Lifelong learning

The concept of “empowerment’ is useful for dealing with the process of aging. When growing older, one needs to be empowered to still think and act for oneself. Growing older has sometimes been seen as a journey into submissiveness, as a period when one is involved in the process of stripping away while making sense of one’s life. However, far too few people consider what is sometimes called the third period of life as an opportunity for flourishing, where aging can be seen as good news rather than only negative diminishment.

Contemporary research has produced fascinating data about people who are in their eighties and nineties, and yet are still learning new things. With regard to physiological and biological levels, studies have shown that even at this age new synpatic connections can still grow in the brain if it is sifficiently stimulated, for human brains posesess what is called synaptic plasticity. It is well known that the synaptic connections in the brain will not develop properly in a newborn baby if one does not nurture her sufficiently, speak to her, and thus stimulate her. Brain matter will not develop if the brain lacks the necessary mental, psychological, and spiritual input. This is also true of older people. They can go on learning new things, and through this learning experience new synapses will continue to grow in their brain. It is therefore of the utmost importance to stimulate the brain, to enhance people’s awareness to develop new thinking through new learning processes. This is a most important principle in caring for older people.

– above excerpt from “The Search for Spirituality: Our Global Quest for a Spiritual Life” by Ursula King, pages 94-95.

Comment: Don’t stop learning, folks! Stimulate your brain by actively learning new things each day. Pick up a new hobby, a new sport, a new craft. How about painting or drawing or mastering the computer? How about doing research on a topic close to your heart? Never mind if you can’t remember well. Just be earnest about working your brain. Here’s wishing you … a beautiful mind.

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The Spirituality of Children

Any educator must take note of the spiritual world in which children live, their experiences, hopes, dreams, as well as pains and fears. This requires intuition and empathy, a focused listening to children’s own stories, their real and imagined worlds. The vision of children can relate to the flowers, meadows, woods, and trees in nature, to different plants and animals, but also to their toys, and now for many to electronic games, to the imaginative worlds of songs, poems, stories, films – and to family members, siblings, friends. It is a world of vision and color, of diversity, expectation, great excitement, little hurts, and sometimes also deep pain, a world of laughter, tears, and fears as well as a world of trust and innocent abandon.

The capacity for spirituality is present in every human being, but it needs to be activated and realized. That means it has to be taught in some way, and this requires new approaches to spiritual education. We teach our children to learn to walk, to talk, to dance – to acquire all the immensely subtle and complex aspects of human culture and to master a wide variety of skills. But often enough our children are not taught how to develop spiritual awareness unless they are given the right kind of spiritual and religious education. At present this does not happen in large parts of secular society, nor does it necessarily always occur in a traditional religious environment. The spiritual potential of each human being has to be awakened, trained, and practiced, just as training is needed to develop the potential to do well in sports, make music, sing, or dance. But even then not all people make good singers or dancers. Similarly, not everybody is equally spiritually gifted.

– above excerpt taken from “The Search for Spirituality: Our Global Quest for a Spiritual Life” by Ursula King, pages 87-88.

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God is not a banker or a personnel officer

God is not a banker or a personnel officer. I was reading “Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer” by Ann and Barry Ulanov this morning and found this a fascinating thought and how we can reframe our mindset to see how God answers our prayers. The words in bold are mine; they drew my attention when I was reading the passage.

“The language of primary speech is often the language of grace, especially when its subject matter is the answer to prayer. The reply to our beseechings on those occasions is a flow of gifts, rarely clear as to source and not often a clear and direct response to what we have asked for. That is to say, if we have petitioned for a specific amount of money or support of some precise kind, for a particular purpose in business or love or schoolwork, we do not often get the exact sum in dollars and cents, the precise favor at work, the grade on a school assignment, or the detailed show of affection we have requested. God is not a banker of credit manager, a personnel officer or intermediary in the offices of love. The graces that come in answer to prayer come, as we have indicated, in the form of new energies, freshly stimulated memories, openings of self and the world, agreeable changes in what we thought was our disagreeably fixed nature. We may indeed receive funds, sometimes much more, sometimes much less than we asked for, new jobs for old, promotions, splendid grades, an overwhelming gathering up in love. But prayer is not a cash business; it is the world of grace, which is to say its language is the language of the spirit, and its specifications are very different from what we are accustomed to.
[snip]
Answers to our prayers are always wholenesses, though we may choose out of the eagerness of our hopes or the stress of our needs to see or hear only those parts of the answers that speak directly to what we have been asked for. In that way, we may get our money, our grade, our job, our gesture of love. But we have missed something, maybe what matters most, if we have contented ourselves with the obvious answer to the prayer. We may feel somewhere the increase of energy or the jog to our memory but not associate it with our prayer. We may know in some way that we are not such an emotional simpleton or hoarder of anxieties as we were before, but again not make the connection to our prayers.”
– pages 103-104.

Food for thought.

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Feet and soul

What has feet in common with soul?

I’ve just returned from a 10-day silent retreat. During that retreat, I was meditating on Jesus washing the feet of his disciples (John 13:4-12). It dawned on me that soul, like feet, are neglected parts of our body. As I “looked” at Jesus washing the feet of his disciples in my meditation, I was reminded that as a spiritual director, I am asked to tend to souls.

“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
– John 13:14-15, NIV

In that meditation period therefore, the image of feet allowed me to gain insight. I am richer by that “wisdom”. I thank God for the gift of imagination.

“Images invite us to relate to them. Relate is the key word here. An image that captures experience acts like a metaphor. It discloses and surprises by revealing familiar and unexpected aspects of meaning in our experience. Both broaden and enrich our awareness and understanding.”
– The Art of Theological Reflection by Patricia O’Connell Killen and John de Beer, page 38

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Unlived potentials

“There is a story from India, the Ramayana, that relates one individual’s journey through life and his gradual enlightenment. In a notable episode Rama the King is holding court during the morning hours. In those good old days when the king sat on his throne to hold court, anyone in the kingdom could come and lay out their problems and concerns. Justice was to be had at the hands of one’s king. The monarch heard the most pressing issues of the day and dispensed justice, wearing his mantle as Wise Elder.

Every morning, as Rama sat on his throne and prepared to hear the long list of petitioners and penitents, a monkey bounced in through the window and brought the king a piece of fruit. This happened daily. Rama became accustomed to this process and didn’t pay much attention. He would take the fruit, thank the monkey, toss the fruit behind him, and get on with the business at hand.

Well, a considerable pile of unused and rejected fruit accumulated behind the throne of the wise king. One day they got around to cleaning and discovered a pile of jewels in back of the throne. It seems that every piece of fruit contained a jewel. Hanuman, a manifestation of the divine in the form of a monkey, had presented a gift to the king each morning, and the royal had simply tossed it aside.

Every day of your life Hanuman, the monkey god – your instinctive voice of creative potential – hands you a piece of fruit with a jewel in it. And your inner king, busy with the responsibilities, conflicts, anxieties, and worries of the day, tosses it aside. In back of each person’s throne there lies an accumulating heap of gems. These are unlived potentials. They all are available to you, right now, if you open to your archetypal energy.”

– excerpted from “Living Your Unlived Live: Coping with unrealized dreams and fulfilling your purpose in the second half of life” by Robert A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl, Ph.D., page 173-174.

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Reframing

“There’s a wonderful story set in medieval times in which a man sees a laborer walking by with a wheelbarrow and asks what he is doing. “Can’t you see, I’m pushing a wheelbarrow,” the laborer replies. Another man comes by doing the same thing and he, too, is asked, “What are you doing?” He replies, “Can’t you see, I’m performing the work of God; I’m building Chartres Cathedral.”

The same activity, but very different levels of awareness. The second man has invested his work fatefully – connected to a greater purpose – and thereby rendered his life meaningful. It’s not what you do in life that is most important; rather, it’s a question of what consciousness you bring to the activity. Whether you are pushing a wheelbarrow or heading a corporation is really not the point. Who is doing it and what consciousness is brought forth?”

– excerpted from “Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with unrealized dreams and fulfilling your purpose in the second half of life” by Robert A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl, Ph.D., page 200.

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The “beam” in one’s eye, the “speck” in another’s

“Those inferior personality traits submerged in unconsciousness Jung called the shadow, “the thing a person has no wish to be”, “the sum of all those unpleasant qualities” from which one attempts to hide. The shadow, that which we reject in ourselves, may contain elements of evil and also highly positive elements. However, when the negative is not acknowledged, the shadow can develop a life of its own as a sub-personality and be unconsciously projected onto an object or person in the external world. The failure to own one’s shadow is demonstrated in a case where, for example, a pastor outwardly shows vehement disdain for pornography, fighting to rid the world of such “filth”; yet this same individual may simultaneously be fantasizing about pornography or having a secret affair. While certainly not denying the reality of evil or the right of individuals to protest against it, Jung was concerned when someone obsessed about what he or she saw as particularly “wrong” behaviour. The question arises: What evil do we deny in ourselves as we come to see it with such clarity in another? According to Jung, “everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. This psychological phenomenon highlights the importance of considering the “beam” in one’s eye before addressing the “speck in another’s (Matthew 7:3).”

– excerpted from “The Living God and our Living Psyche: What Christians can learn from Carl Jung” by Ann Belford Ulanov and Alvin Dueck, pages 15-16.

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Exodus is now

The prophet Isaiah records a powerful and compelling image for the Hebrew people. In it the God of Israel speaks a message that echoes down through the centuries. It brings strength and guidance to many people who follow the Judeo-Christian path.

“When you pass through the waters
I will be with you;
when you walk through fire
you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.”
(Isa. 43:2 RSV)

An enduring Presence animates the history and the wandering of those who have been nourished by this Old Testament tradition.

But apply these words of the prophet to your own inner world. There is a remarkable parallel with the unfolding of inner life. The felt sense can be a place of fire and flood, confusion, turbulence, and pain. It is beyond control, beyond the crafted security that ego can provide.

A call into the desert drew the Hebrews from their familiar Egyptian landscape into the untamed wilderness of Sinai. What they lived as an external, historical event we experience today in the unfolding of our own inner sense of self. Focusing* provides an Exodus context for each of us. It places us in the wilderness area of our own open-ended journey, our pilgrimage, our wandering in the realm of evolutionary surprise.

This is a desert place for most of us because we usually come to know ourselves as ego, as the ones who strive for control. Yet here, control must be abandoned in favor of a new way of being.

Two vital experiences happened to the Israelites during their Exodus wandering, two experiences that radically transformed their sense of themselves. They discovered a new identity, and in it they were touched by the saving power of God.

The desert was beyond all control, yet out of this strange wilderness came wonders and surprise. Water gushed forth from a rock. Manna fell from above. They were given a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide them.

The Israelites heard a voice that spoke to them in this wilderness, a voice from beyond the habitual, the familiar, the secure. The protective shell of their hardened ego was blistered by the desert sun – cracked, broken, and eventually transformed. Exodus for the Israelites was a time of conversion. Beyond all their resistance a new identity lay waiting to be born. They were to discover themselves as gift, as graced. They would find within the limitations of their own flesh the seed of God.

So, too, with each of us in our time. What Hebrew could imagine the surprise of living water gushing forth from an arid desert rock? Who among us can imagine that the hard place of inner resistance – anger, frustration, fear, and confusion – might one day open up to point the way home?

Do we yet know the gift we are? Have we explored that inner reserve beyond our ego?

Exodus is now. It is the story of Everyman, Everywoman, and Everychild. It is a journey lived over and over again. It is the commitment to a greater depth of humanness. It is finding in life much more than simply the will to survive. It is testing the waters of deeper identity. Being drawn beyond all willing into the embrace of a wider bio-spiritual quest.

– excerpted from “Bio-Spirituality” by Drs. Peter A. Campbell and Edwin M. McMahon, both Jesuit priests, pages 82-85.

*Focusing here refers to Bio-Spiritual Focusing which is a special way of coming home to the truth of yourself by turning your attention inside your body so a gifting energy within the “Larger Body” (of which you are an integral cell) can free you to grow more connected and whole. On the back cover of the book, it is written:

“Beyond ideology, culture, race or religious affiliation, the human body with its wondrous capacity for knowing and being in the universe, for being “in God”, is what ultimately binds every human being into a shared experience of “the Transcendent.”

Bio-Spiritual Focusing is a simple, step-by-step approach into the wisdom of your body – the bridge connecting you with a Sacred Presence greater than yourself.”

Bio-spiritual Focusing aside, I feel that the Exodus story, like all stories in the Word of God, is our story. If the Word is indeed alive, then the lived experiences of those who have gone before us are the stories of today. The people in the Bible experienced fear, doubt, anguish, anger, disappointment, pain, suffering, joy, bliss, delight, miracles, the call of God, and more. The people in the Bible heard the voice of God in their lives and in the wilderness. Today, we experienced these too, and we can only become aware of God’s presence in our day-to-day living when we pay attention.

Don’t just read the Bible. Draw parallels in the stories of the Word to your life, and therein God is actively ministering to you. May you find a new way of being as you allow the Word to engage you.

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I can find my way home from here

A little girl got lost one day in a big town. The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where they lived but she couldn’t find a single landmark. She was very frightened. Finally a policeman stopped to help her. He put her in the passenger seat of his car, and they drove around until she finally saw her church. She pointed it out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, “You could let me out now. This is my church, and I can alway find my way home from here.”

– Story as told by Anne Lamott in her book, “Travelling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith” (page 55).

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Eucharistic Presence

For many people the term “Real Presence” of Jesus Christ means simply and solely his sacramental presence in the Eucharist.

We need to reflect, if only, briefly, on ways in which Christ is present in the Eucharist. I recall one time when, being distracted while distributing the Holy Bread at Communion, I inadvertently changed the accompanying words. Instead of “This is the Body of Christ,” which I was supposed to say, I suddenly heard myself saying: “You are the Body of Christ.” A felicitous mistake putting unexpected words on a whole new dimension of the Eucharistic gathering, namely, the real presence of Christ in the assembled community of faith. Word presence is also a form of real presence. Think of being in a room with another person where each of you is reading in a different corner of the room. Then, on a sudden impulse, you desire to share what you have been reading with the other. Conversation ensues. Your presence to one another is changed. It is no longer physical presence merely, it is a typically human way of being present – through dialogue and conversation. Christ is also present, the (Vatican) council says, in the person of the priest-minister who presides at the Eucharist. The words that the priest speaks in the eucharistic prayer do indeed indicate Christ acting in and through him, though I would want to wonder at least if this is not a particular specification of the first way of presence in the Eucharist: Christ’s presence in the assembled people, including the one who presides. Finally, there is in the Eucharist that most excellent form of presence: Jesus’ presence in the sacramental species.

True eucharistic renewal demands not only that we expand our understanding of what real presence is, but also that we deepen our realization of what it means. Jesus is not present in the Eucharist in order that we may adore him (as a spirituality of devotion tends to emphasize) but in order that he may transform us into himself by drawing us into the mystery of his death and resurrection. His presence is not a static presence (just being there); it is a dynamic presence. He is there to re-create us into his own image.

– excerpted from pages 146-147 of “Silence on Fire: Prayer of Awareness” by William H. Shannon.

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