|
|
|
Life Design Ezine>
GATHERING COURAGE THROUGH LISTENING
October 1, 2009
What if pausing and listening patiently could give us greater power to see clearly, to live courageously?
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Since 1990, I have been a practitioner and scholar of meditation across religious traditions. I have also explored the language and spiritual practices of spiritual discernment and have grown particularly intrigued by the mystical use of silence in the wisdom traditions of Buddhism, Daoism, Indian Vedanta and Medieval Christianity.
By following the plight and meditative practices of key spiritual luminaries of the 20th century, like Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, have used the power of non-violent organizing in their goals to throw off depending on the colonizing powers of their day. Many anti-war activists, like the Vietnamese Zen Monk—friends of Dr. Martin Luther King—Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Khong—offer meditations for peace in their Zen community in southwestern France.
Eastern meditation rituals used for personal and social transformation (whether Zen, Tibetan, or Indian) have become very popular in North America as well as in Europe, especially over the last 70 years. Many of us in the work of spiritual discernment have studied a variety of these meditative techniques in our efforts to foster clarity for others and ourselves.
Another meditation movement has been afoot for the last 30 years: the movement or re-appropriation of an ancient practice as old as the psalms called, “centering prayer.”
Centering prayer is considered, by some Christians, to be a method of prayer, which prepares the believer to receive the gift of God's presence, traditionally called contemplative prayer. According to their website: www.centeringprayer.com,
"Centering Prayer facilitates the movement from more active modes of prayer—verbal, mental or affective prayer—into a receptive prayer of resting in God. It emphasizes prayer as a personal relationship with God. At the same time, it is a discipline to foster and serve this relationship by a regular, daily practice of prayer. It is Trinitarian in its source, Christ-centered in its focus, and ecclesial in its effects; that is, it builds communities of faith."
The resurgence of this practice in its popular form has been lead by Roman Catholic Abbot from the Trappist tradition, Father Thomas Keating, and has followed the revered footsteps of another Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.
Western movements, like their Eastern contemporaries, have over the last century transitioned from being individually-focused practices for personal spiritual attainment to integrating collective forms of spiritual transformation. Whether they express this contemplative disposition in a Buddhist sangha, an orthodox monastery or a lay-contemplative prayer group, one might say, “the personal has become communal” or “spiritual integrity depends on collective intimacy.”
This leads me to bring to light another “discernment practice” often utilized by lay and professional spiritual contemplatives. This practice is called “clearness committee” and it happens frequently on retreats that foster “circles of trust”—something also inspired by Thomas Merton and developed further by his Quaker contemporary, respected writer, lecturer, teacher and activist, Dr. Parker J. Palmer.
WHAT IS A CLEARNESS COMMITTEE?
According to Dr. Palmer, who writes about Clearness Committees in A Hidden Wholeness this is a method of discernment that was invented by the Quakers, a method that protects individual identity and integrity while drawing on the wisdom of other trustworthy people. From their beginnings over three hundred years ago, Quakers needed a way to draw on both inner and communal resources to deal with personal problems because they had no clerical leaders to “solve” their problems for them. The Clearness Committee is testimony to the fact that there are no external authorities on life’s deepest issues, not clergy or therapists or scholars; there is only the authority that lies within each of us waiting to be heard.
Behind the Clearness Committee is a simple but crucial conviction: each of us has an "inner teacher," a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems. But that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference. The function of the Clearness Committee is not to give advice or “fix” people from the outside in but rather to help people remove the interference so that they can discover their own wisdom from the inside out. If we do not believe in the reality of inner wisdom, the Clearness Committee can become an opportunity for manipulation. But if we respect the power of the inner teacher, the Clearness Committee can be a remarkable way to help someone name and claim his or her deepest truth.
The Clearness Committee’s work is guided by some simple but crucial rules. Find out more from Quaker Parker Palmer’s online essay, “Clearness Committee.”
|
|
