Thealogical Lady: A Blog

Easter: Day 19

5/8/2014

My spiritual director recently invited me to make a graph of the losses I've experienced throughout my life. She invited me to mark losses as being either negative or positive (by drawing marking them below or above the timeline, respectively), and to indicate how great each loss was at the time by the length of the mark. The result of this graph is the ability to see the frequency, kinds, and impacts of my losses all at once, as well as my coping mechanisms (or lack thereof) for those losses.

I drafted my grief graph last night. I already knew intuitively that my life had been marked by loss, but it startled me to see just how much there was. Death has been my life's companion. Major changes have been my life's normal rhythm. And deep happiness took quite a while to come along, but has been growing exponentially since it arrived. I still have a difficult time trusting deep happiness when it emerges in a new form, and given this picture of my past, it's no wonder.

What can my past losses tell me about my future? What patterns are discernible in them, and what in those patterns needs gentle, healing illumination?

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Living Lent: Aurora Chapel

4/4/2014

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I wrote recently about discovering long-buried grief while sharing sacred conversation with my spiritual director.

It is amazing to me what can dwell in darkness for years without being uncovered, and then emerge--just a little--through the act of trusting another.

Aurora, Homer described, is the rosy-fingered dawn whose light precedes the blazing dayfire of Apollo. She is the first bearer of light, strong and gentle at once. Her light is enough to disperse the darkness, but her light is not so bright that it blinds.

I would like to offer sacred space in which trust may dwell and rosy-fingered light may emerge. I invite you to make prayer requests in the Aurora Chapel for whatever dwells hidden in the depths of your heart. Early each morning, I will gather up the requests that have been made in the past day and offer intentions for them during the course of my Benedictine Canon community's prayer. All requests will be held in confidence.

What abides so deeply in your heart that you scarcely notice it?

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Living Lent: Accepting New Light

4/2/2014

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Suppose someone shines a light in your face. Do you turn from it, or do you let it illumine you for the other to see? What if the light is so bright it hurts your eyes? What if there is no light anywhere around you except that which is shining on you?

My toddler does this. She'll find our emergency LED flashlights tucked away, pull them out, turn them on, and shine them in our eyes till her daddy and I remind her not to do it, since doing that can give people ow-ies.

During spiritual direction yesterday, my spiritual director held up a lone flame to illumine part of my past that was buried deep within me--old, strong grief with old, strong power. She invited me to consider seeking therapy to work through it. My inability to withhold tears as I considered my grief confirmed that she was right.

Lent is a time for digging through one's deepest darkness--not to find new ways to bury it, but to hold it up to light and embrace it with the fierce grip of love.

Will I be able to bear the tears that come as I face this old darkness? Will I trust others to gather me up when I release both my tears and my strength to stand?

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Spiritual Direction: For a New Beginning

1/13/2014

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Photo by M. Kate Allen

I met with my new spiritual director for the first time about a week ago, and now I feel like my new spiritual dwelling has all. It's one thing to journey forth in a community; it's another to have a holy listener dedicated to hearing your story and helping you recognize divine whispers in it.

Choosing a spiritual director who's a good fit isn't a simple endeavor--not all spiritual directors are good for all people. Part of discerning who might be a good fit is figuring out whether the spiritual director you meet with is the sort of person you can imagine yourself either wanting to be or called to be in some respect. My spiritual director is a female Episcopal deacon, and I have long felt called to ordained life as a female, even though my own female identity has prevented me from pursuing ordained life for my entire life as a Roman Catholic.

Meeting with someone who shares (or who can adapt to) your communication style helps as well. If you're forthright and want to hash things out in an objective way while your spiritual director is highly sentimental, you may feel as though you're talking past your director. Compatible communication styles help bring forth the substance of the conversation rather than serving as a barrier to it.

That being said, meeting with someone who isn't exactly like you can sometimes be the most helpful thing of all--someone who is older (or younger), someone who's from a different faith or spiritual tradition, or someone who has had major life experiences that differ from your own may be able to lend a fresh perspective to your context.

For me, the most important aspect of a spiritual director is always my gut feeling about that person: Is this someone I trust? Faith and trust are of the same root, and one can hardly develop one's faith with another if one doesn't deeply trust that other from the very beginning.

My spiritual director shared a poem with me that I had never heard before as we began our first conversation together, and it seems to me to be a perfect encapsulation of what one experiences when one is ready for a spiritual director.

In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

-John O'Donohue, "For a New Beginning"

A spiritual director, or spiritual companion, is someone who bears witness to what is stretching and unfolding in the midst of your life and heart. A spiritual director is someone who walks with you, not to guide you, but to help you name how God/dess is guiding you.

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Easter: Day 19

Living Lent: Aurora Chapel

Living Lent: Accepting New Light

Spiritual Direction: For a New Beginning

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