As I finish my last few bites of ‘jungle squash’[1] and set down my fork, I look out the glass door frame across our hillside. It’s only a few minutes past seven in the evening, yet already the light of the sky is fading. The work of the day is done, and our family is settling into the slower rhythms of the darkness. It’s September, and there’s lots still left to do before winter comes. I feel the anxiety of wanting to push my active work into the night as I pull out the kneeler and light the candle to start Vespers. There will be time the next morning to create and control. Right now, it’s time to let go.
Part of our vision and commitment at Metanoia is to build a culture of human flourishing, in body, soul and spirit.[2] In this post, I turn my attention to our experiment with developing a culture that supports the life of the spirit. The spirit (pneuma in the New Testament) is the aspect of each person that is most transcendent and is already aligned with God. It is the ‘image and likeness of God’ within each of us according to the Genesis story of creation. Is it the place of the ‘Divine indwelling’ as understood in Christian theology. What’s essential to understand about the spirit is that it cannot be distorted by sin or illusion. Our spirits can be covered over or obscured by our brokenness, inner division, or inner blindness, but they cannot be harmed. The soul is the part of the human person that can be ‘lost’ and ‘saved’. The spirit remains whole and pure, silently and patiently waiting for our healing and restoration to shine forth in the splendor of divine life.
Because the spirit is an ever present, divine aspect of our human experience, there is nothing we can do to manipulate or control it. ‘What is born of spirit is spirit…. The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound that it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.” (John 3:6,8) If we cannot control or guide the spirit, how then can we build a culture that is of spirit?
We’ve found that the best thing we can do to support the life of the spirit is to create a life of spaciousness. The spirit is always ready to awaken, but we need to have the spaciousness and openness to allow us to experience that awakening. In 2017, when Lisa and I were guiding a 40-day canoe pilgrimage on the Connecticut River, I was amazed at home many people experienced profound spiritual awakenings along our journey. What surprised me was that we did little to no spiritual teaching. In earlier years, I was accustomed to leading retreats where I would stand in front of groups and give talks and presentations, and also lead guided meditations. On the pilgrimage, we simply kept everyone well fed and safe, held a structure of regular daily prayer, and encouraged guests to abide in silence through our first hour of paddling. This structure supported a spaciousness that, coupled with intimate contact with nature, provided fertile ground for spiritual awakening. Our pilgrims didn’t need to be taught, they simply needed a structure that gave space for the awakening of what was already present. Silence and solitude are powerful spiritual tools precisely because the spirit is already whole and alive. The Kingdom of God is already at hand,[3] if we are awake to perceive it.
We’ve tried to incorporate something of this same structure into our home life. What are the structures that have been most helpful in giving space for the spirit?
Liturgical prayer- We have a rhythm of stopping for prayer 5 times a day (the ‘Liturgy of the Hours’). When we are faithful to all five times (and we often miss some!), we will have spent about two hours in prayer each day, and about half of that in silent prayer. We don’t always feel like praying. In fact, it’s when one of us is most caught up in an ego agenda that the prayer structure is doing its best work. It forces us to stop, lay down the attachment, and turn to God. Many times, these hours serve to interrupt an egoic drive that is (unconsciously) guiding my actions in the minutes or hours before the prayer. I find it immensely clarifying to remember that I’m not trying to attain anything (such as peace, quiet, good feelings, or even a felt sense of God’s presence) in prayer. I’m simply showing up in faith to let go and allow God and the spirit to be present.
I’ve found that regular formal prayer is one of the keys to my being awake for spontaneous breakthroughs of prayerful intimacy with God throughout the day. When I show up for the discipline of prayer, even when I don’t feel like it, I’m more likely to spontaneously fall into the realm of the spirit while going for a walk, framing a wall, or cooking a meal later in the day.
Relationship with nature– The natural world abides in a rhythm of spaciousness. When I stop to pay attention to the sunrise, to the direction and speed of the clouds overhead, to the new growth on a tree or a garden plant, I’m drawn in to this same spacious rhythm. Simply by tuning in to the natural world, I’m brought into an inner state where the spirit can be felt and known. We’ve tried to make choices that bring this relationship into our daily life by gathering wild foods, growing gardens and raising animals, heating with firewood and using candles and minimal lighting after dark. Each way we’re tied into the land provides another tie into the spacious rhythms of the earth and gives the spirit space to be known.
Years ago, Fr. Martin (the prior of Mt. Saviour Benedictine Monastery at the time) told me that the aging monastic community had once discussed selling their sheep herd and farm, realizing that they could make more money off the interest than they could from agricultural production. Yet they ended up keeping their flock, to their own economic disadvantage, because of the spiritual value of the monks being tied into the cycles of the earth through the sheep farm. It’s a wonderful example of a culture where decisions are made based on the primacy of spiritual well-being.
Manual labor– Another structure we’ve learned from the Benedictines is the value of manual labor. Simple, repetitive work with our hands can be another space where the spirit breaks into daily life. Brother David Steindl-Rast writes beautifully about doing the dishes as a spiritual practice. Dishwashing can be done in haste in order to finish the task (an ego agenda), or it can be done from a place of relaxation and awareness (giving space for the spirit). It’s just about as effective either way, but one attitude gives room for an encounter with the spirit, where the other does not. This same distinction holds true for cutting, splitting and carrying wood, feeding chickens, hauling water, weeding the garden, hanging out the laundry, and myriad other simple physical tasks. By setting up a life where we have many of these daily chores, we have many daily opportunities to open to the spirit in the midst of work with our hands.[4]
Relationship with technology– We’ve found that some interaction with technology is necessary for our way of life, but that an unconscious use of technology can severely stifle the life of the spirit. Our current setup is to keep internet access to an ‘office’ setup in an outbuilding that we need to walk to in order to go online. It gives a degree of separation and makes it a bit harder to get sucked into the digital world – though it still happens from time to time. Our goal is to use each technology as a specific tool for specific tasks, but to reduce or eliminate the use of technology for distraction and entertainment. I’ve also found it helpful to limit my consumption of media – while being informed can feel like an essential, responsible task, it can easily snowball into a major source of preoccupation and distraction.
Connecting to the ‘Cloud of Witnesses’ – Because we live in a culture which has little awareness of the spirit, we’ve found it’s helpful and necessary to link our life on the homestead with the lives of others who are prioritizing the life of the spirit. This includes cultivating personal friendships with others who are seeking God and maintaining ongoing relationships with communities of faith (our local church, prayer groups, and monastic communities). It also includes regular study of the lives and writings of those who drank deeply of the well of the spirit in past ages. Reading the lives and writings of the saints serves to ‘normalize’ a life centered around God and the spirit, and to help us to place our lives in the context of this ancient and ever new expression of human life. As humans, our perception and awareness are always shaped in significant ways by the culture we live in. By including the saints in our life (and minimizing our engagement with secular pop culture), we help to build a culture where commitment to the life of the spirit is normalized. In other words, when I’m immersed in the secular culture, our way of life can start to feel crazy. When I’m immersed in the culture and writings of the saints, our life here starts to feel sane and the secular culture starts to look crazy. At the end of the day, I’d rather throw my lot in with the Carthusians than the Kardashians.
These are a few of the ways we’re trying to develop a culture that gives space for the spirit, in ourselves and in others who stay with us. It’s an ongoing process, a dynamic experiment that shifts and evolves as we learn and forget, as we open and close, and continue to seek God in the midst of daily life. What are the ways you’ve found most helpful to open to the spirit?
In this post, I’ve reflected on how we’re trying to support the life of the spirit (pneuma) at Metanoia. In future posts, we’ll look at our efforts to support the life of the soul (psyche) and body (soma), as all three are essential to full human flourishing in God.
[1]Our nickname for the squash (and other produce) that somewhat miraculously grew out of a garden plot we planted and stopped tending to two weeks later. This squash found a way to produce while growing in community with an incredible plethora of both annual weeds and perennial field plants.
[2]Body (soma in Biblical Greek), Soul (psyche), and Spirit (pneuma) is the ancient Jewish and Christian understanding of the triple nature of the human person. It has parallels in the modern holistic health notion of ‘body, mind and spirit’. The ancient concept of ‘soul’ incorporates both the mental and emotional aspect of the human person, as well what we now call ‘the unconscious’. I feel it offers a more complete understanding of our inner makeup than the modern sense of ‘mind’ in the body-mind-spirit template.
[3]Mark 1:15, Matthew 4:17
[4]The repetitive, simple physical activities involved in hiking, canoeing, or camping can provide this same spacious environment. In addition to contact with nature, I believe this is a major reason why many people find these activities restorative.
Firewood has been a significant part of the homestead work this week - felling trees, bucking into rounds, splitting and stacking. As we prepare for our fourth winter on this land, we are on track to meet an exciting Vermont milestone: having firewood ready for the next two winters!
This post is part of the ongoing series:
- Cult, Culture, Cultivation and Conversation -
Imagining a vital human community
Peter Maurin, who started the Catholic Worker movement along with Dorothy Day, spoke of renewing society through the practice of ‘cult, culture and cultivation.’ Writing and speaking in the early 20th century, Maurin saw Western society in precipitous decline and envisioned a wholistic, spirit-centered restoration of vital human community. In our Metanoia reflections, we are adopting Maurin’s template, while adding a fourth ‘c’ of ‘conversation’.
- Cult -
Reflections on spiritual practice and growth, both communal (ritual, liturgy) and personal (spiritual discipline)
- Culture -
Exploration of human culture, renewed by spiritual insight and just relationships between people and with the land
- Cultivation -
The work of building fertility and abundance in land and discovering ways to live in healthy interdependence with the natural world
- Conversation -
Spiritual dialogue with pressing social and cultural issues and dialogue with other thinkers and perspectives beyond our vision at Metanoia.