Insight Trails

Wanted: Spiritual GPS

By Jon Berry

I'M THINKING ABOUT INVENTING A SPIRITUAL GPS. I NEED A device to guide me through life decisions. I can see it in my mind’s eye. It would sit on the dashboard of my car or reside in the memory of my mobile phone, just like geographic GPS. I would tap in a question: Change careers? Move? Become a spiritual wanderer? Stay put? The machine would whir, beep, then pop out an insight.

    “Let go…now.” “Exercise loving-kindness…now.” “Listen…carefully.” “Caution: Attachment.” “Center down…into silence.” “Heed…Light.” “Engage…gratitude.” “Surrender…now.” “Follow…bliss.” “Be…present.”

    The wisdom would be delivered in the voices of beloved teachers. The Dali Lama (with giggle option). The rough brogues of the poets/lecturers John O’Donohue (Irish) and David Whyte (Welsh). The Buddhism of Tara Brach (calm, soft) and Sharon Salzberg (urban, deadpan). The Midwestern mellow of the Quaker Parker Palmer. And people I know – elders from Quaker Meeting, 12-step sponsors, my friend just back from an adventure vacation to Africa with a new mantra (“3-2-1 Bungeee!”).

    There’d be quotes I’ve copied onto scraps of paper and tucked into my wallet: “Life involves one risk after another.” “It can work. It may work. I’m open to finding out."

    And prayers. Like “the two best prayers” the writer Anne Lamott  says she knows: “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Or the archly funny morning and nighttime prayers of a woman she knows: “Whatever” (said in the morning) and “Oh, well” (said at night). They are similar to the morning and bedtime prayers of a friend of mine: respectively, "Show me" and "Thank you."

    I’d program in the Serenity Prayer, maybe breaking its pleas for serenity, courage, and wisdom into three prayers (the way I often recite them). Plus the mantra a Buddhist teacher gave me during a challenging time: “Let this serve to awaken me.”

    There’d be random bits of insight gleaned recently from conversations, emails, and books I’ve been reading. Like: “In a difficult time, always carry something beautiful in your heart,” from John O’Donohue's book Anam Cara. And this one, also from Anam Cara: “We are sent into the world to live to the full everything that awakens within us and everything that comes to us.”

    I'd include light-in-dark-times propositions like this one from Anne Lamott (which, like her quotes above, is from her wonderful memoir Traveling Mercies): “When a lot of things go wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born.” I'd have messages forwarded by friends, like "Happiness is a muscle we must use or it will wither away" (a Marianne Williamson quote) and "Remember: we're not in the outcomes business" (a 12-step reminder to let go). And sayings I've found on friends' refrigerators, like these two spotted this week: “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature; beautiful old people are works of art” (Eleanor Roosevelt) and "Always make new mistakes" (Esther Dyson). And ancient wisdom like the Celtic belief that nature is "latently and actively spiritual" (O'Donohue).

    You've probably noticed that my spiritual Automat isn't big on specific direction. There’s no “turn right, then left, and, bingo, you’re there.” I don’t believe an algorithm exists that can tell us how to get to where we want to go spiritually. Nobody’s been there and come back. We all have our own lives to lead, with our individual choices to make, from matters small (“fix the windows or start painting the front hall?”) to large (“what do I do with my life now?”). The wisdom we gather can only point in a general direction -- what the writer Brent Bill calls the "sacred compass." We need to be like the friend who recently described turning off the car’s GPS to drive home, “scared but brave.”

    Perhaps what I crave is not a full-blown GPS but a low-tech phone app -- or no-tech  Magic 8-Ball -- a go-anywhere repository of the insight I’ve scribbled into “quote journals,” slipped into books, briefcases, and wallets, and  carried in pants pockets until the pants got washed (field note: true insight doesn’t always “come out in the wash”).

    Maybe someday someone will devise an e-Harmony for the soul. Fill out a questionnaire and get all the answers. But I hope not. There should always be room for serendipity, that random event that sends us off life’s interstate onto the small, squiggly kinds of roads where William Least Heat Moon regained his sense of self in the off-the-beaten path memoir Blue Highways.

    I want something that creates space rather than closes it off – a device that nudges me back toward the expansiveness of morning meditations, Buddhist silent retreats, and Quaker silent worship. O’Donohue notes that an original meaning of “salvation” was “space.” Similarly, the directions shouldn't be too obvious, but true to what O'Donohue recalls is the root of the word “revelation”: “re-valere,” to “veil again.” I love it when Anne Lamott throws down the challenge, asking why God uses “dreams, intuition, memory, phone calls, vague stirrings in the heart” rather than something more direct; then admits she's tempted to say it “really doesn’t work” for her; but then confesses, “except it does.”

    Sometimes we just need to shake the Magic 8-Ball to see what vague answer rolls to the top out of the cloudy ink ("Magic 8-Ball, what is the meaning of life?" "Yes."). And, when we get stuck, shake it again.

That’s I.T.

I learned from a friend to keep a journal of quotes. I've filled up two so far. In my recent rush to finish up the books I've been reading (Anam Cara; How the Irish Saved Civilization) and start readings for an upcoming seminary class (Traveling Mercies), and the gleanings of emails and conversations, I've currently got a surplus. Some that didn't make this week's essay but are being tucked into my quote journal include, "We are so privileged to still have time" (O'Donohue), "Pain is the requisite of change. So is fear" (a friend). "Accept good feelings. No questions asked!" (another friend).

For more on Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, or to buy a copy, click here. For more on John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara, or to buy a copy, click here.

Possibility

By Jon Berry

THE OTHER EVENING, WHILE OUT FOR A RUN, I CAME ACROSS A NEIGHBOR and her three, little cherubim daughters going up to a nearby woods to leave rose petals and cookies for the fairies for the summer solistice. Made sense. In these dense, misty June evenings, the world is thick with possibility. If nature can produce fireflies, with their strange, flashes of fluorescent yellow-green, why not fairies?

    Plants, fed by early-summer heat and humidity, seem to grow at will this time of year. A vine will reach down and snag you when you're out for a walk, if you're not careful. Back home, the tomato plants are exploding over their baskets, the first fruit taking shape – tennis-ball-size early girls, long-teary-eye plums, squat, chubby heirlooms, perfect, round little cherries. The basil, impatient (“Good luck if you think we’re going to wait for the tomatoes”), is practically begging to be harvested. The roses are on their second of what likely will be a continuous series of blooms running well into autumn. They give the lie to the old line about the bloom being off the rose (“Just wait; more’s coming”).

    Surprises often lurk in early summer’s possibilities. A handful of lettuce plants, having managed to survive the winter’s snows, have been supplying salad greens for a few weeks now. Nearby, potato plants are elbowing their way into the masses of bush beans, their long, vine-y arms clamoring up above the beans to get their share of sunlight (“Us, too!”). How these volunteers got over there, who knows. Last season, the potatoes were on the other side of the garden.

    A family of foxes has taken up residence just up the road. A friend posted onto Facebook a photo of a mother deer and two fawn breakfasting in her yard. Groundhogs, skunks, and possum make daily rounds.

    It’s not quite a Disneyesque peaceable kingdom. The other morning, walking to work, I was stopped by a shower of feathers floating down from the sky. In wonder (“A sun shower of feathers?”), I looked up and saw a red-tail hawk, high up in a tree, making a meal of a blue jay. A few days earlier, a young eagle swooped in front of me across the new path along the Hudson River while I was out on a run, an awe-inspiring vision from one of my favorite poems come to life (“air, pride, plume, here, Buckle!” Hopkins, “The Windhover”).

    Sometimes it’s easy to dismiss the possibility of possibility in our own lives. The pileups of missteps, mistakes, setbacks, and traumas can condition us to decide that things will never change; this is just our fate, same-as-it-ever-was. But nature tells us differently. Change is the constant; you just need to grab on.

    The ancients knew this. A few weeks ago, I went to an Open Center lecture in the city on Algonquin spiritual traditions. It felt frankly odd in the moment, getting smudged with sage smoke, listening to a Native American chant, while looking out a window onto Manhattan (nee Mannahatta) street of honking taxis, rumbling trucks, and on-the-make executives.

    But the night’s ideas have stayed with me. The Algonquin spiritual world was thick with spiritual forces: Geezoolgh, the supreme being; Kitche Minitou, the great spirit/mystery; Kichelamukong, who “dreams us into being”; the 12 levels of the clouds; the grandmothers and grandfathers of the four directions; regional spirits; mother earth; animal spirits; ancestral land spirits; et. al.

    Spirits were not “out there” but active presences. They guided you toward principles like Tchichan Kweewee (literally, “great spirit, watch over me”), being open and trusting of the world and finding inner peace wherever you are, and Madnach Afulams (“right way to live”), learning skills and tools to make your way through life.

    Serendipitously, this idea that nature is not apart from us but with us, and within us, also came up this week in readings I’ve been doing on Celtic spirituality. The Celts believed nature was an animating force. “I arise today, through the strength of heaven, light of sun, radiance of moon, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth, firmness of rock,” proclaims “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” one of the oldest Celtic prayers.

    To the ancient Celts, writes John O’Donohue, nature was both “presence and companion.” Within nature, the Celts drew nourishment and felt their “deepest belonging and affinity.” The experience of nature engendered “warmth and wonder.”

    Joseph Campbell says the goal of life is to “match your nature with Nature.” “Follow your bliss,” his famous dictum, begins with journeying within. “Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain,” says Campbell. “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again and again.”

    Sometimes, that can mean just stopping and taking life in. I never realized until recently that the oft-quoted epigram at the end of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” – “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – a favorite go-for-it, just-do-it challenge of life coaches – in fact, follows a description of a quiet day strolling through fields, falling down into grass, and asking open-ended questions (“Who made the world…the swan…the bear?”). The day’s highlight is watching a grasshopper “eating sugar out of my hand.” “Tell me,” the poem asks, “what else should I have done?” Sometimes, the call is not to do but to just pay attention.

That’s I.T.

For the full text of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day,” click here.

For the full text of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Windhover,” click here.

The excerpt from “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” and quote from John O’Donohue are from O’Donohue’s winsome book Anum Cara. For more information or to buy a copy, click here.  A fuller version of “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” appears in Thomas Cahill’s wonderful How the Irish Saved Civilization; for more information, or to buy a copy, click here.

The lecture on Algonquin spirituality was part of a series by Evan Pritchard at the Open Center. For more, visit his website; click here. For more on the Open Center, click here.

 

Spiritual New York: The Widening Circle

By Jon Berry 

WHAT DO YOU CALL A LAPSED PRESBYTERIAN WHO makes an offering to a Buddha in her Manhattan apartment before she leaves for a business trip? Or the man who puts his Jewish identity aside for a moment when he passes St. Patrick's Cathedral to go inside and light a candle? Or the practicing Catholic who feels most spiritually connected not inside a church  but sitting at Jones Beach watching the waves come in?

    My answer is: Friends. People I learn from and lean on, and whom I try to reciprocate in their times of need. Fellow travelers in spiritual New York.

    Over the years, they – and the many more like them in what has come to be an ever-widening circle – have come to embody a saying I love: “Your problems are only as big as your God is small.”

    I tend to use the word “God” carefully. I don’t have a good, day-in-day-out, working definition of what the word means. Frankly, I hope I never do. Sure, it’d be nice if God had Louis Armstrong’s voice – and, while we’re at it, preceded every pronouncement with the 1-minute, 35-second trumpet solo that opens Louis’ version of La Vie en Rose.

    And yes, in my mind’s eye, Satch is sometimes accompanied by a fleet of angels who look just like Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire, coifed in long, ponytailed hair, wearing long, dark overcoats, and quoting Rilke. Better than a burning bush.

    But, in the end, some things should be beyond our creaturely grasp. Otherwise, where’s the adventure?

    That said, there is a feeling that I get when I’m part of a group that is gathered in what the Buddhists call lovingkindness, Christians call “the beloved community,” and, in 12-step, is described as the healing and recovery found in the group. In these times, I feel part of something good, loving, and right that is larger than myself.

    Likewise, there is a sense I get when one of those fellow pilgrims says something – be it the trembling words of worship, or a mischievous gleam over coffee – that is a wisdom I’ve known, but never heard; that is truer than I had imagined; or seems to have been plucked right from my soul. As the old Quakers said, “that Friend speaks my mind.”

    At such times, I see how a more spacious spirituality can make the hardest problems seem smaller. It may not be La Vie en Rose. But it works.

    This was such a week. The more I put myself out there, the more that spaciousness got played back to me. It came through in new experiences – leading a group to the East Village to join 40 New Yorkers singing (actually, often, roaring) the ever-expanding, thrumming harmonies of the rural American tradition of Sacred Harp.

    There were new lessons – a lecture in lovingkindness meditation at Tibet House. (Tip: Choose 2-3 wishes. Direct them first to yourself, then extend them to others. “May I be happy. May ____ be happy.” “May I live with ease. May ____ live with ease.” “May I find peace.” “May ___ find peace.” “May I be healthy and whole. May ____ be healthy and whole.” Try it at home. Then try it in the subway, a supermarket, or walking down the street – remembering to not walk too slow. This is New York, after all.) And there were trips to familiar havens – silent wors hip among Friends on Sunday; three12-step meetings. 

    But what I’ll most remember is many conversations with friends, asking them about their practices, how they handle situations, what they lean on.

    There’s a perception in the wider world that New York is a spiritually bereft city. Being the center of the financial empire (Wall Street), media empires (The Times, The Journal, the news networks), and, yes, may as well, baseball’s evil empire (the city’s beloved Yankees), the thinking goes, rules out having a spiritual center.

    It’s like the conventional wisdom that I read in the press, and sometimes hear in seminary, that the loosening of Americans’ religious affiliations, and the rise of new practices like yoga and meditation, have somehow made this a less spiritually serious country. Some see us as a nation of confused, feckless spiritual grazers in need of being corrected and brought back into the fold. I don’t agree.

    Rather, in the personal stories I’ve seen play out in New York, I see something close to the non-polemical, open-minded, trial-and-error building of spiritual “toolkits” that Quaker blogger Diane Reynolds, quoting recent readings of hers, wrote about last week. In the stories is a spiritual experimentation like the essay’s description of “the creative and improvisational nature of jazz,” more about “invention than perfection.”

    My friend goes into the church and lights a candle because, “it can’t hurt” and, in fact, feels right. With an adult child in recovery from heroin addiction, he’s earned the right, I’m persuaded, to try whatever he thinks can help. My other friend goes to the beach because every pore in her body tells her that’s where she will find serenity; invariably, she does.

    And there’s the friend who, with her mom, was attracted to the century-old Buddha they saw in the store in upstate New York. As her mother grew ill, they bought the Buddha. When her mom passed, the statue came to my friend’s apartment, where it now has a special place of honor (photo below). When she leaves the offering of coins to the Buddha before heading off to the airport, she is, in essence, redrawing her connection to her mother.

    Along the way she’s acquired more Buddha’s, as well as a few Shiva’s and Ganesh’s. She carries a tiny, smiling Buddha in her purse. “It sounds silly. But it makes me feel good to know he’s there,” she laughs. “I’ll stumble across him, and feel relieved.”

    In their own, idiosyncratic (the root of which literally means “mix it oneself”) ways, I’ve come to see these friends as like the early Quakers who said they knew spiritual truth “experimentally.” They’re following the Buddha’s advice to his followers to take nothing on his word, but to test everything and find truth themselves.

    Their personal striving after new images seems to me not so different from the absorption, in a different age, of the ancient pre-Colombian Nahuatl metaphor flor y canto, flower and song, into Christianity – the notion that beauty is a blessing, a reflection of the divine – and that we are to respond to it with flower and song of our own.

    In breathing new life into their beliefs, I think, they are enacting a conception of God that I read a year ago in seminary, and that could grow into my definition: that “God is the communion of all things fully alive.”

    The journey to connection is not easy. Many of my friends these days have been to the place Dante describes when he writes, “In the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.” They’re proof of what the poet David Whyte, who often quotes the Dante image, says: “Every courageous life is lived in the grit and difficulty of existence.”

    They have lived on the other side of the equation “there but for the grace of God go I” – the place others dread going – and have found that grace is evident – in fact, can be more abundant – on the other side. The least I can do is listen.

That’s I.T.

Steady, wise, and touched with joy and wistfulness: That's how I hear Louis Armstrong's La Vie en Rose. Have a listen by clicking here. Who knows, you, too, may hear angels sing from above. Let me know what you think -- and whether another voice or instrument better captures the Eternal to you. 

I’ve written often enough about 12-step, it’s probably time for a link. Here’s one for those who interested in learning more about Al-Anon, the amazing, six-decade-old fellowship for those impacted by others’ alcoholism and addiction. Here’s a link Al-Anon/Alateen World Service Organization. It includes questions to consider if you think you or someone you know could benefit from Al-Anon, and lists for finding meetings around the country. 

Given how often I write so about the silent worship of Friends, it’s also time for a link for those interested in learning more about Quakerism, my other spiritual base camp. Here are links to Friends General Conference (where you can find newcomer info and directions to meetings) and Friends Journal, the magazine of "Quaker thought and life today." 

The Quaker Blog I referred to is Emerging Quaker, by Diane Reynolds, a journalist by trade, now a student at Earlham School of Religion (where I've studied). The essay I cite is “Utopia.”

Learn more about Sacred Harp by clicking here; find out about New York area sings here.

The idea that "God is the communion of all things fully alive" is from Elizabeth Johnson, in her book Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God. Click here to learn more.

Q&A: J. Brent Bill, Learning Spiritual Discernment

By Jon Berry

MANY PEOPLE HAVE EXPERIENCED THE FEELING OF being led toward a decision by something larger than themselves. But what do you do with that feeling? Sometimes the practical tools for decision-making, like writing down lists of pros and cons, fall short. In his book Sacred Compass (Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA, 2008; also available on Kindle and with a study guide for groups), the Quaker author J. Brent Bill has created a spiritual tool kit for the spiritual practice of discernment.

    Drawing on his own circuitous spiritual, personal, and professional journey, as well as historic sources, and friends' and mentors' experiences,  Sacred Compass is smart, wise, and disarmingly accessible. The book doesn’t promise easy solutions. Life brings challenges. Sometimes we get confused. Instead of turning away from those moments, Bill encourages us to work through our problems, developing the tools of discernment. I interviewed Brent a few years ago when the book first came out, then put it aside. Recently, searching for help in discernment, I came back to our conversation, and, with Brent’s permission, reproduce it now.

QUESTION:  As someone whose life has followed a winding path, I found your description in Sacred Compass of the journey your life has taken, with “15 jobs, 16 homes, and too many cars,” to be refreshingly honest, funny in an I-can-so-relate way, and really different from what I often read in self-help books.

J. BRENT BILL: I’m not a spiritually perfect person. I do my best to make my way through this life and be true to my understanding of faith and what it calls me to do and be. I don’t get it right a lot of the time. So an expert voice doesn’t help me much.

    If people have all the answers, I tend to distrust them. When I read those kinds of books, I just note my inadequacies all the more. As a reader, I look for fellow companions, people who are spiritually wise and a couple steps further down the road and willing to share their experiences.

Q: Have you had people in your life who are “a couple steps further down the road”?

A: In my writing life, I certainly have. Anne Lamott comes to mind. Kathleen Norris is another; her writing is so beautiful. The Quaker Scott Russell Sanders is another. I’ve been fortunate to have folks who are that way in my personal life. My wife, Nancy, is one. Our views are fairly disparate most of the time, but she’s one of the most spiritually sensitive people I know. There are other folks as well.

    Their honesty, for me, is what sets them apart. I never feel like I’m with a professor who’s studied it, and I’m sitting at their feet. Instead, it’s “here’s how I’ve gotten this far.” That speaks to my condition.

Q: Let’s go back to all those jobs and houses and cars. Did you see spiritual direction at work in this circuitous path, or did that come later?

A: I would say both. I don’t feel that I ever took a job that I shouldn’t have. But there were times that I wondered why I did something I did, like being photocopier salesman.

Q: Tell me more about that job.

A: I’m not a salesperson. But that job came at a really important time in my life. I had gone through a divorce. I knew I wasn’t in any place to take care of anybody. I needed being taken care of. A friend of mine owned a copier company. He said, “Why don’t you come do this? You may not like it. But you can do it and it will put food on the table.” And it did.

Q: It must have felt strange to move into the workaday world after being a pastor.

A: A lot of my mindset was on just surviving the day. I was living in a new city, and trying to make friends. I realized I didn’t want to spend my life in commerce. I wasn’t going to stay with the company for 20 years and retire a district sales manager. That wasn’t going to be my thing.

    But what would be my thing? I realized there’s a whole lot wider world out there. After having been a pastor and denominational staff person, I was so wrapped up in the Quaker world. Everything that seemed so important, that we fussed about at Yearly Meeting, really was not all that crucial.

Q: I love William Penn’s line about true love sending us out into the world. Problem is, when we go into the world, we have to deal with all the frustrations of that world.

A: On some levels, I think it’s easier to see spirituality at work in the business world. You’re examining significant questions. You deal with ethics. You deal with politics. “What would I say to make a sale? What would I do to meet my quota?” “Where is God in this person who’s just really giving me hell right now?”

"On some levels, I think it’s easier to see spirituality at work in the business world. You deal with ethics. 'What would I say to make a sale?' 'Where is God in this person who’s just really giving me hell right now?'"

    My experience really forced me to seek that of God in everyone. What are their needs? I couldn’t look at a person as just a number or a customer. I tried to remember who I had bought things from. It was usually people who I felt I had some kind of human connection with, who looked me in the eye, or who I'd been out to lunch with. I also learned from the experience of being a copier salesperson that I was extremely introverted. I was not meant to be in such an extroverted profession.

Q: How did you resolve that? Did you try to become a bit more extroverted, or practice acceptance and find work that was more reflective of you?

A: The latter. I felt like this is obviously not who I was. I have friends who are super successful at selling. It’s who they are. I couldn’t do it. My next position, as a United Way executive, felt much more like ministry to me.

Q: Have you always had a sense of spiritual connectedness in your life, or did you cultivate it?

A: I think it was a combination. I grew up in a fairly religious family.

Q: What did your dad do?

A: He was a factory worker and independent electrician for most of my life. I grew up going to Friends Church in Ohio. We went to Sunday school, church, and Sunday evening service. Sometimes we went to a midweek service. My folks were always hospitable so when traveling ministers or evangelists or anybody was passing through they always seemed to stay at our house. I met ex-convicts who had gotten saved and were doing a ministry tour. A couple years later [Quaker theologian] T. Canby Jones of Wilmington College stayed at our house.

Q: How did those experiences affect you?

A: I felt pretty convinced by the time I was 12 that I was supposed to do what we called “full-time Christian service.” I did not have a Road-to-Damascus-type revelation. I’m a Midwesterner; we don’t have those kinds of experiences. God works on us long enough that we say, “All right, OK, that’s what I should do.” Frankly, a Damascus Road experience would scare the crap out of me. I need slow, steady revelation. I think God works with our teachability. God works with us where we are.

"I think God works with our teachability. God works with us where we are."

    I was in some ways the kid least likely to become a minister out of our youth group.

Q: How so?

A: Even at a young age, I was a smart-ass. You don’t think of those kids as the ones who go on into service. Usually it’s the really good, pure kid who knows his Bible really well and prays in that wonderful, stained glass voice, or the reprobate who everybody writes off, then gets saved. Instead it was one of the normal kids in youth group who was a smart mouth. When we chose life verses – the verse to pattern our life after – other people would choose John 3:16 or the 23^rd Psalm. I’d pick obscure references like 1 Chronicles 26:18 from the Old Testament, “two west at Parbar and three at the gate.”

Q: What does that mean?

A: It doesn’t mean anything. It was just so weird. I always had a questioning mind, asking, “Why is that in the Bible?” But I think God can work with anyone.

Q: That sense of examining things in different ways comes through in your writing.

A: I’ve known folks who have crises of faith: “Is there a God? How much is true?” I’ve never had that experience. God has always been a given for me. The questioning part, for me, is to say, “Let’s kick the tires on this thing and check it out.” If all truth is God’s truth, it’s got nothing to fear from my puny brain kicking it around asking questions.

"If all truth is God’s truth, it’s got nothing to fear from my puny brain kicking it around asking questions."

Q: That’s a good segue to talk about the book. Why did you write Sacred Compass?

A: A statement kept coming back to me from the old London Faith & Practice [the book of faith and practice of the London Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends] about “the art of living.” It connected with me. Living really is a kind of art.

    Quakers talk about decision-making through “leadings” – “as way opens.” I started talking with other people about the topic, and they said they’d like to read something that doesn’t tell you what to do, but how to do things.

Q: How do problems of discernment come up?

A: A lot of times it happens in crisis. It can be a professional opportunity: “I’ve got a job offer. Should take it?” Or a decision about where to go to school. Or getting news about an illness. “Where is God in this? How could this be part of my path?” Sometimes, when people ask these questions, the answers that others give them are platitudes. “God wanted it that way.” “Your son got killed because God wanted another angel.” Well, that's not helpful. It often just wounds people. I wanted to say, “It’s ok to wrestle with these questions. Let’s explore.” 

Q: If you were just meeting someone, and wanted to communicate the essence of your book, what would you say?

A: There are folks who say God loves you and has a plan for your life. The Sacred Compass says God loves you and has lots of plans for your life. Your life is a pilgrimage. It’s about a trip of going to God. The good, the bad, the happy, the sad, they’re all part of our existence. God is present through it all. Our ways as humans are unique, based on our personalities and life circumstances. God uses all of these, including our ability to be taught and led. At each season, God is with us and working with us.

"Your life is a pilgrimage. It’s about a trip of going to God. The good, the bad, the happy, the sad, they’re all part of our existence. God is present through it all."

Q: Why “sacred compass”?

A: A compass points us in a general direction. It’s not “turn left here, go down the boulevard, then turn right.” In workshops I have people do an exercise of creating a life map, with the different points in their life. “Has it been a straight line – or curvy and twisty?” “Looking back, why do you think you went there? Did you learn something?” The idea is to see our lives as journeys. Often things pop up that people have held down or forgotten.

Q: I really like your idea in the book that it’s important to learn to listen to how lives speak, and that our lives speak in different ways, through our individual dreams, stories, problems, opportunities, inclinations, even our bodies.  How did you come to this?

A: Some of it’s based in my own experience, especially my experience of getting out of touch with my body and getting sick. Shortly after I turned 40, a whole bunch of physical stuff started happening to me. My body had been telling me things were going wrong for a while, but I had not been paying attention. Growing up fairly evangelical, I tended to think my body as an unreliable witness. Turns out, it was pretty reliable.

    I started thinking, if my body’s telling me about this, what else is it telling me? I started noticing things. When I speak I have some of the same reactions as when I have low blood sugar. So what’s that telling me? That “this is important.” Otherwise I wouldn’t be tense. I never thought of paying attention to my body to teach me about my spirit.

    When I researched Sacred Compass, I asked friends about their spiritual experiences. One person talked about God speaking to her through housecleaning; she hates housecleaning so much, God must speak to her through it. There are all these ways God tries to get our attention. Often times, we’re not paying attention.

Q: I like what you say about learning to trust our individual patterns.

A: We decided to start a little worship group out at our farm. I’d been fighting the idea for three years, and it wouldn’t go away. I finally said, “Well, OK.” It was beautiful and persistent and not from some ego need. Lots of signs were coming together. I had to learn to trust them.

Q: What signs speak most to you?

A: Love is a big one. Love is about caring for things. A friend of mine walked across the United States, from New Castle, Indiana, to Washington DC, in a walk for peace. She wore a vest that said, “Pray for Peace.” Some people wanted to join her at times and carry antiwar signs. She asked them not to. The idea of being for peace was much more loving than being against war.

    Persistence is also big for me. I get lots of ideas and can get confused. I have friends who are writers who keep a pencil and paper right on their bed stand to write the idea down before they lose it. I’ve gone the other way. I feel if an idea’s still there in the morning or comes to me later that day, it’s worth recalling.

    Another important sign for me is a feeling of rightness. “This feels right.” This can be confirmed when we talk with other people, when they say, “Yeah, that feels right for you.”

Q: You talk about the Quaker practice of asking for a clearness committee. Have you been part of clearness committees?

A: I’ve been part of them, and have used them. Sometimes they are formally named. Other times, they’re less formal. I’ve even done them electronically. I have friends across the U.S. and the world who can’t get together but whom I trust as a sounding board.

Q: What’s the difference between a clearness committee and someone telling you what you should do?

A: Clearness committees won’t tell me what I should do. Instead they ask questions that point me back to myself, to Christ my inner teacher. “Why do you think you should do this?” “Why do you think this is the right time for you?”

Q: Is where you’ve wound up where you expected?

A: About the only thing that is where I thought I’d be is the writing part. I always was a reader, and always wanted to be a writer even as a kid. But the rest of my life, no. I never would have ever thought I’d be living on a farm in Indiana with 50 acres, planting prairie grass and trees. I was a city boy.  I still am at heart. Hardly anything’s turned out the way I thought it would. It wasn’t a direct route. And I’m exactly where I should be at this time.

Q: Talk about a time when you experienced everything coming together.

A: One of the times it became clearest to me, and probably put me in a place where I could write this book, was when I turned 50 and took a job at the Center for Congregations, and we moved to the Indianapolis area. The responsibilities that were called for in the position brought together almost every position I’d ever held. Even copier sales. I supervised an education program, and that involved conference planning. I had learned to put on trade shows when I was in photocopier sales. So far the only job I haven’t drawn on is running a go-cart track – though maybe I do, because people sometimes seem to be going in circles, so it’s my job to call them in for pit stops.

That’s I.T.

For more information on The Sacred Compass, or to purchase a copy, go to: http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Compass-Way-Spiritual-Discernment/dp/1557255598/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298310374&sr=8-1

To read an excerpt from the book, learn about Brent's other books, or find out about his upcoming workshops and talks, visit his website: http://www.brentbill.com/

To read what Brent is writing about now, visit his blog, Holy Ordinary: http://holyordinary.blogspot.com/

The sketch of Brent Bill is by the Quaker artist Marcy Stacey-Reberdy.

 

God in the Cubicle: Sacred Ground

SHOOTS OF SNAP PEAS POPPED UP from the ground this week. Nearby the first flowers have appeared on the tomatoes. Hyacinth vines that in a few months will cast showers of purple on the side of our house, stand in a row an inch or so tall. The Irises, allium, and salvia are in bloom.

    Our garden is a small space, two patches on either side of the driveway and a border along the postage-stamp back yard. But when I step into it, even if it’s  en route somewhere else – leaving for work in the morning, for example – I feel I’m entering sacred space.

At this time of year, I’m stopped by the miracle and mystery of life springing forth. Before long, with the right mix of sun and rain, it will be wonder at ripening tomatoes, basil, string beans, rosemary, and greens.

    Over the years, I’ve come to respect that different people experience the sacred in different places and ways. For some it is entering a timeworn place of worship: a spare, simple Quaker meetinghouse with worn benches, or an ancient, spacious cathedral. For others it is in nature. One friend goes to the beach; sitting there, with the ocean stretching out before her, the waves coming in, she feels closest to God. My Dad feels it looking out onto his farm in summer, the wheat, corn, and soybeans shimmering in the breeze.

Reading the Old Testament for school this spring, though, I’ve been wondering if I’ve placed too narrow a boundary on sacred space. Encounters with the sacred can happen anywhere in scripture. Jacob is visited by God in a dream one night on his journey from Beer-sheba toward Haran (Genesis 28:12). Moses is called by God speaking through a burning bush on Mount Horeb (Exodus 3:2).

In one of his lectures, the poet David Whyte says that for him the moment of “sudden insight” for Moses – what in Zen is called “kensho,” revelation into one’s true nature – comes not when God calls to Moses, telling him to “take off your shoes, you are standing on holy ground.” (Ex 3:5: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”) Rather, it is when Moses looks down, Whyte says, and realizes “in the echo of the voice, not only was he standing on holy ground but had been for the whole of his days.”

My professor probably would call that “gap-filling.” The Old Testament does not say what goes through Moses’ mind. It’s a gap in the narrative. Moses’ first words – after God has gone on to reveal that He has heard the misery of the Israelites in their enslavement in Egypt, has “come down to deliver them” to a “land flowing with milk and honey,” and wants Moses to go to the Pharaoh to seek their release – are astonishment: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” 

But I think David Whyte makes a good point. Who is to say but that the ground  we’ve been walking on the whole of our days is holy? Rather than trying to confine sacred space, maybe we should think of it as expansive, reaching beyond our safe, predictable sacred spaces of church and nature to wherever we may be.  

Would it change how we are at work? How we are with others? How we approach tasks? Would we work harder? Do something else? Would it change how we are in the quotidian tasks of life, in the subway, the supermarket, bringing the kids to school, paying the bills? Would we be more present? More charitable? Stronger in our convictions? Would we see and hear more of the life unfolding around us and be more aligned with what Whyte calls “the particular conversation with the deity, with God and Creation, the ground itself,” that only we can have?  

Once, after reading a poem on Moses’ encounter, Whyte was approached by a rabbinical student who offered a further insight. In the original language, the student said, the word in God’s command to Moses to “take off” his shoes is “the word that is used for an animal shedding its skin.” In that moment when we have an encounter that takes us beyond ourselves, we go through “a falling away of old skins.”

We all need a “periodic molting” to reveal new possibilities, Whyte says. While that can happen stepping into the garden and being awakened anew to the mystery of new life, it can also happen at any time, anywhere, perhaps when we expect it least.

**

More on David Whyte is available at his website, http://www.davidwhyte.com/. A poem based on Moses’ encounter with God, “The Opening of Eyes,” is available on the website, http://www.davidwhyte.com/english_opening.html. Whyte’s comments on the encounter are from his lecture “Midlife and the Great Unknown.”

God in the Cubicle: Ecclesiastes and the Recession

I HAVE A FRIEND WHO, A FEW YEARS AGO, HAD IT ALL. HIS business was booming. His large, sprawling family was the envy of everyone with four beautiful, athletic kids, and a cherished, loving wife. They had a nice house. And a second house on a lake. They drove new cars.

    Then the recession hit. The business folded. They lost the lake house. They lost the home. They gave up the second car. They moved into a small apartment. Money is tight.

    But the family is good. The kids – now out in the world, in college and first jobs – are still beautiful. My friend has had a few fits and starts in the job market; so far nothing’s worked out. 

That’s left him time to cultivate life. In a few weeks, he plans to run a half-marathon with his oldest daughter. On weekends, he and his wife take walks in the state park. He checks in on his mother-in-law. 

They’re not rich, but they still have a rich life.

I’ve been thinking of my friend the past few weeks since reading the biblical book of Ecclesiastes for a class I’m taking at Earlham School of Religion. Its message of adjusting and accepting seems to speak to what my friend, and the 15 million others in this country displaced by the recession, are going through.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

A time to keep, and a time to throw away;

A time to tear, and a time to sew;

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time for war, and a time for peace.

    Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

    Biblical scholars say Ecclesiastes was written in a time much like the present. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NOAB) says the period after the Israelites returned from exile, about 2,500 years ago, saw “tremendous economic activity.” Money became prized, “a commodity desired for its own sake.” It was a time of opportunity; even the poor “could become wealthy.”

    But with that came economic volatility and widespread insecurity. Some became wealthy, while others lost out – raising questions of why and how this was happening. Into this gap, the NOAB says, the author of Ecclesiastes – the title translates to “Gatherer” or “Acquirer”  – offered an explanation of a world, that was “contradictory, if not altogether absurd,” and of human attempts to control life. (The image at left is by the artist Gustave Dore.)

    The world, says Ecclesiastes, is larger than our understanding. Sometimes our efforts pay off. But other times it is not “the season,” and there is no easy explanation. Trying to explain it, says Ecclesiastes, in what becomes a recurring theme, is “vanity and chasing after wind.” (Ecc 2:11).

Instead, Ecclesiastes extols accepting and appreciating the gifts that life gives. That can mean simple pleasures – savoring “your bread with enjoyment and…your wine with a merry heart” (9:7). Appreciating the light of the day; “light is sweet, and it is pleasant…to see the sun” (11:7). Being there for loved ones; “enjoy life with the wife whom you love” (9:9). Not getting caught up in possessions (“eyes are never satisfied with riches,” 4:7) or worry (“banish anxiety,” 11:10).

It must have seemed like a radical message in its day. The dominant message of the Old Testament is to strive. Seek the promise land. Be fruitful and multiply. Do good. Hard work produces results. “Honor the Lord with your substance, and…your barns will be filled with plenty,” as Proverbs 3:9-10 says.

Ecclesiastes is not exactly arguing against striving. One of the most-quoted passages in the book (and the motto of my daughter’s high school) encourages that “whatever your hand finds to do, do with thy might” (Ecc 9:10). We should “take pleasure” in our toil (3:13), “enjoy” our work (3:22), and “follow the inclinations” of our heart (11:9).

    But it is saying to check your motivation. Don’t do something for a the result you hope it will bring. As another famous passage says, “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecc 9:11). Or, as a 12-step friend says, we’re not in the outcomes business. (Ecclesiastes resonates with many friends in 12-step programs.)

    Some people see Ecclesiastes as the odd-book-out in the Bible – too gloomy and world-weary. But, reading it, then rereading it, these past few weeks, I think it’s well-rooted in the spirituality of the Old Testament. Its message that we humans are not as in-control as we’d like to think is like the lesson of the Tower of Babel. Its connectedness to God and Creation in places sounds like Genesis. Nature and God's majesty play large roles in this book. Ecclesiastes' pronouncement of “vanity” seems like God’s message to Job. When we try to fill in God’s blanks, we come up empty-handed (vanity’s Latin root is “empty”).

        Better, when we’re disappointed, to step back, reflect, be humble. Remember, says Ecclesiastes, that it’s God’s work that “endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it.” Sometimes what we’re supposed to do just to “stand in awe” (Ecc 3:11-14).

     That may be hard in times like this. But I think it would be reassuring for my friend to know that someone in a time like this 2,500 years ago struggled with questions he’s struggling with now, and found hard-earned wisdom.

Practice: Cultivating Silence

By Jon Berry
WHEN I WAS A YOUNG, ASPIRING NEWSPAPER REPORTER, a gruff, old journalist taught me something I never forgot. It wasn’t about writing a lede, developing sources, or other tools of the trade. It was the importance of cultivating silence.

    Whenever he hit a wall in a story or in life, the journalist went off to a corner of his house where he wouldn’t be disturbed, lit a candle, and spent a half-hour in complete quiet. He always came back, he said, with a new perspective.

    A business executive once expressed the same idea in a different way to a friend of mine. “Everyone,” he said, “needs some ceiling time.” He meant that everyone, even busy executives, needs time to meditate. His own daily meditation was to gaze up at the ceiling – the one space in his office that didn’t carry a reminder of work.

    Silence can be uncomfortable. We’ve all had the experience of being asked to observe a moment of silence in a ballgame, dinner, or meeting, when the leader leaps onto the next sentence before the word “silence” has barely been said. We live in a culture of taking action. Slowing down is disruptive. It’s disturbing.

    And it leads to good things. I see it in the people I’ve interviewed so far for Insight Trails. They practice it in different ways – walks in the woods, meditation, prayer, quieting down in religious or spiritual setting. But all have silence as part of their life.

   I experience the power of cultivating silence in the spiritual communities that I’m part of. In the Quaker meeting I go to on Sunday mornings, the hour of silence yields insights, connections, and a sense of calm unlike anything in my day-to-day life.

   I’ve opened meetings in non-spiritual settings – including workplaces – with a brief silence. Sometimes it’s a minute. Mostly it’s just one or two full, deep breaths. I don’t identify the request as spiritual as such – saying instead something like, “first, let’s take a deep breath and think about what we want from this meeting…” This moment of reflection can do wonders for focusing the group’s attention.

    Early Quakers identified the experience of discomfort that we have in silence as the first step in spiritual awakening. They believed that we all have within us an “Inward Light” that impels us toward truth, including uncomfortable truths. The experience brings us fresh points of view and deeper perspectives – in Friends’ terms, closer to God. Within it is the potential to transform, refresh, and heal.

    How does one begin? Recent readings have deepened my appreciation of the process of Quaker silence. Taking these books and pamphlets together, certain themes come through:

    Center Down. This old Quaker term literally means what it says. Quaker worship begins with turning inward, to our center, and focusing down, to get out of our heads. The goal, says J. Brant Bill in Holy Silence, a good, book-length primer on Quaker worship, is to “create a space for God to work within us.” It’s not easy. Cares of the week bubble up. Sounds crowd in – someone coughing, cars going by, children whispering. Some Friends respond by returning to centering down. Others turn the disruptions into prayer – reminders to pray for people’s health, safe travels, and children – “pray the distractions directly into the prayer,” as Douglas Steere puts it in his pamphlet Friends and Worship.

    Deeper Silence. At a certain point, the busyness gives way to a deeper quiet. Bill puts it nicely. Having “cast off from the shore” and made our way “around the edge of the spiritual sea,” we are drawn to “launch out to the depths,” to a place that is “deeper spiritually” and “higher emotionally” than “any place we normally live.” The busyness of the first phase of centering drifts away. It’s as if we’ve stepped outside time.

    Opening up. In this deeper silence, things happen. Life opens up. The controls that we clamp onto day-to-day life – that often keep us from experiencing life – fade away. Some people experience a welling up of gratitude that isn’t accessible to them in everyday experience, from the divine mystery of life to simple beauties around them – birds at the birdfeeder, children on the playground, bicyclists going by.

 Answers. Early Quakers found another, important thing occurred in this deeper state: Answers came to them. Many times they were elusive – an image, a feeling, or a snippet of a phrase. But they resonated as true.

    Rex Ambler, who recreated the process of early Friends’ worship experience in his brief book Light to Live by, writes about the words “be real” coming “out of the blue” to him while meditating on a troubled relationship. He “understood immediately,” he writes, that he had “been acting a part” in his life, with the result that he didn’t know himself or how to be in a relationship. It would take courage and acceptance, but – if he could be true to himself – he had a way through his problem.

    This notion of letting in answers separates the Quakers from other kinds of meditation that emphasize continual letting go. The concept has been integrated into therapeutic practice. “Focusing,” a six-step technique developed by Eugene Gendlin, a psychologist who attended Quaker meetings as a child, is premised on the idea that truth resides in each of us (as opposed to an external authority); that this truth can be experienced; and that it often lies deeper than words or other symbolic expressions. Our inner truths often have corollaries in our bodies – “felt senses” in the chest, gut, or elsewhere. Focusing doesn’t solve the problem. But, in the words of one writer, it can lead to “the beginnings of clarity about changes I need to make in my life.”

    These moments of clarity can also be accompanied by physical effects – sighs, tears, deep feelings of relief. I’ve seen all of these, as well, in Friends’ Meetings for Worship.

 Transformation. Cultivating a practice of sailing into the deep waters of silence, and listening to the deeper truths available there, can be risky business. Early Friends describe being “ripped apart” by the experience. But they also found that opening themselves up in silence changed them in powerful ways. Exposing the old, uncomfortable truths, says Ambler, can lead to “the birth of a new, truer self.” 

    This transformation can spur further changes. It sends us back into the world with a new energy. It’s the underlying idea, I believe, in the often-quoted line from William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania) that “true goodliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.” It keeps us focused on the big picture and big questions, forcing us, as Bill says, to ask “what does God want?” rather than “our usual ‘what do I want?’” It helps us be with others; a deep, shared silence can be more helpful than any words to a friend in need of comfort. It gives us “strength and power to allay all storms and tempests,” in the words of George Fox, the early leader of Quakerism. Done communally, as in Friends Meetings, it can harmonize us with those around us and open us to wisdom that others possess. Fox counseled his followers to always “carry around some quiet inside thee.”

    Early Friends considered silence to be a direct path to God, the Christ Within. This was a radical idea in its time. Giving up dependence on doctrines, rituals, preachers, and the other accoutrements of the church, and turning inward to find the Eternal, put the Quakers at odds with the establishment.

    Silence remains a radical idea today. In our culture of Blackberries, cell phones, the Internet, high-definition televisions, and continual bombardment of advertising, cultivating silence – as opposed to consuming products – is a radical idea. But it can connect us to – and keep us on – the path we’re supposed to be on.

That’s I.T.
 
J. Brent Bill’s book Holy Silence is a fine introduction to Quaker practice, with guidelines for starting an individual practice or going to a Quaker meeting. For more information, visit Brent’s website:
http://www.brentbill.com/
To purchase a copy of Holy Silence, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1557254206/qid=1113445622/sr=8-6/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i6_xgl14/103-6882526-5818259?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 

Rex Ambler’s great little book Light to Live by chronicles Ambler’s study of early Friends’ approach and step-by-step distillation of it for individual and group meditations.  To purchase a copy, click here:
http://www.quakerbooks.org/search

To read Douglas Steere’s Friends and Worship, a classic introduction to Quaker meeting, please click on this link:
http://www.fgcquaker.org/library/welcome/fa-worship.html

 Nancy Saunders’ article “Focusing on the Light: A Modest Proposal,” is a good introduction to Eugene Gendlin’s technique of Focusing and its links to Quakerism: http://www.focusing.org/focusing_on_the_light.html

For more information on Focusing, click on this link:
http://www.focusing.org/

The website Quakerfinder can help you find a Friends meeting near you:
http://www.quakerfinder.org/

Friends Journal is an excellent resource for learning more about contemporary Quakerism (full disclosure: I serve on the board of this publication, in addition to being a big fan of it.):
http://www.friendsjournal.org/

The image of the Quaker meetinghouse is of Live Oaks Meeting in Houston, Tx. The meeting room features a "skyspace" ceiling window that opens to the sky. For more, see:  http://www.friendshouston.org/

 

Q&A: Ellen Baker: Being Who You Are

By Jon Berry, Insight Trails

MAHATMA GANDHI'S SECRETARY WAS ONCE ASKED HOW Gandhi could speak so profoundly, for so long, without preparation, prompting, or notes. “What Gandhi thinks, what he feels, what he says, and what he does are all the same,” the secretary replied. “You and I, we think one thing, feel another, say a third, and do a fourth, so we need notes and files to keep track.”

    We can’t all be Gandhi. But we can strive to be authentic – the same person in what we think, feel, say, and do.

    I was reminded of this insight when I interviewed Ellen Baker. Ellen has multiple spiritual outlets. With her husband, James Sweeney, and four other parishioners, she recently started a church. The congregation, part of a movement breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church, meets every Saturday evening in their home in suburban New York.

    With James, Ellen is studying Buddhism through a three-year program at a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York. She also is a lay associate of an order of Catholic nuns, and has participated in Catholic ministries. She is active in Al-Anon, the 12-step program for family and friends of alcoholics. Ellen views her work as a bookkeeper – she has had an independent practice for 17 years – as an expression of her spirituality as well.

     Her beliefs have sometimes led to confrontations. Her decision to leave the Roman Catholic Church is one example. She once was fired from a job after standing up for what she believed.

    Listening to Ellen talk, the different aspects of her life are reflections of one of the core truths she’s learned – to “to be honest and who you are.”

    I talked with Ellen about her spiritual pursuits, her work, and her journey.

QUESTION: You’re starting a church. Can you tell me about it?

ELLEN BAKER: It’s a brand-new, fledgling parish, and it’s exciting. It’s called the Church for All People. And it is. Nobody’s excluded. Women can be ordained. Gays can get married. Those are two of the big issues we’ve had with the Roman Catholic Church.

     It’s part of the Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (CACINA), which is a movement that started back in the 1940s with priests who left the Roman Catholic Church and started a Vatican-free Catholic Church.

     Right now we have six parishioners. The priest who started our mother church in Brooklyn comes up on Saturdays for the services.

"It’s called the Church for All People. And it is. Nobody’s excluded. Women can be ordained. Gays can get married."

Q: How is it exciting?

A: It’s like we’re astronauts going to visit another planet. If you’re a Catholic, you live your life so locked into tradition. Giving it up is like giving up my citizenship. But at the same time, my heart hasn’t been fully in it.

     Both James and I were out of the church for decades. When we returned, there were always questions in the back of our minds. The Catholic Church’s sex scandal put it over the edge. It was a struggle every time we went to church. We felt like we were wearing two faces. We loved the people and loved our ministries. But when it came to the priests and the hierarchy of the church, we felt like hypocrites. We went through a lot of struggle and discernment, and finally decided we couldn’t do it anymore.

Q: How is the new church different?

A: The laity are involved in all the decisions. We decide the prayers. We take turns being the Eucharistic Minister. It’s what I think of the Catholic Church being like in the early days, when it was a new community, everybody was on equal footing, and services were held in people’s homes. It feels much more natural.

“It’s what I think of the Catholic Church being like in the early days, when it was a new community, everybody was on equal footing, and services were held in people’s homes.”

    I feel like I’m in the place where I’m supposed to be. On Christmas morning, Joe, our priest [the Rev. Joseph Diele, a priest in the Roman Catholic Church for two decades before starting the Church for All People], did a special Liturgy. He asked us where we see God working in our lives. Almost everybody touched on this new community. We didn’t know at first what it would be about. But it’s become a big impetus for all of us. It was a leap of faith. I feel I’m in a community that is all in this together, trusting its instincts and moving forward.

     Every morning during the week, we have a conference call. We get on the phone at a quarter to seven, for five to ten minutes. One person opens it with a prayer for the day. I’m absolutely amazed by what they say. They’re beautiful prayers. Then we have petitions where we pray for specific things, like people who are sick. Then we say the Lord’s Prayer and a short closing. I like it a lot.

Q: What are your relationships like in your former parish?

A: It’s been fine. A number of people feel the same way, but can’t bring themselves to move. They have been in the church all of their adult lives. They cling to the belief that the church is the people, and that it’s important to stay in there and fight. I admire that. I really do. But I’m not that kind of person. I need to get something out of this while I’m here. I’m not here to fight for what’s going to happen in 50 years.

Q: How does the Buddhist study factor in?

A: There are so many similarities between Buddhism and Christianity. Many times what we talked about on Saturday morning in the Buddhism classes turns out to be what comes up that night in the Scripture readings.

Q: Which similarities strike you most?

A: The obvious one is the message. Christ’s message is peace, compassion, and loving your neighbor. That’s basically the Buddha’s message, too – peace, compassion, loving-kindness, no killing, no violence. The life of the Buddha and the life of Jesus have a lot of similarities. Many of the stories in the sacred texts are also similar.

     I had always had a theory that Jesus was the Western Buddha. I could never buy that God would send his Son down to one small group of people and say this is just for you and nobody else. To see this happening, 500 years apart, on two sides of the world, makes a lot more sense to me.

"Christ’s message is peace, compassion, and loving your neighbor. That’s basically the Buddha’s message, too – peace, compassion, loving-kindness, no killing, no violence."

Q: And Al-Anon?

A: 12-step is the umbrella over all my spirituality. Without Al-Anon, I never would have discovered my spirituality. It’s where I learned to have a relationship with my Higher Power, and where I learned to see that Higher Power working in my life. It helped me learn to let go of outcomes and “what if’s.” My other activities are, in a sense, the natural consequence of the awakening I’ve had in Al-Anon. It made me want to connect with like-minded people, learn more, and keep growing.

Q: Going back to when you were a kid, did you always have a large spiritual component in your life?

A: Nothing. We were strict Roman Catholics. But it was all about religion and nothing about spirituality. It was pray, pay, and obey: Do the prayers they tell you to do, pay your donation every Sunday, and do whatever they tell you. I went to Catholic school all the way, right through college. Mass every Sunday. Confession. Sacraments. First Communion. Confirmation. But I never really got it. I didn’t feel anything when I was in church.

“It was all about religion and nothing about spirituality. It was pray, pay, and obey: Do the prayers they tell you to do, pay your donation every Sunday, and do whatever they tell you.”

Q: You wound up on Wall Street. How did that happen?

A: Really, by default. I started college at Elizabeth Seton College in Yonkers, then transferred to Catholic University in Washington. But I dropped out at the end of my junior year. I came back to New York and got a job as a secretary.

     My first job was for the national headquarters of the Girl Scouts. I really liked it. I wanted to work in something that was intrinsically good. I was a hippie, basically. I graduated from high school in 1969. Peace, love, justice and non-violence were definitely part of my life.

     But working for a nonprofit, I wasn’t making a lot of money. Eventually money won out, and I got a job as a secretary for a big Wall Street firm. I worked five years at that firm, then got a job at another Wall Street firm. I started out working for the chairman of the board. I was at the top of the level of being a secretary.

    But the whole time I was on Wall Street, I was bored with the business. I didn’t think I could do anything but type and take shorthand. I didn’t really understand the financial world. I was never out to make a lot of money. Everybody around me was excited about what they were doing. I thought there was something wrong with me. My self-esteem was so low that I felt I couldn’t ask anybody for help. I thought they’d fire me.

Q: When you’re in that type of a hole, it’s hard to work your way out.

A: Plus I was married to an alcoholic. I just thought there was something wrong with me. My husband at the time was in the movie industry, and he got a job in Hollywood. So we picked up and relocated. I was starting to get “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” as people say in Al-Anon. But I went. To some extent, I think I saw it as a chance to break free of my old life and get out of the Wall Street scene.

     We lived in California 14-15 months. I started to make my own friends. I also discovered Taoism. I started having acupuncture. My acupuncturist’s father was a Taoist master. I started reading about Taoism. I didn’t understand any of it but there was something about it that so wonderful and so peaceful. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was something I wanted.

“I started reading about Taoism. I didn’t understand any of it but there was something about it that so wonderful and so peaceful... I knew it was something I wanted.”

Q: What happened to change things?

A: My husband lost his job and decided to go back to New York. His addictions were getting worse. In the back of my mind, I was starting to give up on the marriage. I came close to saying go back without me, but I felt I couldn’t give up that easily. We’d been married almost 10 years. I had to give it another shot. So I went back with him.

     The marriage continued to disintegrate. I got a job through a mutual friend working for an interior designer. He was automating his office, putting it all on computer. I could wear my jeans to work, and that really appealed to me. (It still does!) One of the areas I had to automate was the accounting department. I began to see how accounting worked. I realized I was good at it, and liked it. I like everything in neat little piles and wrapped up nicely. That’s my personality.

     I went to a work for a friend of mine who was starting a business. She asked me if I could come in a couple days a week to pay the bills and reconcile the bank statement. That morphed into a full-time job. By then, my husband and I had separated. I wound up doing all the finance and administration for her business. I started going back to school, and took accounting classes to supplement what I didn’t know.

     She had a lot of freelancers working for her – designers, writers. They really liked me. I would pay their bills the same week they would turn them in.

     I guess this is where some of the spirituality started. Most bills we put on a 30-day rotation. But I knew these people. This was their bread and butter. I wasn’t going to make them wait 30 days.

Q: What was spiritual about that?

A: You don’t withhold somebody’s money from them. To me, that’s part of my spirituality. It’s the right thing to do.

“You don’t withhold somebody’s money from them. To me, that’s part of my spirituality. It’s the right thing to do.”

Q: When did your spiritual shift began?

A: It really started when I went into Al-Anon. My husband and I had split up and I was having a really hard time with my mother. A couple people had suggested I go to Al-Anon. I had the classic response: “What do I need to go for? I’m not the one who’s sick.” But they continued to suggest it, so I went.

     About the same time, I started my bookkeeping business. The writers and designers I was working with started coming to me with their questions about money. They’d come into my office with a 1099 and say, can you help me out? I’d explain it, and they’d say, thank you so much for taking the time to tell me this stuff. They started telling me, “You should hang out your own shingle.” Things were getting bad in my job. I wasn’t happy there anymore. So I decided to leave. They helped me. One designed my business card. One helped me write ads to put into trade magazines. Through them, I started to get clients.

Q: Do you think there’s a connection between your starting to go to Al-Anon and starting your own company in the same period?

A: When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When I went to Al-Anon, the thing that first struck me was to hear people talk about how God was working in their life. I didn’t see those things happening to me. I was scared. I was single. My marriage was over. I was starting my own business. I had a mortgage to pay. I had a co-op. But I was listening. I began to realize that if things were going to change, it had to start with me. The first three steps in 12-step programs talk about relying on God and turning your will over. I realized I really didn’t have much choice. I had to do it.

     I started praying again. But it was totally different from when I was young. I didn’t say a Hail Mary. I basically just talked to God: “Show me what to do here. Help me out. Am I doing the right thing?” Going back to the rooms, week after week – I was going to three meetings a week, consistently, for the first five years I was in program – bit by bit, I started seeing things working in my life.

“I was scared. I was single. My marriage was over. I was starting my own business. I had a mortgage to pay. I had a co-op. But I was listening. I began to realize that if things were going to change, it had to start with me.”

Q: Do you remember an a-ha moment?

A: I was still working three days a week at the company while starting my business. I was asked to do something I wasn’t comfortable with. I didn’t think it was ethical. I called a friend who was an accountant, and he said, don’t do it. It was Friday. I left a note on my boss’ desk, saying I can’t do this. When I came back the next week, I was fired. All of a sudden a lot of my income was gone. I never saw it coming. I had no idea. That was a real a-ha!

     I was starting to integrate what I was hearing in Al-Anon – say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t play games. Do the right thing. I did it, and, whoa, I got fired.

     I realized the power of being ethical in business. It was scary. But it was also kind of cool. I was relieved to be out of there. In Al-Anon, you start learning to throw off all the lies and all the trappings, and to be honest and be who you are. That was the beginning of it, and felt good.

“I realized the power of being ethical in business. It was scary. But it was also kind of cool. I was relieved to be out of there. In Al Anon, you start learning to throw off all the lies and all the trappings, and to be honest and be who you are.”

Q: People could go several ways in that situation. You could have said, “I did the right thing and it got me fired. I won’t do that again.”

A: That never occurred to me. I never questioned whether I was doing the right thing. There was one thing I learned from my mother. She never let anyone push her around. From a very early age, I would never let anyone push me around.

     There had been another, earlier incident. When I was on Wall Street, I was asked to lie to my boss by one of his underlings. There was a big political mess going on in my company at the time. I refused to do it. These corporate types just went crazy. They couldn’t believe this secretary wouldn’t do this. I was completely alienated and ostracized by the muckety-mucks.

Q: What was the difference between the two events?

A: The first time, the fact they asked me to do it just frightened me. I thought, “Oh my God, I’m in one those Michael Douglas movies about the Wall Street tycoon who’s trying to get everybody do something illegal.” I had worked in Wall Street firms at the time when they were having major scandals. I remember sitting next to a guy who was on the front page of the paper the next day being taken out in handcuffs. I had seen that kind of stuff happen, but I had never been asked to do anything.

Q: How did having a spiritual community make it different the second time?

A: I wasn’t alone. I had a community, a group of people who understood me. I could go to an Al-Anon meeting the next day and talk about it. I had people who would support me. The first time, I didn’t have that. I couldn’t go to anybody in the company and tell them. I didn’t have a 12-step group. I could tell my husband, and he was sympathetic. He said you did the right thing. But that was it.

Q: You’ve touched a number of times on doing the right thing. How do you know what the right thing to do is?

A: I ask what my gut tells me. I also ask the Christian question, what would Jesus do? It’s a cliché, but it works. And I try to think about what I’m putting out. It’s a concept I learned early on in the 12-step program: You get back what you put out. It’s the idea of karma. If I do the wrong thing, it will come back to haunt me, in my soul.

“You get back what you put out. It’s the idea of karma. If I do the wrong thing, it will come back to haunt me, in my soul.”

Q: Coming back to the present, what are the connections between your work and spiritual life today?

A: Almost all of my clients are doing something that’s making the world a better place. Most of them are in creative work. Their politics and values are similar to mine. Most of them are spiritual. I can bring my spirituality into the workplace very easily. I don’t have to worry like I did when I was on Wall Street that I can’t go in and speak my mind and be honest about how I feel about something.

     We talk openly and honestly. When you’re dealing with money, you have to be honest. I’ll force them to take an active role and pay attention to their books. And I always set everything up so that if I walk out at lunchtime and get hit by a bus they can go back in and figure out exactly what I was doing. There are not going to be any mysteries.

     That’s who I am. That’s bringing my spirituality into the workplace. It’s all one now. I’m one person. I don’t have a work persona and a non-work persona.

“It’s all one now. I’m one person. I don’t have a work persona and a non-work persona.”

 Q: How long after Al-Anon did other spiritual activities come in?
 
A: I began feeling I wanted to start connecting to a specifically spiritual community. I had been out of the church for 20 years. My mother came up for Christmas, and said she’d really like to go to Christmas mass. When we went in, I was just overwhelmed. They were singing Adeste Fidelis in the old Latin. I just started crying. It was such a good feeling. I wanted to experience this all the time. So I started going back. And it was great. I heard everything with different ears.

That's I.t.!

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You can learn more about the Church for All People by visiting their new Website:
www.thechurchforallpeople.com

To learn more about the Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (CACINA), click on this link:
http://www.cacina.org/

To learn more about Al-Anon, click on this link: 
http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/english.html

To learn more about the Buddhist Association of the United States, click on this link: http://www.baus.org/baus/index.html

Wikipedia is also a good resource on Al-Anon, Buddhism, and religion and spirituality generally: www.wikipedia.org