What Condition is Your Spiritual Condition In?: Four Questions to Ponder

I recently enjoyed a week off duty. It was lovely and oh so needed. A time to truly let my soul catch up with my body. A time to see what condition my spiritual condition was in. It is oh so easy to get caught up in the doing of life that you forget to experience the being. It is vital to take time away and recharge in order to return to fully engage with life. I came back refreshed and straight into leading worship.

I slept well on Sunday night and awoke raring to go. The only problem was that my head was so empty that I had no idea where to go on this week’s little adventure. So off I went to the gym and thought if I get into my body surely something will come. Well thoughts came and went, but nothing stuck. I came home and showered and ate, but still nothing stuck. So, I thought I’d have a look at Facebook and see what my friends, all over the world, were talking about. Still nothing came. I then thought I will have a look at Facebook memories and see if there was anything from the past that might offer inspiration. There is was a wonderful reflection "The Four Questions" from Rev Bill Darlison, the retired minister from the Dublin congregation, who now lives in retirement with the lovely Morag back home in Pontefract. It just seemed perfect for where I was at. So for the rest of this "blogspot" I will explore the four questions that Bill proposes we ask ourselves from William J Bausch book “The Yellow Brick Road”. The Four questions being “When did I stop singing?”, “When did I stop dancing?”, “When did I stop being enchanted by stories?”, “When did I become uncomfortable with silence?”

Bill introduces the four questions with the following reflection:

"We all have periods of spiritual malaise, world-weariness, soul-sickness, times when we feel oppressed by life, or disengaged from things, and we can't quite fathom the reason why. At such times writes William J Bausch (in his book The Yellow Brick Road), we should ask ourselves four questions."

So the first question: “When did I stop singing?” Bill reflects:

“He doesn't mean by this: when did you stop picking up the hairbrush and pretending to be Mariah Carey? Or: when did you stop singing a selection of Elvis's greatest hits in the bath? The question goes much deeper and really means: When did you stop singing your own song? When did you surrender your own uniqueness and decide to live an imitative or conformist life? When the voice is stifled the spirit suffers.”

As soon as I read this I was reminded of a question, humorously asked by a friend, on Facebook, the other day. She wrote “Does singing ‘Spirit of Life’ in the shower in the morning constitute a spiritual practice? I’m asking for a friend.” There were some lovely responses to this. I remember thinking well it’s as good a prayer as any song ever sung and I am sure that it said something of the persons spirit.

It also brought immediately to mind the following piece of wisdom “Listening for Our Song” by David S Blanchard...it has always touched a place deep in the soul of me...

"On sabbatical in East Africa, I heard a story of a people who believe that we are each created with our own song. Their tradition as a community is to honor that song by singing it as welcome when a child is born, as comfort when the child is ill, in celebration when the child marries, and in affirmation and love when death comes. Most of us were not welcomed into the world in that way. Few of us seem to know our song.

It takes a while for many of us to figure out which is our song, and which is the song that others would like us to sing. Some of us are slow learners. I heard my song not necessarily from doing extraordinary things in exotic places, but also from doing some pretty ordinary things in some routine places. For every phrase I heard climbing Kilimanjaro, I learned another in a chair in a therapist’s office. For every measure I heard in the silence of a retreat, I heard another laughing with my girls. For every note I heard in the wind on the beach at Lamu, I gleaned more from spending time with a dying friend as her children sang her song back to her. What came to astound me was not that the song appeared, but that it was always there.

I figure that the only way I could have known it for my own was if I had heard it before, before memory went to work making sense and order of the mystery of our beginning. Our songs sing back to us something of our essence, something of our truth, something of our uniqueness. When our songs are sung back to us, it is not about approval, but about recognizing our being and our belonging in the human family.

It is good to know our songs by heart for those lonely times when the world is not singing them back to us. That’s usually a good time to start humming to yourself, that song that is most your own.

They can be heard as songs of love or of longing, songs of encouragement or of comfort, songs of struggle or of security. But most of all, they are the songs of life, giving testimony to what has been, giving praise for all we’re given, giving hope for all we strive for, giving voice to the great mystery that carries each of us in and out of this world."

...What is your song? When was the last time you sang it? You have been given a voice, the world so desperately needs to hear your unique voice, it is a gift that life needs to hear.

Question 2: “When did I stop dancing?” Bill reflects

“This refers to the relationship you have with your body. James Joyce tells us that a certain Mr Duffy "lived a short distance from his body", and a young man interviewed on television recently announced, "I thought my body was a useful vehicle for carrying my head around." We are taught to feel disgust at our body's odours and secretions, shame at our sexuality, dissatisfaction with our appearance. We are taught to suppress our laughter and to hide our tears. Is it any wonder that we are confused and that we retreat from the body, ignore it, punish it, abuse it, and stop dancing with delight? And yet, according to Walt Whitman, "The scent of these arm-pits (is) aroma finer than prayer." How far away from your body do you live?”

Again this immediately remined me of four lines by Eduardo Galeano from “Walking Words". He wrote:

“The Church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business
The body says: I am a fiesta”

The body and our relationship with it are many and varied. So many people live with deep shame about their physical being, their bodies. We don’t really like to talk about our bodies. People are often comfortable talking about the mind, their thoughts, and their opinions about things. We are even able to talk about emotions, our feelings, these days. That said so many of us are still uncomfortable talking about the body, the home of our thoughts and feelings. Without the body we have nothing, we have no life.

This brings to mind an interesting phrase “embodied spirituality”. Which Jorge N. Ferrer, professor of religious psychology has written of:

“Embodied spirituality regards the body as subject, as the home of the complete human being, as a source of spiritual insight, as a microcosm of the universe and the Mystery, and as pivotal for enduring spiritual transformation.

The body is not an “It” to be objectified and used for the goals or even spiritual ecstasies of the conscious mind, but a “Thou,” an intimate partner with whom the other human dimensions can collaborate in the pursuit of ever-increasing forms of liberating wisdom.”

Embodied spirituality is about fully inhabiting our lives, our thoughts, our feelings our relationships with ourselves, our lives, each other and the mystery that connects all life. It’s about being fully present in our bodies and lives and therefore fully experiencing our potential and being fully alive. Through the body we experience what it is to be fully alive. They say “listen to your body”, sage wisdom indeed. “Sacred the body” is a hymn I love to sing and sacred the body is indeed.

...So how far do you live from your body? Do you live a disembodied life? We need live within our being and the world needs us to truly dance the rhythm of life....The key is to live your life as if it were a dance...

"All of My Life is a Dance" by Nancy Wood

All of my life is a dance.
When I was young and feeling the earth
My steps were quick and easy.
The beat of the earth was so loud
That my drum was silent beside it.
All of my life rolled out from my feet
Like my land which had no end as far as I could see.
The rhythm of my life was pure and free.
As I grew older my feet kept dancing so hard
That I wore a spot in the earth
At the same time I made a hole in the sky.
I danced to the sun and the rain
And the moon lifted me up
So that I could dance to the stars.
My head touched the clouds sometimes
And my feet danced deep in the earth
So that I became the music I danced to everywhere.
It was the music of life.
Now my steps are slow and hard
And my body fails my spirit.
Yet my dance is still within me and
My song is the air I breathe.
My song insists that I keep dancing forever.
My song insists that I keep rhythm
With all of the earth and the sky.
My song insists that I will never die.

From "Many Winters", by Nancy Wood

The third question ask "When did I stop being enchanted by stories?" Bill reflects:

“When did fiction and fantasy lose their appeal? When did you become obsessed by facts and start restricting your reading to biography, history, and natural science? All of these are vitally important, but they don't nurture the soul like stories do. Ask yourself why is it that all the great religious teachers used stories, and why JK Rowling is set to become the first billionaire author in history. What chord has she struck in children (and adults, too) in her re-working of the old myths? We need history and biography and science, but we need magic and enchantment, too, or the soul withers and dies.”

Stories and story-telling have been distilling wisdom throughout the generations and I have no doubt that this will continue on into eternity. They have revealed universal truths, they have spoken deep into the soul of those who have cared to listen, introducing them to magic, mystery and the possibility of otherness. These stories have expanded the imagination and have been windows onto something beyond the confines of pure reason. Life is far more than the sum of it's parts.

The great sages such as Jesus and the Buddha excelled in storytelling. They knew that through a story they could reach every aspect of the person receiving their truth; they knew that the listener could relate to a story and it could open them up to new and deeper truths. A story really does put flesh on the word. Shaman and elders of every tradition also shared their wisdom through telling the tale around camp fires and other gatherings. They drew their listeners to deeper visions of life with imagery and symbolism.

When we listen to the great stories and when we listen one another’s stories we connect not only to each other but to all people at all times, past, present and future and of course to that greater reality present in all life. These stories bring a zest to life; these stories help us to see ourselves reflected in a different light. Through identifying we also see our own absurdities and we can laugh at our own holy foolishness. This helps us see a new, a different, perspective. A great story builds a bridge from our particular life to the timeless, the universal, they connect us to the whole. They are windows that give us a glimpse of something way beyond ourselves.

So when did you lose that sense of enchantment and imagination and get lost in the realm of prosaic fact? We need imagination in order to extend ourselves and one another beyond the limits of what we believe life is. Others need us to express our imagination so that they too can glimpse beyond the confines of their perceived limits too.

The fourth and final question asks: “When did I become uncomfortable with silence?” Again, Bill reflects

“When did it become necessary for you to turn on the radio first thing in the morning, play your personal stereo or car radio on the way to work, and sit in front of the television all night? When, as a culture, did we begin to accept piped music in lifts, loud music in pubs? When did we become comfortable with mobile phone noise, road traffic noise, aeroplanes and, police sirens? "I think the intelligence of a person is in inverse proportion to the amount of noise they can bear," writes Schopenhaur. The body craves noise and distraction, but the soul needs silence.”

Silence is vital and we need not fear it, instead we should befriend it, we need not fill the space between our bodies or our words. In the silence inspiration and clarity comes, it helps us to make sane decisions about our lives. It is often in the silence that I find a deeper connection to God, to the ground of all being, to that which runs through and connects all life, the still small voice of conscience deep within. What the Quakers describe as “That of God in everyone”

“Silence is Golden” it is so vital to the active life. We all need time alone, in silence, in solitude; a time to commune with that greater reality, a time alone with God; a time alone with our deeper selves. Prayer and meditation is as vital to me today as air, food and water. My body and mind cannot function without these elements; my body and mind cannot maintain good health without my soul being fed by prayer and meditation, by humbly entering into silence.

The spiritual and religious life has to be both active and open. To give ourselves fully to the lives we live, we need to ensure that we ourselves are in fit spiritual condition. Therefore like the great sages sometimes we all need to wander off into the wilderness, commune with our God and feed our souls as we enter into silence.

So what do you think of these four questions: “When did I stop singing?”, “When did I stop dancing?”, “When did I stop being enchanted by stories?”, “When did I become uncomfortable with silence?”

Maybe something to reflect on in the coming weeks. If you find yourself lacking in any area perhaps ask yourselves what you can do to resolve them?