In an April 29, 2010 National Catholic Reporter article, "Connecting With God While At Work," Tom Gallagher questions, "... is it possible to foster an employee’s spiritual life during work hours? And is this a good thing? Or is it better for employees to compartmentalize their spiritual life to weekend services and to keep that part of their person out of the workplace?"

An important question to ask, to value, and to potentially implement, read how Ascension Health System is responding. Teasers from the full article include:

Ascension Health System is the largest Catholic health system in the United States, with 72 hospitals in 20 states, over $14 billion in operating revenue, 113,000 employees (called “associates”), almost $900 million in care for the poor and community benefit in 2009, and a $6 billion endowment.

“Everyone has a spirit and we want people to bring their whole person, including their spirit, to work,” said [Lynn] Tate. “We tell new employees at orientation to bring their whole spirit to work.” 

If employees cannot get to the spirituality center, [Jack] Logue takes programming to the hospital staff and departments on topics like de-stressing, meditation and contemplation. Lunch is often an opportune time for staff to find peacefulness, quietude and rest at the center.

“It’s our view that patients get better care if the employees have a better relationship with God,” said Logue. The religious makeup of the employees reflects the local community, heavily Protestant, specifically Baptist, with Catholics making up approximately 20 percent of the staff. While authentically Catholic, the spirituality center serves the entire hospital staff.

Click to read the entire article, "Connecting With God While At Work," by Tom Gallagher.

Please make a comment to share your experience and thoughts about integrating health care and spirituality into your organizational culture.

SDI educational events in San Francisco, California, April 8, 2010:
The “Artist and Musician Celebration” following “Thomas Merton: Pilgrim and Prophet of Peace – A Reader’s Theater” performance by David Hoover was juicy and full of life!

With more than twenty-five authors and musicians visiting and signing books, our international learning community flings gifts into the world. SDI Authors and musicians signing books and CDs included: 

Dr. Wilkie W. Au, PhD; Dr. Jeannette A. Bakke; Rev. Canon Peter W. Ball; Rev. William A. Barry, SJ, PhD; Betsey Desloge Beckman; Ms. Pegge Bernecker; Mary Ann Brussat; Richard Bruxvoort Colligan; Ms. Trish Bruxvoort Colligan; The Rev. Mary C.  Earle; Dr. Wil Hernandez; Mrs. Kristen J. Hobby, MASD; Rev. Dr. Anne M. Ierardi; Ms. Diane G. H.  Kilmer; Ms. Colette G. Lafia; Dr. Megan McKenna; Mary P. Millerd, MATS; Dr. Susan S.  Phillips, PhD; Ms. Sheila M. Pritchard; Susan Rakoczy, IHM; Patricia V. Roberts, MA, MRE; Hillevi Ruumet, PhD; Alexander J. Shaia, PhD; Christine V. Paintner, PhD; Rev. Jane E. Vennard, MDiv; Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit.

Delight in these images!

Perusing hundreds of resources in the SDI conference bookstore.

Authors ring the room to greet and meet everyone!

Dr. Wilkie Au personalizes a book; authors visit and connect.

Sharing stories with Spiritual Directors International staff (And receiving copies of Presence journal and Listen: A Seeker's Resource for Spiritual Direction.)

Spiritual Directors International editor, Pegge Bernecker, announces the new SDI imprint book, Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing The Arts to Spiritual Direction to 600 attendees, inviting everyone to celebrate the amazing SDI learning community as the evening continues.

 
Liz Ellmann, SDI executive director, thanks David Hoover for his stunning perfomance of “Thomas Merton: Pilgrim and Prophet of Peace – A Reader’s Theater.”

Thank you to "Spirituality & Practice," our Thursday evening sponsor, the phenomenal conference bookstore, David Hoover, authors and musicians, and everyone who participated!

Walking the Peace Path near the Spiritual Directors International home office, Jan Thurston told her story of being in the second formation class for spiritual directors in training at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, USA. Jan explained that Donald Schell, who served on the founding Coordinating Council of SDI, was her spiritual director more than twenty years ago. Twenty-some-odd-years-later, Jan now serves as a spiritual director and creative retreat center director for Stillpoint Lodge and Retreat Center in Halibut Cove, Alaska.

Jan is pictured here admiring the service berry tree that Spiritual Directors International planted in 2007, after the educational events in Vancouver, British Columbia. Spiritual Directors International loves it when members visit! Especially during this 20th anniversary year, stop by and walk the Peace Path with us. We want to show you the service berry tree that SDI gave the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace with a grateful heart. 

On the same weekend that Karen Armstong came to Washington state to celebrate Seattle as the first United States city to sign the Charter for Compassion, Spiritual Directors International participated in the new commitment by Bastyr University to cultivate compassion in medical students through teaching contemplative practices.

Professors Joel and Michelle Levey, Brad Lichtenstein, and Leanna Standish taught neuroscience, meditation, and contemplative disciplines by sharing their research and experiences with eager and engaged medical students. The course was oversubscribed, demonstrating an awe-inspiring interest in integrating Western medicine, neuroscience, naturopathy, and contemplative practices in the service of health and healing.

Please join me in praying for and blessing the next generation of contemplative healers as they continue to learn meditation, contemplation, and neuroscience.

Below is a picture of Karen Armstrong and Sky (aka David Enron) who participated in the Seattle signing of the Charter for Compassion. The signing coincides with the two year anniversary of the Seeds of Compassion conference which included  visits by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and many others. Hundreds of Spiritual Directors International volunteers were involved in the Seeds of Compassion programs, and SDI hosted a contemplative listening space during the Seeds of Compassion, in April 2008, providing a multifaith, compassionate, listening presence. Karen Armstrong launched the Charter for Compassion just before attending via videoconferencing, the Parliament of the World's Religions where dozens of spiritual directors taught contemplative practices and provided a compassionate listening presence in Melbourne, Australia, December 2009. 

Add your comments about how you are cultivating compassion through contemplative practices...

Interested in how spiritual direction might be helpful with health care? Follow this link to a Boston Globe article.

The international learning community of Spiritual Directors International believes that the practice of spiritual direction should lead to ways of being and acting in favor of justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.
As spiritual companions, we are concerned with peace, justice, and integrity of all creation. Because we are all interconnected, Spiritual Directors International hopes to be a model for good stewardship and awareness that every action ripples into the greater universe.

Earth Day, 2010
Spiritual Directors International shares our commitment to continually going green. Ways we embrace this responsibility include:

• Reflect on the implications of a cosmological perspective for the practice of spiritual direction, encouraging and encourage this reflection in Spiritual Directors International programs (e.g. Educational events, Leadership Institutes, teleconferences) and publications (e.g. Web site, Presence, Connections, Listen and books published under the Spiritual Directors International imprint). Some recent examples:

• Educational events: provide stainless steel water bottles to participants, ecologically responsible tote bags, workshop presenter handouts online, events brochure only available online.
• Offer teleconferences, online learning opportunities and resources
• Print publications with a Forest Stewardship Council certified press
• Shift Connections, the official newsletter of SDI to an online only version
• Encourage a working team that can telecommute and meet in a "virtual conference room" using the telephone, e-mail, and Internet
• Plant trees where educational events and pilgrimages occur

• Include the natural world, both in its beauty and in its diminishment, in our practices of prayer and meditation on a personal level and in Spiritual Directors International meetings and programs.

• Be conscious of the environmental impact of the services and goods which Spiritual Directors International uses and the events which it sponsors.

The SDI Coordinating Council commits to these values, and conducts a periodic environmental audit of Spiritual Directors International practices and activities and the impact they have on the environment.

Click to read the SDI Coordinating Council pledge
Click to learn about SDI "Going Blue and Green!"

Twenty years ago, Mary Ann Scofield, RSM, and four other spiritual directors founded Spiritual Directors International.

During the "Gratefulness: The Heart of Spiritual Direction" 2010 educational events, participants listened to her humorous memories from the founding story, together with the real experience of saying "yes" to something ... and the unexpected events that subsequently occur! The video shares the story, in her words.

Do you remember the early days? When did you become a member of Spiritual Directors International?

Thirty-six contemplative retreatants wandered the serene landscape of Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, allowing the SDI educational events to slowly seep into their souls. Joe McHugh, SJ encouraged the contemplatives on retreat to metophorically meander through their experience of the conference, men's institute, health care institute, and leadership institute. Catherine Regan led meditations, encouraging silence and contemplation. Mary Ann Scofield, RSM offered questions and scripture texts to support retreatants in identifying ways to grow closer to God by reflecting on their experience. On Wednesday evening, retreatants lit candles and meditatively walked through the chapel, over a threshold, toward a new beginning. The beautiful evening ritual, pictured above, concluded by singing one of the songs from the conference while giving and receiving candlelight from one another.  

You are the heart.
You are the hands.
You are the voice of Spirit on Earth.
And who you are,
and all you do,
Is a blessing to the world.

Thank you Richard and Trish Bruxvoort Colligan for sharing Karen Drucker's contemplative music with the SDI community during and after the conference. Your music lives on...

Thank you Catherine Regan, PhD; Mary Ann Scofield, RSM; and Joe McHugh, SJ for facilitating a beautiful and contemplative retreat. Many thanks to the gracious staff at Mercy Center in Burlingame for collaborating with SDI for the retreat, especially Colleen Shannon Soracco, and Suzanne Buckley, Director of Mercy Center. 

Spiritual Directors International returns to its roots for the April 2010 Coordinating Council meeting.

 
The Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International is the governing body of the Spiritual Directors International not-for-profit, charitable organization. With the role comes fiduciary, visionary, strategic planning, policy-setting, and personnel oversight responsibilities.
 
Planting Trees
The Spiritual Directors International Coordinating Council blessed an oak tree during the SDI twentieth anniversary celebration at "Gratefulness: The Heart of Spiritual Care" in San Francisco, California, USA.

The oak tree will be planted on Thursday during the educational events Spiritual Directors International contemplative retreat at Mercy Center, where Spiritual Directors International began twenty years ago.

To learn who serves on the current Coordinating Council, visit the "Servant Leaders" pages of the SDI Web site. Click here to read Coordinating Council.

My grateful heart beats with a worldwide rhythm of thanks for thousands of people – including YOU - who dreamed, formed, and fostered Spiritual Directors International. Be still and listen to your heartbeat as six hundred kinfolk from six continents gather in San Francisco to celebrate twenty years of kinship during Gratefulness: the Heart of Spiritual Care.

Tune into the rhythm expressed eloquently by Rev. Tilden Edwards, “At the first gathering that led to the formation of Spiritual Directors International twenty years ago, I could not have envisioned the explosive growth and breadth of membership and vision that Spiritual Directors International has experienced. It has become one of the most significant and forward-looking ecumenical and multi-faith spiritual organizations in the world today. Not only does it serve the ongoing education and mutual support of spiritual directors, but it has been connected with the explosive growth of contemplative re-awakening over the same period of time, which offers a unifying ground for the spiritual life beneath many lines of theological interpretation. I’m deeply grateful to God and to the wonderful staff and councils of Spiritual Directors International over the years for the many gifts that have flowed through Spiritual Directors International for the world’s spiritual well being.”

Place your hand on your tender and strong heart, and listen to these words from Sister Joyce Rupp, OSM, “Just as a plant cannot thrive without sunlight, water, and good soil, so I could not thrive without the kinship and support I receive from other spiritual guides. Spiritual Directors International has provided many opportunities for this kinship and is a marvelous help for those of us privileged to accompany others on their journey with the Holy One.”

My grateful heart beats with a worldwide rhythm of thanks for YOU. Humbled and ecstatic, we gather in April prayerfully, virtually, and in person to celebrate YOU, the heart of Spiritual Directors International.

If you would like to send a Gratefulness-gram, expressing your grateful heart for the ministry and service of spiritual direction and for Spiritual Directors International during its twentieth anniversary, simply e-mail 30 words and a digital picture of your radiant, grateful face to membership@sdiworld.org. You may also add comments to this blog entry by choosing to Reply. Your comments are always welcome!