spiritual direction, I questioned my good sense in even attempting it. But it really seemed right to try. So I called these people. All three said in different ways that they had been feeling the need for something like this for themselves. All felt the need for some support for living our groundedness in God. This is what we shared in common. Our diversity, though in the beginning a challenge as we struggled to hear one another in the varied expressions of our life with God, became the lens through which we would appreciate the uniqueness of God's dealings with each of us. Sometimes I couldn't really understand what someone was saying about his or her particular life circumstances or work, and I suspect that was true for others, but that didn't seem to matter. I felt a deep affinity in prayer. I sensed that in some way I was joining God's caring love being manifest by the others in the group as I prayed for their mission in that love. They brought me in touch with situations and people I might never have prayed for on my own.

We stayed together for three years. When two people left the group, two others joined. Though it took us a little time to share at a deep level, we settled into prayer together easily. We used the format of group spiritual direction to guide us through our sharing, allowing time for attention to each person in the group. Then at our December meeting, after eighteen months of being together, we found ourselves being drawn into a new way of being together. We set aside, at least for that meeting, our usual format.

It was the week after the Clinton impeachment hearings had ended. After a time of silence, one person began to share something of the pain of her own heart in the awareness of her self-righteousness and anger. She spoke of her need for forgiveness. What followed was not so much a dialogue but a ritual of confession. Each named for all of us our part in the divisiveness of our country as we experienced the divisiveness of our own hearts; each spoke of both personal need for reconciliation and the sense of invitation to be part of the healing of our nation. None of us knew what that would look like for us individually; we named a sense of helplessness in figuring that out. One person said that the people he needed most to be reconciled with he never had contact with. We prayed for mercy and guidance. We prayed the question, "Where is God in this, for ourselves, for our nation?"

As we reflected on our time together, each of us voiced that the conversation we had had could not have happened anywhere else. We said that, in other settings where we had talked about the impeachment proceedings, we and others had been too filled with our private agendas to even listen. We recognized that something very profound had happened among us, had been given to us. We sensed that our commitment to meeting month after month, our prayer together over the months, had prepared us to receive the gift that had been given. It had deepened our trust, not in one another, but in God's presence among us. It was this trust that freed us to receive and to participate in the gift of healing. We began to sense that this healing was not just for ourselves, but in fact, it was God's way of drawing us into the healing of our nation.

The Quaker, Marious Grout, once wrote, "If contemplation, which introduces us to the very heart of creation, does not inflame us with such love that it gives us, together with deep joy, the understanding of the infinite misery of the world, it is a vain kind of contemplation; it is the contemplation of a false god. The sign of true contemplation is charity. By your capacity for forgiveness shall I recognize your God and also your opening to all creation."

His words apply aptly to spiritual community. If such a community, which is meant to introduce us to the very heart of our oneness with God, does not inflame us with such love that it gives us, together with deep joy, the understanding of the infinite misery of the world, it is not a spiritual community; it is a narcissistic gathering. True spiritual community is an expression of a contemplative heart. It expands beyond itself to embrace all humanity. The essence and the fruit of true spiritual community is an intercessory stance for our world.