I’m in an Engaging Spirituality
(ES) group with several other women. This small group – all-female simply by
chance – includes two Catholic nuns, two widows, a married lesbian couple (who,
yes, are happily welcomed and accepted by the pastor of my church despite Vatican pronouncements on same-sex marriage), and two
women married to men of a different spiritual bent. Since 2010, our group has
been regularly meeting to explore and deepen into that space where
contemplative presence and social action meet. We pray, read, reflect, journal,
hear the stories sent to us in letter form by contemporary teachers and
sojourners, open our minds and our hearts to the beauty and the suffering in
our lives and in the world, and participate in various outreach ministries involving
contemplative prayer, corporal works of mercy, justice-making, interfaith
dialogue, and solidarity with the poor and the ignored.
Whenever my life feels too full
of drudgery and routine, all I need to do is remember how grateful I am for my Engaging Spirituality peeps. For nearly a decade before our group formed, I had longed for some form of
community or deep church that would “do” both
contemplation and gospel action. Now, in
the Catholic church that I attend, yet another Engaging Spirituality group is
starting up, thanks in large part to the parish’s social justice committee and
to the members of our ongoing ES group who are willing to co-facilitate a new
group. I see that there is a real hunger for this kind of breathing,
teeth-in-the-flesh spirituality, and organizations like Just Faith (who are the
creators of Engaging Spirituality, as well as other programs that provide ways
for church groups to learn and engage more in Christianity’s social teachings)
give me great, here-and-now hope for congregational – as well as ecumenical and para-church -- community.
To provide an idea of some of the
ministries the people in my ES group are involved in: One of us heads the
social justice committee at our church; another provides sanctuary in her home
for women who are escaping the bonds of human sex trafficking; another
volunteers at a hospital, spending time with patients living with Alzheimer’s
and other forms of dementia. Another serves on the bereavement committee at our
church; another leads a weekly centering prayer group and helps
introduce interested parties at various local churches to this
contemplative-meditative practice. Another helps organize free group bus trips for
children so that they can visit a parent who is in prison – she also recently
spent two weeks in El Salvador, retracing the steps of the 20th-century martyrs there and
learning about liberation theology. As a group, we occasionally provide meals and goods
for homeless families; organize and march as part of a local interfaith
coalition that supports underpaid grocery workers, domestic workers, and janitors; and
host evening church discussions on immigration issues, Islam (in dialogue with local Muslims), and
global poverty. Our coaxing has encouraged one of the church youth groups to sell fair-trade chocolate after weekend Masses to raise money for various causes.
My initial aim for writing this post was not to plug Just Faith and Engaging Spirituality per se – I was really intending to go somewhere else with this! But there is an urgency in me that wants to shout from the rooftops: People! Look
at what Church can be! From the outside, it can be so difficult to see these flowerings of mercy, justice-making, community, and compassion. It’s the historical atrocities of Christianity -- as well as the various
ongoing hypocrisies, abuses, narrow-minded stances, and unenlightened judgments -- that catches the eye of much of the secular world. And the lack of balance that many critics exhibit – the inability or the unwillingness to see both
the light and the dark when it comes to religion – leaves me feeling so profoundly
frustrated at times!
That frustration must be part of what's driving me to blog into this late-night ether. Maybe it's fuel for a kind of witness -- funky, stumbling, tangential, grasping though it be … but mostly grateful, Lord. Achingly, helplessly, frustratingly grateful...
That frustration must be part of what's driving me to blog into this late-night ether. Maybe it's fuel for a kind of witness -- funky, stumbling, tangential, grasping though it be … but mostly grateful, Lord. Achingly, helplessly, frustratingly grateful...
