Spirit On The Margins

A few weeks ago, I was leading a spirituality group session in a setting where everyone had in their past been homeless and is now in chemical dependency recovery. The session went very well. There was a positive spirit about things and those present seemed to be supporting each other in their spiritual growth.

As the session neared its end, two of the men quickly escalated from a disagreement to a moment of threatened violence. They were in each other’s faces and not about to back down.  Instinctively, I jumped up and placed myself between the two of them.  In retrospect, I realized how much risk I had taken. One of the men has post traumatic stress. Both grew up in an environment with a lot of violence.

What surprised me the most was how quickly things moved from conversation to violence.  I have heard many participants describe their challenges with anger and violence on the streets, but had never seen in person how quickly a situation can change.

Earlier this week I was introduced to the practice of “Welcoming Prayer”.  It is a practice predicated on the recognition that most of our emotions have been cultivated over a lifetime and that deep seated pain and suffering underlie much of it. 

Loyola Spirituality Center Newsletter, article by Terry Shaughnessy, page 8

Fr. Thomas Keating talks about three patterns that falsely drive us to seek happiness; through power and control, affection and esteem, security and survival. The “Welcoming Prayer” acknowledges and transforms these patterns. It works in three movements.

The first is to focus and sink into the body sensation connected to the upsetting emotion. The second movement is welcoming the afflictive emotion and its impact on our body. The third and final movement is letting go – of our need for power and control, affection and esteem, and security and survival.

The Practice of Welcoming Prayer, By Cherry Haisten

Yesterday, I found my day filled with some kind of unnamed anxiety. No matter what spiritual practice I employed, the anxiety remained. This morning, I decided to use the “Welcoming Prayer.”  Within minutes, I felt a level of serenity that had been evading me.

As I finished with that prayer practice, God seemed to bring back to me the memory of the participants from several weeks ago that almost came to violence over a simple disagreement. At the time, I almost couldn’t fathom how they could have escalated that quickly.  In the glow of the aftermath of the “Welcoming Prayer”, I could see that I too have unconcious reactivity within me that I at times can not control. How much more so within persons that have grown up in a life of violence and poverty on the streets. Suddenly, not only was I feeling serene, but also connected to those participants, feeling compassion for myself and for them.  I know now I will introduce this form of meditation to them in my next group meeting and see where it goes.

O Holy One, thank you for the gift of this “Welcoming Prayer”, and for your gift of compassion and connection with the poor that helps me to see my neediness. Amen.

Buddhist Monks carrying begging bowls 

Religion Facts Buddhism

At another post on this blog, a friend of mine, Emily Wilmer, made reference to a begging bowl.  Begging Bowl  I found this interesting reflection by Rev Rudolph Nemser

“Several years ago,
in a book, Everyday Sacred by Sue Bender
I gratefully remember but cannot find,
I read of the ancient Buddhist custom
of the begging bowl.
Each morning the Buddhist monk
sets out on his day’s journey
with an empty bowl.
All that the monk will eat that day
            -each day-
is what is placed in the bowl
by the people
            among whose lives his path takes him
At night, if no food has been placed in the bowl,
the monk goes to his bed hungry;
if any food remains,
the monk is to eat it all…
            not waste any…
so that the morrow
            shall start out with an again empty bowl.
The reason for the monk’s bowl
            is a teaching that transcends
                    physical hunger.
Teachers instruct that, like the monks,
            each morning
everyone of us should begin our day
            with mind and spirit cleared and uncluttered.
We should be in a state of receptiveness without demand.
Thus our psyches will be able, like the bowl,
            to be filled by the experiences
                    and the teachings
we encounter in the course of the day.”

……..

“Monks and charity.
Buddhist monks and their bowls.
Benedictine monks and abbeys.”
___
“What is the spiritual meaning
            of the hunger and the giving?
Why does the Buddhist tradition teach
            there shall be people of the begging bowl?
Why does the Christian tradition
            teach the sacredness of the calling
            of a life a prayer
                    dependent upon the gifts of others…
                            freely given
                                    often with only unvoiced thanks?
What is the meaning of the people of hunger…
            the people who are hungry
                    not as function of birth
                    but as deliberate path of choice?”

Urban Dharma Worse Than Hunger 

A friend of mine sent me an article from the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation newsletter.  It really has captured my imagination. I can feel God’s invitation for me to take a serious look at what the author, Shannon Howard is saying.

Infusing Money With Awareness

“We are so convinced that there isn’t enough to go around that we’ve trained ourselves to believe that more is better; it has become the source of much of our selfishness and greed. ”

“When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, which is what we are all trying get more of, it frees up immense energy to make a difference with what you have.  When you make a difference with what you have it expands.”

“Sufficiency isn’t the flip side of scarcity and it isn’t the same as abundance, which is having more than you need.  Sufficiency is precise; it means that things are exactly enough.”

As we await in gratitude for year end donations to City House and as I walk with persons on the margins that have so little (and yet who can seem so less stressed than I about having enough) these passages really speak to me with meaning. Sufficiency is a radical new thought for me.  How about you?

I have a 15 year history with God of responding to what I perceive to be invitations to move further and further out on the margins. What has come with it is decreasing income and assets. This has proven to be a real struggle for both my wife and me.

After a lot of wrestling with this in prayer, God and I seem to have reached a new covenant that I am now living into – to discern whether this is “of God.”

• God, you’ve caught me in your net of working with the poor.
• This path has and will have great meaning and purpose for me.
• But, what comes with the path is a struggle with resources.
• You have assured me that we will have food, clothing, and shelter for the next 24 hours for the rest of our lives.
• You have assured me you will help me to adapt to the struggle with joy and serenity.
• You have assured me that you will always provide me with meaningful work as an expression of this path.

I feel a sense of peace about this. In it, God has spoken to me about some of my deepest fears. I am grateful. I could use your ongoing prayers about this. Thank you.

Our volunteers often lead retreats with City House program participants. One of the ways of engaging people spiritually is through art. Inviting individuals to make a collage, for example, supports one in making meaning out of life, whether rich or poor. Art has a way of speaking to and expressing the soul in ways that words sometimes can not.

Last Sunday, Krista Tippett’s program on Minnesota Public Radio aired a story about The Rural Studio. It is a program in western Alabama for student architects to transform dilapidated structures into “shelters for the soul.”  

Mason’s Bend Shelters 

This short video clip stunningly portrays the spiritual importance of beauty in all of our lives.  In the context of the intense poverty portrayed here, architecture is used as social art with raw and basic materials.  “These are very spiritual people and they needed a place to worship,” says one student architect.  “I go to church a lot. I wanted a place to be alone with God and pray”, says a resident whose home was transformed.

There was great article in the Tuesday, November 20 Source Section of the Star Tribune by Jeff Strickler, about the use of centering prayer in prison. Sister Mary White, a Beneditine sister at St. Paul’s Monastery in Maplewood, is teaching inmates at Stillwater Prison “how to find their own private freedom.”

She says in the article, (Centering Prayer) “teaches people how to go to a place in themselves that is wise, stable and infinitely spiritual. People who have been wounded in life often react violently unless they know that there is a place they can go to not carry out behaviors they have learned and automatically produce.” 

Definition of Centering Prayer 

Centering Prayer facilitates the movement from more active modes of prayer — verbal, mental or affective prayer — into a receptive prayer of resting in God. It emphasizes prayer as a personal relationship with God. At the same time, it is a discipline to foster and serve this relationship by a regular, daily practice of prayer.

It was distilled into a simple method of prayer in the 1970’s by three Trappist monks, Fr. William Meninger, Fr. Basil Pennington and Abbot Thomas Keating at the Trappist Abbey, St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts.

In the Star Trib article Jeff Strickler says, “Her (Sister Mary White) approach is based on Locked Up and Free, a program that has been heralded for reducing anger and frustration among inmates at Folsom Prison in California.”  I found this site with a compelling first hand description of someone leading Centering Prayer in that environment.

Locked Up and Free Newsletter 

And so we sat in silent prayer, in the lap of God, in prayer beyond words or thoughts, in pure faith, totally at the service of the Holy Spirit. After our first 20-minute prayer meditation, the silence breaks, a voice shares, telling of a life of craving, of chasing happiness outside of himself, chasing a God outside of himself, feeling disconnected, separated from everyone. He says he is finally getting it; God’s inside him, happiness comes from inside. Others nod in affirmation.

A lump rose in my throat that I could not choke back, I just stared misty eyed and nodded as he witnessed in such a gentle, placid and transformed voice.

He went on to tell of how he finally understands the clichés he’s heard his whole life. Forgive your enemies; do not judge others; to receive you must give. Of how he came to realize this in the past week during prayer, in an instant, snapping his fingers, of how there will be no more useless chasing, of how he doesn’t believe he will need to drink again, of how he feels so unconditionally loved, and connected, of how he trusts, of the feeling of being reborn… of being so free.

I wept throughout the second 20-minute prayer meditation and most of the way home. What a God of infinite mercy we have. I need to learn how to trust in his mercy always. 

Excellent program on PBS last night, Cheney’s Law.

It was about the belief on the part of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that the president could do as he liked, even if Congress and the Supreme Court said he couldn’t. Assuming the report was accurate and truthful (which I know may be a big assumption) the report really made me angry. The controlling, manipulative, and secretive behavior it described were absolutely appalling in my mind.

 In the middle of my anger, a friend’s voice popped into my head. He would have asked me, “Did you pray for them?” Damn, I really wanted to despise these people, not pray for them. But, the Gospel is pretty clear about that. So, I stopped and prayed. I could feel more interior freedom afterwards. Must have been God at work.

 Then I realized that at the highest office in our government, we had leaders behaving like street people and addicts. The cynical side of me said, “Duh!” Is this new information? Then I realized I needed to pray for myself, about my cynicism.  Hmmm. Freedom returned again.

Then I realized that I too have those capacities for manipulation, secrecy, and control, and have used them in the past – sometimes knowingly and sometimes not. Time to pray again.

What I was left with was a sense of compassion for all of us – feeling God’s compassion for the street people, myself, and Dick Cheney, in our brokenness. And, I was drawn to this Biblical passage for meditation. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Philippians 2: 3-7

 Every Wednesday night when I sit with a group of persons in recovery and who have been homeless because of it, I feel that invitation to be emptied. It is one of the few places I know where that emptying can take place. It is humbling. I hope and pray that we can all open ourselve to that emptying. It is life giving.

How is it you open yourself to emptying?

Peace

Saturday morning house cleaning. Not the most favorite of activities for me.  Because we do it every Saturday, it is down to a routine. Routines can feel boring.  So, my mind tends to wander from the present moment, thinking about the future or the past.

 When I notice my mind has drifted, I also notice that my body is more tense. My body actually feels like it is angry – about what I don’t always know.  It is always an invitation to come back into the present moment.

My favorite practice is to remember that there were many persons among the “working poor” that served me this week – waitresses, housekeepers in commercial establishments, security people, etc. You know, the ones we tend not to notice because they kind of blend into the background. I imagine those individuals doing their work on all of our behalves at the very moment I am cleaning my house. Suddenly, I am back in the present moment in unity with others around the community and around the world. I am grateful for their presence and feeling at one with them.

It is a tricky way to bypass my ego and move into community with others, outside of a focus on myself. It is what we Christians might call an experience of the “body of Christ.”

What are some of your favorite spiritual practices regarding the poor?

 Amen.

This is my first experience with blogging. I am fascinated with it. Frankly, I am a little obsessed about it. I find myself wanting to run back to my computer no matter where I am or what I am doing. I am definitely not living in the present moment. I can feel the tension these past few days building in my neck and shoulders.

 I know in my life with God that these are signs of putting something else ahead of my relationship with God. It may be just the fun of a new experience. But, this is the way that addictions begin. I know from listening to addicts on the streets.

 So, this becomes a moment of awakening to my own need to let this go and to being in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are in recovery. At some level, I think we are all addicted to something. My addictions, like possibly blogging, are just more societally acceptable.

 As I take all of this to God in prayer, I can feel myself letting go and the freedom of God’s grace transforming this place.