2022.07.03 IN-dependence? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blogpost

We, in this country and on this Earth, are living in the midst of the death throes of patriarchy. As I stutter to understand things, a question pops up, like in the game Jeopardy. Let’s call this category: Values. 

The highest personal value in the United States.

What is Independence?  

Ding. Correct. That’s $$$$ more for you, dear Contestant. 

More Word Play 

“Throes” does not mean death itself, but rather the painful struggle, the convulsion that accompanies great change. 

“Patriarchy” does not simply mean the rule of all things male. It means a system of social organization based exclusively on the dominance of White straight maleness, often Protestant—garnished with the temptingly alluring word: INDEPENDENCE. 

“Independence” does not simply mean freedom. IN-dependence means without dependence. Consider: other words, such as IN-ept (without aptitude), or IN-animate (without animation), or IN-adequate (without adequacy), or IN-domitable (without defeat) or unbeatable, or even IN-formation (without full formation)—just a list of facts without a fully formed idea, plan, or conclusion. 

All my eccentric word-play explorations make me wonder even more about the American idolatry of IN-dependence. We even set apart a whole day, July 4th, to honor our IN-dependence. It came about historically after a bloody war, the loss of many human lives, and the establishment of our own government, based in IN-dividual (without divisions) freedom for our nation. We fought to be free of British rule, and we prize our freedom(s) without letting them evolve and ripen. Too much? 

Have we overvalued our IN-dependence?

*  *  *  * 

When I read about the move to end checks and balances in our government I feel alarmed about the return of originalism, a political fundamentalism that IN-hibits (hinders) national evolution and advocates autocratic methods and purposes—so alarmed that I have actually prayed for what Christians call The Second Coming. We need divine INter-vention (coming between). NOW. It could also open enough hearts and minds to, well, revive the ancient ethic of the good old Golden Rule: What you hate do not do to another OR Love one another as you would have them love you. 

We need INTER-dependence (sharing mutual dependence) not more IN-dependence. No one is ever without dependence, despite all of her or his dramatic adolescent delusions. 

Who is not dependent? 

Personal Spiritual Stories

When I was a child I struggled consistently to be INdependent of my mother’s over-attentiveness, not the same as nurture. She was well-meaning I know, but I needed to know my own embodied self, INdependent from her. I needed to breathe. I achieved my INdependence. I also lost much in the process, including the capacity to mother myself and give enough maternal nurture to my own children. What did I gain? I gained a strong sense of myself, strong enough to make many choices like divorce, professional success, and happiness. What did I lose?  A marriage and full IN-timacy (without timidity) with my children. 

What helped me reclaim my dependent self?  

1) The consistent and INternalized (not externalized) loving listening presence of God whom I encountered in prayer—the chatter of a small child to the God she’d seen in a picture book. 

2) The affectionate good presence of a therapist, herself suffering from excesses of INdependent sadness and anger. 

3) The abiding INtimacy and good humor of a man who taught me to love and cherish my body as if it were his. 

4) The cautious yet authentic devotion of my four biological children whose feelings and fears I have learned to listen to without condition or parental-ism.  

5) The very recent acquaintance I’ve made with a young (26) man named Jared, who, because of a tragic accident, is paralyzed by a spinal cord injury that has left him dependent on others. Talking with Jared, I admit, has felt at times emotionally paralyzing to me. He has taught me again how to be healthfully dependent, ironically through his very fine, educated mind, fully IN-tact (without tactile sensation). Jared works as a design engineer at a healthcare facility for people with spinal cord injuries such as his own. He texted to me:  “I’d say that my greatest joy is seeing my ideas become reality. Having something to build, designing it, and eventually holding it in my hands.” 

I remain dependent on all these love-factors—IN-definitely (without definition), but not quite IN-finitely (without finitude)—yet. 

Happy Dependence Day. 

 

2022.06.26 In The Beginning? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The biblical story of Creation portrays a God who created, giving spiritual birth to humanity in the divine image. The only “rule” God set was the only “rule” humanity disobeyed: Just don’t eat of this one tree or you will open the door for evil alongside good in the world. Simple, right? Let’s check out if God is just being parental. One bite won’t hurt. Follow your bliss. It was HER idea. Turns out God was being loving not judging. This mythic story continues to be re-enacted over and over. It turns out we all have control issues. 

And again. 

The Supreme Court just ruled that the constitutionality of rights secured for 50 years by the Roe V. Wade ruling was, yes, unconstitutional. Make no mistake, this ruling is about women, none of whom get pregnant alone, some of whom get pregnant not by choice but by immaturity or crime. All of them are held responsible for the consequences of their putative “sins”, and many suffer abandonment, poverty, racial bias, classism, and ill health. Oh yes, others are condemned in the name of God as well.  

I think of the biblical story in the New Testament (John 7:53-8:11) about the woman brought to Jesus for condemnation. She has been accused of adultery. Assuming the accusation is true, did she commit this act all by herself? Jesus famously bends over and writes something in the sand. What he wrote no one knowe The crowds bellowed for her execution by stoning. Jesus rises and challenges the crowd:  “The one among you who is without sin may cast the first stone.” The crowd disperses—each heading home carrying their “toys.”  The woman is told to go and sin no more. 

Was it a “sin” to be a woman? Well? She didn’t commit adultery alone or get pregnant alone. As to what Jesus wrote in the sand, I bet he wrote: “So where’s the guy?” 

*  *  *  *  

This statement below was posted on June 24, 2022, by Kathleen McCartney, the President of Smith College, a woman’s college and my alma mater. There are many concerns and fears generated by the Supreme Court’s decision, and one of them of course is higher education, especially women’s education. 

“Today the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. As reported by The New York Times, “the decision, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, will lead to all but total bans on the procedure in about half of the states.” Decisions about reproductive rights are now relegated to the states, which will exacerbate inequalities in access to reproductive healthcare. In the words of Gloria Steinem ’56, “medical needs should not be distributed geographically. They're way too distributed by class and economics as it is because we don't have national health care as we should. And this makes it far worse for the female half of the population.”

In an amicus brief in support of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, economists noted that “there is a substantial body of well-developed and credible research that shows that abortion legalization and access in the United States has had—and continues to have—a significant effect on birth rates as well as broad downstream social and economic effects, including on women’s educational attainment and job opportunities.” Research in the years since Roe v. Wade became law has shown that access to abortion increased the probability that young women finished college by nearly 20 percentage points and entered a professional occupation by nearly 40 percentage points; it also found that teen motherhood was reduced by 34% and teen marriage by 20%.”

*  *  *  *

I am not in favor of abortion. Nor am I in favor of pro-life arguments that claim to save the life of the fetus but fail to consider all other lives, especially the mother’s life as one of those lives to consider in the pro-life arguments. I am in favor of LISTENING to many stories told by women about their experiences. I am in favor of compassion all round, in church and state. I am in favor of lobbying the Congress to codify Roe v. Wade so it becomes federal law, not to be regulated by states with wildly different moral and religious cultures. I bet that’s what Jesus would do. President Biden agrees, too—not about Jesus necessarily, but about restoring the rights and choices Roe v. Wade secured.   

As far as I can figure, women and men are equal by Constitution, by Democracy AND equal under the rule of law, AND equally created by a Creator-God who gave a nod to the other tree in the garden, the Tree of Life—abundance of food and life for ALL living things. Here is an image that depicts this forgotten Tree of Life God placed in Eden. 

*  *  *  *

Personal Stories

 

In my  ministry and in my counseling, I have sat, on more than one occasion, with a young teen who is pregnant, in tears, and terrified. She has no money. She looks forward to higher education and to pursuing her dream vocation. She is not equipped to take care of a child. She is afraid to tell her parents, and certainly her very Catholic boyfriend. She feels condemned and all alone. I have helped such children make decisions, choices each could live with. And I helped one girl find a doctor who helped her abort.  

And once I sat with an older woman who, in midlife, confessed her earlier abortion and sobbed with grief over the loss of her unborn child, a son, she felt sure, whom she had named. I listened with compassion. Further, I suggested that we could baptize this unseen, unborn son. She looked at me in amazement and then knew this was exactly the right thing, the right kind of absolution if you will. So she held her invisible son while I consecrated water and baptized him in the name of God. I think I have never presided over a holier baptism. 

May we begin again, please. And may we remember that God is not a gracious puppeteer but a gracious indweller. 

 

2022.06.19 Divine Empathy. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I used to think that with God as my father I would always be safe and loved. I also used to think that my own father, whom I loved without reserve, had no fears or flaws. That was until he took a course on assertive training that I offered at our parish church when I was in my thirties and he was in his seventies. Turned out he was shy. Turned out he trusted his oldest daughter to teach him how to love himself as much as his own “Father” God did. It also turned out that God is much more than a father. God is the Creator and Source of ALL Being—all living beings not just fathers or sons or daughters or mothers or Whites or Blacks or sinners or the righteous. Creation itself is an act of divine Empathy.

*  *  *  *

The other day as I sat on one of the many benches strewn along our walking paths at McLean Village retirement community where I live, I witnessed a poignant and typical scene.

Two children were riding bikes, a young boy of perhaps six and his older sister on her bike riding behind him. I watched them progress and overheard snippets of conversation.

She: Wait. Don’t go so fast. You’ll fall!

He streaks on ahead. 

She mutters: “This was my mother’s idea that we go out and ride bikes. What a stupid idea! He’s too far ahead now.” 

She is about to fall off her bike, so she stops and shouts after her small brother: WAIT! He’s so stupid I know he’s going to fall. She shrieks at the nearly out of sight brother, as she tries to mount her bike and can’t steady it. She mutters: “This is so dumb! I’m done.”  

She catches my eye, and I smile. I think to say, “It’s not easy being the big sister, huh?” But I don’t say it out loud. A simple nod with a loving intention is all I can manage in the face of a deep sorrow at this child’s life-plight. 

She mounts and rides off wobbling. God, don’t let her fall. 

*  * *  *

I think of the parable in Luke 9 about Jesus’s being confronted by a man possessed by countless “demons” all of which, or whom, Jesus banishes, making the man well, lightening his burden. My imagination plays fast and loose with this story. What rivets me is not the apparent miracle of an exorcism, but Jesus’s single-minded focus on the possessed man’s misery—not only derived from his illness, but because his terrified community had shackled and exiled him because of it. Of course he also feared more torment from Jesus. Jesus is slow to react. This is an emergency! Jesus should flee for his life. Still, he pauses to ask the man his name, and does not act before he gets a response. “My name is Legion,” the man cries.  Legion is the name his frightened and ignorant community have labeled him. It is also the name used for the Roman military, a fear-inducing name. You know how it is in adolescent years when certain teens are called sticky names like wimp, bully, nerd, queer, lard-ass, fraidy-cat, sissy, on and on. Such names are like glue, hard to live down—legion. 

But Jesus wanted to know all these names before he banishes them all, sending them to find a new host—a herd of pigs that suddenly race pell mell down a steep slope of land to their death in the sea below. 

Many people hate this parable, because they feel sorry for the farmer who has lost his whole herd and his livelihood, and/or they are overtaken by cruelty to innocent animals, or, yes, they are horrified at Jesus’s own careless insensitivity to local needs. I wonder. 

Eventually they called Jesus the Christ—anointed as healer/savior, not because of magic powers but because of extraordinary, dare I say divine, empathy. It turns out Jesus was much more than a son.

          *  *  *  * 

I’ve referred to my sorrow about this child’s “life-plight”. Of course I’m projecting from my own experiences, and no exorcism is called for, yet I wonder: Does she battle legions of invisible “demons” such as shame at being plump, anger about her caretaker role assignment, resentment about the cute, disobedient little brother’s freedom, hurt by her mother’s apparent favoritism, and her own enslavement—this child in hot pursuit of an assignment she feels compelled to do and hates but does clumsily, hastily, out of duty not faith?  

I don’t know. I pray. God’s grace I trust far exceeds my small momentary concern. After all God is a good “father,” right?  Okay, I’m kidding, something I do when I feel a little wobbly inside like the girl on the bike, or like my own father on occasion, or like Jesus before he heads to Jerusalem, facing execution.   

My dad was shy like me, but he kept it hidden. Once at a party for my seminary graduation he announced: “We’re not sure how this happened, but Lynda has graduated from Yale Divinity School.” He raised a glass to toast me and said how proud he was. I knew he was “just kidding”, so I too laughed along with Dad and everyone else. And I never forgot that “joke”. Dad wasn’t a cruel man, just a man with a few leftover “demons” of his own—like most of us really.   

So, happy father’s day to anyone who fathers, mothers, parents with good grace, and prays like crazy anyway. 

God bless the girl child on her way. 

God-in-Jesus, named Christ, who knows fear, empathizes, names, and disempowers all our big or little “demons,” to save us in spite of ourselves, bless this girl and all children.   

God is Creator of the TREE of LIFE—the one left in the mythic Garden of Eden to continue to flourish no matter what for all creation—forever.  

     

2022.06.12 Trinity Sunday. IT'S THE LANGUAGE!

For years I have squawked and lobbied, consistently and at varying levels of intensity about the need to change traditional theological language—words and ideas we Christians use to describe the image of God.  HE, HIM, HIS, ALMIGHTY, TRANSCENDENT, SUPERMAN OMNI-EVERYTHING. 

We have for millennia worshipped this Divinity, voiced from afar, presiding from above, empowering from without. Oh, I do know that there are many people, especially women, who wonder and protest such a patriarchal Divinity, even as they sing and praise otherwise. I know that many academics teach new ideas. Every Sunday School I ever attended and most preachers anywhere told me God was Love. And, yes, the Bible tells us so, too. 

What’s a girl to do? I fretted and even wrestled with this issue in my waking sleep. In my mind I howled at God, fretting about upcoming Pentecost and Trinity Sundays. What to say in my weekly blog? I thought God was silent because I could take care of this issue by myself. As I tossed about in my half-sleep I heard this: IT’S THE LANGUAGE!

It’s the language? The language?  I already know this. But what if this were God speaking directly to me? I thought it might truly be the bath kol  (Hebrew for the voice of God). If it were simply my own inner voice speaking to myself I’d have heard: “It’s the language, STUPID!”  

But God does not call anyone stupid. We do. 

*  *  *  * 

Feeling spiritually bolstered, I calmed down and considered exactly how and why words matter and words about God matter deeply?  I cringed at the number of times a good editor would write “WC” in my margins. WC= word choice, as in find a better word to make your point.  

It’s Trinity Sunday. I love the idea that God is One, a Creator whose singular divine immensity is shared with humanity and in all living things, yes flowers and weeds.

Now consider the language we Christians use to express this amazing mystery. 

FATHER=GOD  This WC is both gender-bound AND role-bound. Divinity is restricted.

SON=GOD        This WC is also restricted to male roles and gender. Jesus was a man. Christ, his title, is gender-free. 

HOLY SPIRIT = GOD  This WC is more free yet still is masculinized in some liturgies, some credal statements, and, though more mobile, remains exclusive. Some churches change the Spirits’ gender to She, but that feels condescending, a kindly and unofficial nod. 

This Trinitarian formula and its traditional language must be used by Episcopal clergy to baptize.

I used the required formula, adding another such as:  “I baptize you in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit.” My much longer-ordained spouse did the same.

Why quibble and bother? For me, the theological idea behind the Holy Trinity means the joining of humanity and divinity through sacramental grace—in Baptism and in Eucharist. When our WCs  bind BOTH divinity AND humanity into role and gender language, they undermine God the Creator’s immensity, restrict humanity and all nature, and generally fail to communicate what the Holy Trinity—three in one AND one in three— means. 

*  *  *  *

I’m an Episcopal priest, a spiritual director, and pastoral counselor, retired. I believe in the healing power of sacraments, music, and beautiful liturgy. I am not alone in feeling frustrated about the consistently patriarchal imaging of God in Christianity. I am also in my eighties, and I’m tired with not enough stamina to be a Job. 

Michael Hudson, Episcopal priest writes a meditation on cosmogenesis for Trinity:

The union of created life and God

eludes our understanding, but we trust

that here and now and through the sweep of time

we each exist in God. And God in us.” 

It is simply not that hard to get our WC’s together, to accurately represent an already beautiful idea, and to listen to God saying: IT’S THE LANGUAGE,  BELOVEDS.

Not only is the traditional language idolatrous, worshipping not God but the culture from which this language derives, it is also aesthetically clumsy. Try Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit.  

2022.06.05 Pentecost. The Hot Pink Raincoat on the T. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

 

When, in 2010, we left St. John’s parish in Gloucester, Massachusetts where Dick had been the rector and I the Sunday Priest Associate for thirteen years, we moved to North Cambridge, Massachusetts into a lovely townhouse. I was thrilled. I grew up in a much bigger city, but still felt the lure of the urban in my bones. Also we couldn’t wait to ride the famous T—in and out and all around the big city of Boston. 

Retirement happened in stages. I found it hardest to say goodbye to one particular counseling client I’ll call H, who had been homeless on and off, depressed and, according to a psychiatrist I consulted, with “too many diagnoses for a clear treatment plan.” He admired my willingness to stick with this client of whom I’d grown fond but who never really made much progress. I admired H’s incredible survivorship—moving about, never settling, and somehow staying alive. When I said goodbye to her I expected her, despite all the advanced notice I’d given her, to blow up, rage at me, and maybe throw some at-hand “weapon.” It was 2010. I never thought of guns. But H was calm. She parted peacefully with a few tears and a hug I accepted. 

A few years later we, like Charlie on the MTA, were riding the famous Red Line subway into Boston when I suddenly spotted H entering  our subway car. I wasn’t quite sure it was H, but with a few brief hard looks without staring I recognized her. She looked frail, small, with scraggly graying hair. Instinctively, I looked away and hid behind my newspaper or some book. She wore a bright hot pink raincoat—full length to her ankles. I don’t think it was raining that day, but H was prepared. I grinned.

As the conductor called out the various stops, the T shook and bolted along towards the big city. I glanced over at H and suddenly realized that her hot pink raincoat was mine—had been mine! I’d loved it, but when we moved, I gave it to the parish annual rummage sale. I’m not sure quite why except I was sorting sifting and getting rid of as much as possible. H always hung out at rummage sales, and ours was no exception. She looked smashing in my coat; it covered her small fame with elegance. 

I can’t tell you exactly why, but it was a Pentecostal moment—unexpected, uplifting, very funny, childlike, and, yes, Holy Spirit resplendent.  

2022.05.29 Easter Seven. My Wound and Its Revelations, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I once said to a young female client whom I’d been counseling for some time with no surcease of the incessant anxiety that reigned over her mind and was now causing her to wound herself: “In your vulnerability is your power.” I never saw her again. 

My intervention was probably insensitive and perhaps ill-timed, but it worked in a very paradoxical way. I heard later that she had gone to a psychiatrist, a recommendation I had made several times to which she’d responded angrily, “I’m not crazy!” The “shrink” of course prescribed medication, and I got a call from her mother who wanted to see me for some therapy for having been a “bad” mother. 

*  *  *  *  

I do believe that none of us is invulnerable and that we all have wounds. A wound needs attention. As a Christian, I think of Jesus’s many wounds, openly displayed yet mostly managed in worship—objectively but not emotionally.  

When children have dreams, as all of us do, they start small and expand in breadth. A little boy child dreams of being a fireman—first, to be able to drive a huge shiny red fire engine, later, to be able to help save lots of people. A little girl child dreams that one day she will be God—first, to give orders that her parents must stop fighting, later, to end warring violence, establish world peace and justice, and end gender stereotypes. 

When I was a child I dreamed that one day I would be like the old daddy-God I’d seen in a book who made everything happen just as He wanted it—first, to sit under a big table and give orders according to my own will, later, to lose faith in this kindly patriarchal God and devote my life to finding a new kind of God.  

*  *  *  *

By the time I was eight years old, I’d become an expert little nagger. I nagged my way into an invitation to go to New York’s Radio City Music Hall to see the The Rockettes, amazing precision dancers I admired too much. The big day finally arrived. New York City, my hometown, sparkled at Christmas like a million different trees all lit up at once. I had a brand new skirt to wear, and my aunt and I took a taxi downtown. I sat in the huge theater, holding my breath watching and waiting for the curtain to rise, revealing wonders unimaginable—miracles I thought, maybe even like God. The curtain finally rose—slowly, slowly. And then I felt someone’s hand on my left leg. Sitting next to me in the aisle seat was an old man with a long scraggly white beard, not Santa-like, but God-like. You know all those images of a bearded old man God reclining on a cloud making the world buzz with life. The man next to me looked just like this image. He had nimble fingers that tickled my thigh—going up higher and higher, causing my skin to tingle with an odd pleasure to accompany my terror. I was paralyzed, save for my left hand that removed his hand—over and over. 

I never saw the Rockettes. 

I never told a soul.

I hung my brand new skirt in the closet to stay. 

I lost God.

      *  *  *  *

I turned  to school, because I could do it well, get great grades; then to marriage and bearing children, because I wanted to love and be loved; then to therapy because I lived in my mind and had lost my feelings, and therapy helped me unbind my rage; then finally back to school again, this time God-school, seminary. All of this coping soothed my soul and blew my mind open. But nothing worked to restore me fully to God as well as my own coming to terms with my wound of so long ago, with the help of prayer, spiritual retreats,  and a Jesuit who introduced me to Jesus.  

Revelation #1: I had fallen in love with an IMAGE of God that was beautifully childlike and immature— limited, visual only, yet not totally false.  

Revelation #2: I survived, and even thrived, thanks to one part of that image— the portrayal God as a listening Presence within me—my inner god-voice. 

Revelation #3: God, in whatever image, does not eliminate or prevent evil. 

Revelation #4: Whether wounded or well, vulnerable or hearty, I am powerless over the awesome Mystery I name God.

Revelation #5: For the very first time, I remembered, with a grin, that I’m not too powerless to pray—actually hammer my dear old listening God to change that precociously almighty, omni-masculine image—all by “Himself.”  

*   *  *  *  

Half a century later, two tickets to the Christmas show with The Rockettes appeared on our kitchen counter. This time I went with my husband who sat to my left—my hand in his.  

 

Easter Six.How To Be We. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/22/22

It’s important to notice that the accounts of Jesus’s postmortem appearances to his close disciples remember the message as Peace! Peace is what the risen Christ offers, not Love but Peace, because Peace is the only way we will love each other as God does.

*  *  *  *

For many years I have sent small and consistent donations to a group called Listening Hearts Ministries. This project, founded in 1987 by Suzanne Farnham, believes that listening well is the key practice to assure goodness and peace in the world. 

That’s a big statement. I believe it, because listening happened to and for and through me when I was a small child of three under a large dining room table with a cloth to the floor and four fat legs connected by flattened cross beams on which I would place my food supply, five Ritz crackers, while I sat cross-legged and talked to God—who listened without interruption or commentary to all my chatter—my every small and large thought and feeling. In time I called this practice prayer. 

God didn’t do a thing I asked; nor did God tell me precisely what to do. God just listened. Thus I learned that I mattered. I also learned that God did not fix the world according to my specs, which were, I thought, quite honest and righteous and right. 

Suzanne Farnham, trustee and founder of Listening Hearts, was married to an Episcopal priest, the late Rev. Barny Farnham. She is the author of many books on this kind of quiet listening prayer. 

We listen for God in the way God listens for us. I have no way to prove the divine presence; I just trust it. However, I do know that the churches and the world could use more listening right now. Listening builds community anywhere, from small family units to large congregations, governments and societies. Here are some guidelines to listening conversations or meetings anywhere for any reason. (Parenthesized comments are mine.)

-Take time to settle, sit down and shut up. (How many times do you rush into a meeting of any kind breathless?) 

-Listen to others with your whole being. (Sometimes, I just surface listen. It helps to take notes, so I do not miss the point entirely.)  

-Do not interrupt. (An impulse I often have, and too often fail to respect, especially if someone else non-stop blats)  

-Pause between speakers. (Impossible but try for a breath or two.) 

-Do not formulate what you what you want to say next while someone else is speaking. (Laughably impossible. Helps to jot one-word reminders.)

-Speak for yourself only—your own thoughts and feelings. Avoid being hypothetical or generalizing. (Sometimes hard to avoid phrases like, “I read somewhere that . . . OR Well, everyone says . . . )

-Do not challenge what others say. (Keep thoughts, such as, ‘What a jerk!’ to yourself.) 

-Listen to the group as a whole—to those who have not spoken as well as to those who have. (I do this well, occasionally asking what the silent one thinks or feels.)

-Generally, leave space for anyone who may want to speak for the first time before speaking a second time yourself. (Yikes!)

-Hold your thoughts and opinions, even your convictions—lightly. (How lightly!?) 

All these guidelines are excellent for effective decision-making, soothing family tensions, and group discernment. They are heavily used in churches and religious organizations, because most spiritual people know that God’s peaceful, loving presence is more likely to be clearly felt in contexts in which we deeply and respectfully listen to each other. 

This is how we can move from the omnipotent “I” to the even more potent “WE”.