Spiritual journey | Seriously Seeking Answers

As my husband and I begin a new year under trying circumstances, one of my priorities is to continue the spiritual direction journey I began around five years ago.

Spiritual direction – for those unfamiliar with the concept – is a partnership in which one Christian helps another grow in a personal relationship with God. Monthly one-on-one meetings have involved examining my relationship with God, my prayer life, my personal values and various lifestyle choices. For me, spiritual direction has been a supplement to – rather than a substitute for – church.

Several factors led to my decision to seek such direction: the transition in focus and priorities prompted by my retirement; the “time is limited” epiphany that comes with being 60-something, losing loved ones and developing chronic health problems myself; and the internal tug-of-war over my personal values brought on by the increasing divisiveness and polarization in our society.

I’ve begun to think of this decision as a “God thing” that came at exactly the right time. Pete and I have recently lost what feels like an unbearably long list of loved ones. We’ve taken turns being hospitalized ourselves. COVID-19 has upended our lives relentlessly. Now we’re dealing with chemotherapy (Pete) and cardiac rehab following a heart attack (me).

As we struggle to establish new habits/routines and ward off depression and exhaustion, spiritual direction has turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. In fact, when Pete saw how much I was benefitting from the process, he decided to begin spiritual direction himself.

So what’s next, as I continue my spiritual direction journey? Here’s what I’ve worked on so far and where I want to focus my attention in the coming year.

Doubt. I began this journey by learning how to address those pesky doubts about God’s existence that creep in from time to time – mostly by going outside and immersing myself in the natural environment, which constantly reassures me of the presence of a Creator. But I still wrestle with questions about God’s nature, especially in the midst of our current crises. I’ve often found myself asking, “Is God really concerned about each of us personally, let alone each sparrow? Or is that idea just wishful thinking?” One might say I’ve graduated from “Does God exist?” to “Does God care?”

Prayer. I’ve explored a variety of prayer techniques – meditation, prayers of petition and intercession, prayers of thanksgiving, writing or journaling as a form of prayer, nature prayer. I must confess that lately most of my prayers have been of the “foxhole” variety. (“Dear God, please get us out of this jam.” Or simply, “Dear God, help!!!”)

Self-care. 1 Corinthians 6:19 reminds us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and my recent medical adventures have sent an unmistakable message that I need to take better care of mine. I really, really need to establish better eating habits and a sustainable exercise program. I want to help nurse Pete back to health as well. We’re assembling a good medical team that can help both of us get the ongoing physical care we need.

Emotional support. Getting the right support system in place has been crucial for surviving recent events. Family and friends have been supportive, and members of our church congregation have reached out as well. We’re on several prayer lists. I’ve added a professional therapist to our medical team to help Pete and I cope with the emotional fallout from battling a pair of life-threatening conditions simultaneously.

Staying spiritually connected. I participate in our church’s community service and faith formation committees and am helping keep our micro pantry filled. Pete and I continue to co-facilitate Sundays@6, our congregation’s adult faith formation class. We are part of an associates program for the Dominican Sisters in our community, where we are involved in their anti-racism initiative.

My writing. I want to start making some real progress on my book, and keep working on my blog. From age 10 onward, I’ve dreamed of writing a book. More than 50 years later, that goal is … still on my bucket list. I’ve known since grade school that writing would play some role in my life’s purpose, whatever that turned out to be. I do consider my writing ability to be a gift from God that should not be wasted.

Gardening. We had extensive landscaping work done last spring. I planted lots of native perennials, as well as an abundance of annuals, and the yard is looking beautiful! We’ve turned our flower beds into a welcome center for hummingbirds, bees and butterflies. I like to think of this project as “God’s work, our hands,” and have found gardening to be enormously therapeutic.

Finances. This past year, Pete and I updated our wills and power-of-attorney documents. We also established a donor-advised fund with our local community foundation in honor of his parents and mine. This coming year, we want to consult with our financial advisor to help us find socially responsible investment opportunities.

Clutter. My first spiritual director recommended I devote one hour each weekday to sorting through the physical clutter in our house. This priority may seem trivial in the face of everything else we’re dealing with right now, but when the house is a mess, the rest of my life starts to feel unmanageable. Decluttering is one small thing I can do to feel less helpless when life gets chaotic.

Discernment. From the beginning, I have been questioning all kinds of dogma, from the spiritual and religious to the political and ideological. This “deconstruction/reconstruction” work started with questioning a lot of things I thought I knew, along with beliefs and values other people – whether liberal or conservative – want me to hold. I want to develop a belief/value system that both my rational mind and my conscience can accept, rather than simply parroting a set of values and beliefs that will let me fit in chameleon-like with my peers. What do I actually believe about God and why? What is God’s purpose or plan for my life? What are my values, or what should they be? How do I live my life in a way that is consistent with my beliefs and values? What are my own beliefs about the hot-button issues that consume our nation’s culture warriors? What is my role as a Christian in fighting or mitigating society’s problems and political battles? I would like to continue this discernment process.

Keeping our heads above water, for the next few months at least, is going to be a challenge for my husband and me. But I also want our lives to move beyond mere survival mode – from surviving to thriving. Hopefully our continued spiritual direction work can be a key part of making that happen, with God’s help.

Note: This is an excerpt from my book in progress, which examines the polarization ripping apart our society and shares my personal search for an appropriate Christian response. For an overview of the book and to read my previous excerpts, link HERE.

My church’s adult faith formation class has been discussing Christianity’s Family Tree, a fascinating exploration of how several denominations came into being and what their members believe. One thing I like about the book is that author Adam Hamilton refrains from criticizing the denominations he writes about. Instead, he compares members of various faith traditions to relatives we might meet at a family reunion, and invites us to enrich our own faith by learning what we can from our “cousins” in Christ who belong to the other traditions.

Studying the book has also helped crystallize for me why I’m increasingly at peace with the convoluted nature of my own spiritual journey. Hamilton’s personal faith experience somewhat resembles mine in its twists and turns – he started life as a Roman Catholic, joined a Pentecostal church as a teenager, then ended up a member of a United Methodist Church, where he is now a minister. I’ve done some hopping around myself and, like him, I’ve come to see my rather zig-zaggy spiritual path in a positive light.

My journey through the spiritual/religious kaleidoscope began early. The church my family attended on a given weekend often depended on where we had Sunday dinner. One week we might attend the mainline Protestant church we and several members of Dad’s family belonged to, while the next Sunday might find us at the more conservative church Mom’s side of the family attended.

Being of different denominations, the two churches presented contrasting teachings on everything from baptism (sprinkling or immersion?) to communion (wine or grape juice?) to how one gets “saved” (baptism or personal decision?). But Dad regularly assured us, “In the end, we all worship the same God.” And the extended-family feasts that followed church and Sunday School are among my favorite childhood memories.

In college, I joined Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as Cru), a nondenominational student organization whose main attraction for me was that these classmates didn’t pressure me to participate in the drug scene or the sexual revolution. (In the early 1970s, both proliferated on campus.) Some of the classmates invited me to attend services with them at a local evangelical free church, where congregation members encouraged us to join them for Sunday dinner – a great outreach effort for homesick students, I must say.

After college, I followed the trajectory of a growing number of today’s young adults and became a “None.” I didn’t stop believing in God altogether, but I was preoccupied with chasing professional brass rings and worshipping at the altar of career success. I referred to the endless round of political fund-raisers, Chamber of Commerce cocktail parties and Happy Hour gatherings with colleagues as “networking” and convinced myself these alcohol-soaked events were essential to my job … until I wound up in detox.

When I embarked on my recovery journey in the early 1990s, I immersed myself in the 12-Step movement, which labeled itself “spiritual but not religious.” The people I met “around the tables” came from a wide variety of spiritual/religious backgrounds with wildly diverse understandings about God. Folks at the meetings advised me, “Take what you need and leave the rest.”

Meanwhile, my husband and I joined a church that shall remain mercifully nameless. Members seemed obsessed with pointing out how smart they were in comparison to most Christians. The toxic organizational culture – marked by constant bullying, backbiting, infighting and power struggles between rival cliques – ultimately drove us out of the congregation. After that, I took another hiatus from church, though I continued to attend 12-Step meetings.

In my late 40s – after a huge medical scare during which I prayed fervently and made promises to a God I hoped would still listen to me – I started going to a mainline Protestant church with my husband and mother-in-law and periodically sneaked into a couple of Evangelical/Pentecostal churches my parents, other family members and friends now attended.

Shortly after I started going to church again, I began working for a faith-based prison re-entry program that encouraged congregations to “adopt” incarcerated mothers reintegrating into the community. Part of my job description involved recruiting and training a team of volunteers from each congregation to work intensively with their “adopted” mother and her children. The recruitment process required me to attend services at a dazzling array of churches – from Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian to Baptist, Evangelical and Pentecostal. Every month or two would find me attending a different congregation’s church service.

In addition to sampling the denominational smorgasbord as part of my new job, I read the entire Bible from front to back for the first time in my life and discovered passages that prompted me to observe, “So that’s where the Pentecostals get their belief about speaking in tongues … where the Catholics get their belief about purgatory … where the Evangelicals get their belief about the Rapture.” And I found myself agreeing with Dad’s long-ago observation: “In the end, we all worship the same God.”

I now belong to the mainline Protestant church I began attending nearly 20 years ago with my husband and mother-in-law. I like that the people at my current church do their best to practice what they say they believe. I like their involvement in serving the larger community. I like that I’ve been able to ask questions in our adult faith formation class that probably would have gotten me burned at the stake in a previous era, and I haven’t been excommunicated or struck by lightning. At least not yet. So even though I’m still questioning a lot of things, my current church is where I’ve settled and plan to stay.

But I haven’t stopped exploring ideas or getting spiritual support from a variety of sources.

Over the years, I’ve continued to attend Evangelical and Pentecostal services when visiting family and friends. Members of my parents’ congregation never failed to make me feel welcome when I went to church with them and I absolutely appreciate how supportive they were of my parents during their final years when I lived too far away to be as involved in their day-to-day care as I would have liked.

More recently, my husband and I have been receiving spiritual direction from a pair of Dominican teaching Sisters and this year we joined their “associates” program. Spiritual direction is a partnership in which one Christian helps another grow in a personal relationship with God, and serves as a supplement to – rather than a substitute for – church. During monthly sessions, I have been examining my relationship with God, prayer, my personal values, and various lifestyle choices. As associates my husband and I assist, among other things, with the Sisters’ social justice activities such as their anti-racism and environmental efforts.

I’m an insatiably voracious reader as well. I subscribe to both Christian Century (mainline Protestant) and Christianity Today (Evangelical), as well as America Magazine (Catholic). I devour books by authors from a variety of faith traditions – some of the more interesting titles I’ve been reading lately include Falling Upward by Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, Do I Stay Christian? by Emerging Church leader Brian McLaren, Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk by Evangelical pastor Eugene Cho, Creation as Sacrament by Greek Orthodox theologian John Chryssavgis and Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor.

During a recent session of my congregation’s adult faith formation class, I shared some details about my rather eclectic spiritual background. “I guess you could call me a spiritual mutt,” I joked. One of the other participants responded, “I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing,” and I would be inclined to agree.

Some might consider my spiritual journey – with its hopelessly squiggly lines – confusing. (At best!) But I’ve come to believe that experiencing a variety of traditions has had benefits. I certainly don’t claim to have a corner on the truth about religious/spiritual matters. I refuse to demonize people whose beliefs differ from mine. I’m less likely to get drawn into squabbles with other Christians over the long list of issues Martin Luther would label “adiaphora.” And I get thoroughly impatient when either conservative or progressive culture warriors imply that people who belong to a denomination other than their own “aren’t real Christians.”

Instead, like Hamilton, I prefer to learn from my “relatives” in Christ and to look for areas of agreement. What I really care about these days is how well a church encourages its members to fulfill these commandments:

Love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.
Love your neighbor as yourself.

“When we view the body of Christ as a tree, there are several things we begin to realize,” says Hamilton, in Christianity’s Family Tree. “We are reminded that all the branches share the same roots and trunk. Our roots are Judaism. Our trunk is Jesus Christ. Permeating the entire tree is the Holy Spirit, which feeds the leaves and allows the tree to grow.”

Hamilton reminds us that in the beginning, Christianity did not have denominations. There were no Lutheran, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist or Pentecostal churches. Christians were known as “followers of The Way” or simply followers of Jesus Christ.

And I still trust my father’s advice: “Remember, in the end, we all worship the same God.”

Question for readers: What has your spiritual journey been like, and has it changed over the years? I’d love to hear your response to this question, as well as your comments on the article. Just hit “Leave a Reply” below. When responding, please keep in mind the guidelines I’ve outlined on my Rules of Engagement page (link HERE).