Spirit On The Margins

Another story from one of our volunteer spiritual companions who serves at a domestic abuse shelter.

Ginny entered the room and her friend said, “she dragged me here to see you, she said it would be good for me,” Cindy said grudgingly. We talked about their frustrations of the last week regarding; finding suitable housing (“it’s hard to get housing with 4 felons one said), the school uniform of her daughter’s that was stolen from Ginny’s room last night, and finally the violence against them by the men they had just left.

A long pause and Cindy said, “My Momma was a faithful woman and she always said “You gotta forgive and forget,” but I’m having lots of trouble doing that, what’s wrong?” I won’t go into all the details but it was a very rich interchange. Reassuring them it was ok not to forget. . . and as I had them explore what forgiveness meant to them, as they understood it, Cindy didn’t know, as she was still ‘hopping mad’ at the sting of abuse that she and her daughter still felt. I said to Ginny who was slouched in her chair looking uninterested, “What does forgiveness mean for you?” After a long pause, and pushing her hood back off her face for the first time, she said in a quiet voice, “I think you just finally forgive for your own self cause you don’t want to give that person any more of your energy.”

Wow, I thought, I am blessed to be here today— to have been informed and touched by this woman.

To view evocative videos about stories of forgiveness:

A Lesson in Forgiveness

A Lesson in Forgiveness

This piece of reflection comes to us from Mary Gallagher, another City House volunteer who serves as a listening presence among the homeless. Thanks Mary!!

A Memorial

so little

yet so much

The basement room was filled, on that rainy evening with folks who had come to the local Catholic Church for a free meal, an educational session and spiritual direction.  As a spiritual director, I felt honored to be there.  I often thought I received more from the individuals I talked with in a spiritual direction session than I could ever possibly give to them. 

As I walked into the church, I glanced up to see Sarah and her beloved dog.  She had a forlorn look in her eyes.  “Here,” she said, “Read this article.”  I glanced at the newspaper article and remembered seeing it in the newspaper a few days earlier.  “A Brutal Homicide,” was the title.  The article told of a homeless man who had been murdered by the Mississippi River for his possessions.  “Robert was my friend,” she said. “I wish we could do something here for him.”  Robert, the deceased man, had attended a few sessions of our educational program at the church.  Many of the program participants were acquainted with him on the street or had met him at a drop in center.  As Sarah continued to talk, she expressed her desire to have a memorial service for Robert.

At the end of the evening session, I spoke with the program facilitator regarding Sarah’s request. We decided to have a prayer service for Robert at our gathering the following week. 

When I arrived the next week, the newspaper article that Sarah had been carrying in her hand the week before was pinned to a bulletin board next to some pink, plastic flowers and a sympathy card.  I noticed people reading the newspaper article about Robert as they gathered in small groups around the board, many shaking their head in disbelief.  At the end of the evening, we all joined hands in a circle… all ages, all nationalities, and all the poorest of the poor, who mainly live in shelters, low income housing or on the street. The facilitator invited anyone who wanted, to say a few words about Robert.  Sarah, along with some others, shared their thoughts about this kind Native American they had met at a shelter.  “A thoughtful man, a man who loved basketball, a defender of the underdog,” was just a few of the comments that filled the air. As tears flowed we said the Our Father and then read in unison,

He will raise you up on eagle’s wings

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun

And hold you in the palm of His hand…

                                                            Isaiah 40:31

As the reading ended, tears changed to smiles as thirty-five caring individuals broke into a rousing applause as a final good-bye to Robert, a soul whose tragedy had gifted them with an opportunity to share what they had the most of….love.

For me this was a simple but powerful memorial.  These heartfelt expressions of shared memories allowed God’s grace and love to transform their grief into a bond of healing and caring for one another.  I was blessed to be a part of this special moment.

Basilica St. Mary’s Minneapolis Pathways Program

This posting is from a daily meditation of the Henri Nouwen Society.

Meeting God in the Poor

Henri Nouwen Society Web Site

city-house-leadership-flyer-blog-fall-08

Click above for a detailed description of an exciting new spiritual formation opportunity for fall 08

City House is delighted to announce the launch of a brand new spiritual formation opportunity for fall 08.  It is called, “The Inner Leadership Journey.”  It is a unique program for societal mainstream leaders that embrace humility and a spiritual path towards leadership – by choosing to learn from mentors on the margins.

Dear friends,

Based on the huge success of this offering in the spring, we are pleased to offer the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program for the fall of 08.

The details of the program can be found here (click below) including testimonials from the spring program – 4 pages in all.  We hope and pray this program will speak to the desires of the heart for you and many others for years to come.

city-house-cup-program-brochure-fall-08

Greg Mortenson and Pakistani students

I read a great book on vacation, called Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson. From the book’s jacket cover:

“One day in 1993, high up in the world’s most inhospitable mountains, Greg Mortenson wandered lost and alone, broken in body and spirit, after a failed attempt to climb K2, the world’s deadliest peak.  When the people of an impoverisehd village in Pakistan’s Karakorum Himalaya took him in and nursed him back to health, Mortenson made an impulsive promise: He would return one day and build them a school.  Although he was a homeless “climbing bum” living out of his aging Buick in Berkeley, California, Mortenson sold what few possessions he had to launch one of the most remarkable humanitarian campaigns of our time…Three Cups of Tea traces Mortenson’s decade long odyssey to build schools, especially for girls, throughout the region that gave birth to the Taliban and sanctuary to Al Qaeda.”

Three Cups of Tea web site

I really resonated with his story.  I was struck by how his mission chose him, reinforcing how often serendipity plays a part in calling and purpose. He did not set out to find this remote village. He got lost and stumbled into it.  He did not set out to build schools in that part of the world.  He was pursuing his passion of climbing mountains.  I would contend that this was God at work, shaping and molding his life world, passion, and calling.

The sub title of his hard cover book is, “One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time”.  He goes on to explain in a podcast that this sub title was the idea of his publisher to help market the book.  But, in the book, he talks about his compassion for children as his driving force. 

Charlottesville Podcasting Network

For the longest time, he and his wife made great financial sacrifices to support this work. It was difficult to get the attention of people in the United States about educating children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, until after 9/11. Then once again, in circumstances not of his choosing, the world awakened to the idea of education as a way to counteract terrorism. He did not choose combatting terrorism as his mission. It has chosen him.

Central Asia Institute web site

I so resonated with this book because it so closely resembles the way I have experienced God at work in my life.  I did not choose City House as a place to work.  It was synchronicity that I was their consultant in 2002.  I did not choose an economic slow down in 2002 that opened my eyes to even look at this opportunity. I did not choose the passion for this mission that has overtaken me.  I would not choose to be working full time for half time pay and not feeling cheated about it. 

Greg Mortenson’s journey is very inspirational to me, and I come back from vacation more committed than ever to my passion for City House’s mission, regardless of the costs.  It is my life world that has been created by God and to which I have chosen to surrender. I am grateful for the way in which God spoke to me on vacation through Greg Mortenson’s life and book.

Mentor On the Margins Description 6/08

A few weeks ago, my friend Janet Hagberg invited me to a gathering called Real Power Network. It is a group of people that commit to living and working out of higher stages of power as described in her book Real Power. I could feel God nudging me to go. It gave me an opportunity to talk through our new program The Inner Leadership Journey: Mentors On The Margins, which is based on the concepts of power described in Janet’s book.

I could tell before I even went the first day of this session, that my spirit was agitated, about what I didn’t know. After presenting the concept behind this program, I asked the group for input on how to price it. I mentioned that Janet Hagberg had been suggesting that we not have a listed price, and simply ask people to pay what they thought it was worth at the end. I was intrigued with the idea and yet frightened by it at the same time. Talk about giving up total control and trusting!!

As I explained her suggestion, I found myself saying, “I know this is craziness. I know where this leads” and I dramatically gestured with a downward movement. One of the attendees that day challenged me on that point of view. She said that she felt drawn to invest in what we were doing, but not if I went into it with an attitude of scarcity. I could feel my internal resistance to this line of thinking. I have heard this from others before. It is my nature to hear things like that as critcism and that I have “done things wrong.” I always want to say, “But, you haven’t lived my life experience – all the financial struggles that have ensued when I have followed my heart.” It feels like a discounting of my life experience.

As I reflected back on the conversation later that day, I realized that I was more upset than I had realized about someting that had happened before this gathering. A foundation that had funded City House at a significant level for 2 years had decided to stop funding us because of our new direction, which includes the offering of this new Mentor On The Margins program. No wonder this interaction at the network bothered me so much.

I had assumed that I would not be going back for the second day of the gathering. But that night, I slept restlessly. I faded in and out of consciousness. I was aware all night long of coming to the realization that I was no longer doing fund raising for City House in a way that had integrity for me – nothing unethical, but just a realization that I could no longer bring myself to ask people for money in the way that I had. I knew when I woke up that morning, that I needed and wanted to go back to the gathering. And, I knew that I wanted to ask the group to help me think through a different way to raise money for City House – one that operated at higher levels of power as described in Janet’s book and had more authenticity for me.

The group was very helpful that day. Some of the comments that I heard:

• Receive the things you need and out of your sufficiency you can be generous with others
• Could I be so bold as to actually stop asking people for money?
• Could I be so bold as to publicly put out my monologues – “I don’t want to ask you for money anymore, and you’re tired of having me ask.”
• “What if I let this be as easy as it wants to be?”
• “I’m no longer comfortable promoting. But, I am comfortable letting the world see the real me.”
• “Attraction, not promotion. Just invite people to participate.”
• Sacrificial living and giving from the heart – “Pay It Forward” – give beyond what you can afford, so faith and trust are connected. This concept is based on the movie “Pay It Forward”

Pay It Forward Movie

Fast forward to this week. We had a design team planning session for Mentor On The Margins. Janet Hagberg is part of that design team. And she said, “In my prayer time this morning, God gave me the idea that we ought to provide this program with a ‘Pay It Forward’ concept. That is, instead of mass marketing, let’s invite select individuals to invite a mainstream leader they care about to take this program, and offer to sponsor and pay for that individual. In other words, “Pay It Forward.”

Within minutes, two people in the design team jumped in and said, “I will be one of those ‘Pay It Forward’ people.” One of them said she was going to forgo half of her season tickets to the Minnesota Twin’s games in order to sponsor someone. I sat in awe and wonder at what was unfolding in front of me. God was truly at work here and showing me what it means to give sacrificially.

What came to me in prayer yesterday was that God has already been showing me this principle for quite some time. I just hadn’t noticed. Jim Dodge followed a “Pay It Forward” concept when he founded City House. He accumulated assets for a ministry that he thought was going to be one thing, and has turned out to be something totally different. He invited me to lead City House and generously released those assets to pay my salary, not knowing where all this was going. He released it to my leadership, forgoing his power to control it and have it unfold the way he might have preferred. I and City House were the beneficiaries of his sacrificial giving. Pretty amazing stuff.

And finally, God helped me to see that I have been personally drawn into “Paying It Forward”. On February 1, I went to half time because of funding challenges. Although I have been looking for other half time work, I find I have little interest in anything other than City House. It is clear that God continues to ignite my passion for this mission – to the point that I have been working full time for half time pay these past 3 months – and not feeling cheated.

As Janet Hagberg likes to say, “Don’t you just love God’s sense of humor?”

I really yearn for the kind of leader that David Brooks defines in his most recent column in the New York Times.  Of Abraham Lincoln, he said “He came to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity…In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self…The young Lincoln had been encouraged by the culture around him to identify his own flaws…He knew he was ferociously ambitious and blessed with superior talents — the sort of person who could easily turn into a dictator or monster.”

New York Times David Brooks

“This concept of maturity as self-conquest didn’t survive long into the 20th century…Self-discovery replaced self-mastery as the primary path to maturity, and we got a thousand novels and memoirs about young peoples’ search for identity…In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.”

“And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices — Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity — they’ve never really faced.”

“It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.”

I couldn’t agree more with this point of view. Janet Hagberg, in her book Real Power talks about going “through the wall”, as a stage in leadership development – when a leader confronts his or her own shadows. (Read “George Bush” who seems incapable of introspection)

Parker Palmer, in his book, Let Your Life Speak, describes 5 shadows often encountered in leadership:

1. Insecurity about identity or worth.

2. The belief that the universe is a battleground, hostile to human interests.

3. The belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me.

4. Fear of the natural chaos of life.

5. The denial of death itself (seen most often in the fact that all things must die in due course). This underlies so much of our fear of failure.  (Read, “Hillary Clinton” in her refusal to concede the race to Barak Obama when he had won the majority of the delegates)

Again in Real Power, Janet Hagberg defines 13 practices that develops one’s capacity for leadership from one’s spirit – beyond ego. One of the ways is to find a mentor on the margins of society. “Then you can look at your own homelessness, your own inner prisons, and your own addictions in a new and more compassionate way.”  Then one can lead from a place of wholeness that has integrated both shadow and light. This has certainly been my experience.

This is the premise of a new leadership program City House is developing – to connect mainstream leaders with a mentor on the margins of society – to deepen her / his capacity to lead from a spiritual center.

Someone was wondering recently if we had written any articles for publication in Presence, the magazine for Spiritual Director’s International. I realized that we had not yet posted that article on this blog for people to read.  So, here it is. I hope you enjoy it and that it is helpful.

Listening For Spirit On The Margins Presence Article