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