Seasons Change
By Colleen Thomas, Associate Program Director
“We’re all just walking each other home.”
~ Ram Dass
It is almost a year to the day of my writing that I started the long solo drive east. After 17 years in Los Angeles I found myself driving back across the country towards home. Lately as I meet new friends and find new spiritual community here in the Washington D.C. metro-area where I spent my childhood and pre-college years, I find myself telling people that Los Angeles was the sacred ground of my spiritual transformation. It’s as though the God of my father and mother sent me out from everything I knew so that I would have a new encounter with a new God. I call this god, “The God of my Formative Years.”
Hindsight is 20/20 they say. While I was a young seminary student, I met Ravi Verma in a midday Eucharist at a church just across the way from my campus. He became my first spiritual director before I even knew what spiritual direction was. I only knew I needed someone to listen. There were things happening in me that needed sifting. I even recall the question that began forming in my heart then, nearly 15 years ago now - Where is home?
Through discernment with Ravi and my parish priest, the late Rev. Zelda Kennedy, I found my way to a three-year art of spiritual direction program, met Jim Finley, discovered Centering Prayer, experienced my first dark night of the soul, journeyed through a year-long Ignatian 19th Annotation…and then suddenly, found myself thrust into an unplanned career in television.
During those years working as a producer, I’d often work 7 days a week in different cities all over Los Angeles and across the US. I did my best to find my way home to spiritual community after a three, or four, or five month gig wrapped. In these times of welcomed unemployment, I quickly returned to the stillness and silence I would crave while working 14-hour days on set. I’d wander my neighborhood streets of Venice, walk through the canals, watch the sunset on the beach, practice yoga at dawn, visit Jim Finley’s meditation group at St. Monica’s parish, and dream about a life uninterrupted by aggressive work and a demanding schedule.
I found I could easily pick up where I left off in my contemplative journey, but in truth, I never found I was able to adequately sustain my practice while working. It is only in retrospect that I can see Spirit was working even when I was too busy or tired to notice. And though I would lament the disruption to intimacy and companionship, God never actually stopped companioning me.
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change, Changes You. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”
~ Octavia E. Butler
Now, I certainly won’t tell you it's not best to maintain a discipline and regular prayer practice to the best of your ability. But the truth is, more often than not, life just happens to us. And we are not all built for the routine of regimented daily discipline.
For three years I worked at a yoga studio and knew all the regulars by name. I would observe with curiosity the “old timers” who showed up to practice at the same time, everyday. They’d been doing it for years and I’d bet money they’re doing it today. As an impressionable 30 year-old, I admired them…tried to make myself be like them…chastised myself for my failure to do it like them.
Now, 16 years after I was first introduced to contemplative practice I maintain some semblance of regular discipline, but it still doesn’t look like those people who practice yoga in the same studio, at the same time, every day, year after year. My practice looks like my practice. And it changes like the seasons.
Spring is here again in Maryland. In a year’s time, I’ve seen spring quickly turn to summer, summer to fall. Watched trees and flowers die in winter and now awaken to new life again. I doubt trees fear each time they begin to lose their leaves. It’s more likely death just happens to them and they stand, bearing the cold, the darkness of shorter days, the unforgiving wind. They trust their maker for new life to come again. And it does.
The spiritual journey is like the tree who stands through four seasons a year not wondering whither or when they will die or spring to life again. She is transformed whether she intends to or not. And I, like the tree, received the grace to practice and found grace sufficient, and that God’s consistency is made perfect in my inconsistency. And by grace I accepted that my own nature, like God’s, is to change and be changed, and be changed, and be changed…
If like me, you find comfort in traveling with companions, I invite you to consider taking The Spiritual Journey with our Stillpoint community and faculty. Beginning in the Fall of this year, we have many ways in which you can travel and deepen your relationship with God, others and yourself. You are welcome.
Colleen Thomas is a Spiritual Director and Stillpoint's Associate Program Director. A long-time practitioner of Centering Prayer, Colleen leads contemplative prayer groups for the ‘40s and Under’ community and works closely with Contemplative Outreach's diversity outreach initiative. Colleen earned her MA in Theology and Art from Fuller Theological Seminary. She worked in television in Los Angeles for 10 years before relocating to her hometown of Washington D.C. where she continues her spiritual formation and explores her creative passions while enjoying the close companionship of her family. You can discover more about her work and explore her writing at https://soulcarela.com/ and hear her in conversation about Centering Prayer and the contemplative life on the Opening Minds, Opening Hearts podcast.