Living Spirituality Connections

Resources for deeper living

Visit to the Cosmic Walk in Winchester

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by Joan Ishibashi

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The group with Lisa Isherwood and Megan Clay

On 16 September, seven of us from the Journeying Together group met at Waterloo station for a day trip to the University of Winchester to meet Professor Lisa Isherwood, Director of the Institute for Theological Partnerships and artist theologian Megan Clay, Ph.D. They are partners in the development of the Cosmic Walk at the University.

We walked past student housing and came upon a quiet area where a beautiful garden greeted us. The Cosmic Walk was developed by a multi-disciplinary team at the University of Winchester, including Lisa as theologian and Megan as the artist for the garden which is the focus of the walk. Lisa shared with us the theological vision she had for the Cosmic Walk.

She said academics spend time in ivory towers and classrooms reading and conversing about theological and spiritual concepts concerning the cosmos and our place in it. This garden is a way to have the conversation through other means. We leave the classroom and mindfully walk through a garden, feel the ground beneath our feet and have elements of the cosmos depicted before our eyes.

Megan gave us a tour. She developed the artwork for the garden as part of her Ph.D. dissertation. In an interview with Lisa, she said her inspiration for the garden was to depict “deep knowing and relationality, a power that is the full force of nature, tectonic plates shifting, galaxies colliding, stars exploding and new planets being created, it is what makes us know we are alive and what frightens us the most about being alive!” When you walk the garden, this is precisely what you encounter.

When we entered through the archway, we saw beautiful trees and plants. Megan created large, vibrant murals along the walk, depicting stages of the birthing of the cosmos beginning with Tohu Vabohu, the primordial chaos. Walking through the garden we encountered creatures made of bicycle parts, an asymmetrical labyrinth, carvings made of tree stumps. It is difficult to describe in words, as the garden is a narrative that calls upon different senses.

The Cosmic Walk is a work in progress. It is a godding project, reclaiming the female narrative, concern for the environment, justice for the marginalized, relationality rather than stasis. The Cosmic Walk is for everyone, not just scholars stuck in ivory towers.

We look forward to more interactions with Lisa through Theological Partnerships. The Walk was provocative; it was fun; it raised more questions than answers.

Many thanks to David Carter for connecting us with the Institute for Theological Partnerships and for planning all the details of our Winchester excursion. Spending time with Lisa and Megan made for a truly blessed day.

 

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The Soul’s Journey: A Creative Pilgrimage with the Abbey of the Arts online retreat through Lent

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abbey_arts_postThe Abbey of the Arts is an online global monastery without walls and seeks to be a place of ‘transformative living through contemplative & expressive arts’ (www.AbbeyoftheArts.com).

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, says

“This is what we need! Christine is offering us a “moving monastery” yet with solid grounding in Scripture, Nature, Art, the Tradition, and the Saints! Abbey of the Arts is spirituality for our time and every time.”

I heard about the Abbey through being a member of LivingSpirituality and resonated closely with the ‘Monk in the World’ video presentation on the website to such an extent that I signed the Monk Manifesto and receive regular letters via email. I would encourage readers to look at these for yourselves because I don’t think they will be what you imagine.

Christine Valters Paintner created the Abbey and was joined recently by John Valters Paintner, her husband. Christine follows the path of a Benedictine as an oblate of the order. The Abbey is gifted in many ways that include opening life’s questions in a gentle and creative way that is liberating.

Online retreat

I registered for the retreat wondering how it would be to join an online community. Towards the end of the retreat I was using the word ‘generosity’ to summarise the whole experience.

As part of her introduction to the retreat, Christine wrote:

“The soul’s journey through Lent is like a pilgrimage exploring inner desert places, landscapes, thresholds, and the experience of exile. Ultimately, pilgrimage always leads us back home again with renewed vision. Resurrection is about discovering the home within each one of us, remembering that we are called to be at home in the world, even as we experience ourselves exiled again and again.”

We explored each of these themes and more over an eight week period, but prior to that, time was given to the registration process to make sure everyone was familiar with how the community would work. People from all over the world were on the retreat. Each of us could upload an image or a picture of ourselves with a few words of introduction during the registration process – and we had to choose which timeline we lived on so that each day’s materials became available at the correct time.

Once into the body of the retreat I enjoyed the pace and space allowed for personal reflection, and then time to read and respond to the reflections of others on what I can only describe as the retreat’s own secure web site that is made by Ruzuku for those who understand these things.

Retreat structure

Each week ended with a day of rest, which I needed to sit with my thoughts, or rest and orientate myself to the following week. And each week had a similar rhythm which seemed to me to be slow in week one. Soon I saw the wisdom of the repetitive pattern and depth of reflection that each day offered. By the end of the retreat I realised how un-important it was to ‘keep up’. I harvested the real blessings of lagging behind and having more time to read what others had discovered when I did the whole retreat again! Such was the generosity embedded in the whole process that all the materials were accessible for a good while after the end of the retreat, and all the materials were downloadable for private use at another time.

The title of each week gave a real flavour of how journeying feels. Hearing the call and responding; packing lightly; crossing the threshold; making the way by walking; being uncomfortable; beginning again; embracing the unknown; coming home.

And each week was sprinkled with encouraging insights, poetry, stories, artwork, joys and sadness as the community developed. For example, Christine gave us these words from others:

Week one – The practice of packing lightly

When we feel more secure, powerful, confident, and self-sufficient, we are nothing. We are most abjectly not. But when we’re stripped naked by desert despair, helplessly and hopelessly decreated by all of our facades and deceptions, we are most real, most substantial. We are. Our being is in proportion to the destitution forced on us by the wilderness. —Kerry Walters, Soul Wilderness

Week 7 – The practice of coming home

My final question, ‘How will I know when I have reached the destination?’ brings me full circle, and I face the Mystery again. Perhaps the truth is that we never arrive, not because the journey is too long and too difficult but because we have been there all along. I am coming to believe that there is no final destination except to continue to be on the journey and to know that every place along the way is a holy place because God is present. I believe that God is calling us to stand on our own ground and know that it is holy and let our roots grow deep. And yet at the same time, the journey goes on. It is a paradox, I know, but perhaps we are traveling most faithfully when we know ourselves to be most at home. —Judith E. Smith, from “This Ground is Holy Ground” in Weavings Journal

My experience

I would encourage others to look into the Abbey and perhaps choose something for yourselves. There are some free retreats, and I find the newsletters really helpful. For anyone thinking that they need to be a traditional artist to benefit from the Abbey I promise you that you don’t. The image at the top of the page was one I posted a few times – each time the flowers changed, and it was my image of coming home. Many people took photographs with their phones; I used a more traditional camera.

Another refreshing thing about the retreat was that people expressed their faith, or lack of it, in different ways. Some told us they did not belong to any formal religion, others were deeply committed, and others seemed to be at many points in-between. It really did not matter. The materials and language used were inclusive and did not need any of us to believe or not in a particular way.

Some people responded to posts each day, and others followed the whole retreat without being ‘visible’ – again it did not matter – all were welcome.

Perhaps more importantly than these things, for myself I discovered things that I did not know about myself. At one point we were asked to think deeply about what our deepest desire was. I simply did not know, but in the process it was as if it was revealed to me in a most tangential way. I also discovered that it is possible to become part of an online community during a retreat in a very real sense. A few months later I am registering for another.

Abbey of the Arts: www.abbeyofthearts.com

LivingSpirituality Art and Spirituality Group: www.livingspirit.org.uk/special-interest-groups/art-sig

 

Linda Courage is Coordinator of the LivingSpirituality Art and Spirituality Group, regional contact for the North East, and LS Steering Group member. She is an Associate member of the Centre for Spirituality Studies at Hull University, and is an experienced nurse and lecturer on nursing matters.

 

Deep Abiding: Praying, Living and Loving from the Inside Out

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“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.

Purpose of the course

“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.”

Desired outcomes

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.”

Outcomes of the research

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:

  • 96% of respondents reported using the practices for personal healing on a weekly basis during the programme.
  • 93% of respondents said they still used the program for personal healing on a weekly basis one month after the program ended, though less frequently.

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).

Content of the programme

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).

Integration into the everyday

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:

  • when they wanted to prayerfully send healing and compassionate intention to others.
  • when they wanted to be a calming, peaceful, healing presence.
  • whenever they noticed their “reminder wristbands,” thus helping to make their spiritual practice become “a way of being.”
  • when they felt joy, wonder and/or gratitude.

Relevance of this approach in a range of community settings

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.

Importance for work in inter-spiritual situations

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.”

Comment from LivingSpirituality

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.

Link to thesis

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.

 

LivingConversation

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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 Sandler

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:

  • Introducing ourselves: home, family, job etc
  • Where we are now on our Spiritual Journey
  • William Blake’s Poem ‘The Poison Tree’
  • Gratitude. The best gift I have ever been given.
  • Befriending the Dark
  • Transition experience
  • New Beginnings in Later Life
  • Healing
  • Creativity and Chance.

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 Baxter

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 Courage

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 Ozanne

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.

 

Exploration of transcendence and immanence

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Note about Equalist Group meeting – 30 May 2014

A fruitful meeting was held on 30 May on the topic of transcendence and immanence and the ways in which these have been linked with ideas of masculine and feminine. Inputs were made by John Newton based mainly on the work of feminist theologians Sallie McFague (Models of God. Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age) and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Sexism and God Talk); by David Carter on Beatrice as a possible type, or embodiment, of Holy Wisdom/Sophia and her role of inspiring and guiding Dante; and by myself based on Lucy Goodison’s book Moving Heaven and Earth, showing that there is evidence of an early form of religion in Crete that wasn’t based on either patriarchy or matriarchy, and where the sun, as a religious symbol, was seen as female.

As one of many possible sources for our future work towards more integrated forms of language and liturgy within the Judeo-Christian tradition, we began to look at the work of Genia Pauli Haddon (author of Body Metaphors, Releasing God-Feminine in Us All and Uniting Sex, Self and Spirit; Let the body be your guide to New Consciousness and Deeper Spirituality in a Changing Age). Genia Pauli Haddon trained as a biologist, a Jungian therapist and a Minister in the United Church of Christ. She draws on all these sources to present a vision of the divine and of humans that includes equally both active and receptive forms of masculinity and femininity, and gives sample liturgies in which each of these aspects is focused on.

Petra Griffiths

Note: The Equalist group is now meeting as the Journeying Together group.

Equalist Group visit to the National Gallery – 4th July 2014

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A report by Joan Ishibashi

One of my favourite pastimes is visiting art galleries, but I admit that I often wander through exhibit rooms scanning the works of art without much thought or contemplation. When the Equalist group of LivingSpirituality offered a visit to the National Gallery to explore the theme Gender and power relations in heaven and on earth, I was intrigued. I also saw it as an opportunity to view particular works of art with a more discerning and informed eye.

Our group gathered in the Sainsbury wing and off we went with our leader, David Carter. He gave us a brilliant tour of particular paintings, primarily but not exclusively from 14th and 15th century Italy. The theme centered on the portrayal of the assumption and coronation of Mary, and her relationship to the Trinity. With his introduction to each painting or altarpiece, we were able to pick up on the nuances of power and emotion regarding the mother of Jesus. Growing up in an American Congregationalist tradition, I had never given Mary much thought beyond the blue robed statue I sometimes saw attached to the dashboard of my Catholic neighbours’ automobiles. Feminine role expectations, power and authority took on new meaning when viewed in light of the various ways Mary has been portrayed through the ages. Some of the art was even disturbing, showing Mary and Jesus in relationship that could not in any way be described as mother and son!

Our group had a lively discussion during the tour and afterwards over tea and cakes. I was able to look at art with more understanding than would have been possible on my own and came away pondering new theological questions. Thanks to David for organizing this enjoyable evening!

Joan Ishibashi

 

Note: The Equalist group is now meeting as the Journeying Together group.