Joining the Conversation
By Rev. Elizabeth Rechter, Executive Director
Wise Ones with the Moon, Santa Ana, California 2022
When I was introduced to the art of writing sermons, I received advice that became life advice. At the beginning of the week, read your texts and enter your week like a Lectio Divina. Let your life teach you what the texts mean. As the rabbis say, sacred texts must prove their truth in every generation. Let the rhythm of your household tasks and your relationships speak to you. How does the news cycle inform? Listen to the voice of the natural world. Then, when you sit down to begin creating, then you look at the commentaries, and not before. And when you see what scholars have written, listen. Do you think they got it right?
My professor was teaching us to trust our own knowing, our own wisdom. It doesn’t mean others don’t have wisdom, challenging insights, helpful and unique experiences, but they are voices joining the conversation we are already engaging. This professor, Barbara Hall, put her thoughts into a book, Joining the Conversation. I don’t recall much of the content anymore, but I kept the title.
Victoria Loorz, in her book Church of the Wild, opens up the history of this Hebrew word-conversation. It apparently was originally the term used in Genesis for word. In the beginning was the word. She notes a closer translation to the original: “In the beginning was the conversation.” The Gospel writer John picks it up to begin his story of God come to dwell among us: the word became flesh and dwelt among us becomes the Conversation became flesh. There is meant to be communication flowing between the Divine and her creation. It is why the one who said, I AM the light of the world also said, you are the light of the world. You. You, part of the conversation.
This is likely why I have a strong allergy to celebrity culture. I don’t like it. I don’t like how we are prone to create hierarchies where there are none. We do this to others, and we do it to ourselves. When we live in a society that values what we do above who we are, we are set up for celebrity culture. And we are prone to the sink hole of comparisons.
While I am exposed to this culture, my spirit resists it. In Spirit’s kingdom, everyone is a celebrity, every life is of equal value. But in a culture where our doing is elevated and becomes a metric, celebrities follow. The top of the class, the number one sales person, the best preacher, the best of the best. And the rest? Who are they? Where are they? And when this culture bleeds into the spiritual world, it is corrosive. We can be spiritually encouraged by another’s wisdom, but not at the expense of our own. Encouragement is good, but encouragement is rooted in God and can come from everywhere and anyone. It is the conversation that matters, and the community it creates.
The practice of Spiritual Direction is an invitation into the sacred conversation going on in your life with a companion who listens with you, helping you hear your part of the dialogue. Joining the conversation means accepting the invitation to be part of it, believing you are invited, and listening well to the others and their knowing.
A story from the Desert Monastics says it this way:
Abbot Arsenius had a well-deserved reputation as a holy man, a learned man, a scholar, and an ascetic. He was rightly exalted and revered. The peasant spent his life cultivating his farm on the banks of the Nile as it flooded and receded from year to year. It was a difficult and largely thankless task, yet in its simple way maintained the community around it.
One day, the story goes, Abba Arsenius was asking the old Egyptian man for advice about what he was thinking. But someone overheard the conversation and said to him, “Abba Arsenius, why is a person like you, who has such a great knowledge of Greek and Latin, asking a peasant like this about his thoughts?” He replied, “Indeed, I have learned the knowledge of Greek and Latin, yet I have not learned even the alphabet of this peasant.”
Stillpoint hopes this blogpost is another invitation to join the Conversation, a gathering place to connect with other spiritual companions and Holy Listeners. I will continue to offer my voice, but I desire that we will hear from the rich well of wisdom from within our organization, fostering connection and trust among us. We hope to hear your voice as well, with the use of the comment section. I hope you will add your voice as something wells up in you in response. Maybe it is a prayer. Maybe it is word of gratitude, or shared wisdom. Our authors will commit to being part of the conversation emerging there as well.
We desire to share stories of people who have been helped by the work that we do, both as spiritual companions, and as members of The Conversation. We hope it will serve as support for our journeys. I hope you will join us.
Blessings for your Journey,
Elizabeth+
