Spirit Journal - April 2019 -

Preview

Happy Spring! We hope you had a wonderful Easter. April’s Spirit Journal announces that “early bird” registration is now underway for the Living Flame program that starts in October, as well as for this summer’s Eight-Day Intensive/Post Intensive Retreats. Alan Krema writes about the “Enter the Chaos” retreat he recently attended in Michigan. This retreat will be offered in our area next February

We are also delighted to publish a prayerful poem by Deb Marqui of Healing Gardens, as well as the third and final installment of a Pluck the Day . . . for It Is Ripe, by Jeff Ediger.

Finally, we provide information about several additional contemplative activities that are coming up soon and may be of interest, along with Insights from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Howard Thurman, David Steindl-Rast, and Mary van Balen.

As always, we hope you will let us know what you think about Spirit Journal – and start your side of the conversation – by emailing the editor at the address provided at the end of the newsletter. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Living Flame Program Starts October 12

Sign Up Now – The First 15 people to register will receive a very substantial “early bird” discount!

Registration is now open for the Living Flame Program, which was last offered here in Chicago more than ten years ago. The first 15 registrants may sign up for all seven workshops for only $195, then the price goes up to $235 for Advance Registration. A few weeks before the program begins, the price will increase again to $260. Please consider signing up early to take advantage of the savings.

The Living Flame program has been updated and re-designed by Father Thomas Keating and the national circle of service in recent years. It includes seven full-day offerings of in-depth spiritual study presented over a seven-month period by commissioned presenters from the various Contemplative Outreach Service Teams.

Designed to teach the vital conceptual background needed to support a faithful practice of Centering Prayer, the program also offers encouragement and support in a small community setting, heightens the awareness of the purification process, helps discern when psychological skills can be helpful tools, and provides the opportunity to give and receive spiritual companionship.

All Living Flame workshops will take place at Mary Seat of Wisdom Church in Park Ridge. Specific dates are:

In 2019

October 12 Deepening Our Centering Prayer Practice

November 9 Lectio Divina

December 7 The Human Condition

In 2020

February 1 Divine Therapy

March 7 The Dark Night of Sense

March 28 The Welcoming Prayer Practice

April 18 The Discernment Practice

For more information and an opportunity to register, please visit the Living Flame event page today!

Eight-Day Intensive/Post-Intensive Retreat, July 14-21 at the Beautiful Portiuncula Center

by Alan Krema

Our local Chapter is hosting an Intensive and Post Intensive silent retreat this coming July 14-21, 2019. This is an event we host every other year, with the alternate years hosted by the Milwaukee Chapter.

The retreat is held at the Portiuncula Center for Prayer in Frankfort, Illinois, which is a beautiful setting for time to sit in prayer and listen to the voice of God in your heart. The Intensive and Post Intensive Retreat share the same venue and the majority of the format. The Intensive is meant for those who are participating in this extended retreat for the first time.

Our guides this year are both deeply experienced in centering prayer and spiritual direction and will form a warm, sustaining space for a contemplative experience. I welcome you to consider joining us this year. It is a powerful experience. If you have any questions about this retreat, please contact me.

For more information and a chance to register, please visit the retreat’s web page.

Enter the Chaos

by Alan Krema

Two weeks ago, I was very blessed to attend a retreat in Michigan called “Enter the Chaos.” This event is a four-day retreat fully engaged in Centering Prayer and meditation, along with being fully engaged with the many differences we find in our present-day relationships.

I was very moved by the power of the retreat to transform my being into a being of connection and unity with other people from widely diverse backgrounds. The retreat utilized the perspective of the stages of human growth and development as described by Don Beck as spiral dynamics. We considered the relationships of our lives, close family and friends as well as societal and political relationships. When we considered the positions and perspectives of others from the point of view of the way they see reality from their stage, we come to a deeper understanding of them as fellow human beings.

Combined with contemplative meditation in order open our hearts and boundaries, I felt a deep connection to others and found a new place from which to converse with them. I experienced a new intention to embody and engage with values of sharing and working with others with a diversity of thought and opinion.

Contemplative Outreach Chicago Chapter will host this retreat February 20 – 23, 2020.

This is a unique opportunity to combine a deep teaching of Ken Wilber’s Integral theory of stages of development, as formulated in the Spiral dynamic context and developed by Don Beck, with extensive communal and individual contemplative practice. This combination will grow the power of personal engagement with your life’s relationships in a dramatic opening of boundaries, using the mind to serve the heart.

If you have wondered, “What can I do?” to better participate in our polarized societal discourse, this retreat will help a great deal.

This retreat/workshop was designed and developed by the Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue (ICCD). The program Enter the Chaos: Engage the Differences to Make a Difference reflects the commitment of the ICCD to communal contemplation as a powerful transformative practice that develops within us a new way of seeing ourselves and the world with the power of dialogue to engage each other across differences and generate creative new responses. For more information and a retreat description, please take a look at the ICCD website.

We will begin registration for this retreat on the Contemplative Outreach Chicago website in June.

Found

A poem by Deb Marqui

(Deb Marqui is the creator of Healing Gardens at Stone Hill Farm, which is located in St. Charles and is open to the public for silent meditation and a growing lineup of contemplative events, see below.)

I watched the squirrels.

One ran from another and hid

in a hole in an old, gnarled honey locust tree.

Today, after meditation

I tried to hide from God.

Hiding my face in shame,

I saw on a deeper level my imperfections

of selfishness, my critical attitude

about how people dress, look, act and

my impatience with being versus doing.

God comes and finds me.

Leaning down God places warm hands

on my shoulders and says,

“Do not hide from me.

You will be called

‘The One Who Knows Herself.’

Looking deeply into yourself

will help you understand

the depths of human nature

and the depth of my love for you

just as you are.”

Tearfully, watching the squirrels play,

I sit with this paradox

of being deeply loved

knowing the depth of my imperfections

grateful and unworthy

of this consuming tenderness

and acceptance.

Other Upcoming Events, Retreats, and Conferences

Here are some additional contemplative activities that may be of interest to you:

This Sunday April 28: The International Thomas Merton Society Offers a Private Showing of the Acclaimed Documentary “In Search of Silence”

According to Scott Tobias of NPR, “As much a visual treat as an aural one, the film divides its time between using the tools of cinema to isolate and enhance the beauty of sounds and silence and exploring different schools of thought on the subject.” The screening will take place in the Rectory Assembly of Immaculate Conception Parish, 7211 W. Talcott, Chicago at 2:00pm this Sunday. All are welcome. Look for “MERTON LECTURE” signs if you are unfamiliar with the location.

Claret Center Open House Saturday May 4 in Hyde Park

The Claret Center cordially invites you to attend an Open House at their Hyde Park campus. The Center’s mission is to help people become whole in mind, body and spirit, and they do this in three ways – through Psychotherapy, Spiritual Direction and Body-Centered Therapies (acupuncture, cranial-sacral massage and therapeutic massage). Meet with practitioners, learn about the programs, tour the facility and sign-up for a brief sample session regarding any of the services. Refreshments will be provided. More information at the Claret Center website.

Eight-Day Intensive/Post-Intensive Retreats near St. Louis, June 7-13

If our July retreat dates don’t work for you, or if you just feel like taking a little trip to the St. Louis area, you may want to consider these extended retreats offered by Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis at the Marianist Retreat Center in Eureka Missouri.

The retreat director is Fr. Bill Sheehan, OMI. Fr. Bill has been involved with Contemplative Outreach since 1983. During that time he has led many Centering Prayer workshops and retreats in different parts of the country. With a Masters degree in Formative Spirituality from Duquesne University, Pittsburg, PA,

Fr. Bill has broad experience in pastoral ministry, serving the Archdiocese of Miami, Florida in the

Office of Lay ministry, and as Director of Ministry to Priests. Fr. Bill has served as provincial of the Oblates Eastern America Province as well as Oblate Formation Director and Novice Director.

For further information and registration, please visit the Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis website.

Healing Gardens Spring and Summer Programs Include Silent Saturdays, An Enneagram Workshop, an Introductory Centering Prayer Workshop, and an Awakening in Nature Retreat

Healing Gardens at Stonehill Farm invites you to enjoy two acres of perennial gardens in a quiet wooded setting in St. Charles. A growing list of contemplative activities take place at Healing Gardens, including the following:

Introductory Centering Prayer Workshop, Saturday June 22, 9:00am – 3:30pm

Awakening in Nature Retreat, Sunday July 21, 8:45am-3:00pm

Silent Saturdays, July 13 and August 31, 9:00am – noon

Level 2 Enneagram Workshop, Saturday October 12, 8:45am-3:30pm

For more information and registration, please visit the Healing Gardens website.

Ongoing Centering Prayer “11^th Step” Program – Chicago

In AA 12-step programs, the 11^th step is making a personal effort to get in touch with a Higher Power, however one understands it. Increasingly, people in 12-Step programs are deepening their relationships with their Higher Power using the method of Centering Prayer.

Here in the Chicago area, an ongoing Centering Prayer-based 11^th step group meets on Fridays at 6:45pm in conference room “C” on the 7th floor of the Community First Medical Center, 5645 W. Addison Street, Chicago. For further information on this program, please contact Philip Lo Dolce — stuffer1@ameritech.net.)

Pluck the Day . . . for it is Ripe!

By Jeff Ediger

[If you missed Chapters 1 and 2, you can catch up in the February and March editions of Spirit Journal.]

Chapter 3: Oh What a Tangled Web the Day Weaves

Billy Collins begins his poem titled “Morning” with these lines:

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,

the swale of the afternoon,

the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,

his many-pointed stars?^[1]

So sweet is the morning, so filled with promise, that the rest of the day pales in comparison. As I noted in the first chapter of this meditation, it is often wise, when a project turns sinister late in the day, to “call it a day” and get a “fresh start” in the morning…because that’s just what the morning is—a fresh start at life!

But the day doesn’t stay fresh.

Have you noticed this? How the day deteriorates as the hours pass by? The morning, so full of promise! We set out to “make hay while the sun shines.” But then we hit “the heat of the day” and things start to get tense. Then there’s that “noonday devil” to contend with. Afternoons can drag on as energy wanes. By the time evening comes around, the day has often come unraveled. That’s why some people turn to drink in the evening–to numb the pain of this unravelling of a day’s intentions. Pretty soon, we’re ready to call it quits and head for bed. It’s not that we didn’t accomplish anything. We just didn’t get as much done as we thought we would in the morning. And more often than not, we get so lost in the muddle of things that, by the end of the day, we can no longer think straight.

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But then, the miracle happens. It’s the miracle everyone experiences time and time again, day after day. Or, more accurately, next morning after next morning. We get a good night’s sleep and everything looks different in the morning. It’s as if we have been brought back from death to life.

Even a less than complete night of sleep does wonders for us. Every day, we wisely say, is a new day. And a good night’s sleep works wonders.

What, then, is this mysterious force which knits us back together in the morning?

Fresh Mercy

The Lord’s acts of mercy are not exhausted,

his compassion is not spent;

They are renewed every morning—

great is your faithfulness!”

Lamentations 3:2 (NEB)

Do not forget to say your prayers this morning

because God did not forget to wake you up.

Anonymous

In her book titled Mystical Hope, Cynthia Bourgeault calls to mind Helen Luke’s meditation on the etymology of the word ‘mercy’ in her book titled Old Age. Luke observes that it derives from the Etruscan root ‘merc,’ a root which both ‘commerce’ and ‘merchant’ also share. Pondering Luke’s discovery, Bourgeault concludes: “…at heart, mercy means some kind of exchange or transaction. It is a connection word.”^[2] Noting that Luke draws upon an analogy of weaving to describe what she calls “the Mercy,” Bourgeault concludes that “for Luke, the Mercy is first and foremost the great weaver, collecting and binding the scattered and broken parts of our lives into a tapestry of divine love.”^[3]

If the day is a ‘little life,’ sleep is a ‘little death.’ But sleep is as much of a mystery as is death. Winter is a death-like state for vegetation, yet letting ground lie fallow does not mean all activity ceases. Letting ground lie fallow allows it to repair. And sleep does the same not just for us, but for the whole created order. Much that is broken and fragmented gets stitched back together, night after night. The day that unravels as it ages becomes whole cloth again the next morning.

Bourgeault does not conceive of the Mercy as a force so much as a force-field or, rather, the realm in which we dwell. But to go into further detail here about Bourgeault’s analysis of mercy would carry us too far afield for the limited scope of this meditation.^[4] I suggest, though, that the miraculous force which works through the night to stitch us back together the next morning is like a hyper-surge of “the Mercy.” While this force may be with us always — in fact, surrounding us as the sea in which we swim, the realm in which we dwell, Bourgeault suggests^[5] — the book of Lamentations tells us that God’s mercy is new every morning. Like baguettes from a French bakery, the morning delivers fresh mercy!

This, then, I suggest, is the source of that miracle whereby yesterday’s knots often get untangled by the time morning rolls around and we roll out of bed. “It is,” Bourgeault says, “the spring at the bottom of our being through which hope is continually renewed.”^[6] And that renewal comes to us on a daily basis…as steadfast as the rising of the sun.

Of course, you’ve got to have, as Christ reminds us repeatedly in the Gospels, the eyes to see and the ears to hear. It is with the eyes and the ears of the heart that we recognize this phenomenon as the expression of God’s mercy. But by means of this inner perception, we are able to actually experience, in our bodies, mercy flowing through us and circling around us. That big stretch and yawn you revel in as you lie in bed or, arms outstretched, after you’ve stood up? That’s a fresh surge of the Mercy flowing through you, waking your muscles and ligaments to the new day.

What , then, is the best time of day to experience God’s mercy?

The morning. And more precisely, the break of day. But before going further, I need to clarify the context in which I am asking this question.

I will admit that I have been somewhat provocative in asking it. I do not so much mean to suggest that there is a particular time of day that one should seek out God’s mercy as opposed to other times of day. What I am suggesting is that there is a particular time of day that is, in itself, a revelation of God’s mercy.

In other words, God has written two books—the scriptures and nature. In asking what is the best time of day to experience God’s mercy, I am asking if there is a time of day that is most expressive of God’s mercy. We know, of course, that the rainbow is a sign of God’s promise of mercy. But what I am asking is if there is a time of day that is particularly easy to read concerning the reality of God’s mercy.

If we find this time of day, we can then look to it as a source of experiential understanding of this mercy. Do you want to know what God’s mercy is like? Look to this particular time of day as an expression of it.

The morning, then, I suggest, as a surge of renewal, a powerful expression of God’s mercy. One can even pinpoint the emergence of this expression, which begins at the break of day. The dawn of the day and the rising of the sun out of the pregnant womb of silence that is the beginning of the day is the tangible expression—for the one who has the ears and eyes to sense it– of the renewal of God’s mercy, “His mercies are new every morning.”

The writer of Psalm 130 seems to agree with this analysis. “Out of the depth I cry to you, oh Lord,” the prayer begins. Out of this “dark night of the soul” comes the appeal for God’s mercy: “Let your ear be attentive to my cry for mercy.” And to what does the psalmist compare this cry for mercy? The morning: “My soul waits for you, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” The fact that the psalmist repeats this phrase indicates how fervent is the psalmist’s desire for mercy.

The scene being invoked here is most likely that of the watchmen guarding the city of Jerusalem. With our 24/7 world of electric lighting, we have a hard time imagining the terror of straining to see and hear invaders through the silent darkness of the night watch. But with the morning light comes release from their terror. This psalmist knows the renewal of God’s mercy that comes with the morning light, and invokes this image as an expression of fervent watchfulness for it.

There is no greater stillness in the day than one experiences in the pre-dawn hours. Not even the birds are stirring at this time.^[7] This time is like that of a fresh scent of a sheet that has just been drawn from the dryer and all of yesterday’s wrinkles smoothed out from it. Or it is like a calm lake on which no wind is blowing—a smooth, untroubled, but deep stillness. Or one might imagine it as a field of virgin snow onto which no foot has yet set. But this stillness extends beyond the surface. The field of psychic tension is most relaxed at this time of day as well. The pressure of the day has not yet imposed itself upon us. What one senses at this hour, I suggest, is the culmination of the re-creation of life by means of the fresh infusion of God’s mercy. I imagine this hour as being the pause in which God, having “renewed the earth,”^[8] sits back and says, “It is good.”

The resurrection of Christ is another sign of this relationship between the dawn of a new day and the renewal of God’s mercy. According to most accounts, Christ’s rising from the dead took place sometime around dawn. If the day is a ‘little life’ (Schopenhauer) and the night is a ‘little death,’ then every morning is a ‘little resurrection.’ What is more significant, though, is that it is a resurrection we can experience in our bodily existence! That surge of life that we experience in the morning isn’t just coming from the morning cup of coffee. It comes to us from the day itself—a fresh surge offered to aid us in the work of “plucking the day.”

* * *

Someone once approached the abbot of a monastery and asked, “What spiritual practice have you adopted for your monastery?” Without missing a beat, the abbot responded, “We fall down. We get back up. We fall down. We get back up.” ^[9]

Such a wise practice! It corresponds exactly to life itself—lived in foreshortened segments, day by day and night after night. We fall down into our beds after an exhausting day, oftentimes feeling defeated by the trials of the day. Renewed by God’s merciful gift of sleep, we get back up the next morning. We fall down. We get back up. We fall down. We get back up.

Your mercies, Lord, they are fresh every morning.

Greater than any baguette from a French bakery is your faithfulness!

[1] Billy Collins, “Morning” from Picnic, Lightning. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.

[2] Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope. United States of America: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001. p. 23.

[3] Ibid., p. 24

[4] For this analysis, I recommend the reader turn to Bourgeault’s own accounting of it in Mystical Hope.

[5] She’s echoing Psalm 113:11:

For as the heavens reach beyond the earth and time,

we swim in mercy as an endless sea.”

Translated by Lynn Bauman in his striking translation of the Psalms, Ancient Songs Sung Anew. Telephone Texas: Praxis Publishing, 2008.

[6] Ibid., p. 39

[7] And this may have been the inspiration for the rather inglorious name being assigned to this hour as “sparrow-fart.” As close as I can figure it, the notion is that this hour is so quiet that, if a sparrow were around, you could hear the sound of it farting. But don’t ask me if birds actually perform this particular bodily function. I’m no expert on birds.

[8] Ps. 104:30

[9] I believe I heard this story from Cynthia Bourgeault, either on a retreat I attended that she led or in some recorded lecture I listened to.

Insights

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.

– Howard Thurman

Prayer is not sending in an order and expecting it to be fulfilled. Prayer is attuning yourself to the life of the world, to love, the force that moves the sun and the moon and the stars.

– David Steindl-Rast

I have always believed that sincere seekers of truth, whatever their field of study, spiritual path, or human experience, will come eveually to the same place: The Holy One who is Truth.

– Mary van Balen

Your Turn

As always, you are invited to write in to comment on or add to any of the items in Spirit Journal. Let us know if you are aware of an upcoming event you think others should know about, or send us an inspirational quote you’d like to share, or information about a book, website, podcast, or video you recommend. You can contribute by emailing the newsletter editor at news@centeringprayerchicago.org.