Seeking Authentic Voice

Solitude, and a life of solitude are two different things, writes Chittister in the eighth chapter of "Called to Question." Both are spiritual disciplines and practices in many faith traditions. The Christian faith has numerous saints (Julian of Norwich, for example) who lived a life of solitude, alone in a dwelling on the grounds of a convent. People who live a life of solitude spend their days and nights completely alone, except for the occasional visitor who comes seeking spiritual advice. Solitude is a desire for some time out, a space to soothe the soul and enable one to become useful again. I have never had a desire to live a life of solitude. The idea of being perpetually alone completely unsettles me. In fact for part of my life I couldn't handle being alone for more than a few hours or a day. I hated being alone at night. I didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't read because the aloneness was deafening. I couldn't work because the alonesne...

"You show me the path of life; in your presence these is fullness of joy." (Psalm 16) The path of life is a circuitous one. Chittister describes this in the seventh chapter of "Called to Question," but I understand this reality from my own life. I spiral through times of joy and sorrow, fear and anguish, delight and peace. Sometimes the spiral feels out of control, sometimes it feels like a gentle path. "The path of life is much more than a simple career placement. It is an attitude of mind, an orientation of heart, a quality of soul, a sum of all learnings." (Called to Question, pg 59) Life is about learning, growing. More than the reality of the situations we are in, life is about what we learn from the circumstances. It is in the learnings that we grow and become fully human. Life tests us and we should test life back. Ignatius called this process, "self-examination." He wasn't talking about looking at one's hand or face. He ...

Yesterday I read chapter six in Chittister's book, "Called to Question" - which focuses on being called. She anchors this reflection in two snippets of scripture: "For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29) and "You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding Spirit of God.' (First Peter)   From this chapter I launched into what I thought was going to be a reflection on being called. I ended up going elsewhere with that reflection and so return today to the notion of being called. Chittister says, and I agree: "...everybody lives to do something that only they can do. Everyone of us is called, by virtue of what we love and what we do well, to give something to the world that will bear the stamp of our presence here. We are called to add something to the creation of the universe." The baptism rite in the Episcopal Church, and the teachings about baptism, po...

Prayer is what links the spiritual and the religious, the inner and outer parts dimensions of life. - Joan Chittister, "Called to Question" pg. 44  Chapter five of "Called to Question" is a reflection on prayer. Chittister tells the story of novitiates in the convent becoming weary of the busyness of life - from chores to worship to chores to worship -no time for ones self was exhausting. The old nuns would laugh as they told the story of women leaving after six months of this busyness because they could get no rest. Chittister says it took her years to get the "joke" to understand why the old nuns laughed in telling the story. Prayer, for the novitiates who left, was work, an intrusion into private time. But for those whose life is centered in prayer, prayer is time resting in God. It seems to me that one reason people don't come to church is because it takes too much work to get ready, to drive or walk over, and to sit in the pew for an hour....

Yesterday I reflected a bit on "spiritual" and "religious," ideas that have spurred several books recently from well known church thinkers. Ideas that seem to point to where "we" are as people of faith - are we spiritual not religious - believe in God in some form but not in the institution of the church? Or religious but not spiritual - believe in the rules of the church but not in the mystery of an unknownable God (well, that might be minimizing the statement, but it points to the essence of the criteria)? Or spiritual and religious - living in the tension of mystery and ambiguity while finding some footing in the teachings and practice of faith community?  My reflection was spurred by Joan Chittister's thoughts on this topic, nuanced by the idea that women have been invisible in much of the church's teachings on God, religion, and living a life of faith. This morning, while reading chapter four of "Called to Question" I am captivated...

After several weeks of setting aside Chittister's book., "Called to Question," I have once again returned to reading it. I am only on page 22, plodding through slowly as every paragraph calls my attention and stirs my thought process. For the most part I appreciate the way in which she is drawing the conclusion that religion and spirituality are intertwined. For example she writes: The very purpose of religion is to enable us to step off into the unchartered emptiness that is the spiritual life, freely but not untethered. We have under our feet the promise of the tradition that formed us and the disciplines that shaped our souls. We can then wander...religion gives us the structures that weld the habits and disciplines of the soul into one integrated whole. Those same structures can also, however, smother the very spirit they intend to shape...spirituality is a commitment to immersion in God, to the seeking that has no end. No doubt I left church because the structur...

As I mentioned yesterday I am reading, again, Joan Chittister's book, "Called to Question," in part as a response to the NPR "Talk of the Nation" interview Theresa McBain, the UMC minister turned atheist. "Called to Question" is a sometimes brutal reflection on the differences and connections between "religion" and "spirituality." Chittister considered this eight years before Diana Butler Bass, Brian McLaren, and Marcus Borg, took it up. Actually, because the book is the culmination of five years of journaling and then the creation of a book she probably started considering this question in the late 1990's. A Roman Catholic nun much of her scathing response to religion is the result of living in the confines of the Roman church and the limitations imposed upon women and laity by the teachings of the church. I appreciate much of what she writes. This morning I am reading the second chapter of the book. Taking it slowly, ponderi...

My Facebook and blogging friends have engaged in a conversation following the NPR interview with Theresa McBain which aired on Talk of Nation  with Neal Conan on Monday, May 7 (I tried to create a link to the transcipt but it won't work). McBain is the United Methodist minister who decided she was an atheist and left the ministry. Apparently there is a movement afoot, some 200 former clergy who have joined a cause called "The Clergy Project." Reading the transcript of the interview with McBain was a reminder that in this country we tend to think that Christianity looks a certain way, follows only certain dogmas and doctrines. The religion correspondent for NPR, Barbara Bradley Haggerty, perpetuates this idea, sadly. For me, the real issues that we ought to ponder here is not the shift to atheism, but the idea that people define themselves as atheists because the do not believe the limitations of Christianity as they know it. (And, I suppose this would also be true fo...