Waiting for It to Clear

Today’s post is by Kathleen Moloney-Tarr

A couple of weeks ago I spent a week alone writing in the North Carolina mountains high on a ridge overlooking a wide valley and long mountain range beyond. The first day I settled in with my journal of the last few months and the intent to gather pieces of poems to my computer screen where I could work them over, print them, and revise until they became whole. I was looking forward to being in a creative flow and accomplishing a lot happily in one of my favorite places.

The first evening a thick fog settled in. Tuesday morning I was sorry to see it remained and thought, “It’ll burn off by lunchtime.” At noon, I hoped the view would clear by late afternoon. When I went to bed, the lights in the valley were obscured by a dense white cloud. Wednesday morning I was disappointed to miss a second sunrise behind the fog. Even though all the doors and windows were closed, the tiny squares of every screen filled with water drops. I could not see the mountain range or the valley or even a poplar tree. Surrounded by a blanket of white moisture, I felt a little uneasy and claustrophobic. I don’t like being closed in. I sleep with my bedroom door open and choose not to have curtains or blinds in my kitchen, living room and dining room. I like light, and I like to be able to see what is outside.

When I write I love looking up from the page to see what Nature is up to—the dogwood changing through the seasons, a hawk soaring, the blond squirrel scurrying up the lavender oak trunk or the native grasses swaying in the breeze. The very presence of the natural world keeps me company and settles me into writing. Often I rely on the external world to jumpstart me on to the page.

But in the fog, the only external presence was the cloud wall pressing against the screen and glass. For more than four days in this white world, I tried to keep myself moving to the computer or my journal. A dozen poems and a couple of essays slowly made their way onto the page. I was forced to stay internal, to notice what was happening to me as I experienced living in a cocoon. I was uncomfortable. I wanted out. I walked from room to room, made tea and took time-outs to read a novel.

By Friday I woke up and took charge. I made a fire to keep me company. I kept a candle lit all day and let music quiet me down. I burned incense and breathed deeply. I wondered why it took me so long to remember to do these things to support myself as I wrote. I know what works with me, but for days these things never occurred to me.

I was waiting for it to clear. I was waiting for the external world to change. I took for granted that I was fogged in and that was that. I relinquished control and could not even imagine the view beyond.

Sometimes this is how the spiritual path is for me. I have a deep sense of knowing something is “out there.” I wait for it to come to me. I may sit in stillness or read wisdom writings, but I don’t really see or experience what I desire. I am in a fog, what the ancient mystic called the Cloud of Unknowing. I am in a world surrounded by the sacred presence, but I am unable to see past what is right in front of me. I smile now to realize that this white world was a gift. Opaque white fog blocked the valley and mountain range. The blank white page in front of me awaited my words.

I sat with it and let it be. It was uncomfortable and disconcerting. I wanted the mountain view to distract me, but I was given space and time to understand that the mountain, like Mystery, lies behind the fog both literally in the beautiful living world and figuratively in the ever present sacred. The view is always just behind the fog just like Spirit is present no matter my mood or disposition. My challenge is to do what I know works to keep me on the path of becoming as I keep relearning this truth.

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This post appeared in the September 2012 Shalem eNews.

Kathleen Moloney-Tarr, a graduate of Shalem’s Spiritual Guidance Program, enjoys the privilege of offering spiritual companionship to those of all faiths who seek contemplative, prayerful space to notice and turn toward the sacred Presence in their lives. She holds membership and the ethical commitments of Spiritual Directors International, The Unitarian Universalist Society for Community Ministries, the Shalem Society for Contemplative Leadership and the Unitarian Universalist Spiritual Directors Network. Kathleen also writes poetry and personal essays, weaves and knits, and leads workshops such as Writing Your Spiritual Journey.

Photo by Dianne Sharma Winter

Running Water Is a Holy Thing

Today’s post is by Bryan Berghoef.

As everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever. ~Herman Melville

Drip, drip drip… Drip, drip, drip…

Getting water is something many of us don’t normally think about. It’s something many of us take for granted. We turn on the tap, and there it is. For a lot of us, this water has been treated already and is drinkable. Perhaps we’ll run it through a Brita pitcher or some other filter, but we don’t have to wait long, or at all, to get a tall, cool glass of refreshing water.

Our recent move from Washington, DC to a rural setting in Michigan has led to a number of changes, including how we get our water.

Instead of municipal city water coming out of the tap ready to go, with its treatment of chlorine and fluoride, we depend on well water. Well water can notoriously come with the lovely scent of rotten eggs, due to the presence of hydrogen sulfide and other minerals. To counteract this, our home has a water softener in the basement. A water softener replaces some of the hard minerals through a cycling process involving sodium ions. After this the water has a higher sodium content and a “silky” feel which isn’t bad, but it’s not that great for drinking.

So our water goes through a second process: an under the counter filtration system that runs the water through several filters and comes out through a special drinking tap. Due to all the processes the water goes through, by the time it comes through the tap for drinking, the pressure is low and it comes out in a slow stream—at times it only drips. Just to be on the safe side (water can’t be too pure, can it?), we add a third step and run the water through a Brita filter. Maybe this is just a habit.

As perhaps happens at your house, we don’t always remember to keep the Brita pitcher filled. Sometimes I run to the fridge thirsty and ready for a cool glass of water. But the water pitcher is empty! As I sit there and wait for the pitcher to fill, a process that sometimes takes fifteen minutes or more, I am tempted to complain. To pout. “I’m thirsty, where’s my water?!” “Who forgot to keep the pitcher filled?”

But in my better moments, I see that I have been gifted with a perfect moment to practice contemplation. I can focus on that water flowing slowly(!) out of the faucet and be grateful. I have drinkable water. Right out of the tap. In my own house.

In many places in the world, that is a luxury. And so I take a moment to be mindful of and in solidarity with those for whom water is a major need. I think of those in Gaza whose water supply is now in question after a major power plant was recently struck by a missile. I think of the nearly 800 million people in the world who lack access to an adequate water source. I think of the children who suffer every day due to lack of access to water and proper sanitation. I think of the way we are treating our fresh water sources, which all of life depends on.

I have attempted to use this pause in my day to savor with anticipation the water that will come, to give thanks to the One whose presence is with us each moment, and to consider how I might help or raise awareness for those who need clean water desperately. Water, however we get it, is a needed gift that can invoke wonder and gratitude. After all, it keeps us alive.

As the English proverb puts it: “Running water is a holy thing.”

For more information on where fresh water is needed or needs protection, and how you can help, check out the resources recommended by National Geographic.

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Bryan Berghoef is a pastor and writer who helps curate Shalem’s social media content and provides technical support for Shalem’s online courses. You can see more of his writing at pubtheologian.com. Photo by Peter Essick, National Geographic.

The Energy of Emotion

Today’s post is by Savannah Kate Coffey

I sometimes sit by the ocean in the evening light when the air is soft and the clouds are pinky-orange. The youngest children have gone to bed. The sandcastles of this day are giving way to the fresh grainy canvas of tomorrow. Lovers walk holding hands. Vacationing families, freshly showered, gather in their white shirts and khakis for the yearly photo. There are a few gritty shore fishermen, beer in hand, hoping for a gift from the sea.

It occurs to me as I sit there how like the sandy shore our emotional lives can be. Often, seemingly out of nowhere, we are hit with wave after wave of emotion. It may be boredom and listlessness one minute, or longing and passion the next. Anger, sadness, loneliness, joy, love, elation, and disappointment all break upon the shores of our spirit sometimes relentlessly. Our emotions are a great gift, but I imagine there are times when we all wish we didn’t feel the way we do, or when it is simply difficult to balance the energy coursing through us. It is easy to understand wanting relief from painful emotions, but even the more desirable ones can be strong and overwhelming. I sometimes feel relieved on those days when the waves of feeling have been mild and the water warm.

The physicists have taught us that all matter is simply energy condensed into form. A baby is a beautiful example of the energy of desire becoming life and breath. Although we know physiologically how the process works, it all begins with energetic presence. We are learning there is “an energetic continuum running through all creation.” (Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 45) French Jesuit philosopher and biologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote that our suffering is actually potential energy that can be consciously offered to God as a gift. The energy of our pain becomes part of the “ascending force of the world,” fuel for the transformation of fear to love. This understanding also keeps us close to our elemental humanity, knowing that even our “failures” and setbacks are the instruments of grace on our behalf, enriching the soil of our lives from which we grow strong and beautiful.

I wonder if this wise Jesuit’s insight might provide a path of peaceful partnership with all our unwieldy emotions. Might we see our emotional waves as energy that once liberated from our fear, grasping, and attempts at control, can be offered for a higher purpose? Life is full of emotional conundrums. A dear friend experiences daily frustration working with a man who expects super-human effort and offers very little grace. A beloved son is drinking himself to death and his father is determined to help, but his love cannot be received. A woman feels great tenderness for a man whose heart is unavailable to her. A son watches his mother suffer with cancer, wanting to be present for her, but knowing there is little he can do about her pain. There are situations that can and should be changed, but when change is not possible or is slow in coming, we are left with our strong feelings and very little idea how to live with them. Sometimes our resulting actions come from a simple desire for relief. In the case of the woman wanting to love–a seemingly “positive” thing–she can attach her desire to the unavailable man, trying to force love and doing violence to both their spirits in the process, or she can choose to release her longing into the universe, asking that it be used for Love’s purposes. Who is to say what shape that energy might come to take? Who is to say what purpose our loving and suffering might serve and accomplish when joined with the great energetic Love that upholds the universe?

Unlike the shoreline, we are not powerless victims to the waves of emotion that crash through us. We can receive what comes, adding the power of our own consciousness, our willing surrender and the beauty of our own spirit, thereby offering our emotions as gifts of energy for Love’s purposes. We might also find, then, in the evening when the air is soft and the clouds are pinky-orange that our emotional shoreline has been renewed like the canvas, washed clean and ready for the work, play, and discovery of a new day.

Kate Coffey is a graduate of Columbia Theological Seminary and Shalem’s Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups and Retreats Program for which she now serves as adjunct staff. She lives and writes in South Carolina.

Practicing Contemplation on the Road

Today’s post is by Leah Rampy

My hands are locked on the steering wheel as I sit in the mass of vehicles inching down I-395 during morning rush hour.  I look straight ahead, my eyes locked on the truck just ahead of me.  I carefully avoid eye contact with the driver of the car to my right.  I pretend not to see her blinker, not even to be aware that she’s there trying to move her car in front of mine.  Drat!  My peripheral vision is too good; I can see her now beside me, just as I saw her pull out a dozen cars back into the diminishing right hand lane, moving up to the front of the line, trying to bypass all the rest of us who are waiting “patiently” to make our way to work.  I am indignant that she does not follow the rules.

There’s something about righteous indignation that feels so good, so superior— at least for a minute.  And then it all comes crashing down.  What am I doing?!? I started with a spacious morning, I set my intention to bless those along the way, I really want to be gracious to others I meet, and I’m on my way to Shalem for heaven’s sake!  Yet here I am again, hijacked by my amygdala, under the control of my ego, or maybe just caught up in an old habit.  How distressing!

I suppose in some ways it’s a blip on the radar.  And yet I feel sad.  Why is it so difficult for me to live consistently from the spiritual heart?  In this moment, I feel that others have figured out the key.  They pray enough; they hold silence longer, they don’t fail so often in their intent.

And then I smile.  In the course of two minutes, I’ve fallen fully into dualistic thinking.  The other driver is wrong; I’m right.  No, she’s fine; I’m the one who’s not good enough.  My thinking mind is a judgment machine!  It leaves no situation unlabeled!  I open to the possibility of simply being with what is, as it is, in this moment.  I breathe.

Such a small and yet such a frequent occurrence in my life.  I think it’s time for the words of Richard Rohr to be taped to my visor: “Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection, as we think. Divine perfection is, in fact, the ability to recognize, forgive, and include imperfection! —just as God does with all of us. Only in this way can we find the beautiful and hidden wholeness of God underneath the passing human show.  It is the gift of non-dual thinking and seeing, which itself is a gift of love, suffering, and grace. In fact, this is the radical grace that grounds all holy seeing and doing.”

What shows up for you as you as you open to living contemplatively?

Leah Rampy, Shalem’s Executive Director, has a background in corporate management and leadership consulting as well as a deep passion for contemplative living and care of the Earth. She has a PhD in Curriculum from Indiana University and has participated in Shalem’s Living in God: Personal Spiritual Deepening as well as Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups and Retreats: Transforming Community.

Shalem’s intention is to open space for you to deepen your own contemplative practice and awareness. We offer online courses, one-day retreats, and extended in-person programs. This fall, Leah Rampy will be leading an online Contemplative Leadership workshop. Read more here.

Contemplation of Nature’s Offerings

Today’s post is by Bryan Berghoef.

A quiet space, a walk in the fields.
Sounds muted, muffled.
A bird calls in the distance. Another responds.
Butterflies conspire quietly
between the greenery.
Contemplation of nature’s offerings.

Contemplation doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s incredibly simple. When I tell myself I’m entering into a contemplative space, it’s as if everything else sort of blurs around me, and the center focuses more sharply.

My physical surroundings become secondary to my inner state of mind and heart. Beatrice Bruteau confirms that “what interferes with our living a contemplative life is not the busy, noisy, confused, demanding, harassing world in which we must earn our living and care for our families. We like to blame this environment, but that is not really the source of the disquiet. Even if we could go to the country, have nothing much to do and no threats to our comfort, we would take our own noisiness with us.”

That said, our physical surroundings do matter. My family and I recently relocated from a busy urban neighborhood in Washington, DC, to a rural farm in Holland, Michigan. The differences in our physical surroundings are plenty–yet as Bruteau notes, peace requires more than a change in scenery.

There was much to love about the city and the neighborhood we left behind. Yet undeniably my wife and I have both felt and experienced a kind of inner calming since arriving in our peaceful location, situated on the edge of my in-law’s spacious flower farm.

The sheer expanse of sky that one experiences in wide open spaces tends to nurture an inner expansiveness through a sort of spiritual osmosis. Simply walking beneath this wide blue sky does its own sort of inner work on one’s soul. In this soft, subtle space, I find myself renewed and refreshed.

It has been a delight to see the way our four children have eagerly embraced our new setting, despite the sadness of leaving good friends behind and facing the uncertainty of a new school this fall. All of that fades momentarily as they race along the fields of yellow sunflowers, sprouting gladiolas, and colorful zinnias–chasing kittens, chasing each other, chasing summer.

Simply sitting in our backyard provides plenty for contemplative nourishment, as the kids run about, the fields lay open and the woods beyond beckon. Gerald May also noted the effect that simply being outside can have when seeking connection with the Spirit: “I find it best to be outdoors, away from the habits of household and civilization. Familiar surroundings always seem to demand certain activities from me. I sit a certain way in a chair, act a certain way in a room, think along particular lines in a particular place. Outdoors, especially in a fairly wild place, I’m much fresher, more immediately available for whatever inspiration might come.”

If you’re longing for a contemplative re-connection to nature and to the earth–wherever you are– perhaps you might consider next weekend’s online retreat with Shalem’s Ann Dean. She is leading a Contemplative Earth Awareness Retreat Day, available to be experienced next Friday, Sat or Sunday, July 18-20. (Also being offered in November 2014).  For more information, or to register, click here.

Wherever we are, Bruteau reminds us: “we can be peaceful, even in the midst of contemporary life, because what is really pressuring us is the insistence of our own demands. Once we are convinced that these demands can be let go, everything will begin to look very different.” So whether you find yourself in the city, in the suburbs, out on the prairie, in the woods, or even at the office, may you experience the inner calming that comes with tuning your mind and heart to the ever present Spirit.

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Bryan Berghoef is a pastor and writer who helps curate Shalem’s social media content and provides technical support for Shalem’s online courses. You can see more of his writing at pubtheologian.com. Photo by Christy Berghoef.

Becoming Love

Today’s post is written by Kate Coffey.

I’ve been told there are only two states of being: fear and love. All the other inner landscapes that seem so real are simply shadows of one or the other.

Just as we are rarely aware of the air we breathe, we often consider it normal to live fearfully, barely noticing the weight we carry. We use seemingly benign pet names for our fear: anxiety, stress, concern.

There is plenty of evidence of course to justify our fear. Pain, loneliness, and loss are part of the human experience and no one escapes this reality. All our efforts to survive and to protect those we love will in fact, one day, end in death. And the journey from here to there is fraught with difficulty.

In his book Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul, Michael Meade recounts a story of a young seeker who finds a wise teacher and his students living in a forest. All good teachers ask good questions and this one is no different. The sage asks the pupils to answer one question, “What do you love most in the whole world?” Some students answer truth, wisdom, their families, or the teacher. The young seeker hesitates to answer when it is his turn. Finally realizing he must speak the truth of his heart no matter how absurd it may sound, he answers that he most loves his family’s cow, the companion of his childhood. “I love the sound of its lowing and the shape of its great back that I used to ride upon. I love the swelling of its belly, its great teats, and the sweet milk it would pour out so freely. I love the curving horns on its head and its deep dark eyes. Above all things, I love that cow.”

The sage instructs the students to return to their huts and meditate on the thing they love most. When the meditation time ends the young seeker cannot be found. When he is finally found, still in his hut, the teacher instructs him to end his meditation and rejoin the others. The seeker softly replies, “I would love to come and join you, however I’m afraid that the horns on my head are too big to fit through the doorway.” In his meditation he had become what he most loved.

Love is the only force strong enough to overcome fear. We must become what we love if we are to be equal to the challenges of our days. “Become what you love” could easily sound like a simplistic prescription that holds no practical value, written only for starry-eyed novices. How is this supposed to help when the cherished child of your heart may have cancer and you can only wait in terror for the diagnosis? What good is becoming what you love when your beloved is traveling to China and the plane never arrives, anywhere? How does love help make the decisions that are so murky with consequences so far-reaching? Becoming love in the face of rejection and the apparent loss of love sounds ludicrous.

Although the arts of surrender, acceptance, and radical trust in the face of fear are necessary disciplines, they are not enough on their own to awaken our intrinsic power and courage. Emptying ourselves of willfulness is only half the equation. Love will not keep us from feeling fear or experiencing pain, but love is the courage and delight of our souls, empowering our presence for every difficulty. In love we come to know the wisdom and beauty of our deepest selves and any response we then make to our outer circumstances will be empowered by our inner flame.

What does your heart love the most? Live from that love.