2023.05.28 PENTECOST, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I’ve loved and trusted the Presence of God since childhood, but I’ve never felt the urge to evangelize as we Christians are supposed to, right?  To me Pentecost was/is not the birthday of the Christian Church, nor the arrival of the Holy Spirit for the first time ever, but rather a stunning advertisement for the steadfast loving Spirit of God, present broadly, deeply, and wildly to all sorts of people the world over. Will they all be Christians? Not likely. Will they all be endowed with divine grace? Yes. Is that enough salvation? Yes. Is it the only way of salvation? No.

*  *  *  *

Recently at a sacred music concert taking place in an enormous church sanctuary, a listener turned to me and said bluntly: “What’s a mystic?” As if I knew! People ask clergy the most annoying real questions just because we are clergy. Clergy are NOT God, thank God!  

Still, the question got me wondering: What IS a  mystic really?  

A prayer practitioner. 

Pop-up answers seem foolish, I know, yet they are the kind of answers that force my attention away from my ego and all my educated answers. A prayer practitioner?  

Who, what, where, when, and why? 

WHO is a prayer practitioner? Anyone hoping, perhaps longing, to deepen their relationship of love with self, God and neighbor.  

WHAT is prayer? Being silent, preferably in solitude, while willing to open up to inner thoughts and feelings, to listen for God in your soul or notice God sitting on the branch of a tree. 

WHERE? At a place of deep quiet usually but not always at a monastery or a convent, run by monks or nuns whose ministry is to provide and maintain space and hospitality for prayer practitioners. 

WHEN? As soon as you admit to yourself that you need well, to know what the hell you are doing with your life.  And when you decide to sign up for a silent directed retreat for 3 days, then for 5 days and eventually for a whole week or 10 days. And when you submit to talking about your innards with a wise and trained Spiritual Director who listens and makes suggestions about things to use from Scripture or, annoyingly, recommends more silence. That’s when you take a walk, fume to God about all this damned silence, return to your room and sleep like a champ. 

WHY?  Because I said so.  On my first silent directed retreat, I stared for a very long time at a huge portrait of a rose. I loved its sheer size, its astounding beauty, elegance, and all its petals. I went to the greenhouse and asked if the man I met there was the gardener, just like Mary Magdalene had asked the Risen Christ who appeared to her as she wept at Jesus’s empty tomb in the gospel story in John 20:15.  In my case, this guy in the greenhouse actually was the gardener. He gave me one rose. I took it back to my room and dissected it, one petal at a time. The bright red petals were strewn all over the floor. There were only about 29. I left the petals and slept. The next day I returned to the chapel where the rose portrait hung. This time I noticed its long stem. There were thorns, sharp and pointed all along the stem on both sides.

 The thorns were hard. I frowned.

The petals were soft. I cried.

The petals far outnumbered the thorns.  I laughed.

  

What is SDI?

One more acronym to figure out. Oh no!—another “stupid dumb institution.”

SDI stands for Spiritual Directors International. Not stupid. Not dumb. Not institution.

SDI is a an organization dedicated to the ministry and practice of Spiritual Direction (SD) a discipline with ancient roots and contemporary practice of guidance in deepening your relationship with divinity in your soul and divinity all around you.

SD spans all religious traditions and many secular humanists come wondering and seeking. The longing persists for something beyond human effort alone, something beyond human beings—Being itself.

SDI is a global learning community of people from many faiths and many nations who share a common concern, passion and commitment to the art and contemplative practice of spiritual direction. There are annual conferences, a monthly journal called Presence and a website where you can learn more about SDI history and purpose and locate a Spiritual Director in your area with the Seek and Find Guide.

Recently I attended a meeting of this organization at which Boston area directors gathered to network, eat cookies, pray in silence together, share our hopes and concerns, and get to know the coordinating team.

The value of this meeting was to see faces of our community. Most of us practice alone in offices or homes and only connect on line. In the age of Facebook it was inspiring to me to see real faces and hear voices too. I confess I get tired of electronic connecting that is deaf, dumb and blind even if it is convenient and quick.

SD’s don’t just sit around and pray; nor do their directees. We don’t simply go on retreats or spend time on our knees looking at icons. Nor do we seek to strengthen our personal spirituality for self betterment or happiness. We seek to transform the soul of the world.

SD is not for narcissists or the faint of heart. We talk to God about peace, justice, simplicity, love. Our lives exemplify these values.

That mission is why the SDI committee made a last minute decision to cancel the Boston accommodations for the annual conference in April, 2011 and move the conference to Atlanta. Why? The large conference had been scheduled at the Hyatt in Boston.

The Hyatt recently made some management decisions that conflict jarringly with our core spiritual values of faith, hope and love to say nothing of the common good. They trained people who would work for less money, then fired their maintenance staff and put in the new and cheaper team. I’m sure there are nuances and official excuses for the inexcusable but that’s the nutshell.

The decision was of course a great disappointment to Boston SD’s. SDI’s director Liz Budd Ellman told us the decision was made with much reflection and prayer.

It is impossible to discern exactly what God wants but this one wasn’t hard to guess. What the Hyatt did in the interest of their own profitable survival. I doubt they will suffer from SDI’s decision as their former employees suffered from their executive decision.

Bostonian SD’s were disappointed but affirming of the rightness of this discernment. Everyone praised and overpraised. I wondered.

Rightness can be close to righteousness.

What about the present staff, hired under such inauspicious circumstances. How do they feel? Are they ashamed of needing and having a job at whatever cost? Do they cringe at the publicity and the protests? Are they treated with respect? Did they know the circumstances?

I have no doubt about the sincerity of SDI’s decision. I know it wasn’t knee jerk bleeding heart liberal spiritual reactivity. I pose my questions to caution against any syrupy jargon that stultifies and sets us apart from the hard truth that all decisions, God or no God, are extremely complex and likely painful even for those we imagine to be haughty.

I have faith in the long slow movement of the divine Spirit in and through everyone involved.

No one can know what Holy Wisdom works in human hearts.

SDI will continue on in its fine ministry, making decisions to the best of their limited capacity, trusting that time—grace and circumstances acting on our own good will—will bring about goodness and truth.

2010.09.08 What Is Spiritual Direction?

SO WHAT IS SPIRITUAL DIRECTION?

Spiritual Direction is a conversational process in which a gifted and trained mentor accompanies someone as s/he discern how God is acting in her/his life just now.

Unlike therapy, in which you talk about your life problems and how to solve them, you talk to a Spiritual Director about what is going on in your prayer life

WHAT IF I DON'T OR CAN'T PRAY?

A Spiritual Director will help you figure out the best spiritual practice for yourself, a means by which you stop racing around and start to listen to yourself and to the divine whisper in yourself and the world around you.

BUT I'M CATHOLIC.

Do you think God, by whatever name you choose to call that presence you think or hope is divine, is Catholic? Or Jewish? Or, of all things, Episcopalian?

Spiritual Directors are called, gifted— AND trained— to transcend, in both practice and attitude, denominational boundaries. They don’t care if you’re Catholic or pagan if you want to connect more deeply with your own soul and with Love, one of God’s many names. They will discern with you whether you are confusing Love’s voice with your own, your mother’s or, heaven forfend, the Church’s.

BUT.............

Fear not. If a director does not know enough about your particular religious concerns beyond their impact on your soul then they will be honest and refer you to someone of your brand.

WHAT IF I'M AN ATHEIST—SORT OF?

All you need is an open heart. God doesn’t believe in God. Do you think God believes in most of the pathetic and ferocious, patriarchal and exclusively masculine images humanity has projected onto the name of Love over the years?

DO I HAVE TO PRAY TO JESUS OR LOVE HIM?

Come on! Of course you might want to if you’re Christian. (Jesus can be quite nice.) If so a director will help you get to know Jesus.

I'M SCARE. I DON'T LIKE SOMEONE DIRECTING ME, CONTROLLING ME.

The director in this process is Spirit. Your director won’t direct just listen, suggest, pray only if you want, and laugh a lot with you. This is a WITH thing. Fear not, beloved.

Besides, you can interview a spiritual director ask any and all question and if you don’t like her/his manner, it’s not a sync then thanks and move on. It’s nice to do this with dignity and wordless flight.

WHERE DOES THAT NAME COME FROM THEN?

Jesuits. And........

It has ancient roots even biblical. Jesus mentored his disciples as did Moses, Paul and Mohammed. Spiritual teachers, tutors for initiates and inquirers have always been part of religious life. They listen carefully, provide wisdom, encourage deep prayer and retreat, and acknowledged always that the true director of the process was divine.

Today’s spiritual directors are called to their practice as professional ministry. They are naturally gifted listeners and discerners. They receive training and credentials to hone their gifts and qualify them to set up a practice and charge fees, usually on a sliding scale.

Directors are trained to suggest therapy or other paths to accompany direction if it seems that a person needs more that they are qualified to provide. So don’t go thinking you can go see a dear sweet spiritual director and avoid the confrontations of good therapy.

Spiritual Direction is about tuning into the direction the Spirit is moving in your life, remembering that your prayer life and your daily life do not reside on different planets!

HOW DO I FIND ONE OF THESE SPIRITUAL DIRECTORS?

Pray.

Then act: Go to the Seek and Find Guide on the website for Spiritual Directors International.

And see my next blog post: What is SDI?

Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Church: Wound of Forgiveness

Recently I read an essay on clergy sexual abuse in which the phrase “a desire to see the church community healed of its hidden wound” jumped off the page and into my heart. After I said ouch I asked what that wound might be. The first thing that came to mind was forgiveness.

The article, “Spiritual Direction with Women after Sexual Abuse by Clergy” by Spiritual Director Trish McBride, appeared in the March 2010 issue of Presence: International Journal for Spiritual Direction. You can read it with the help of google, the new name for God. It is well informed and and clear that statistics in the U.S. and other countries indicate the problem to be “an occupational hazard that exists not just in the wilds of Africa.”

The article referenced two 2002 letters to the editor of a church newsletter. Both letters referred to a case in which sexual abuse survivors had made accusations to the Church against the pastor of the church, Father X.

First, the response letter, because the phrase that caught my attention appeared in that letter, the author of which on behalf of the Susanna group said that complainants to the Catholic Church about sexual assault/abuse by clergy and religious "usually act from a passion to stop the same thing happening to anyone else, and , if they care, from a desire to see the church community healed of its hidden wound."

Now, the letter to which the group responded. In it the writer raised objections to accusations of sexual abuse against Father X suggesting that the accusers lacked proper maturity, integrity, wisdom and compassion especially since the abuse happened seventeen years ago. The letter writer cited the New Testament phrase from John 8 “let who is without sin cast the first stone.” It further implied that the wounded ones should forgive as they have been forgiven.

This letter made me furious. Christian? Maturity? Whose? The responding letter made me cry.

All this got me going on forgiveness. Forgiveness stands at the center of the Christian gospel. It regularly gets misused, its healing power abused. Let me count the abuses: overuse, superficial (sinful) application, judgmental use and globalizing as above, clichéd cover-ups like “forgive and forget,” hasty use without process, thoughtless sloganeering using biblical quotes out of context as above, and forgiveness used in the service of institutional protectionism to dismiss or cover up crimes committed against the powerless by those in power.

Forgiveness as cover up colludes with the conspiracy of silence about clergy sexual abuse. This abusive use of forgiveness wounds the already wounded. Thus we crucify Christ over and over. Thus we wound the Church itself and its faithful. Thus we wound Jesus and the gift of healing he proffers.

We in the Church are loose-lipped with the most gracious gift God has given to us and calls us to share. Perhaps the worst abusive use of forgiveness is the sin of spiritual arrogance—assuming we can do it ourselves without divine help. Thus we wound even the mercies of God.

How long can this go on? My head spins on its axis like Janus. One side angry the other sad. But it’s all my face, angry and sad at once.

I have chosen and continue to choose to serve and love this damn Christian Church for better or worse. I try to say it's just the Roman Catholic Church. I make excuses for my Episcopal Church because its politics are conciliar; it’s more progressive; and by grace and grit it manages to pull off amazingly inclusive actions of which I’m proud.

But excuses are just excuses. None matter because this kind of abuse goes on in all churches to say nothing of all secular institutions. No one is exempt. More often than not all is “forgiven,” hidden, passed along without consequence except for those who live with unhealed wounds. That, not clergy sexual abuse, is the true hidden wound of the Church.

Whatever happened to repentance another pretty strong Christian teaching? Ignored for some, demanded for others? Forgiveness misused itself becomes a stone, hurled without reflection.

I think of a woman who was sexually abused consistently and in the name of Love for years. She had no power to refuse the seduction from Father XYZ; she grew up never knowing who her biological father was; she prayed regularly to “our Father in heaven...” and then there was the priest called “father.” These three incarnations became scrambled in her mind while she longed for and waited for her real (biological) father to come, the father to whom she would have given her soul. Instead she gave her body. She gave it to an Episcopal priest for nothing and she has never gotten it back. Of course she has her own sins that beg forgiveness. But to name her wound and its perpetrator was not one of her sins.

Making God into a parent, an exclusively male parent, may not be such a good idea. Jesus may have used this term of affection for his God. But today, metaphors like Father are no longer useful.

The sorrowful side of my face weeps for this woman and for so many others. I also weep for priests who are trapped in a system that is impotent in its structures and is too afraid to help them with their own wounds, too fearful in fact to truly forgive them!

My heart also weeps for Jesus and the gift he didn’t just teach but acted out in his life, the gift of forgiveness without condemnation but with a call to faith, to re-grounding in God, in community and in the best of the human self.

How? He suggested prayer and compassion. He suggested that God is the only being with heart-capacity enough to forgive.

It is not ongoing clergy sexual abuse that is the Church’s hidden wound; it is the hidden and unacknowledged abuses against forgiveness. Justice is made a mockery, yes, but that pales next to the abusive uses of forgiveness.

My rant is done. If anyone dares to forgive me for it I have stones.

* * * *

P.S. The letter by the defender of Father X was awarded “letter of the week” by the parish’s editorial staff.
The letter sent in response was not published.

One can only hope that such editorial decisions have not escaped Sophia’s notice and transformation has taken place.