January 4, 2008

Dear Spiritus Dei ECC participants,

As Marilyn gathered together material for this announcement, she asked me if I wanted to attach a note of encouragement to the community. I am glad to do so as we move from winter's dark days toward the promise of spring!  I noticed this past holiday time how the toasts rang clearest and highest to the return of the light on December 21!  It seems as if this winter was particularly long and dark for me and others I spoke with this year. Maybe it was the number of cloudy days along with the short hours of daylight.

From Darkness into the Light—Death into Life

For me--and perhaps for others of you in this community--there might be added to this physical reality of darkness the fact that we've been living through six long years of what in what spiritual writer and teacher Fr. Ron Rohlheiser referred to a few years ago as "the dark night of the church's soul."  Occasional articles or book now and then serve as a lamp to dispel this darkness a bit. Lately I've been sensing a call to be less concerned about what is happening out there among the powers that be and focus on simply being the change in the church I want to see. Back awhile, I heard the Spirit of God seem to ask of me: " Do you believe that I can bring good even out of what appears very bad?" It was hard to believe at first. I am believing more and more as time goes on that good can come from evil, that the Paschal Mystery of life from death is indeed very real.

I'm thinking now that good out of this crisis just might just be my own spiritual transformation and that of others who are open to God's grace. The good news is that we have over these last six years ceased to sit on the sidelines of our church and are now beginning to take responsibility for what we pray and how we pray it. That was evidenced for me when this past October the gathered community in Seattle decided to continue being fully and actively participative in creating our liturgies!

I am also encouraged that we have been willing as a Catholic community to look at brokenness in our Catholic system, not ignore it or wish it away. The hard part at this point for me is naming the truth that systems are comprised of the people who make them up. That means that the brokenness we encounter in the system is in us, too--we are the church. We are part of the system.

I am awed at how in our broken condition, we are still moved to want great things. This was revealed for me in our list of values stated last August at our summer decision-making meeting. There we said we wanted to live together such values as

compassion, inclusion, acceptance, nurturance, receptivity to one another’s gifts, creativity, willingness to grow, deep connection and radical intimacy; open to discovering in freedom, sharing our heartfelt beliefs, believing in Jesus present in humanity and all of creation; vibrant; leading from a spirit of service;  sharing our lives; supporting each other in our concerns and ministries; sharing food;  honoring the feminine;  living with joy and radical excitement.

What a wonderful dream! What a very tall order!  I hope even as we strive for these values, we remain gentle and forgiving of ourselves and one another in the process.

Sharing the preparing, planning and presiding of our liturgies

I do thank you all for risking living in the unknown these last several years as the community of Spiritus Dei. It's been very slow going; we've had to risk living the questions, not than having the answers!  

I sense in our one-step-at-a-time process has been very wise, even as it isn't very certain. It has allowed us to keep discovering how much we do value our gathering together to pray our Catholic liturgy in a way that feeds our need for connection to God and one another. We have, it seems to me, entered more deeply into this prayer by sharing its leadership than if we had asked one person to take responsibility for it all as we might have been accustomed to doing in the not-so-distant past.

As Sheila Mattingly said while we worked together on the December liturgy, and perhaps speaks for all of us who have helped design and lead our eucharistic rituals, "I didn't realize I loved the liturgy so much until I had the chance to do it myself!" Hearing this kind of assessment makes all the work worth it for me, and helps me believe that we are being transformed by this prayer more perhaps far more than we had expected. I also sense this kind of personal transformation in us by how we pray the liturgy today when I hear of transformed relationships in our families and healing for ourselves and our loved ones!

Listen! 

Catholic theology tells us that prayer is more about God speaking to us and our listening than it is our finding words to say to God.  If we believe that, then our most important role in prayer is to listen--to our own lives, to God in the moment, in each other, in the silence, in the created world. When our sharing can come from deep listening, and be received from one another with deep respect, we will know the way to go forward.

I am grateful for how much each of you brings of yourself to our monthly prayer in terms of your personal reflections and stories. To me, you are what Vatican II envisioned--a fully active and participating Catholic church.  I hope we can continue sharing deeply of ourselves and listening deeply to the truth in one another, holding both in the silence and waiting together for the voice of the Spirit to help us make the creative connection we need among our truths, so that we can together fulfill the purpose of Jesus' life as he put it:  that we might "have life to the full." (John 10:10).

Imagining our Future Together, Sunday February 3, 1 p.m., Holy Trinity Lutheran Church   Directions on the website: http://www.htlcmi.org/  

On Sunday February 3, beginning at 1 p.m. we in Spiritus Dei will take the next step of our community evolution--our semi-annual meeting to reflect together and decide upon some future direction as a community.

 In light of the values listed above, I hope you will all reflect on what you imagine this community can become with the contribution of the gifts we each have to share with one another in the coming year. 

 Some other questions that might help us reflect:

• Do I want us to stay gathering as a Catholic community--or not?
• If yes, what do I sense to be the purpose of that continued connection?
• What am I willing to give of myself to foster that kind of continued connection?
• What do I need from the rest of the community as we move forward together?

As you ponder and pray, I encourage you to notice what comes up for you as you hold these questions in your awareness. If possible, jot down what you notice, especially what might surprise you. I have learned over my life that God is full of surprises. Generally God's surprises leave me with a feeling of clarity and solidity, even as they may be completely unexpected. God's directions may shake me up a bit on the surface even as I may feel aware deeper down that they contain truth for me. I tend to feel consoled by the awareness that comes to me, even if it might have never been one I imagined before!

Possible topics for this general leadership decision-making meeting:

Last August we named the topics we would like our large group decision-making meetings to consider:

• review of our statements of values and purpose,
• selection of leaders,
• general direction/focus we desire for our educational and spiritual development,
• general allocation of the budget,
• "backbone" of our liturgies.
• general plan for our future meeting dates while we are all present

We also indicated last August that we would like our leaders (a smaller group than the whole community)  to make decisions on speakers and other special events and presentations, to oversee our liturgies, to handle our connections to the national communion; to help create any bylaws we might need, to establish a budget, to look for a possible permanent location to meet (if we want that), to collectively authorize spending over $1,000, handle matters related to the tithing and donations, to tend to the specifics of the liturgy, and to see that we have food to eat for our fellowship time. These kinds of decisions would be ones would be more likely decided by leaders in monthly or quarterly meetings rather than the annual or semi-annual one.

Given we do need to call forth leadership of this community to stay viable, I invite you to ponder who you would like to nominate for our 2008 board leaders--the names that go on our state paperwork and that reflect those who will lead us in our decisions and processes to develop into the kind of Catholic faith community we desire to be. You could send those names to Linda or Louise or myself between now and mid-January, and we will let those who have been nominated known about that nomination so they can pray about it.  

These will be among the sorts of topics we address on February 3. Linda Mains, Louise McAllister and I will chat this week how to help guide our community through these topics. Our group decision-making time begins at 1 p.m. at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Mercer Island. 

Prayers to start our meeting on February 3

We will begin this meeting with brief prayer in the Celtic vein.  February 1 is the feast of St. Brigid, one of the most significant spiritual leaders of the Celtic Christian Church in Ireland. She was widely admired for her deep compassion and effective leadership of the early church there. For the Celts, February 1 is a time when the transition from winter to spring is celebrated.

Given that the root meaning of Lent is "spring," and Lent begins on February 6, three days after our meeting, this gathering seems well timed for us to allow our prayer to help us cross the threshold from winter darkness into spring light and from our community's past into our future. In Celtic spiritual thinking, unexpected things can happen in the threshold times, also called a "liminal space."

(I must admit to an ever-increasing interest in bringing a Celtic spirituality into our Spiritus Dei prayer gatherings. I see the Celtic Christian spirituality as a way in our day, with our current focus on the whole of creation and our earth's global health, to link the ancient Christian ways with new scientific insights into our universe. Celtic spirituality also offers us stories and rituals to encourage our celebration in the Divine as revealed in this created world. It is dedicated to seeing the beauty and good of all creation and to noticing what is being transformed around us and within us!

I thank you for your trust in me as a pastoral leader this past year. I do value the opportunity to support this community in being as open as possible to God at work within us and among us,

In trust of all that has been, is now, and will be,

Eileen