I'm home from the first "intensive" of the Carmelite Spiritual Direction program, and it's time to start unpacking the experience.
I didn't go with a lot of mentally mapped out expectation. I wanted to simply arrive and let it happen, though I admit I went through a spate of anxiety a few days before as I packed my suitcase. The worries that popped up were strange ones for me. Along with the whole bit about flying (and the fact that my flight out was on September 11) I had tribal worries about the architecture of the retreat center. What did it communicate? Could I trust these people? I recount that not to engage tribalism, but to notice that it was surfacing. This was an approach I employed a LOT during the week. It's an entry point for a contemplative gaze to listen -- first -- to what is going on interiorly, and suspend judgment for a time.
The word wasn't in vogue when I was converting to Catholicism -- tribalism -- but it was a reality I grappled with as I tried to make sense of finding my place in a completely foreign religious landscape. It stayed with me later, too. I remember telling a woman on a parenting/homeschool chat group when my kids were small that I loved being able to label myself (unschooler, crunchy, etc). She, a more experienced parent, had been saying that she found labels limiting and unhelpful. But I was feeling my vulnerability and helplessness, and labels helped give me a sense of myself, even if it was exterior, borrowed social currency. Labels gave me a sense of belonging, a built-in sense of which way to stand in the world, and to identify my opposition.
The day came, and my anxieties faded into the prayers of the CACS team and other friends, and I was totally at peace with the flight, and guess what? The building didn't poison my soul! All these things were total non-issues, externally. I settled into the experience with gentle anticipation.
In a word, I come away from the week having seen a depth to the term "contemplative" that I had not experienced before. This is the huge Carmelite theme. It's a bit like we hiked out into a plain, away from the city, and I looked up and saw with my own eyes, the Mountain. Mount Carmel. The mountain of contemplation. It's very different from studying geography or soil samples or the mathematics or physics or tectonics involved. It's the experience of: there it is. And here we are. And God is calling you to become a sherpa.
And the process there involves purification, vulnerability, cooperation with the Holy Spirit, and some good old fashioned Teresian determined determination.
At one point, we had a long three-session talk on the wounds of abuse and how spiritual direction can aid in individuals receiving healing. I have to admit, I came out of those sessions affected. Wounds that I was not aware of living with and that I couldn't quite name made their presence known. Even from my interior place of relative peace, I realized a yet deeper, gauzy level of anxiety operating in me, habitually causing me to subtly stick my fingers in my spiritual ears and sing "LALALALA" to keep God at arm's length from me.
One thing that supported this process was the strangeness of having no remnant of my "normal" life with me (except that which I carried on my computer). No one was expecting me to lead, to be in charge of things, no one was greeting me as Senior Church Lady with desired connections and information. No demands placed on me. I remembered that I am, by nature, quiet. I don't speak first to people, and if I'm not leading something or feeling responsibly connected to those who are, I naturally just step away and expect to be totally unnoticed. It's been ages since I've felt unnoticed. And, ooh. Feeling unnoticed stirs up some painful emotions.
Also, every time I leave Steubenville I feel a bit like I just fell off the turnip truck. Surrounded by doctors, psychologists, professionals of various stripes, and people who clearly could afford to be there, I found myself grappling with the questions about "what I do" and other things that I spend zero time thinking about when I am living my normal life. All week long when I mentioned my hometown, people asked me if I teach or work at the University. All I could say was that it's been a long time since anyone paid me for doing anything. By the standards of this world, my family and I are powerless and insignificant. Conversations around this didn't steal my peace, but they did surface interior things that just surprised me, because they are in the category of so close to me I can't see them.
Humility is the most necessary virtue for spiritual growth, and I recognize that God has built in a ton of opportunity for growth into my life. That's a win.
During one of our practium sessions of group spiritual direction (a totally new concept to me) I was overwhelmed by this sentence: "At the heart of the Carmelite Rule there is a call for us to commit ourselves to Jesus..." Actually, that wasn't even the whole sentence, but that's as far as I got into the set of readings we were given for reflection. This wasn't just a reading to me; it was an experience. I experienced... Jesus... calling to me. (He noticed me.) The image that came to me was Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia. There's an exchange where Lucy asks if Aslan, a symbol of Christ, is safe.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
Mr. Tumnus also says, "He's wild, you know. Not a tame lion."
I realized, I do not control, in this relationship with Jesus. Jesus is not my pet, nor my lapdog. And when He is present like that, you don't stop to go through the intellectual question of whether God is real because it is self evident. You move beyond that to a stance of He is the King, and He is calling me to a commitment to Him, personally. I can see that He means to cut through some things I've learned to find my identity in, and to re-establish, re-root my identity more profoundly in Him alone.
Another key experience for me was of the Oxford Carmelite friars. I've followed them now for a few years, and participated in other things they've offered online. I don't yet know how to capture what has attracted me to them and garnered my respect, but I think it has to do with an answer to a question someone put to two of them at dinner one night. They said the Church in England is not polarized. I feel there is a depth of spiritual pursuit that I witness through them. They are Carmelites, so that means they are living the charism of the order. But in contrast, I feel the Church at large in the US bears witness to being blown and tossed by the winds, as St. Paul writes about in Ephesians 4:
And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love. (4:11-16)
I will have a lot of reading and work to give myself to over the next months and years. Please pray for me that the Lord may have a good return on His investment in me. This should prove an adventure.
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