email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
January 2005
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Celtic Cross as map of the soul |
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Gerald May: The heart as the center of faith |
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A story about listening, or not! |
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Margaret Guenther on Spiritual Direction |
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The Examen |
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Solzhenitsyn on the times. |
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“Green Fields” hymn |
What training or experiences do you have in spirituality? I’ve been participating in “Companions on the Inner Way” retreats and conferences for many years and they provide excellent opportunities to be introduced to and refine selected spiritual practices. Companions was the place where I was first exposed to Lectio Divina, as well as several other spiritual practices over the year. This year there will be an opportunity to explore the Celtic Cross as a map for the soul. Here are the words of this year’s retreat leader, the Rev. James Neafsey:
"For
centuries Celtic Christians gathered beneath stone crosses carved with scenes
from Scripture. These 'prayers in
stone' portrayed the core mysteries of faith and the full spectrum of spiritual
experience in simple, evocative images. The
sequence of images carved on the south cross at Castledermot, Ireland, will
guide our journey this week. This
cross offers a comprehensive vision of the Christian path to union with God that
parallels maps of the soul found in other wisdom traditions and in contemporary
psychology. Join us as we gather
beneath the Tree of Life to feed on its fruits of wisdom, healing and
love."
Have you ever “mapped your soul?” This will be an opportunity to find out what that means and to practice it with this one particular Celtic cross. More information can be found through the link at the end of this email. How about a New Year’s resolution to deepen your own spiritual life? Try this!
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of the books that I’ve had to read for my studies this month is “The Awakened Heart: Opening Yourself to the Love You Need” by Gerald G. May, M.D., Harper Collins, 1991. He opens the book with this paragraph.
“There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the human desire for love. Every person on this earth yearns to love, to be loved, to know love. Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire.”
Dr. May’s use of the word heart here is just what the Bible means when it talks about our heart, the deep center of ourselves. This paragraph reminds me once again of the quote from St. Augustine in his “Confessions” that goes something like this: “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Augustine could be speaking of the final rest of death. But if I put Augustine and Dr. May together I find that we will be most satisfied, most restful, most complete when we find the love of God. We will also be better able to give love when we are tapped into the source of love.
May you find that love of God in your life today, and may your heart ever be more awakened to the love in and around you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of our themes for this first week of classes (see “study leave” note below) has been Christian Listening. I had an experience on the opening day of classes that was a graphic illustration for me. That afternoon, I went to the grocery story with two other students. Once I the store, I began looking for the things I needed, finding everything but bottled water. After circling the store 3 or 4 times, I finally asked one of the clerks where to find bottled water. He said something to me and didn’t understand his reply. I repeated “bottled water,” thinking he just didn’t understand or hear me rightly. He said something again and I looked at him strangely. He had an accent, so I figured English was at least a second language for him. Then I realized he’d said either “How are you?” or some other typical greeting. As I did not yet respond and must have had a quizzical look on my face, he explained to me that the policy of the store was to greet each customer first, then address whatever their needs were.
I was chagrined. What should have been a normal polite exchange became a humbling lesson for me. I was so caught up in myself that I couldn’t see him as a person, merely as a means for me to find what I needed. As I reflected upon it the next day, I realized what work I needed to do to learn the art of Christian Listening.
How often does that happen in our lives when god wants to talk to us? How often are we caught up on our own agendas, so busy that we can’t or won’t listen as God tries to speak to us? Maybe you are like me. After praying regularly, I think I am doing God’s work in my daily responsibilities. But God is much more often in the interruptions to my work than in the work itself. My task is to learn to listen better.
May you listen better to the voice of God in your daily lives.
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of the books we are working with this week in my classes is “Holy Listening: the Art of Spiritual Direction,” by Margaret Guenther, Cowley Publications, Cambridge MA, 1992. Here she offers some words about this practice of spiritual direction.
“Like all of us, the person seeking spiritual direction is on a journey. Since the expulsion from Eden, we have been a people on the move, despite attempts as self-delusion that we have somehow arrived, we follow the footsteps of our peripatetic Lord, always on the way, our faces turned resolutely or reluctantly toward Jerusalem. Mobility is our way of life. How many of us live within the, even one hundred miles of our birthplace? And how many of us have any idea where we will die? Physically, our life is a journey. Spiritually, too, we are always on the way, (in via), when we long to be at home (in patria). We are travelers, and we are weary and homesick.”
Is there a way to find ourselves rooted or grounded wherever we are? Well, yes, there are a variety of ways, a variety of faith practices, that can be used to ease the “travel sickness” (my phrase, not Guenther’s) talked about here. Spiritual direction is only one of those ways. To continue this travel image, what kind of motion sickness medication do you take, or, how do you cope with jet-lag?
May you seek the right faith-practice for you. Trust that God is seeking you continually. May you be blessed in finding yourself at home wherever you are.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
For many years, I have followed a set pattern in my daily prayers. Part of that has always been asking for forgiveness for some specific things of the previous day, or perhaps some ongoing event. Some of the material here (see http://www.whitpresby.org/geoff_schooling.htm) has given me a whole new slant on that business of forgiveness. It comes from a wonderful little book called “Sleeping with Bread” by Matthew & Dennis Linn and Shiela Fabricant Linn, Paulist Press, 1995. The book uses the terms consolation and desolation to describe the rhythms of the day. The idea is to ask oneself “What am I most grateful for today?” or “What am I least grateful for today?” Asking these two questions is what is called “The Examen,” based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This second part of The Examen, “What am I least grateful for…?” is what is new for me. Listen to their rationale on this point.
“We agree that our attitude toward desolation is somewhat different than you may have been taught. Our present attitude is somewhat different from what WE were taught, too. We were taught that many of our desolations, such as feelings of lust, anger, etc., were sinful. Sometimes such feeling states were called “capital sins.” The truth in this teaching is that we need to resist the impulse to act upon feelings in a way that would be harmful to ourselves or others. For example, feelings of lust if acted upon might result in promiscuity, or feelings of anger if acted upon might result in violence.”
“Yet this teaching often missed the distinction between acting upon feelings and listening to their story. Such teaching assumed that if we resisted certain feelings, they would go away. However, this isn’t how our feelings work. When feelings are ignored or resisted, they grow inside us and are likely to eventually lead to an explosion in which we act out in even more destructive ways than we might have at first. We believe that what negative feelings or desolations really want is not destructive behavior but rather to have their story heard. When their story is heard, they are satisfied and they quiet down naturally. If we then take steps to meet the needs revealed by the story, this desolation is unlikely to recur.”
I figure when something can get me to change a habit I’ve developed over nearly 30 years, it is worth passing on to you. As one reviewer said “The Lord is surely with the Linns or they could not make such profound things feel so simple.” “What are you grateful/not grateful for this day? This simple formula can make a profound difference in your life with God. Give it a try for a few days, preferably with a partner somehow, and see what happens.
May you find God’s presence in your life as you examine it today.
Grace & Peace
Geoff
Another of our texts here (see http://www.whitpresby.org/geoff_schooling.htm) has been “The Crisis of Care: Affirming and Restoring Caring Practices in the Helping Professions” edited by Susan S. Phillips and Patricia Benner, Georgetown University Press, Washington D.C., 1994. In her introduction, Dr. Phillips quotes from Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, from his work “A World Split Apart.”
“If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be crushed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.”
The present hunger for “things spiritual” is a sign that our time seeks a deeper relation to life and creation that a generation or two ago. Can we say that Solzhenitsyn’s “blaze” is here? That may be over stating things. Certainly the world is no less brutal than it has been. But the ever growing hunger for deeper and more meaningful experiences, even experiences of God, testify to the dissatisfaction with “normal” life. How might we better take care of our “spiritual being?” How are YOU taking care of your spiritual being? There are opportunities around for the task of caring for that part of ourselves. (See the Companions link below) As we approach the Lenten season for this year, think about how you might take better care of your “spiritual being.” May you nourish that part of yourself by whatever means are available to you.
Grace & Peace
Geoff
The seminary bookstore here (see http://www.whitpresby.org/geoff_schooling.htm) had a nice small selection of recorded music and I found a CD called “Sacred and Secular Choral Music of Aaron Copeland and Virgil Thomson,” Gloria Dei Cantores, Elizabeth C. Patterson, conductor, Gloria Dei recordings, GDCD 029. both Copeland and Thomson were great American composers of the last century. One of the “Hymns from the Old South” that Thomson set gloriously caught my attention. It is called “Green Fields” and was unfamiliar to me until I got this CD. The whole hymn is quite nice and if you can hear Thomson’s setting of it, I would encourage you to do so. Here is the first stanza:
How tedious and tasteless the hours
When Jesus no longer I see!
Sweet prospects, sweet birds, and sweet flow’rs
have all lost their sweetness to me.
The midsummer sun shines but dim;
The fields strive in vain to look gay;
But when I am happy in Him,
December’s as pleasant as May.
This hymn expresses our tendency to associate our feelings and emotions with the presence or absence of God, a tendency we all-too-often follow. We too often base the state of our faith on our feelings. The greater, deeper truth is that God is with us always, no matter our current state of emotions, no matter whether its December or May. Indeed, sometimes we are closest to God when we feel the most alone, most desolate or most in pain. One of the gifts of music is to give us songs to sing that express our longing for God, as well as our praises of God and thanksgivings to God. Here is another song to add to our faith repertory.
May your heart sings God’s love to you this day, regardless of how you feel.
Grace & peace
Geoff
