Reflection #1

(Please note that the following are basically parts of the Reflection paper that I will submit.  There is a Word document that will be the final piece.)

INTRODUCTION
My reasons for coming to the School of the Spirit have been overwritten by an quest that feels far more important.  I don't normally describe my activities in terms of "journey," but it's becoming increasingly clear that term is quite useful in describing what I feel called to do.  

Since I started The School of the Spirit program, I've experienced changes in my daily life -- night and day, as described below -- that surprise me.  I feel new opportunities to understand who I really am, who I have been, and who I may become.  

Being at the School has given me a place of comfort and support -- socially, physically, and emotionally -- while, at the same time it has opened up new challenges coupled with a chance to revisit my personal history and possibly heal some injuries that I didn't know I had.  

At this point in my... journey, I feel that growth and change are not just possible but inevitable.  I hear myself saying things I thought I would never be able to say.  Reaching out to touch people -- something I never would have done.   

Plucking the unique and extraordinary out of the common and ordinary.


BEFORE I CAME TO THE SCHOOL OF THE SPIRIT 
From an early age, I don't think I ever thought of myself as someone special.  I did, however, have two characteristics that I felt defined me:  

• First, I knew that I was more intelligent than most of the people around me.  On several occasions, I answered questions from my school teachers that seemed to astound them.  And every now and then, concern them. 
  And my mother told me that, because I was a December baby and smallish for my age in any case, that she had the option of holding me back from entering First Grade for a year because of my size.  But she had me take an IQ test, which came out with a score of 146 (or maybe 164 -- I'm not sure), so the teacher strongly suggested that I should be placed in school at the earliest opportunity.  Mom got spooked about the score -- and told me so.  
• Second, that I was almost painfully shy.  Especially around girls.  (An attribute that still shows up occasionally.)  But I am certainly a devout introvert -- something that I believe I picked up from my Dad at an early age.  

As kids, my siblings and I were expected to go to church (Episcopal), which was an easy 4-block walk.  There was a Sunday School service followed by Sunday School classes.  I don't remember much of anything about them except that they were something we were expected to endure without complaint. 

While the church-going didn't have much effect on me, one particular book certainly did.  My Godparents (appropriately enough) gave me a book titled "Tell Me About God."  In the book a child asks his mother to tell him about God, which she does by relating it to the world around the child.  No church.  No baby Jesus.  No crucifixion.  It was one of the first books I ever read -- and I feel that I absorbed the book's context and the idea of God independent of a Church.  

A considerable number of ministers who served (sequentially) at our little church.  I don't remember much about any of them with one major exception.  Father Faughnan was a young minister whom I thought was movie-star handsome.  His sermons seemed to recognize that most of his flock were nominal Christians.  That few if any of them had been lit with the Divine Fire.  As he had been.  And so he tried his best to help the congregation understand the wonderful gifts that God had placed in front of them -- if only they would reach out and pick them up.  Which they tended not to do.  I still wonder about the disappointment that he might have felt -- that he couldn't reach into where the flock lived and lead them to the ecstasy that awaited them.  I felt sorry for him and was deeply disappointed when he left.  

Deeper involvement in Meeting affairs seems to have replaced my commitment to my own faith.  
Found that the Tao Teh Ching satisfied my personal cosmology.  Some entries are puzzling, but overall more satisfying than trying to understand the Bible -- with all its internal contradictions and laws that we don't follow any more.  And felt that so many people supposedly devout Christians follow a wildly different agenda from mine.  And my friends mostly can do without Jesus and the Bible as well. 


TWO REASONS WHY I CAME TO THE SCHOOL OF THE SPIRIT

REASON #1 -- I've come to the understanding that my spiritual involvement in Meeting has become more shallow -- drier -- than it was in previous years.  

I think the progression was something like this:

• Initial enthusiasm and deep spiritual involvement.  
• A growing list of personal Meeting responsibilities -- committees and the like.  Caused in part by more senior members of Meeting no longer being available to fulfill those responsibilities.
• A gradual shift in seeing my Meeting as a corporate organization rather than a spiritual home.  One for which I bore a lot of responsibility that I never asked for.  

In the last several years, I've become aware of this shift and the cost of this shift.

REASON #2 -- There was a time several decades ago when our Meeting was populated by a considerable number of "Birthright Friends."  People who had been raised Quaker and whose life experiences were all viewed from a Quaker point of view.  

Nowadays, we have -- I think -- only two members of our Meeting who were born into Quakerism.  The rest of us now struggle to acquire the "seasoning" that previous generations were given from birth.  Since I'm a "senior" member of Meeting, I feel a responsibility to open pathways to the newer members to find the deeper meanings of the Quaker faith.  

Possibly a reflection of my own shallowness, feel/felt that other members of our Meeting.  I, at least, recognize that there is a depth available (Marina) and that the way to that depth may need explanation and encouragement from someone else.  Like me.  

If this meant re-establishing my relationship with God, that was okay.  But not necessary.  I didn't want to retrace my steps.  And/but I didn't know what it meant to move forward.  


WHAT I'VE COME TO UNDERSTAND
One of the first activities that our Blue KGroup did when it first met was ask each member to answer the question: "What has your spiritual journey been like -- and how did it bring you here to the School of the Spirit?"  Each member was to take roughly 30 minutes to answer this question.  Given the time allotted for the KGroup sessions, this meant that two of our members would respond in that first session and the other three would respond in later sessions.  

And I knew that I really, truly did not want to be one of the first two.  That I had to revisit a considerable number of "waypoints" in my past -- and wanted time to consider them for some time before sharing my story with the group.  Fortunately, two members of the group felt comfortable to give their reports that session.  

Between the end of that first session and the start of the next, I took time to write out a list of my waypoints and took time to consider what they meant.  There were thirteen elements on that list.  And I brought the list to the next KGroup meeting.  

At that second meeting of our group, another member of our group asked to be allowed to be the first to speak about her journey.  And I was highly pleased to see that she had brought a list of her waypoints to the session.  It felt like it legitimized my bringing my list.    

Now, it's important for me to note here that the first three presenters had presented a dry-eyed, rather matter-of-factual stories of their journey.  Not that their stories weren't valid and heartfelt, it was just that they sounded like reports.  

When she finished her story, I said I really wanted to go next.  And the other remaining person who had not presented seemed comfortable in holding off to the following KGroup session.  So I started relating to the group the story behind each element in my list.  

By the time I got to the third element of my thirteen-element list, my voice was quivering.  By the time I got to the fifth element, I was weeping.  And I remained in tears for the rest of my "presentation."  

I was amazed and puzzled at why I was crying so much and so hard as I described incidents in my life which, of course, I had known for decades.  And I don't recall any new levels of understanding as I read through the list.  And (sorry to say, but...) I was The Guy in the Group.  Hardly a Macho performance!

As my tears flowed during my presentation, I felt grateful.  Here, clearly, was a part of my life's history which needed to be addressed.  Here was an opening to new understandings.  Events that had happened to me as a young child and as a teenager could now be revisited by me -- now at a greater level of experience, maturity, and objectivity.  

I decided to leave the experience alone until my emotional "dust" had settled.  And later, in retrospect, I could see that each of the thirteen elements in my list was a disappointment.  A disillusionment.  

It also occurred to me that none of the elements in that list was caused by someone being mean, being cruel to me.  And I thought of how many people, working on such a list for themselves, would have elements in his/her list of people being purposely cruel.  People who wanted to harm the author of that list.  And I was grateful that I couldn't think of anyone in my life who had worked to cause me serious harm.  

WHAT'S HAPPENING TO/WITH ME NOW
Ever since I was a boy, I've struggled with this issue: "If the Christian God created all of us and that God loves all of us, why has that God seen fit to create billions of us with no opportunity to know Jesus?  If, as so many Christians of many different stripes claim, that Jesus is the only way to True Peace and Understanding, how could God be so cruel -- and what is His Plan for the afterlife of all those billions of souls?  As I understand it, Christians have -- over the centuries -- come up with answers, but these seem to be answers that they invented..."

So I'm deeply grateful to Douglas Gwyn who, in his Pendle Hill pamphlet "But Who Do You Say I Am?" for stating an obvious answer.  An answer that I had been seeking for decades and (at least for the time being) find satisfying to my intellect: which is, there is no answer.  It's a paradox.  The issue cannot be resolved to your satisfaction.  

Yesterday, I created a couple of cards with an old old paradox.  One side of the card says: "THE STATEMENT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS CARD IS TRUE"  and the other side of the card says: "THE STATEMENT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS CARD IS FALSE."  So there is no answer.  

For decades my "story' had been: "I will continue to look for a resolution to this issue as a path to enlightenment and future spiritual growth." I can now say "There is no answer, and that will have to suffice.  Label this issue a Paradox and let it be.  And that realization will have to suffice as spiritual growth." 

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Decades ago, I attended a number of 7-day silent retreats guided by Renee Crauder, a wonderful Quaker lady whose talents and abilities to conduct such retreats were unparalleled.  As a result of one of those retreats, I acquired a small cross on a chain -- a pendant -- that I wore for several years.  

For reasons I don't recall, I hung the chain and cross on the lamp stand beside my bed.  And to this day, every time I looked up from bed to see what time it is, I have to peek around the cross to see the time.  It reminds me that I've left something behind.  I can't bring myself to take it down and I can't bring myself to wear it.  

I see now that my Mother's experience was anxiety about the hereafter.  How could she know there was a Heaven?  What is/was the path she was being asked to walk?  Meanwhile, my Dad was, it seems completely comfortable with a "classical" approach to Christianity and, when left on his own after Mom died, listened to the "Come to Jesus" radio stations.  While my Mom, it seemed, was constantly worried about Life in the Hereafter, my Dad had no concerns at all.


Two-fold reasons: Understood that my "involvement" in Meeting was superficial.  (And I'm only realizing now that it had become so.  It wasn't always like that.)  Deepen my spiritual life -- with or without God, with or without Jesus.  (But every time I look at my nightstand clock and see the image of my little cross in the middle of the numbers on the clock.)

I remember reading A Testament of Devotion early in my Quaker career and being totally swept up in the author's _____________.  So when the book came up on our reading list, I was looking forward to rekindling that _________.  So I was surprised at my response. 


Confirmation was anything but.  Man in the Brown Suit.   
Came to Quakerism from reading the Sunday paper.  Intrigued and felt at home.  Renee Crauder's retreat.