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Monday Morning
Nov. 15th, 2004 06:06 amIt was a very good weekend -- far better than the first session of the class. I am tired this morning, but not nearly as much as I had expected.
I received two gifts of words yesterday. The group in charge of creating sacred space for the day made cards with our names on them, and on Saturday afternoon we each drew a card, took it home, prayed for that person, and then returned it to class with a prayer on the back. The professor got my card, and on the basis of a conversation we had returned it to me with one of Rilke's poems on it. It was so perfect for where I am right now that I got tears in my eyes reading it. (It is too long to transcribe here this morning. Maybe later.)
The other gift was that one of the students went through her vast collection of quotations and thoughts and presented to each of the 20-some members of the class one or two slips of paper with specifically chosen words on them.
I received two. The one on top was She. . . had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present. - Madeleine L'Engle I felt very honored by this, especially since I have such love for L'Engle.
The other piece spoke to the struggle I have to make the time in my busy life to stay in touch with Spirit. I don't recall ever really speaking to her about this, which makes it all the more meaningful: Looking inward, growing in awareness of our oneness with God, and learning from Spirit is the purpose of life. If you take quiet time, incline your ear and heed the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, it will guide and protect you. It will never fail you. - Susan Taylor
Another gift of the weekend was the very last topic the prof addressed: the times of transition when our faith changes. I took very few notes because everything she said resonated so strongly with my own experiences, especially my pivotal existential crisis of years ago. It was only after class was over that I realized this was the first time I had heard anyone in church or in seminary classroom address the topic, and to honor it as a painful time of growth, not tragedy. It occured to me that instead of saying someone has "lost" his/her faith, we should look at it as "their faith has broken out of an old box". Sometimes people "lose their faith" and never find it again -- but perhaps that wouldn't happen as often if those around them didn't try to convince them to come back within the structures that had proved insufficient to their experience and their thoughts. What if support was provided to help find a bigger understanding of God, one that could embrace whatever crisis or growth had triggered the collapse of what had gone before?
It occured to me that "losing faith" could be a lot like "losing virginity": not about "loss" but about growth, initiation, and expansion. Both can be terrible, traumatic experiences or rich and nurturing ones (or terrible and traumatic followed by growth and nurture) depending on how they are handled.
I was very surprised to find that one of the other women in my class this weekend works for the same company in my building. We're going to try to stay in touch, but I'm not sure we're well matched in our temperments or our sense of purpose. She is far more intense than I am (which actually is saying something) and has a very strong prophetic (ie: social critic) perspective, much stronger than my own.
My goal for today is to assert control over the newsletter, which has become a huge weight around my neck this time. I need to release my need to make each article "perfect" and get them scrubbed to "acceptable" and turned in. Otherwise the thing isn't going to go anywhere. I am now the bottleneck, and I need to just Get It Done.
I received two gifts of words yesterday. The group in charge of creating sacred space for the day made cards with our names on them, and on Saturday afternoon we each drew a card, took it home, prayed for that person, and then returned it to class with a prayer on the back. The professor got my card, and on the basis of a conversation we had returned it to me with one of Rilke's poems on it. It was so perfect for where I am right now that I got tears in my eyes reading it. (It is too long to transcribe here this morning. Maybe later.)
The other gift was that one of the students went through her vast collection of quotations and thoughts and presented to each of the 20-some members of the class one or two slips of paper with specifically chosen words on them.
I received two. The one on top was She. . . had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present. - Madeleine L'Engle I felt very honored by this, especially since I have such love for L'Engle.
The other piece spoke to the struggle I have to make the time in my busy life to stay in touch with Spirit. I don't recall ever really speaking to her about this, which makes it all the more meaningful: Looking inward, growing in awareness of our oneness with God, and learning from Spirit is the purpose of life. If you take quiet time, incline your ear and heed the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, it will guide and protect you. It will never fail you. - Susan Taylor
Another gift of the weekend was the very last topic the prof addressed: the times of transition when our faith changes. I took very few notes because everything she said resonated so strongly with my own experiences, especially my pivotal existential crisis of years ago. It was only after class was over that I realized this was the first time I had heard anyone in church or in seminary classroom address the topic, and to honor it as a painful time of growth, not tragedy. It occured to me that instead of saying someone has "lost" his/her faith, we should look at it as "their faith has broken out of an old box". Sometimes people "lose their faith" and never find it again -- but perhaps that wouldn't happen as often if those around them didn't try to convince them to come back within the structures that had proved insufficient to their experience and their thoughts. What if support was provided to help find a bigger understanding of God, one that could embrace whatever crisis or growth had triggered the collapse of what had gone before?
It occured to me that "losing faith" could be a lot like "losing virginity": not about "loss" but about growth, initiation, and expansion. Both can be terrible, traumatic experiences or rich and nurturing ones (or terrible and traumatic followed by growth and nurture) depending on how they are handled.
I was very surprised to find that one of the other women in my class this weekend works for the same company in my building. We're going to try to stay in touch, but I'm not sure we're well matched in our temperments or our sense of purpose. She is far more intense than I am (which actually is saying something) and has a very strong prophetic (ie: social critic) perspective, much stronger than my own.
My goal for today is to assert control over the newsletter, which has become a huge weight around my neck this time. I need to release my need to make each article "perfect" and get them scrubbed to "acceptable" and turned in. Otherwise the thing isn't going to go anywhere. I am now the bottleneck, and I need to just Get It Done.
