Proceed as the Way Opens

Reading a new-to-me book, Writing the Sacred Journey*, I was surprised by the use of the Quaker phrase “proceed as the way opens.” In the context, it describes an attitude toward writing which respects the ambiguity of the process by allowing the emerging of the words to define the direction and content of what is being written.

Of course, the Quakers are describing an attitude toward the journey of life that doesn’t expect all of the steps to be clear from the beginning, and that expects God will keep showing where to go a bit at a time. The process of discerning where to go is not settled, but must continually be engaged, requiring an ongoing sensitivity to God and listening to one’s life.

This is not to say that this is the only Quaker approach to life and decisions. In fact, the Quakers developed a very different approach in the “clearness committees” to assist individuals to explore what they believe might be a call from God for action. In the clearness process a group of people listens to the individual and asks questions, so that the possible blind spots or unconsidered aspect of the decision can be more deeply explored. It takes advantage of the wisdom of a variety of perspectives to improve the discernment.

They are not mutually exclusive, and both forms could and would be used by the same person or persons at different times. But, it strikes me how regularly I have seen the model of the clearness committee described, adapted and used in both church and society. Yet only this day have I discovered its sibling decision making process of “proceeding as the way opens.”

What does it say about us as people and our society that we expect the clarity to be obtained through a clearness committee and we avoid the ambiguity and insecurity implied by proceeding as the way opens?

I know I want clarity even though my life is mostly lived in watching and wondering what will open up. Openness in this sense is living in the moment, acting in response to ordinary everyday experience. I must pay attention to the world, people, and to God around me.

Just this morning Glenda, who is a priest in Panama, called to me as I walked through the Metro station. If I had not heard her call my name, which I can easily do when I am focused on my clear agenda of getting to my train, I would not have had the pleasure of our short hug and sharing of greetings. God opened a way for us to reconnect.

I am learning to appreciate and trust God will be with me as I proceed as the way opens, even if I am still learning. I certainly have used it as I have written this!

*Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir by Elizabeth J. Andrew p. 17

Crying at Baptims

This Pentecost with the baptism of an infant, Karl, as well as his mother, I found myself crying again. It started early in the presentation and reached full flow when I joined the rest of the congregation in saying “We receive you into the household of God . . .”

I have been much more aware of my emotions during church services in the last few years, and am still learning to adjust to them. Often during some point in the Eucharistic Prayer a few words will suddenly jump out at me, speaking directly to something I have been dealing with in my life. I believe it is a gift, God wanting to reassure me. That doesn’t make it any easier.

It can become incredibly awkward since men are not supposed to be emotional. I have decided that I am not going to stifle the emotions just to make other people more comfortable. That would feel like I am stifling God. In consideration for other’s sensitivities when the crying starts, I wait until people are busy making a joyful noise singing a hymn to blow my nose. Or, when my eyes are full of tears, I blink them back until there is a time for prayer and people are supposed to be paying attention to God rather than the guy several feet away who is dabbing his eyes.

I should not have been surprised by the tears last Sunday, as I looked at the parents and their young son. I saw their hope for Karl and the love of those standing with them. Baptism is a time for hope, for bringing the salvation of Christ into his life and in the welcoming him into a community that pledges to teach and encourage him into the faith.

Alongside that hope, I thought of all of the pain and grief that Karl would experience in growing up and becoming a mature person in faith. I wondered what kinds of problems he will encounter in his life, and if he would be overwhelmed by situations. I prayed that he will be given the strength and courage to face those problems.

The sadness grew because there is nothing any of us, including his parents, his godparents or the rest of the community can do to keep that pain away or to protect this young infant from all that will happen. He alone will have to find his way to cope with and overcome the turmoil. I wish it could be different.

So, one more Sunday, I had to stuff my damp handkerchief into my pocket before turning to those around me to exchange the Peace of God, my eyes still damp from tears, and feeling a bit foolish. Foolish for caring about what might happen to Karl. Foolish for wanting to be emotionally open to God and for God.

Sue’s Reflection on Spiritual Hunger

Sue lived next door to me during our spiritual direction training program. While she and I come from opposite sides of the globe, we found ourselves dealing with similar questions and struggles - searching for where our call was leading.

Recently I wrote Sue, “ I doubt I will ever feel satisfied… because I always seem to want more…” Sue replied, “I smiled as I read your words: I have recognized the same in myself for so long; but you know, I suspect that might be a grace to keep us in touch with what is in fact a deep spiritual hunger.”

I struggle with her response, even though I know that she has described something very true. I started down this path to spiritual growth wanting it to lead to being calm, peaceful, and satisfied. While there are times of quiet and centeredness, those times are only brief, infrequent, and rarely when I really need them.

What keeps emerging for me are feelings of the incompleteness and of not having done enough. I feel it as a failure, so when Sue reminds me to consider it a grace, a gift from God to keep me open, I am startled. Rather than being a failure, she understands that yearning as a gift from God. God is stirring me up, calling me forward.

Sue went on to write, “Some people never tap into that hunger for more and don’t want to, because it’s uncomfortable at least, painful at most.”

It is definitely uncomfortable and gets in my way. I easily slip into distraction from that unsettledness. I can numb myself in different ways, such as watching television, staying busy with work or church business, or fantasizing about creating a perfect garden. But, if the yearning is from God, then numbing myself is denying God’s persisting call.

The yearning often recalls places of pain, either from the past or how my life is being lived today. I become aware of how I failed at something in the past or I feel inadequate to resolve a current dilemma. So again, numbing the pain becomes very tempting and it is very easy to slip away from reality.

Alternatively, wallowing in the pain feels safer than risking God’s desire for more. By becoming stuck in the feelings, I don’t have to take on the hard work and challenge of getting on with my life. It avoids changing those things either within me or around me that have closed me to God’s desire.

In her gentle way, Sue leads to her own response, “I’m learning to befriend it.”

Again, she surprises me with what seems obvious. Rather than push away the yearning and discomfort, she urges me to bring it closer, and get to know it better. If the yearning is from God, than by approaching it I am approaching God.

It is not unlike some yoga positions that I attempt while watching the limber young woman on the DVD. With this aging body, I will never move with the grace and strength that she has achieved. I can still approach the movement with the hope that even in my imperfect execution, I am getting closer.

So Sue asks the final question any good spiritual director would. “What happens when you take that holy longing and restless desire for more to your God?????”

But I am afraid to take it to God. What might God ask or even require of me if I were to directly ask the question? Would I be required to take a radical step out of my current life? More questions rise up to keep me away from God.

I don’t know why I am afraid, if I truly believe that God is loving and wants to bring me into closer relationship. But the fear is there, and perhaps that is what I need to take to God in prayer, at least for now.

Ringing Compassion

I have been thinking about compassion a lot. It started a few weeks ago when I was at a flea market, and noticed many sizes of Tibetan singing bowls in one booth. One large bowl, nine inches in diameter and four inches deep, had a deep pure tone when I rang it with the mallet. The vendor showed me how to hold the bowl in the palm of my hand and rub the edge of the bowl with a suede covered mallet. Soon, soft vibrations began, growing louder as it responded to the friction of the leather.

Around the outside in a strange script is some writing which the man told me is “Om Mane Padme Hum,” a repeated prayer for compassion. That convinced me to buy it. Every few days since then I have rubbed the edge of the bowl so it would ring out a prayer for compassion in its full voice.

I need to hear that prayer for my daily life as well as during my time providing spiritual direction. It is hard to be able to be compassionate and stay present to the pain in others. I am not alone in readily hiding behind a wall by offering advice or by judging and rejecting the person in pain or by being unwilling to listen. It is hard for all of us to lower the protective wall. Being fully present with someone in pain strikes the memory of our own pain like the hard mallet strikes the singing bowl.

Compassion is grounded in being able to listen, completely and lovingly, even when my own pain, whether in the past or the present, claims my attention. My ability to listen is shaped by how I have claimed, respected and healed from my own times of suffering. The more I have been able to accept and remember my struggles, the more likely I am able to decide to let down the wall and really be available to another.

As a man, I am trained by my culture to be invulnerable, to stay in control of the situation, to keep up the wall. So the decision to let myself be affected by other’s wounding, to be vulnerable with any other person is counter-cultural. It challenges my internal habits and others’ expectations.

The model for being counter-cultural became more clear this year as I moved through Holy Week. Throughout the events of the Last Supper, betrayal, sham courts, beatings, and crucifixion, Jesus chose to be vulnerable. He chose to give up control, and to endure the worst that humans can do to each other. God in Christ experienced the full range of the emotional and physical pain.

What the social culture did not understand then and still does not understand is that Jesus’ choice to be vulnerable also opened him to the power God’s healing. So too, when I am able to be vulnerable, I am opened to the power of God’s healing.

Compassion is not ethereal or abstract, but is experienced in our presence with and for each other, just as God became flesh and was available for us. In offering compassion to another person, and in my awareness of God’s continual healing and forgiving compassion for me, I may make manifest God’s presence and compassion to others.

When I hold the singing bowl to strike it, its vibrations touch not only my ears, but all of me. So it is with God’s compassion. We can experience the ringing pure tone that touches body, mind, heart and soul, God with us.

Tree of Hope

When Mom died recently, the neighbors gave us a gift certificate to a local nursery, knowing I am a passionate gardener - just like Mom. Wanting something special to remind me of her, I decided to plant an unusual tree.

The chosen location required a small tree, but being near the front sidewalk, one that would be interesting all year. As I flipped through my mind all the trees I have wanted to grow, I knew it had to be a Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum). Originally from China, they were introduced into this country at the turn of the previous century.

David was curious about what to expect, and while pictures helped, he wanted to see one. So one day we went to the National Arboretum, a place we have visited regularly with our dogs. I was surprised that we quickly found two paperbark maples near the National Capitol Columns. They appeared a bit rough for the wear, but still intriguing.

Then we found a very beautiful young one in the Asian Valley. Even in the early spring, without any leaves, it was a delight to see, with the reddish-orange bark that peeled back in odd places, catching the light and even moving in the breeze.

David checked around to different nurseries before he found one in stock that he brought home. I felt a bit left out of the decision, but knew he has a good eye. When I finally saw it, he had chosen well.

It was only after I planted it that I realized it was more than just reminder of my Mom’s life. It is a tree of hope for our future and for our home with a view of the Chesapeake Bay.

We have been in a time of transition for three years now. David has been professionally in-between for almost five years. I have been trying to keep going with my own professional life and pursuing my call to be a spiritual director while wondering when or how his life might pull mine up by the roots.

Without consciously deciding it, planting the tree was our way of making a commitment to put down our roots in that little piece of land looking out over the water. The experts say paperbark maples will grow to 30 feet in 50 years, and I hope to be there shaping its growth as a fitting memory of Mom.

It reminds me of Jeremiah, who bought the parcel of land as the Israelites were being marched out of Jerusalem to exile in Babylonia, showing his belief that they would be returning some day. While we are not threatened with enslavement or exile, we wonder what life will bring, and how we will be able to keep the house, its garden with the labyrinth, and the view of the Chesapeake Bay.

There is a Paper Bark Maple now growing in the front yard, our statement to God of hope that we will live in our bit of Jerusalem.

What is Distinctive about Masculine Spirituality?

Is there a difference between the ways that men and women approach and grow spiritually? Is it better to call it masculine and feminine since the behaviors are not exclusive to one or the other sex? These questions have been in my mind for few years now, and while I don’t have an answer yet, I am beginning to identify some patterns.

My relationships in providing and receiving spiritual direction have primarily been with women. My spiritual directors have been women, my peer supervision group is women, even my therapist is a woman. I have great respect for all of them, for the understanding and skill they have offered, and all that I have learned. But there have been times when I wondered if they understood me.

Earlier this month I participated in retreat for male spiritual directors. The conversations had a distinctive flow, and in a very short time I felt like those who listened to me really did understand at a deep level. The way we told our stories, slowly sorting through things in our mind and cautiously exposing our feelings was different from how women tell their stories.

In Melting the Iceberg: Spiritual Direction for Men*, Don Bisson describes his perception that men often begin with an insight. Don describes a process in which he asks the man to personalize the insights into his present life struggles which causes the man to move to the center of his passion. As the conversation continues, often there is an “ah-ha” experience, and the man reconnects the insight into an emotional stance where he feels more whole.

My struggle has always been to integrate my head with my heart, to bring them together to create a new whole and basis for faith. Often what first emerges in my awareness is an idea or new insight. Then I grapple my way through my thoughts and emotions by journaling, looking for the ways the thoughts and emotions confirm or contradict each other. I will try out pieces in conversations to see how others respond. I monitor my reactions and try to relate the inner work to outside experiences. I try to listen for how God is acting in all of the conversations and relationships.

Writing for this blog has become another way to move through the process of pulling the thoughts together. By recording the fragments as they appear, and letting them keep arranging themselves as I write, discarding what doesn’t fit, I play with how it all fits together. Each of these essays reaches a point where I decide it is “good enough” as I try to let go of getting it “right” or perfect.

But is this common for other men? Don’t some women also find the same kind of dynamic flow and process? Is it just because I start in my mind, when many of the women I know seem to start with the emotions and their heart?

I don’t know, but the questions keep me on the journey.

*Donald Bisson, FMS. Melting the Iceberg: Spiritual Direction for Men. Presence: The Journal of Spiritual Directors International, vol. 6, no. 2 (May 2000) pp. 31-37.

Alone in the Presence

I had seen it several times during the Spiritual Director’s International Conference at the end of March. It is one of a series of Prayer Vessels by Monica Armstrong, who had liberally spread her art throughout the meeting rooms. Titled Alone in the Presence, Monica honors the spiritual wisdom of Julian of Norwich.

Julian was an anchoress in 14^th century England, which means that she lived the last decades of her life in a small cell with the door locked so she could not go out nor others come in. Her cell had a window into the church from which she could hear the Mass and receive the sacrament. There was a second window on the outside wall where anyone could come and talk to her and ask for her advice.

The prayer vessel represents Julian’s ministry of prayer, contemplation and spiritual guidance. She lived her life physically in the middle, between the church and the world. While observing the daily offices, she was not cloistered from the world but available to any and all who passed by. The prayer vessel creates a similar physical inner space of prayer and meditation, a part of the world while apart from it.

Julian was a holy woman who experienced visions from God and took twenty years to write her understanding of them in Revelations of Divine Love. Her non-punitive understanding of sin was radically different from the Church of her time. Also, Julian often used feminine images of God, even describing Christ as “our mother.” Her sense of the inclusiveness of God’s complete love led her to state: “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Alone in the Presence provides a striking contrast to Monica’s other vessels in bowl or bottle shapes which are traditionally seen as feminine forms. It stands tall and narrow as a tower, strong and visible, which is a traditionally masculine shape. While I am not privy to Monica’s vision for her artwork, I can speak to my response. It illustrates one medieval woman’s ability to stand, separate and tall, independent in an age when a woman’s independence often meant ostracism or death. She wrote and spoke God’s truth as she knew it, opposing the fear and turmoil of those days when the plague or violence from other people could strike anytime.

Julian’s cell has not survived and the church was destroyed by a bomb during World War II. However as the first woman to write a book in English, her words continue to inspire many who continue to learn from her vision over six hundred years ago.

Alone in the Presence now sits where I can see it while I provide spiritual direction, a reminder of Julian who preceded me in listening to others on their spiritual journeys.