Living Spirituality Connections
Resources for deeper living
Our autumn newsletter is now available, exploring the area of human flourishing, the way of the heart, responding to recent violent episodes in the UK from a spiritual perspective, and looking at what constitutes really effective listening. We also look at music and spirit, and a life that radiates gratitude and joy despite hard beginnings.
You will find the newsletter here: www.livingspirit.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017-autumn-newsletter.pdf
Petra Griffiths
Following a week that many across the world have found painful and troubling. I was delighted to receive a message that wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault has recorded a response to the Elections in the US, which is an excellent demonstration of the way in which regular contemplative practices such as centreing prayer can enable us to bring stillness and skillfulness to our responses, and to act as a non-reactive “third force” that stays in touch with the vision of oneness of humanity that is key to Christ’s ministry.
Cynthia talks of the heartbreak that many are feeling and reminds us that it’s not going to work to get caught in deepening division, fear and judgement. We need to be in our bodies and in the moment, and see what needs to be done. She has two practical suggestions for how we can establish solidarity with the one body of humanity and of the earth. It is worth taking eight minutes to listen to her words.
Richard Rohr’s Centre for Action and Contemplation (www.cac.org) has uploaded Cynthia’s talk onto Vimeo, so that everyone can access it. Go to www.vimeo.com/191109234 to watch it.
Cynthia’s new book The Heart of Centering Prayer is also due out soon.
The LivingSpirituality Journeying Together Group (JTG) emerged out of an initiative in 2014 designed to “explore the spirituality and theology of giving equal weight to female and male language for the divine”. After a few meetings we broadened our scope to reflect the original members’ interests.
Our aims now are to:
I have written a detailed document explaining more about the group and how it works.
Topics covered include:
The document can be downloaded here – www.livingspirit.org.uk/
Petra Griffiths
This wide-ranging book aims to deconstruct the musical liturgical tradition in a way that is both holistic and analytical. As Professor of Applied Music at Winchester University, Anglican priest, and drum-playing singer, June is well qualified to undertake both sides of this study. The title of her book is a reference to In Tune with Heaven: Report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Church Music (1992).
The root issue which June takes from the work of Michael Kirwan (Discovering Girard, 2004) is the lack of a transcendent myth, an emotionally satisfying narrative and shared purpose that speaks to our humanity. In this book June aims to look at how liturgical music needs to be reworked in order that we arrive at such a myth. Part of the secret is to examine the many subjugated ways of knowing of the different groups whose different ways of knowing have been suppressed, as well as the wisdom of the earth itself.
Women’s musical creativity is one of those subjugated approaches. Challenging musical patriarchy involves more than making women’s musical achievements visible. June believes it also involves a fundamental rethinking of the nature of musical meaning and identity.
There is a very interesting section based on Margaret Lindley’s 1995 article Competing Trinities: The Great Mother and the Formation of the Christian Trinity. In this study, the construction of the male Trinity went hand in hand with the exclusion of women form the musical ministry of the Church. As June puts it “The history of Christianity has been, until the end of the twentieth century, that of the systematic exclusion of women from both the central mysteries of bread and wine and from the central mystery of music.”
With the gradual adoption of more inclusive language, our present time is the first in which there is a combination of a belief in the God who is partly of wholly feminine and having women in positions of authority in the church – so a vital moment to apply ourselves to broadening the range of liturgical music.
Hildegard of Bingen is given as an example of a composer who successfully resolved the divisions of everyday life in a “transcendent relationality” through which people often experience a luminous cosmic connection in listening to her music. Oppositions such as dark/light, body/soul and good/evil were integrated, with the dark sides of life always being brought into relationship with the life-giving aspects.
The chapter on our present period Inning and Outing: Contemporary Practices contains much good information about myriad informal liturgical groups who have been working with the re-integration of the feminine and the earth. It lists much valuable music and songs suitable for use by such groups.
However the book isn’t sanguine about the ease of bringing the Wisdom tradition into formal liturgical music contexts The chapter Hymns or hers: Hymnody Past and Present goes through a list of issues and ways people have found in getting their voices heard.
The cost of this book (£49) will be a barrier to it getting the attention it deserves. I can only hope that groups can get together to purchase it and use the inspiration it provides for the creation of liturgies for our times.
Petra Griffiths
The Sukkah in the garden at St James’s
A week of important events at St James’s Church, Piccadilly ended on 15 October with a meeting on Hope in the Face of Climate Change, looking at what positive actions can be taken for a better future. It culminated in a magical interlude in the Sukkah that had been built from plastic bottles in the garden of St James’s Church, where the band Don Kipper played for us. A Sukkah is a fragile booth, built outside with a roof made of leaves and branches, and walls without doors, similar to the fragile dwellings in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of travel in the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. A Sukkah is open to all, and a place to share what God has provided.
I greatly admire the courage of Rabbi Natan Levy of Jewish Social Action and of Rev. Lucy Winkett of St James’s, who were determined to do this bridge-building exercise between members of the Christian and Jewish faiths, despite the strong feelings and views that the Bethlehem Unwrapped Festival in January had provoked, and which still prevail, leading to considerable criticism of both sides for making this peace-building effort. The magical healing atmosphere in the Sukkah on the last night was perhaps a reflection of the costly efforts that had been involved in this joint celebration. I salute all who took part and who supported it.
Rabbi Natan speaks at the Harvest/Sukkot celebration, with Rev. Lucy Winkett to his right
Celtic scholar, poet and peacemaker, J Philip Newell held the London launch of his new book The Rebirthing of God on Monday 6th October at St Columba’s Church, near Knightsbridge.
A small number of us gathered on a wet Monday to hear JP talk about what he means by the rebirthing of God. Many of us were already admirers of JP’s previous works. With this one he has brought together very powerfully all the ways in which we can participate in the major religious and spiritual transition taking place in our times. We will review the book in the next LS newsletter. It promises to offer the hope of a fresh stirring of the Spirit among us and the invitation to be part of labouring in a new holy birth of sacred living.
For me it was a special pleasure to meet two LivingSpirituality subscribers there, in addition to Jenny from our Steering Group, since meeting in person has so much more impact than email communication!
Petra Griffiths
“Can a heart-focused formal and informal contemplative practice of tuning in and identifying with indwelling life force energy, or spirit as one’s deepest, truest self, contribute to healing?” That was the central question in a programme designed by doctor-of-ministry candidate, the Rev. Catherine Mary Quehl-Engel (CQE).
She conducted her project in Mount Vernon, Iowa at Cornell College, where she is an Episcopalian chaplain. Cornell students, faculty and staff and members of the community comprised the 30 participants in her six-week Deep Abiding: Praying, Living, and Loving From the Inside Out programme and study.
During the programme, “Participants were free to interpret indwelling life force energy or spirit as best fit their own religious, secular, or spiritual, but not religious perspectives.” Throughout her thesis, she touched on a wide range of Eastern and Western contemplative, spiritual and other traditions such as mind-body-spirit practices. Core texts were from the Carmelite and Franciscan traditions focusing on the indwelling spirit and prayer of the heart.
She gave considerable attention to scientific research exploring heart-focused compassion and intention and the interconnection between all living systems, which is theorised by a growing number of scientists, including at the Institute of HeartMath – www.heartmath.org.
Catherine Quehl-Engel successfully defended her thesis in March 2014 before the faculty of Washington Theological Union, a graduate school of theology and ministry in Washington D.C.
“In society and at liberal arts colleges like Cornell, there are people living busy, overstretched, and often anxious lives who seek the healing benefits of contemplative practices. They do so not only out of a desire for personal transformative healing, liberation, and empowerment but also in order to live, lead, and love as channels of healing peace in the world.”
The programme had two primary learning outcomes. CQE hoped people would cultivate a practice that opened them to personal and communal healing. She also wanted them to turn to the indwelling life force energy or spirit in their daily activities when confronted with fear and sadness amid the demands, discomforts and difficulties of life.
The Deep Abiding programme was designed for healing in a variety of emotional contexts, among them fear, disappointment, inability to control a situation, and discomforting and non-life-giving thoughts about oneself. The programme was also created “to reclaim the original purpose of many contemplative spiritual traditions: namely, to help awaken awareness of life’s inter-connective oneness, and to live, love, lead, and serve as instruments of healing peace.”
After the programme, and based on detailed participant surveys, CQE concluded that a majority of participants had indeed experienced significant levels of healing. CQE reported findings such as the following in support of her conclusion that the programme helped lead to healing:
CQE summarises the qualitative results as follows:
“… the Deep Abiding program—including its contemplation-in-action version of the practice occurring amid daily life activities and encounters—was realistically doable for busy people. The program and its contemplative practice helped most, if not all, participants work more skillfully and compassionately with discomforts amid the demands and difficulties of life. Participants learned about the inner gentle gesture of surrender to indwelling life force or Spirit for the self-transcending exterior purpose of loving and healing service. Moreover, participants increased compassion for others and self in transformative, healing, life-giving ways. They also cultivated an awareness of our inter-connective oneness in the dynamism shared by indwelling life force-Spirit, others, self, and all creation in a communio of love.”
Details of the research questionnaires and commentary on the results is available online in the PhD dissertation (see end of article).
There are five course sessions, with weekly meetings. Participants’ homework practice, Interior Prayer of the Heart, was integral to CQE’s research and programme and is based primarily on the experience of divine indwelling in both St. Teresa of Avila’s Carmelite spirituality and in the spirituality of St Clare, who worked alongside St Francis. The PhD thesis goes into the sources in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament for the presence of Wisdom and the indwelling spirit within all human beings and within creation.
As well as the initial stages of the prayer that focused on softening and opening their own heart centre, they then focused on sending out healing, compassionate intention to others. This, participants understood, was vital in achieving personal healing. They ended the formal practice by expressing their gratitude for healing and asking to live their lives as instruments and channels of healing peace. The stages of the interior prayer of the heart are set out in detail in the thesis (see link below).
For an informal contemplation-in-action homework practice, participants followed the formal practice steps during their everyday activities, enabling the approach to become integrated into their daily life. Examples include:
Outcomes of this project may also suggest that this programme could be of use in the wake of community tragedies and conflicts. Other settings where it could be tried include health and wellness centres, spiritual retreat centres, community healing programmes sponsored by places of worship or inter-faith associations, as well as correctional, rehabilitation, and social service settings.
This programme successfully combined a foundation in the Christian contemplative tradition, with inter-spiritual aspects, and was acceptable to the diverse course members. Among the many rich findings of this study, the author says:
“….heart-focused compassion meditation/interior prayer allows religious, secular, and spiritual-but-not religious people to sojourn in healing ways through personal communal adversities together. This program demonstrates how diversity does not necessitate removing spirituality and religion from the public square. More spiritual and inter-spiritual competency—not less—is an answer to diversity, and to ending ignorance, prejudice, and hate.”
At the present time in the world, with constant news of human conflict and suffering justified in the name of faith, Deep Abiding offers one possible response that may be helpful both for the individuals participating and for the wider community. We will contact Catherine Quehl-Engel to enquire about guidance for leaders considering offering the Deep Abiding course in the UK.
You can read the PhD thesis, which is written in very accessible language, at www.heartmath.org/templates/ihm/downloads/pdf/research/publications/deep-abiding.pdf.
Petra Griffiths is LivingSpirituality Coordinator, and UK Lead for the Healing Journey Programme for people affected by cancer.
Here are some reflections on how different forms of open spiritual conversation have had a very sustaining impact people’s lives. We are naming these LivingConversation and suggest that they are an integral part of LSC.
I am fortunate to have just attended a Spirited Exchanges meeting at the Well in Willen, and realise that this is another incarnation of a movement that started in New Zealand and was active in the UK, and which now provides solely a website – www.spiritedexchanges.org.nz – since they experienced their work as a transitional bridge for individuals and for Christianity was complete.
Today in the UK many people are still struggling to find places to articulate their authentic experience within churches, or have left their church and feel isolated. LivingConversation is one way of responding to those individuals’ needs which Living Spirituality Connections could help to promote.
Jenny writes about a group that has met at her flat, involving 5 people with various faith backgrounds.
Spiritual Sharing Group
We meet once every two months. The idea began after several years of having one to one ‘spiritual’ talks with separate friends, who did not know each other. Although I never deliberately set out to hold a group from scratch, it seemed a good reason to gather together, to share a common interest and things would develop from there. The group is developing organically and we feel that 5 members are the maximum number within the time constraint.
We each take it in turns to bring a subject of personal spiritual interest and why we have chosen it, and then go around having the space to react to it in our different ways. It helps if one person “holds” the group to make it feel safe. We feel it is important that no one person “teaches the Truth”, but each person respects others’ beliefs and owns their own personal essence (saying ‘I feel’ etc.)
TOPICS covered, that were brought by different members, have been:
Timetable
The structure of our meetings is as follows:
12pm – 1pm – We have a ‘catch up’ of what has happened in our life since we last met two months ago.
1pm – 2pm – Lunch, to which we each contribute. Very simple. Conversation is usually continued from the previous ‘catch up’.
2pm – 3pm – We each have the space to share our individual thoughts on the topic that has been agreed upon at the previous meeting. This can then develop into general conversation around what is brought up.
What the group means to its members:
“…as a group we listen well, and care about what we hear. This gives us a freedom to talk about any current anxieties and to share in the interchange of views…I think we share a common attitude of service”
“I love the bonding that occurs and gradually deepens.”
“I am learning to listen to others in a safe place, as we travel together on the spiritual path.”
“The most priceless aspect of the group is its bond. That’s what makes this group so close and caring. ….you feel you’re safe to explore your journey.”
On member who has been housebound comments “They do not walk away or avoid. They do not condemn. They do not give slick answers. If they can help they do. Simply listening reasonably is in itself a major help.”
Elizabeth talks about the way in which LivingConversation happens at Holy Rood House in Thirsk.
“I like the idea of living conversations – they seem to me to be what often goes on in trusting relationships and are not dissimilar to what Luther spoke of as ‘table-talk’. Letty Russel spoke of this in her ‘Household of Freedom’. I find at Holy Rood that ‘living conversation’ is what is happening every day, all day – in the counselling rooms, at the table, on the phone, through email, in the chapel, through the sacraments – and at the most unexpected moments. This to me is about the ‘living Word’ which we all embody. Brian Thorne wrote of the ‘quality of tenderness’ – I think it is this that creates living conversations – to such an extent that these conversations may become divine presence.”
Linda talks about two instances of one-to-one LivingConversation
“When I heard other members of the LSC Steering Group talk about the nature of Living Conversations I began to realise that I enjoy this type of conversation in a number of settings, although I would not have named them as such.
I have a friend who has paralleled my spiritual path for many years. We tend to get together perhaps twice a year. Something triggers us both to seek each other’s company at about the same time. We meet in very secular places and enjoy a coffee and a catch up together. But the nature of that catch up reflects the fact that we have become anam caras – soul friends. We talk of our joys and concerns, our hopes and fears, the challenges and places where we are at rest. We are constantly amazed that similar issues are playing themselves out in each of our lives. We feel nourished by the exchange and set off into our separate lives to get on with things…
Another friend and I meet regularly and agree that the nature of the conversations we enjoy don’t happen with anyone else in our church. We can talk about anything and always turn our exchanges towards the living out of our faith. We sometimes touch on doubts and difficulties; we share thoughts and ideas, new books and days away we have attended. We are gentle with each other and I enjoy knowing she is around. We share that which is important to us, again gently, and trust what we bring in the shape of contemplative prayer time, is helpful to others.
Looking at these two examples of what might be called LivingConversations, it occurs to me that they are about deep friendship, sharing, exchanging and listening.”
Heather-Jane, who runs the peace-making organisation Spirit of Peace, will be running a workshop on how to hold soul conversations in November at Ammerdown near Bath. There is much in common with the idea of LivingConversation.
Heather-Jane writes:
Most conversations are enjoyable social meetings but some conversations carry us to a deeper, more numinous place. We call these deep, transforming conversations “soul conversations”. They involve a process of deep listening, awareness and openness, together with a sense of being guided by the questions rather than the solutions. As well as deepening personal connections, these conversations can become a powerful tool for personal and social transformation and healing.
Is it possible to consciously learn how to have Soul Conversations? The answer is a resounding Yes! There are in fact many methods for this form of conversation, some of which have been developed and used to bring about resolution in situations of conflict.
“Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change.” (Margaret J Wheatley).
Soul Talk – 21-23 November 2014.
For more information, please see: www.ammerdown.org/Soul-Talk-2014?date=2014-11-21 or email info@spiritofpeace.co.uk.
