Weeks 40-44

King Lear
read this to overlap the "Bootleg Shakespeare" version Quill Theater put on last month. Quill turned the absurdity into hilarity! they had us rolling in the aisles.

The Desert Fathers - Helen Waddell
wow can't get enough of the sayings or of Waddell's comments. what else of hers can I find at the library?

Unspoken Prayer in Spiritual Formation: Tool or Trouble - Wayne Lewis
this was Wayne's doctoral dissertation! so cool. i could hear his voice through the whole thing.

Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict - Esther de Waal
read for Ruah, second time through. brother Terry recommended it to me early on in my time at richmond hill. i think "Balance" is my favorite chapter. if you want balance, you need to balance good things, like mercy and justice, work and rest, yin and yang. in my life, I try to "balance out" the bad with good - resentment with mercy, selfishness with justice, greed with generosity, etc...that's not working out too well

Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form - Basil Pennington
another Ruah book, another second time around


Hermits: the insights of solitude - Peter France
where did i find this? i think in someone's donation of books to richmond hill. it's too bad Josh and I couldn't stay for dinner with the monks in Chora way back when! France sets the scene for his book in Patmos, and finishes with a interview of fellow Patmos lover Robert Lax. that island leaves an impression.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time - mark haddon
the armstrong leadership program planned to see the dramatic version of this, and i was going to drive the bus, but then remants of hurricane michael came flying through and canceled all plans. so i read the book instead. loved it


Notes

King Lear

• Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
• yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself
• upon the gad
• the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself
• This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars...
• Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit/All with me's meet that I can fashion fit
• That which ordinary men are fit for I am qualified in...
• Beat at this gate that let thy folly in
• Blasts and fogs upon thee!
• Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise
• How far you eyes may pierce I cannot tell/ Striving to better, oft we mar what's well
• Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I'll whistle...
• No, rather I adjure all roofs, and choose/ to wage against the enmity o th air
• O reason no the need! Our basest beggars/ Are in the poorest thing superflous./ Allow no nature more than nature needs,/ man's life is as cheap as beast's
• contending with the fretful elements...unbonneted he rus, and bids what will take all
• the art of our necessities is strange, and can make vile things precious
• shake the superflux to them, and show the heavens more just
• how light and portable my pain seems now, when that which makes me bend makes the king bow. He childed as I fathered
• I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw...
• and worse I may be yet. the worst is not/ so long as we can say "this is the worst"
• he has some reason, else he could not beg
• as flies to wanton boys are we to th gods; they kill us for their sport
• that will not see because he does not feel
• bear free and patient thoughts
• the usurer hangs the cozener
• the bounty and benison of heaven to boot, and boot
• and take upon's the mystery of things/ As if we were God's spies
• List a brief tale
• the strings of life began to crack
• I pant for life. Some good I mean to do, despite of mine own nature
• he hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer

Desert Fathers

• Let the rest go bat-fowling for letters and syllables: do you seek for the sense (Evagrius)
• a mighty silence and a great quiet among them
• The root of the quarrel between the humanists and the Desert is not the exact length to which the branding of the flesh may legitimately go. What ailed Rutilius and Gibbon and Lecky is the Roman civic conscience...
• Verily, this is love's road
• the extravagance of their lives is the extravagance of poetry
• I remember crying out until day became one with night
• how amid swords and deserts and wild beasts, chastity never was captive
• the beasts speak Christ and thou dost worship monsters in room of God
• without whom no leaf lights from the tree
• no one in this world ought to be despised
• they are men of letters, cursed with a feeling for prose
• as a fish must return to the sea, so must we to our cell
• so should the monk forever have grief in his heart
• the body of a woman is fire
• the remedy is not so much in man's anxious thought as in God's compassion
• for nothing so dispirits the demon of lust than when his assaults are revealed
• the treasure house of the monk is voluntary poverty
• his soul fell into a weariness and confusion of thought
• ...Why didst thou will to be a monk?...Believe me, I have been in this habit seventy years, and not for one day could I find peace: and thou wouldst have peace in eight?
• perseverance in his cell brings the monk to his calling
• i shall return to the community, for in all places there is need for struggle and for patience and above all for the help of God
• give thy body in pledge to the wall of they cell
• the cell of a monk is the furnace of Babylon...it is also the pillar of cloud
• thou hast not yet found thy ship, nor put thy baggage in her, nor begun to sail, and art thou already in the city whither thou hast planned to come?
• my sins are running behind me and I do not see them, and I am come today to judge the sins of another man
• if thou dost not hold thy tongue wheresoever thou goest, thou shall be no pilrgim. but control thy tongue here, and here thou shall be a pilgrim...unless thou shalt first amend thy life going to and fro amongst others, thou shalt not avail to amend it dwelling alone
• If we dwell upon the harms that have been wrought on us by other men, we amputate from our mind the power of dwelling on God
• all these things did the great old men bring to proof: and they found that is good to eat a little every day, and on certain days a little less: and they have shown us this master road, for it is easy and light
• if there be three in one place, and one of them lives the life of holy quiet, and another is ill and gives thanks, and the third tends them with an honest heart, these three are alike, as if their work was one
• the fragrance of the Holy Ghost
• But then came the generation that now is, and wrote them on papyrus and parchments, and laid them idle in the windows
• is the lamp injured in aught, that thou hast lit the others from it?
• if he be diligent, he can every day and every hour begin the good life anew
• nay, but i shall repent today; tomorrow, may the will of God be done
• but if there is war in thy soul, add, "Help me"
• though fasting be indeed useful and necessary, it is a matter of our own choosing: but love in its fullness the law of God requires at our hands
• but grant me this, Lord, in Thy tender mercy, to have at least the beginnings of right living
• what is contempt?...to be below the creatures that have no reason, and to know that they are not condemned
• that with our neighbor there is life and death
• saw the old man as it were one flame
• verily i know not if i have clutched at the very beginning of repentance
• i sold that same word that ever used to say to me, sell that thou hast and give to the poor
• every labor of the monk, without humility, is vain
• do thou weep and seek the comforting of God, for we are all deceived
• whatsoever things are from God, have their spring in humbleness: but such things as spring from authority and anger and strife, these are of the Enemy
• for it behoves them that serve God to be straitened in themselves
• having this hope that my brother's gain will bring forth fruit
• there is no stronger virtue than to scorn no man
• a contrite and humble heart
• progress in patience and humility by their steadiness at work
• without working with his hands a monk cannot endure to abide in his place
• unless he persist in renouncing them daily
• these to whom religion was not the mask of desire, but the countenance of that eternity which ever doth besiege our life
• of the beauty and the loveliness of her there could be no wearying for a world of men
• i have heard of thy God, that He bowed the heavens and came down to earth, not for good men's sake, but that He might save sinners
• He will loosen the load of my wrongdoing
• it is no new thing to fall in the mire, but it is an evil thing to lie there fallen

Unspoken Prayer in Spiritual Formation: Tool or Trouble

• The primary ingredient of all these tools of Christian spiritual growth is prayer.
• Just how much of Christianity is exclusively Christian?
• Exodus 14:14
• Lamentations chp 3
• The heightened joy at the nearness of a spouse is similar to the experience of the spirit in unspoken prayer.
• Jesus is the evidence that God is ready and desirous for the flame of relationship to burn brightly in all humans.

Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict

• in exploring the Rule we find that this is a description of day-to-day living which revolves around Christ
• the Word of God is directly addressing the reader or listener
• to listen closely, with every fibre of our being, at every moment of the day
• St. Benedict makes obedience his ascetic practice
• the air a staircase/ for silence (RS Thomas)
• a continuing process of holding on against all odds
• our stability is a response to that promise which reassures us that he is faithful and steadfast and that we should 'never lose hope in God's mercy.'
• conversatio morum - obedience and perseverance to the lifelong process of being transformed as he follows Christ
• the younger monks are to be called 'brother' but for the older he has chosen a particularly gentle but pleasing word 'nonnus'
• the real definition of pride is the desire to control
• Grace evokes our acts, supports them and fulfills them
• prayer + study + manual work = all three should command respect and all three should equally become a way to God
• we are essentially rhythmic creatures
• the sense of God's presence can be mediated through daily work and not destroyed by it
• the means of continually reminding myself of God's presence
• work, held in low esteem, has become a common bond amongst his monks
• I cannot become a good host until I am at home in my own house
• my primary relationship is with Christ: it is through him that I forge my link with others
• rid your heart of all deceit
• every human face is an ikon of Christ, discovered by a prayerful person
• we can only be healed through forgiveness, and we can only gain freedom through it
• work to keep my peace of mind and pay attention to my own morale
• 4 principles of common life: solidarity, pluralism, authority, subsidiarity
• It [prayer] is at the same time root and fruit, foundation and fulfillment
• scripture - basis of a continuing dialogue with Christ
• psalms learnt "by heart"
• the work of God in uninterrupted prayer, which is the search for God in all things

Centering Prayer

• ...we teach spiritual things spiritually
• some of the saints have called attention the safe-keeping of the mind; others, the guarding of the heart; yet others, sobriety; yet others, mental silence, and others again by other names. but all these names mean the same thing
• it is most important to realize that prayer is always God given
• not even our own thoughts can be considered our own (during c. prayer)
• how much of our prayer seems to be just so much spaghetti
• in teaching centering prayer, the simpler the presentation the better

Hermits

• how many things there are I do not want!"
• i can see your vanity peeping through the holes in your cloak
• paracharatein to nomisma (altering the currency)
• for the desert fathers, solitude was not merely an escape from distractions; it was a teaching presence
• if he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my words
• the gift of the starets: a gift for revealing thoughts...sees behind the mask
• "the prophet king david says, first depart from evil, then do good. but with modern men the situation is just the opposite
• "it is a great relief when, for a few moments in the day we an retire to our chamber and be completely true to ourselves. it leavens the rest of our hours
• the way of discrimination and the way of devotion
• zaouia - hospitality houses
• "it is a deepening of the present" (solitude)
• "i'm just a writer who writes what is in his mind"
• "take the five books you'd take to a desert island and keep rereading them"
•  

Weeks 31-39 - Reset Button

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith - Henri Nouwen (Michael Christensen and Rebecca Laird)

The Gentle Art of Spiritual Guidance - John Yungblut

Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction - Margaret Guenther

The Rule of St. Benedict


   I don't know how effective this practice is, but now and then, maybe twice a year, I'll call in sick and push my reset button. It's on the bottom of my left heel, slightly off center toward the instep. Since it's invisible and untouchable, more of a theoretical point than a button, I have to whisper an elaborate, nonsensical incantation and twist and turn several times in bed in order to "push" it, like some kind of Rube-Goldberg magic trick.
   As a result I sleep at least until noon, and then sit around a lot, preferably in the sun. No tv, youtube, or news. A little reading and writing and music are ok. Exercise is ok, if I feel like it. No deadlines allowed. As little talking as possible. No answering the phone if I can help it. If I'm sad I'm sad. If I'm happy I'm happy. "Lord Jesus have mercy on me."
   Today is a reset day. Truly a luxury and a privilege.

War and Peace
   Sometimes you read a book that is so tightly knit, so perfectly tied together, that it seems impossible to imagine leaving out any part of the story... or it seems impossible to imagine the story being other than it is. War and Peace had the exact opposite effect on me. Almost nothing seemed necessary or essential; almost everything seemed gratuitous. Gratis, grace, freely given, etc..
   I could imaging cutting every other chapter and still having a brilliant, coherent story. Or I could imagine splicing and expanding the story into a dozen or so equally epic novels. As you wish! And yet the characters, the narrator (with increasingly annoying repetition), and I the reader are constantly caught between the daily weather of free will and the mysterious climate of Destiny. How is it possible that such heavy, ominous subject matter could feel so loose and free? I mean, Pierre, Ellen, Prince Andrey, Dolohov, Natasha, Princess Marie, can you imagine a more lead-weighted cast of characters? Everything is so serious and important! Nonetheless just as often they are as funny and friendly as you like.
   I decided to read it after Granddaddy David told me he'd started earlier this summer. I hoped to have finished by the end of my bike trip, so that we could talk about it when I arrived...but I hadn't even started the book by the time I left Richmond. It's true what they say about it: it's a long book!

Ruah reading for the 1st retreat
   These three lovely books about spiritual direction, plus the Rule of St Benedict, got us started into year one of Ruah XVII (you know the roman numerals add dignity, solemnity, lol).
   Nouwen's book isn't exactly his book - it was put together after his death by two friends of his from various papers, class notes, and selections from other Nouwen writings. Nouwen makes it clear that he felt various calls in his life - Christian, priest, teacher, writer, etc - but in one passage he claims that his call to Daybreak in Toronto was the first time he'd felt called. I really want to hear more about that.
   Yungblut deeply loves Jung and Teilhard, and for some reason I don't love them, so it took me a minute to get over that, but once I did his book was charming. He offers helpful suggestions about how to prepare oneself for being a spiritual guide and the mechanics of meeting with someone (where to meet, how to talk, how to sit, etc). They're only suggestions, though; he is always clear that each guide and each guide-ee will find their own ways, and that they must both always look to the Holy Spirit as the true guide to "self and Self."
   Guenther's Holy Listening felt the most "real" to me, as in - based mostly on her years of experience as a spiritual director. I loved her use of psalms, and the way she incorporated anecdotes and mini-case studies. What else has she written? All three authors strongly advise that the desire and call to be a spiritual director must begin with an experience of God's love. An anchor in God's everlasting love enables the director to listen without judgment, to serve without the need to please or control, and to love without unhealthy attachment.
   How many times have I read the Rule? Not that many. Certainly not so many that the pages have ceased to spark, or chafe, or sing, or drone. I absolutely love the modern commentaries and interpretations (Chittister is amazing!), but their goal is to make the Rule easier to comprehend and practice in daily life, which necessarily softens the shock. It helps to feel the strangeness of the Rule, from time to time, I think. Beyond the shock you might find a the prick of absurdity, the little dash of insanity. Benedict wants nothing to do with the eccentricity of Simeon Stylites, but even amidst his mild manners, sensible judgment, and "nothing harsh, nothing burdensome," you get glimpses of Benedict atop some crumbling ancient column, a free and blessed old fool for God. Also I always appreciate the reminder not to wear a knife to bed.


Notes

Spiritual Direction

• -For Henri, a spiritual director simply was someone who talks to you and prays with you about your life. Wisdom and direction emerge...
• -disciplines of the Heart, the Book, the Church
• -I had raised a question from below and that she had given an answer from above
• -discipline to ask, seek, knock until the door opens
• -Once pain or confusion is framed or articulated by a question, it must be lived rather than answered
• -Without a question, an answer is experienced as manipulation or control. Without a struggle, the help offered is considered interference. And without the desire to learn, direction is easily felt as oppression.
• -One of the main objectives of spiritual direction is to help people discover that they already have something to give
• -the lion in my heart recognized the lion in the marble
• -To listen with obedience to the voice of God requires building up a resistance to all the other voices that compete for our attention
• -We can't always see God's activity by ourselves
• -Self-rejection can show itself in a lack of confidence or a surplus of pride
• -Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do
• -No, no...I just wanted you to know that Jean Vanier sends his greetings
• -my heart started to burn, and I started to recognize the presence of Jesus in a radical new way
• -1cry out to God, 2turn everything into conversation with God, 3meditation and contemplation
• -Anger and hatred, which separate us from God and others, can also become the doorway to greater intimacy with God
• -Prayer is primarily a 'useless' hour to be with God, not because I am so useless to God, because I am not in control
• -This relationship is called Spirit
• -hear the word: 1Living Word, 2Scripture and written word, 3spoken word, 4writing the word
• -a willingness not just to read but to be read
• -the Bible does not speak to us as long as we want to use it
• -Word from silence and back to silence
• -Silence gives strength and fruitfulness to the word
• -Even after many years of writing, I experience real fear when I face the empty page
• -Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us
• -Solitude greets solitude and community is formed. It's remarkable that solitude always calls us to community.
• -Community life opened me up to the real spiritual combat: the struggle to keep moving toward the light precisely when the darkness is so real
• -It's so important that we keep forgiving one another - not once in a while but every moment of life
• -Henri, you give good advice. Why don't you read some of your own books?
• -It's an incredible mystery of God's love that the more you know you are loved, the more you will see how deeply your sisters and your brothers in the human family are loved
• -Mutuality in ministry can be characterized by two words: gratitude and compassion
• -Compassion and gratitude in ministry are possible through the twin disciplines of downward mobility and voluntary displacement
• -the Heart, the Book, the Church, and the Body

Gentle Art of S.G.

• the art of discerning "that of God" in another and helping that individual be true to this divine spark
• remaining intensely alert to all the shadow manifestations brought into play by this intolerably heavy persona, one is to commit one's self into God's keeping, knowing that appropriate humility will flow only from sustained consciousness of the love of God, to which the very first intimation of calling was already a response
• the call to serve as a spiritual guide...always begins with the experience of being loved by God
• developmental stages: purgation, illumination, unitive life
• Jung - "autonomous complex" - creates independent orbit of its own within psyche...tends to pull into its orbit other parts of the psyche
• How can there conceivably be any discontinuity? (between prelife and life)
• convergence of Jung's myth of the psyche (individuation) and Teilhard's myth of cosmogenesis (universe evolving toward more and more consciousness)
• Teilhard, "radial" meeting, from center to center, as distinct from tangential meeting
• A "meeting for spiritual guidance" must be an occasion for communion if it is to realize its full potential.
• Doctor, it's turtles all the way down
• a mutual discernment of the way forward
• anyone who would presume to practice this vocation must also have a spiritual guide of one's own
• there is the haunting suspicion that, though long dead, the author somehow knows me, is strangely nearer to the real me than I have been for some time
• Caryll Houselander
• praise, thanksgiving, confession, intercession, petition
• EmD, "identity is a hound that all to readily slips its leash"
• no gift should be allowed to atrophy without the recognition that this puts in jeopardy one's whole psychic health
• Fox, "Go cheerfully over the face of the earth, answering to that of God in everyone"
• If one does not sufficiently identify with the counselee, one cannot help. Neither can one help if one over-identifies
• Retracing the golden thread of continuity...The most significant events are the mystical experiences of the love of God
• ...the rule paradoxically bestows a new freedom for spontaneity
• ongoing, sustained, corporate experience of the love of God

Holy Listening

• Alan Jones, true spiritual direction is about the great unfixables in human life
• host, someone who offers a temporary home as a place of rest and refreshment
• the first task is one of housecleaning, of creating our own inner order
• I always disconnect the telephone and hang a Do Not Disturb sign
• a good host gives the guest the sense that there is all the time in the world
• less is frequently more
• about ten minutes before the time is up, I manage to interject, "We'll have to stop in a few minutes"...the most important material of the session may be introduced...It is tempting to extend the time when these "doorknob manisfestations" occur
• story-telling needs to be unhurried and unharried
• simple, direct questions that cut to the heart of the matter are part of the spiritual tradition
• "I, too, am a sinner"
• amateurs who aspire to reflect Christ's love
• help connect the individual's story to the story
• this story must reach into the future. spiritual direction is about hope, and there is always a next step
• preparing for a "good death"
• thoughtful self-disclosure is one way of remaining grounded and human, although it must be intentional and judicious
• gentle, non-intrusive humor has a way of restoring perspective, or reducing our inflated selves to manageable proportions
• the Holy Spirit is the true director
• a learner and teacher of discernment
• Jesus helps the woman (at the well) to look into herself deeply and discover her thirst for God
• Amma Theodora on the attributes of a teacher
• (don't let desire to be liked keep you from speaking hard truths)
• a good teacher encourages play
• I am constantly struck by the proximity of play and pray
• a merry candor
• the director needs to combine gentleness with candor and expect commitment and hard work
• a good teacher is always hopeful
• a good teacher asks questions, but they must be the right questions - ones that open doors, invite the directee to stretch and grow
• to live the questions is to be willing to persevere in peering into the empty tomb
• a good teacher is willing and able to evaluate progress
• a good teacher is vulnerable
• a good teacher is always a learner
• a good teacher (like a good parent) educates for maturity
• the desire for help in shaping and structuring the daily routine is implicit in almost every case
• hurray for Shiphrah and Puah
• Yet if I were to name my own most profound spiritual or theological experience, without hesitation I would cite the birth of my three children
• a long period of waiting and uncertainty
• the onset of labor...this can be sudden or slow and gradual
• labor itself (director - presence, patience, waiting)
• she intervenes only when necessary and helpful, never for the sake of "doing something"
• she is capable of a loving detachment, but at the same time feels solidarity with the one giving birth
• transition...the birthgiver is gripped by tremendous force and feels that she has somehow lost control
• the second stage begins in the midst of the chaos of transition...the time of active work
• celebration...it is impossible to describe the joy that fills the room at the birth of a child. A midwife friend tells me that the excitement of welcoming new life never grows old.
• it is a time for rejoicing and celebration, even when the midwife knows that this is just the beginning, the first of many births. sooner of later, the whole process must begin again
• Weil, the action that follows are just the automatic effect of this moment of attention. the attention is creative
• there is the danger of becoming a spiritual voyeur, of using and feeding upon the other
• the unquestioning and tenacious love of mothers
• a ministry of compassionate presence
• If we believe with Julian that, in spite of everything, it will be alright, we need not say these words. We will embody them.
• the directee must be taken seriously, even when she seems not to take herself seriously.
• self-contempt is a loveless field that offers prime growing conditions to other sins, among them false humility, envy manipulativeness, and sloth.
• my two favorite questions - "what do you want?" and "where do you hurt?"
• but there is one thing you must do, and I will keep at you about it: value yourself!
• yet at all times the director needs to be credulous. we are still suffering from Freud's failure to believe the real world experiences of upper-middle-class girls in turn-of-the-century Vienna.
• joyously attentive to those small annuciations that don't always seem like good new