Session 3 Engaging Wonder

Transcription

1 For Engaging Spirituality Facilitators only Out to the Light Session 3 Engaging Wonder JustFaith Ministries P.O. Box Louisville, KY (502) All EngagingSpirituality materials are copyrighted by JustFaith Ministries, Overview of the 2 1 / 2 hr Session 75 Minutes 20 Minutes 20 Minutes 20 Minutes 15 Minutes 75 Minutes 60 Minutes 5 Minutes 10 Minutes Part 1 Meditation Bearings Presentation Bearings Dialogue Break Part 2 Sacred Listening (small & large group) Community Business Meditation JustFaith Ministries,

2 Note to Facilitators These notes are summarized in Pointers for Participants 3. Facilitators please review these comments BEFORE Session THREE. Out to the Light Moving Prayer from Head to Heart My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make melody. Awake my soul. Psalm 108: 1 Session three moves us from an attentive, listening posture into wonderment. Reclaiming wonder is central to contemplative or grounded living being awake and captivated by life s miracles and mysteries. We revisit the conversation on spiritual awakening or mystical encounters. Defying logic and reason, mysticism and compassion move us out beyond the limits of our heads into deeper, broader fields of conscious connection. Such moments of deepened awareness have an awesome, prophetic power, capable of turning our lives around. Notice how the key phrases in the journal are spiraled, forcing us to turn our heads around in order to absorb them. Model heart prayer for your group, as a way of listening and responding to the world. Let your prayerful responses to the dialogue come from your core. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for Justice! The Bearings letter for Session Four was composed by Arthur Simon, Lutheran pastor and founder of Bread for the World. Practice Astonishment as a Way of Listening to Life. The journal readings that follow session three encourage participants to practice amazement taking time to notice, wonder and enjoy. Consider the practice of getting up early to listen to the sunrise, aware of the struggles and surprises that await all who turn their faces to the sun. Extend this invitation to intentionally greet the dawn. Mysticism is not a dream state. Wonder is not enchantment! Like the shutters on a camera, moments of awakening are apertures, offering glimpses of the layers of love, pain, joy and connection accessible to all of us. Encourage participants to take this awareness to their outreach ministry of presence. Moving from Talking to Listening Our society values freedom of expression, a great good in a world where many are silenced. This freedom has, at times, been limited to our right to talk, to make a point, offer a personal opinion. Being accustomed to talking, we are not generally as comfortable with listening. Often perceived as a passive stance, listening is sometimes reduced to that pause I must endure before I get to say something. In this process, active listening is understood as way of participating and sharing that affirms the one who is speaking. This countercultural appreciation of quiet listening recognizes that our silence can also be received as a contribution, something we can all share. Preparing for the Bearings Presentation Remind everyone of the commitment to create a personal Bearings letter. Both co-facilitators present their own Bearings letters at the next session (#4). Remind the Bearings presenters to write a Thank You note to the author. Co-facilitators keep the authors contact information and mail the Thank You notes. 1

3 Session 3 Engaging Wonder 2½ hours You will need: Copy of the Bearings Letter (Art Simon) for the next session; pillar candle; a small cross; the covenant cloth; a small hand-held mirror; matches; a music player and reflective music; bible (Luke 12: 22-34); refreshments. Participants will need journals and pens. Co-Facilitator Prayerful Preparation Arrive at least 10 minutes before the group. Set the room (circle of chairs, with additional Bearings seats; small central table; candle; covenant cloth; cross; bible; reflective music; music player). Light the candle and have reflective music playing. Sit together in silence for 5 minutes. Silence Silence Silence Offer a word of blessing to one another OR invoke the Holy Spirit, by echoing this prayer: Reader Come Spirit of justice overwhelm us. Fill our hungry hearts. Ignite in us the fire of compassion. Reshape our lives and send us out, To restore and renew The beauty of the earth. Echo Spirit of justice Fill our hearts Ignite compassion Send us out To restore... The earth. Out to the Light Welcome everyone into the circle and into the silence. Invite people to put everything down, sit in a receptive posture, and become attuned to the rhythm of their breathing. Alternating voices, offer this reflection: Then God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils and earth person became a living being. (Adapted from Genesis 2: 7) Slowly Become aware of the gentle touch of the air on your skin. So often overlooked, so taken for granted This is the life-breath we all share! From our first gulp, to our final exhalation we are saturated totally immersed in life-giving breath an exchange of gases that marks the meter of our lives. I wonder? I wonder HOW? I wonder WHY? I wonder? Am I awake? I wonder? I wonder..therefore I AM... awake. Open 4 minutes of silence. Silence Silence Silence Strike the chime again to break the silence. Share these insights: 2

4 Meditation (20 minutes) Out to the Light Mysticism is neither enchantment, nor a dream state Mysticism is waking up to a clarity that penetrates our ordinary appreciation of reality exposing deeper connections, a wide field for us to explore. Where is my treasure? Where is my heart... I wonder? Read: Luke 12: for a minute of silence. Silence Silence Silence Offer this question for quiet reflection: What does this Gospel cause you to wonder about? Large Group Listening Open Response (10 minutes) This brief dialogue allows for only a few voices to be heard. Give primacy to quieter voices. Open the floor for (2 or 3) people that feel moved to offer a response from the heart. Strike the chime between each sharing, and pause briefly. Close with these words: God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. Dag Hammarskjöld Bearings Presentation (20 minutes) The presenter introduces Mary Jo placing her picture on the empty chair. After the reading, the presenter returns the letter to the co-facilitators. Bearings Dialogue Invitational Mode (20 minutes) after the reading and final Lectio sharing. Offer this question: What struck you in Mary Jo s testimony? Share ONE heart response to the letter. After a pause, nominate someone else to share her/his heart response. After that person has shared, s/he nominates another person in the circle. This process continues until everyone has been invited to share. Break (15 minutes) Select a reader to present the next Bearings letter (Arthur Simon). If possible, match the gender of the author and the presenter. Give the Bearings letter to the reader. Remind him/her NOT to make additional copies of the letter, but to reflect on it and come prepared to lead the Bearings process at the next session. 3

5 Sacred Listening (60 minutes) Out to the Light Call everyone back to the circle. Large Group Inspirational Mode (40 minutes) Open with a minute of silence. Silence Silence Silence Share these comments (alternating voices): From SEEING to GAZING. Wondering permits the Spirit to breeze through us, to blow our minds scattering our well-crafted and reasoned responses to life. Pick up the small mirror and holding it, open the dialogue with these words: This world is our cloister and wondering is the doorway to reflection. Tells us about one time when you were awestruck..., touched deeply by the pain, the joy the beauty, the cruelty, the injustice, the mystery of life? As you share, we receive and hold your reflection with full attention. Pass the mirror to a neighbor on your left or right. Remind people to pause before sharing. If someone does not wish to share, s/he holds the mirror briefly before passing it on. When the mirror has traveled around the circle, return it to the small table. Thank everyone for their reflections. Large Group Open Response (20 minutes) Slowly offer this reflection: There is in all things, an inexhaustible sweetness and purity a silence that is a fountain of action and of joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being. John Howard Griffin, A Hidden Wholeness, for a full minute of silence before presenting ONE of these queries for open dialogue: Silence Silence Silence What are your reflections on the journal and spiritual reading? Wonder leads to compassion. How are you attending to the frail people in your care? The floor is open! After 20 minutes thank everyone for sharing. 4

6 Community Business & Pearls of Wisdom (5 minutes) Out to the Light A participant shares a quote from the ES Journal and a brief excerpt from a current spiritual reading text. Invite someone to bring two quotes to the next session. Inform everyone of the date and time of the next session and the personal Bearings commitment. At the next session you will hear the first 2 personal Bearings letters, presented by the co-facilitators. Remind everyone about ongoing commitments to spiritual reading (in Pointers for Participants) and outreach ministry. Offer a brief stretch break. Meditation (10 minutes) Alternate voices in the reflection: Because we think we know Because we presume to understand Because it seems so familiar and common Because we expect rather than receive we are blind. we forget to listen. we take life for granted. we fail to be astounded. Without wonder, we cannot hope to embrace the wounds and appreciate the mysteries of our lives. Let us close our eyes, and position our hands to receive (palms upturned, resting on our laps) ready to receive life as God gifts it to us. Invite the group into 3 minutes of silence: Silence Silence Silence Break the silence to offer this reflection: People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool in the world can see (GOD) is always trying to please us back. Invite people to open their eyes. Ask people to stand and link hands. Alternating voices offer this prayer: This is our God s doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day our God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118: Alice Walker, The Color Purple Open our eyes that we might gaze upon your wonders, O God, and wonder about the struggles and sufferings of your people. If there is a situation that cries out to be heard, share it with us. After people have prayed aloud conclude with this blessing: 5

7 Meditation cont d Out to the Light By the inclination of (our) hearts may we constantly repeat, Thy will be done! Yes, my God, yes to whatever may please Thee. May all Thy holy wishes be fulfilled. Jean-Pierre de Cassaude Let us bless one another with a word, a sign, a gesture of God s peace. This concludes the session. Co-facilitator Afterglow (5 Minutes) When everyone has gone, revisit the session together. Begin with a few minutes of silence. Let a grateful word surface. Offer a word of affirmation to one another. OR Share your response to A N Y of these: I felt the Holy Spirit I was stretched or challenged by... I have learned Look ahead to the next session or activity. 6

8 4 Pointers for Participants Between Session 3 & Session 4 Practical Applications Prayer Spend prime-time in your prayer space every day. Consider this your listening corner. From time to time, take the newspaper with you and pray the news. Spiritual Reading Jesus Today, pages Journal-Keeping Read and respond to pages Spiritual Practice Practice being awake by greeting the dawn. Get up early to listen to the sunrise, and let yourself become aware of the struggles and surprises that await everyone under the sun. [ES Journal, p.58] Outreach Ministry What do you hear as you listen to the lives of those you encounter in your outreach ministry? Heart Listening Let it in... Let it be... Let it move you! There is nothing so much like God as silence. There is nothing so much like God as silence. Meister Eckhart Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God. The feeling remains that God is on the journey too. Teresa of Avila Preparing for Session FOUR Reflect on these insights BEFORE the session DEEP Listening Draws Us Into Deeper Sharing Remember that time when someone was deeply listening to you what it felt like to have someone really get what you were saying. It most likely inspired you to articulate your innermost thoughts and feelings, freed you to express the essence of yourself. Kay Lindahl? How do you listen to your heart, to your loved ones, to your enemies? How do you practice listening to this blessed and broken world? How does God listen to you? Rooted in Scripture Read and reflect on MATTHEW 13: You will indeed listen but never understand. Jesus often spoke in parables, challenging: Let anyone who has ears listen! How does this challenge resonate with you? From an Age of Information to a Time of Wisdom We need to loosen our tight hold on information, in order to allow wisdom to capture us and understanding to overcome us. Where is the Life we have lost in the living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in the knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in the information? T. S. Eliot Be Opened! Mark 7: The Bearings letters are intimate and personal presentations. They are exercises in the discipline of prayerful listening the way we listen to Gospel readings or a personal story. In other situations we tend to listen selectively; sifting, filtering or categorizing what we hear according to what we like or dislike. By contrast, auditory prayer (praying with our ears) is a way of listening that allows the truth we hear to resonate, without trying to retain, analyze or memorize it. In this way the truth penetrates as we let it in, let it be and let it speak to us. STILL in the STORM Visit the Engaging Spirituality blog: For Engaging Spirituality participants only 1

9 Mary Jo Leddy To be read aloud at Session THREE. Bearings Letter Directions To be read aloud to participants of Engaging Spirituality. This material is copyrighted. Print ONE copy of this document. Do NOT forward or make additional copies. Detach and retain this cover page so the co-facilitator can mail the Thank You Note to this address: Mary Jo Leddy 48 Wanda Road Toronto, Ontario, M69 1C6 Canada JustFaith Ministries P.O. Box Louisville, KY (502) Invite a participant to read the letter to the group. The letter is returned to the co-facilitators after the session. All EngagingSpirituality materials are copyrighted by JustFaith Ministries, Copyrighted material. For co-facilitators of Engaging Spirituality ONLY. Do NOT copy, share or forward.

10 BEARINGS Letter O that today you would listen to God s voice, harden not you heart. Psalm 95: 8 Directions for Readers General Remarks Bearings letters are meant to be read aloud, listened to and received as auditory prayer. Do NOT copy or electronically distribute the letter to participants. Each letter is read aloud by a different member of the Engaging Spirituality group. The reader is responsible for: prayerful preparation; introducing the author; reading the letter aloud; inviting people to respond in the Lectio Divina format; crafting a note of thanks to the author. Before the Session Co-facilitators print only ONE copy of the Bearings letter. At a prior session (a week before the letter is read), co-facilitators identify a reader from among the participants. The reader takes the Bearings letter home to review it in prayerful preparation. At the Session Add an empty chair to the circle to represent the author of the Bearings letter. Using the attached introduction, the reader introduces the author (in the first person) and then passes the author s picture around the circle. Before prayerfully reading the letter, the reader places the picture on the empty seat. Note to Readers: Use the pauses to moderate the pace of your reading. Take three slow breaths when you pause. This will give your listeners time to let the words penetrate. Follow the directions for the Lectio Divina reflection. Allow 2-3 minutes for those who wish to share a word, a question or a brief insight, before resuming the reading. After the reading and during the ensuing dialogue, note one or two insights (in your journal) generated by the letter. After the Session At the close of the session, return the picture and letter to the co-facilitators for safekeeping. Do NOT make copies of the letter after the session. Using the attached stationery, the reader writes a brief personal response to the author, including: a word of thanks; the name and location of the group; a few insights from the group s reflection. Co-facilitators are responsible for mailing the Thank You Note to the author (not to JustFaith Ministries). Respecting the author s privacy, the co-facilitators do not share the personal mailing address of any author. 1

11 BEARINGS Letter Personal Introduction I am Mary Jo Leddy. I wrote these reflections at my desk in a small room in a house I share with refugees from Zimbabwe and the Middle East. I have lived here at Romero House for twenty years and my writing has become located in this little neighborhood of a very large city (Toronto, Canada) that is my home. I have written many books and articles from here. I have also been a Catholic Sister, a theologian, a teacher and a social activist. I am blessed that both my writing and the work of Romero House have received broad recognition. Mary Jo Leddy 2

12 BEARINGS Letter My Struggle Dear like-spirited people, I do not know each of you by name and I cannot imagine your face or the landscape of your particular history. However, I believe we are like-spirited and that we can take our bearings from each other. In some mysterious way we are bound up with the strengths and weaknesses of each other. Together we are part of the mystery of the church. I am not an activist by temperament. However, I have become one through intellectual and spiritual conviction. As a graduate student in philosophy I was deeply challenged by a Jewish professor who asked: How can we go on thinking in the same way after Auschwitz? I thought this was the most important question I had heard in all of my classes. I began to think... to really think. After some years of thinking through the dust and ashes of the holocaust, I concluded that being a bystander was not an innocent position, that there was a terrible price to be paid for being silent.. This insight had implications: I did not pursue an academic career, I joined with others in founding an independent Catholic newspaper (Catholic New Times) committed to faith and justice, I became active in the peace movement. In the process I discovered writing as my way of acting in the world. Marching for almost impossible causes moved me to kneel. Some of these activities led me into conflicts with the institutional church but basically I was sustained by the social teachings of the Church, by the immense vision of Vatican II and by the compelling witness of the many saints and martyrs of today s church. Nevertheless, in spite of all this involvement in the struggle of justice, my heart had yet to be broken. Then quite accidentally, or providentially, I found myself living in a house of refugees. I had offered to replace a friend who was working as a night manager in a shelter for refugees. It was to be for a month. That was twenty years ago. Life, I have learned, is what happens when you are busy planning something else. 3

13 BEARINGS Letter During that first month and in the many months to follow, I lived side by side with some African women and children who taught me the most important lessons about what it means to be a good neighbor. They were all Muslims and I was the only Christian in the house. We had tea together every night, although we could not speak each other s languages. I learned their names and they learned mine. Living side by side we saw each other face to face. I felt as if the gospel had become alive and walked right off the page. After years of being involved in church politics and theological debates, I was reminded that the most basic commandment of Jesus was that we love our neighbors. Living together with these Africans, who had been stripped of so many forms of identity and security, I was surprised by joy. Friends who came to visit me in the evenings were also impressed by the simplicity of this gospel experience. When the agency operating the house planned to sell it, my friends and I decided to try to continue the work with refugees. We wanted to continue in a more communitybased rather than an agency model. We had discovered that the relationship between neighbors was far more liberating for all concerned than the distancing relationship between social worker and client. I began to understand the wise maxim (originally attributed to Frederick Buechner [pronounced BEEK ner]) that the place where God calls you is the place where your deep joy meets the deep hunger of the world. To make a long story of twenty years short, we developed a small network of four houses and a storefront office in a little neighbourhood of the most multicultural city in the world. It was named Romero House, after the great church leader who gave his life for the poor. 4

14 BEARINGS Letter This is still a place of real and deep joy. I enjoy living with refugees. However, as the years pass by I am increasingly aware of the immense suffering that situates this almost miraculous joy. My deepest spiritual challenge is how to live surrounded by so much suffering. Unlike the social worker who goes home at night, I live in the house with my neighbors who bear scars and wounds that will never heal completely. Torture has a name and a face and it lives in the room next to me and some nights I hear screams. I have tried to escape this suffering in many ways. I have tried to create a little island of joy in a sea of suffering a place inside or outside where I cannot be touched and disturbed. But the sea of suffering breaks upon the shore of my little life. Someone turns to me, looks me in the face, calls me by name and summons with the words Please help me. I could look away. However this summons is more like an annunciation, a visitation, a commandment. My life becomes weighty, consequential. This I must do. There is no other. In responding to this summons, I discover who I really am, for better or worse. What I am learning is that I too can summon another person, one of my neighbors, to bear with me in my suffering. Longer Lectio Divina: What WORD, QUESTION or INSIGHT resonated with you? Invite people to share 5

15 BEARINGS Letter My Practice Over the years I have come to a spiritual clarity about the kind of practices that will sustain me in living with such suffering. It boils down to the simple practice of prayer in the morning and the evening. It involves going to Mass, at least on Sunday. These are the times when I take my bearings. In the morning, I awaken with the conscious realization that this day of my life has been given to me. That this is the dawn of a new creation. I, small creature, take my bearings and situate my life and the lives of all those I care about and place them in the hands of the Creator, where they already are. The morning is the time when I recall that we all begin in God. Let me awaken into You Let me lift my arms in praise. I thank You for this this once more, this day, this resurrection. Let me throw off the covers of sleep I trust You will wrap me round with goodness. Let me place my feet down on You who are Ground. Grace. Stability of Earth. Bear me. Bear with me Bear me forth into this once more day this time of my life You have given me. Bless me O Creator, my beginning. our beginning. 6

16 BEARINGS Letter In the evening, I again take my bearings. I consciously recall that we are all going to God. I remind myself that all those I care about are in the hands of God. And I place them where they belong. And I go to sleep and leave the world to God. Let them all go to You all the joys and sufferings of this day. Let them all go to you all the worries of today. Let them all go to You all the mistakes that I did make. Let them all go to You all the people that I care for. Let them all go to You all the sufferings of the world. Let them all go to You all the happiness I held. Let it all go to You all the good that was done. Let it all go to You all the beauty that appeared. Let it all go to You all the love that I was given. Let it all go to You. Let me all go to You. Once a week I go to Mass at our local parish. It is another way of taking my bearings within the longer and deeper reality of the church. Our parish liturgy is impoverished in many ways, but I believe it is the time when my small acts of thanksgiving are taken up into the great act of thanksgiving in Jesus. It is the time when I participate in the heart breaking mystery of the love of Jesus with his suffering people. 7

17 BEARINGS Letter Longer Lectio Divina: What WORD, QUESTION or INSIGHT resonated with you? Invite people to share My Challenge My painful lesson is that unless we learn to live with suffering, we cannot act for justice. We may work for a while on a cause or an issue but it will be only for a time. However, when suffering has a face it becomes a summons and your heart is broken open by love. There are other sufferings, the vast indifference in our society towards people like refugees, the social cruelty that stalks the land in these mean and angry times. You barely recognize yourself or those you care about when the powers that be pound out their social stereotypes of the stranger and foreigner. There is the suffering that afflicts us in a church that can seem insipid and defensive. The salt has lost its flavor. If my life with refugees has taught me anything it is that we will be born again among suffering people. I yearn for the day when the church will become more humble and heartbroken. Then we will be able to speak to the powers that be and say: to find happiness you must go by the way of great suffering, to become once more a true church you must go by the way of humility. Gratefully, Mary Jo Longer Lectio Divina: What WORD, QUESTION or INSIGHT resonated with you? Invite people to share Please return this letter to co-facilitators. 8

18 Thank You JustFaith Ministries P.O. Box Louisville, KY, (502) With heartfelt thanks for your wisdom and your witness. May you remain rooted and grounded in love...