G’Day from Melbourne! Along with many other Spiritual Directors International members, I feel honored and humbly privileged to be raising awareness of spiritual companionship during the December Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia. Since 1893, the Parliament has met periodically to build bridges and foster peace among people from diverse spiritual traditions. This year’s Parliament theme, “Making a World of Difference: Hearing each other, Healing the earth” is well-suited for what spiritual direction has to offer.

So often, we speak of spiritual direction as a personal spiritual practice. No doubt the personal inner benefits are great. Increasingly, however, spiritual direction is being noticed by media, like the recent PBS filming, New York Times articles, and the Parliament, as a way to connect our sometimes insular religious groups with the interfaith realities of our world. As spiritual direction is practiced in interfaith communities, barriers among people shift. Spiritual friendship emerges among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, like the story of Rabbi Ted Falcon, Pastor Don Mackenzie, and Sheik Jamal Rahman, also known as the Interfaith Amigos. Everyone who has attended Interfaith Amigo workshops during Spiritual Directors International events will concur that their friendship is palpable and deeply spiritual. By participating in the Parliament of the World’s Religions, we are taking part in a deep culture of transformation through spiritual friendship. Spiritual direction is making a world of difference. By meeting regularly with a spiritual director, by hearing each other, by listening deeply for the Spirit’s guidance, we are healing not only ourselves, but also the earth.  

As a member of Spiritual Directors International, you are making a difference. Thank you for generously participating in the nonviolent, countercultural, and deeply transformational process of listening with compassion. You are moving the world toward light, love, and everlasting peace. Can you think of a better gift in this sacred season?

Reporting November 24, 2009, for The New Your Times, Laurie Goodstein writes, "The minister said “unconditional love.” The sheik said “compassion.” And the rabbi said “oneness.” These core spiritual values animate what Spiritual Directors International members, Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie, and Sheik Jamal Rahman describe as, “the spirituality of interfaith relations.”

Goodstein reports, "They call themselves the “interfaith amigos.” And while they do sometimes seem more like a stand-up comedy team than a trio of clergymen, they know they have a serious burden in making a case for interfaith understanding."

How did they get to this place?
What led them to engage and wrestle with their religious differences and become friends? Goodstein explains:

The three say they became close not by avoiding or glossing over their conflicts, but by running straight at them. They put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another’s holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and, of course, Israel. ...
They began to meet weekly for spiritual direction, combining mutual support with theological reflection. Their families became acquainted over meals. They started an AM radio show, and they traveled together to Israel and the occupied territories. Recently, they wrote a book, Getting to the Heart of Interfaith.  

Interfaith Dialogue
Friends and members of Spiritual Directors International encounter Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie, and Sheik Jamal Rahman through their contributions to the ministry and service of spiritual direction. The three have taught workshops at Spiritual Directors International educational events, write for SDI publications, and are featured in SDI YouTube videos.

In The New York Times article they explain, “One of the problems in the past with interfaith dialogue is we’ve been too unwilling to upset each other,” Rabbi Falcon told the crowd at the Second Presbyterian Church here. “We try to honor the truth. This is the truth for you, and this is the truth for me. It may not be reconcilable, but it is important to refuse to make the other the enemy.”

Their important interfaith dialogue and spiritual friendship nurtured through spiritual direction contributes to peace and justice in the world, growing compassion, love, and oneness in spite of differences. Our world is better because of their commitment to one another and their willingness to wrestle and articulate what they believe, "refusing to make the other the enemy."

What do you think?

Click here to read The New York Times article, Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship. Please share your comments on this blog.

*Earlier this month, the "three amigos" were filmed for a PBS Religion and Ethics spiritual direction segment that will air in early 2010. A reflection about the filming is posted on the SDI blog. Read the SDI blog post.

 

Prayer can be as natural as breathing, and occur at any time in any place. Prayer can be something that you did as a child, with prescribed words, and that has no real meaning to you as an adult. Perhaps you have been praying for many years, and your prayer is changing—either becoming rich and evocative as you move into deeper relationship with the Beloved. Or, perhaps the prayers that at one time were so full of life and vigor are now empty and arid and this is confusing. Maybe you wonder how to pray—where to begin.

Prayer is, quite simply, a cry of the heart. It can be of gratitude and thanksgiving, longing, desire, need, absolute angst, compassion, deep stillness -whatever moves you. Henri Nouwen offers an insightful explanation:

“There are as many ways to pray as there are moments in life. Sometimes we seek out a quiet spot and want to be alone, sometimes we look for a friend and want to be together. Sometimes we like a book, sometimes we prefer music. Sometimes we want to sing out with hundreds, sometimes only whisper with a few. Sometimes we want to say it with words, sometimes in deep silence.  In all these moments, we gradually make our lives more of a prayer and we open our hands to be led by God even to places we would rather not go.”

Perhaps the current economic crisis has created a new awareness of the need to ask for help. Losing a job, discovering a life changing medical condition, caring for parents, children or a spouse who is ill, grappling with world poverty and justice issues requires extraordinary strength and inner fortitude. Prayer is one way to strengthen spiritual connections, recharging our worn out batteries.
 
Meeting with a spiritual director for individual or group spiritual direction is a place to share the story of what is happening – or not happening – in your spiritual life. Do you want to make your life more of a prayer? Who accompanies you in this process of ongoing growth and transformation or in the beginning steps when you respond to an inner prompting?

How do you pray? What are the little, very personal, and even ordinary things you do to connect with God, a Higher Power, the Sacred … that you may never talk to anyone else about, yet? 

Please share your comments.

 

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Religion and Ethics Newsweekly came to Seattle, Washington, to film a story about prayer and spiritual direction. PBS filmed interviews, a retreat, a spiritual direction session, and a seminary "Introduction to Spiritual Direction" class. Why? To tell the story of how people are learning to pray and how spiritual direction contributes to cultivating prayer and compassion in communities. PBS is also filming in other locations. Spiritual Directors International will announce the television air date as soon as the date is determined by PBS. The estimated date is late January to early February 2010.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank You To ...
Thank you Christina Puchalski, MD, for your interview in the Washington, DC, area with PBS correspondent and co-producer Lucky Severson.

Many thanks to PBS co-producers Ned Judge and Lucky Severson and to Director of Photography, Paul Thiriot for your journalistic passion and professionalism.

Thank you to Interfaith Community Church and participants in the Blushed of the Beloved retreat for inviting the filming of interviews and retreat presentations from Rabbi Ted Falcon, Karen Lindquist, Pastor Don Mackenzie, Sheikh Jamal Rahman, and Liz Budd Ellmann. Thank you to The Very Reverend Michael Ryan and Sister Joyce Cox, BVM, for opening St. James Cathedral to filming and interviews. Thank you to Seattle Recovery Cafe volunteers Kayce Hughlett and Mary Ellen Weber for demonstrating a spiritual direction session and to the Peace and Spirituality Center of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace for opening the retreat center for filming the session.

Thank you to Mary Rose Bumpus, RSM, Patrick O’Leary, SJ, and the Seattle University School for Theology and Ministry for welcoming PBS into the seminary classroom. Thank you to everyone who came to the public PBS filming of the story of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, patron saint of spiritual direction in the Christian tradition, as told by Pat O’Leary, SJ. Thank you to Spiritual Directors International staff members, Molly Bauthues and Jennifer Williams, for helping with camera equipment, RSVPs, and making the film schedule go smoothly.

Please Pray ...
Please pray for Ned Judge and the film editing process.

We pray that the message of the PBS television segment will embrace people of all faiths. We pray this film will communicate the power that prayer and spiritual direction offer for healing, for nourishing exhausted hearts, for building capacity for compassion in community, and for connecting us with the source of compassion and peace. We pray the segment will provide encouragement and hope for the weary and downtrodden.

Thank you for your prayers. 

Photo credits thanks to Faren Bachelis and Molly Bauthues.

Thomas Merton wrote, “Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” What does compassion mean to you?

Meeting regularly with a spiritual director contributes to building a capacity for compassion in our communities. By nurturing compassion in ourselves and each other, we participate in moving the world toward peace.

On November 12, author Karen Armstrong and a global group of collaborators, unveils an international initiative to promote compassion. Armstrong is a TED [Technology, Education, Design] award winner with the following wish, “I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, crafted by a group of leading inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principles of universal justice and respect.”

Please join Spiritual Directors International in raising the global awareness of spiritual direction as a powerful way to cultivate compassion.

Share your stories of how spiritual direction cultivates compassion by replying in the comment field below.

In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s harvest season. Granted, it’s always time to harvest our blessings, and many spiritual practices include the daily recounting of things we are grateful for. During this time of the year, many spiritual traditions and cultures beg us to count our blessings out loud—to give the harvest a sound and visible witness in the world.

Preparing for our next visit with a spiritual director is also a perfect time to reflect on what God has planted in our lives during the past year, and to notice what God is harvesting. You might ask yourself (or reflect with a spiritual directee):

• Through the eyes of God, how am I seeing conflict anew and becoming a peacemaker in our world, in my neighborhood, and in my family?

• Using God’s ears, how am I learning to listen to the needs of the forgotten and displaced and respond with compassion?

• With the nose of God, which direction is the sacred scent of the Spirit inviting me to move in, not necessarily knowing where the scent may lead, yet trusting God’s direction anyway?

Focusing on our earthy senses facilitates paying attention to God’s ripening fruit in our lives. But what if it is hard to see or hear anything? That’s why it helps to meet regularly with a spiritual director, an anam cara soul companion who contemplatively looks, listens, and sniffs along with us for evidence of God’s grace.

 It can also be helpful to watch the sights, sounds, and smells created by others as inspiration for noticing God’s harvest in our own lives. In a spirit of collaboration and celebration, these resources may help you contemplate harvest with a grateful heart.

• Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB, created two contemplative videos about harvesting gratefulness in every day. If he intrigues you and speaks to your senses, considering meeting him in person. He will be a plenary presenter during the Spiritual Directors International April 2010 “Gratefulness: the Heart of Spiritual Care” conference.

• Joanna Macy created a beautiful reflection on gratitude, shared earlier on the Spiritual Directors International blog.

Please let us know what you are harvesting in your spiritual life, and if you have other resources that inspire you to contemplate gratefulness.

Add your resources or comment on what you are harvesting by replying in the comment section. Thank you! 

Are you awake? What might you learn in this “thin time” and “thin place”? What would it be like to be still enough to allow a blackbird to nest in your praying hand? These are spiritual questions that early November asks us as we experience All Saints’, All Souls’, and El Dia de los Muertos.

Having just returned from Ireland, which has a reputation for being a “thin place,” my analytical mind is filled with heady questions: what is a thin place? When is time thin? Who cares about ancestors anyway? Yet my poetic mind simply smiles, knowing the answers hang out between the words, in a contemplative silence that I will process in spiritual direction. A thin place is where two worlds meet, where heaven kisses earth and eternal time brushes against ordinary time.

In a thin place, more than outward geography is experienced. In a thin place, the soul’s GPS intuits hotspots for transformation. In a thin place, we remember that we are hard-wired with a God-Positioning-System, which is restless until connecting with sacred sites, stories, sounds, and symbols. For sure thin places can be experienced anywhere at any time. Our spiritual traditions invite us to pay special attention in ancient, hallowed places – like Ireland -- and during sacred seasons -- like now -- in early November. By focusing awareness now, we practice being spiritually awake always. By meeting regularly with a spiritual director, we learn how to navigate using our soul’s GPS.

In Ireland, I experienced Glendalough as a thin place. For more than a thousand years, pilgrims have visited Glendalough where Saint Kevin played, prayed, and discovered his purpose. One day, the legend tells us, while Kevin the monk was praying with outstretched arms, a blackbird landed in his hand and built her nest. Imagine holding a prayer stance -- in Zen stillness -- long enough for a blackbird to build a nest and raise her young. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney beautifully teaches us about the spiritual companionship between the blackbird and Saint Kevin,

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird,
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the
tucked

Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity; now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his
hurting forearms?

Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
"To labour and not to seek reward," he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird,
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.

Saint Kevin’s whole body became a prayer of love that recognized God in an ordinary blackbird. Now imagine me, standing across the lake from Saint Kevin’s cave. Gazing into the lake, I contemplated the blackbird resting in Kevin’s hand and the call for contemplative action in today’s world to become responsible stewards of all God’s creation. Suddenly, my soul felt seen by Saint Kevin, staring out from his cave. In that instance, a robin started singing from a branch just over my head. In that thin place, I felt Saint Kevin’s love encouraging the kind of singing presence that sees God in all things.

Share your stories of thin places, thin times in the comments section by leaving a reply. What do you think of Ron Clark's image of Saint Kevin and the blackbird? What stirs in your soul as you listen to Seamus Heaney read his poem?

Please pray for me to forgive God, myself, and my parents due to years of child/teen abuse. May God heal me of depression, anger, bitterness, and feeling unloved. Secondly, may God supply financial help/work. Thank you-Samuel

I am presently using Joyce Rupp's wonderful book resource: Open the Door. In one of the daily reflections in this book, it was suggested that one stand at a door and knock. The door was to be opened by Christ or some other divinity. To my amazement upon knocking on the door, it was opened by my mother! (My mother died in 1973.) Upon opening the door, my mother stood in front of me welcoming me. She was young and gave me her radiant smile. Her hair was dark brown and pulled back as she often wore it. She was wearing a colorful apron. She invited me to come in and join her in the kitchen. On the table was a pie and some tea. During this experience I was a third party - standing nearby and observing my mother talk to me. I don't know what she said but I had a sense that she was affirming and supporting me in my life. This experience stayed with me for many days. Thanks.

Open The Door, by Joyce Rupp