It begins: building a new Shekina space.

When Chinua and I moved to Pai, it was with the intent of beginning a meditation community similar to Shekina in Goa. This past year has been a settling year. We’ve been learning language, getting to know people here, playing music, making connections-- doing all the things you need to do to get into life in a new place. I didn’t want it to take a long time and I’ve been very impatient at times, sitting on the bus trying to make it move faster with my knees and the muscles in my cheeks.

But sometimes we wait for God. He has his time and we don’t know what’s going on, but we wait. We looked and looked for what would be our own space, a place to gather, to be the place for our circles and meditation here. Sometime in May, a friend told us about a property for rent that he thought might be something we could use, a lot like what we’re looking for. I walked out to the property. Chinua was away for five weeks, and I remember the Skype call I had with him.

“I’m in love,” I said. I took Miriam out there and she loved it too. And Chinua, when he came, saw all the things we saw and more. We started dreaming.

The property is small, just the right size for beginnings. It’s for rent, rather than for sale, also good for beginnings. It’s close to town, close enough for people to walk out to us in no time at all, and yet when you walk out to it, crossing the river in the process, you enter a little space of quiet and you can see for a mile, all the way to the mountains. It’s lovely.

We signed a lease on June 15th.
We started building on July 2nd.

We’re making progress, and we’re so excited; planning and sketching, dreaming and comparing ideas. We talk about the feeling of absolutely everything. The words we use in designing are: simple, welcoming, sacred, artful. We ask ourselves questions: Can you see the doorway when you walk in? Will you feel drawn in? What does the way the buildings are arranged do to your headspace as you see them? It’s all important.

There were two buildings already on the property. We kept the kitchen (re-did the walls) but took down the bamboo hut, and now we’re in the process of building a large meditation/gathering space and a bathroom.

We’re nearly ready to begin here. And of course, the timing of God is perfect. If we had tried to do all this a year ago, without the amazing connections we have now, we’d be spinning our wheels. If we tried to do it without being able to speak Thai as we are now, we’d be incredibly frustrated. It shows me yet again: Wait, oh wait on the Lord.

Beautiful Community: Values

There are many ways to attempt to keep a community moving toward an idea or purpose, rather than away from it. One way is to write a set of rules that the members of the community should follow, then have the leaders of the community make sure people abide by them.

This is a terrible idea. Honestly, take my word for it. There is nothing worse than an adult feeling like a kid because of a well meant but misguided rule book, and a visionary feeling like a policeman or policewoman. I shudder, even writing about it.

But there has to be something. Doesn't there? Because if there isn't anything that keeps the structure of the community in place, how is it intentional? How is it safe? How is it not completely annoying because everything changes all the time?

This is where a written group of ideals comes in, and it needs to be in place from the beginning. Your written values originate with the core group of people who are starting your community. But how do you come up with these ideals- your values? I suggest you sit down together and have a talking circle. (Use a talking stick if you need to- they're very handy and keep more vocal people from trodding over quieter ones.) Ask questions and listen to the answers around the circle.

• What things feel like the most important things in the world to you?
• What things will strip you of the will to live, I mean, the will to remain with your community?
• How do you dream of living, when you have beautiful dreams about life lived in a different way?
• What makes your community different from any other?
• What are your experiences in trying to do things with other people? What have you learned? What are the pitfalls? What would you like to avoid? What would you like to repeat?

Come to the talking circle with the goal of really listening to one another. Write down all the things you think you are best at, as a group. Write down all the things you are worst at. And write down the answers people give to the above questions. Then pass that stick around the circle again and again until you come up with the things that are most important to how you will structure your community.

With what you have at this point, it is not too hard to form a values statement. The purpose of the values statement is that it forms a sort of constitution. It does the work of aligning person to person. It inspires the original feelings and hopes of the community when things get opaque and full of struggle. And when others desire to join your community, you can give them the values statement and ask some simple questions: Do you agree? Can you live by this? The answers to those questions will tell you whether people are a good fit for your community or whether you need to encourage them to live their dreams elsewhere.

Here are a couple of sentences from our values statement, stated in brief (because our statement goes on to explain each sentence.)

We have sentences that describe the beliefs the community is built on:

Each of us is personally responsible before God and also to others in the community to live life in a way that honors Jesus.

And sentences that describe the practices of the community:

We choose to be a community centered around prayer, meditation and worship.

We are a community that practices hospitality.

We are a community that values creativity.

And they go on.  Our values are quite serious because we spend a lot of time with one another in countries around the world, living life together and seeing one another every day. If you have a community of women who love to knit together for those in need, your values might be as simple as: We will be welcoming to newcomers. But maybe you also believe in encouraging local economy, so you write down a value like, We attempt to support our local yarn stores, whenever possible.

Values differ from rules. A rule states: Greet newcomers as soon as they enter the door, or, members must purchase yarn locally. Rules take the thinking out of a value system, and they take ownership away from other members of the community. Rules limit. Values expand. The support of local yarn stores can take many different shapes, (a sale of goods to raise money for those in need, held in the yarn store, which then attracts customers and interest) just as our practice of hospitality can take many different shapes, and these things are not limited to rules when they are expressed as values.

This is a rather silly example, but say our community, because the core members feel strongly about being hospitable, had a rule like Greet newcomers as soon as they enter the door. How would that honor someone perceptive enough to notice people who seem shy, as though they would rather sneak into a circle and be there for a while before talking to anyone?

This is why values trump rules. Rules are for elementary school. In a dynamic, communicative, thriving community, each person will feel that she has something to offer and a statement of values helps her to sort out, for herself, what her offering will be. The health of your community can only be as strong as your understanding of your values.

Beautiful Community: Rhythms of life together.

Last week I wrote about the expectations surrounding community and how to adjust them to be more accepting of what living alongside other people actually entails, how to cultivate an inner acceptance. 

Today I want to talk about the next thing to make community work well, an outer bit of practicality that has everything to do with putting things in the correct order. I think this is one of the easiest things to fumble over. I know we have, many times. 

To have a healthy community, you need to ask and answer questions on a regular basis and come up with community rhythms that help and challenge everyone.

There is a set of questions that I've sketched out, to help with finding out where your community is now, then setting the schedules that will work best for you. I can't tell you how important the order is, here. In a world and culture where we are always scrambling to fit the bill, we tend to come up with ideas of what we should be doing,  and then, when leaks inevitably spring because we've overextended ourselves, we run around and try to plug the holes. So. Here are the questions that seem to work, in the sanest order.

1. What is your vision?

2. Who do you have?

3. What will you do?

4. What/who do you need to do more?

What is your vision?

I strongly believe that a community will be healthier if it has an idea of something it wants to accomplish, if being together is not the end goal, but the way of life that enables everyone to thrive in doing what they believe in. For my community, that would be living and teaching Christian practice among the international community of travelers around the world. For some communities, it may be restoring permaculture methods,  rebuilding a neighborhood in an urban setting, or working with children who are at risk. It may also be something small, like knitting or eating soup or putting photos in albums or listening to stories.

Once you've decided what you are hoping to accomplish, you can dream and make your vision more robust, and you can look at who you have and what kind of community you want to create. Community means togetherness, and you can do togetherness in anyway you want, as long as it is committed. You can be together twice a week, you can live together, you can live near each other. You decide, and you come to  agreement.

Who do you have?

Look around and really see each other? What are you skilled at? What are you passionate about? How much time do each of you have to work with? What are your capabilities? Longings? Dreams? How many families do you have, and how will their children be involved? How will singles and families work together?

What will you do?

When you look at who you have with you, you'll be able to decide what you will do. For example, this year when Chinua and I were in Goa, we and Miriam had a talking circle, as we always do, at the very beginning of the season. We asked each other, "What can we do this season?"

There were three of us who were experienced at guiding meditation, so we decided to have three meditation sessions per week. In past years, when we've had more people with us, we've done them five days a week.

Chinua, a skilled musician, was inspired to be out playing music as much as possible, so we decided to worship together on the beach once or more a week. Chinua was also really excited about leading workshops on aspects of the life of a Jesus follower, so we added that into the week. We all loved Devotion Circles, so we kept that in place on Saturdays. I am in love with gardening and Miriam wanted to learn more about gardening together before she took on the care of our community gardening, so we added a community gardening time. And we took Sunday as a day of rest. Our week ended up looking like this:

Monday: 10:00 AM meditation, 1:00 PM lunch scheduling circle, 5:00 PM worship on the beach
Wednesday: 10:00 AM meditation
Thursday: 9:00 AM community gardening
Friday: 10:00 AM Workshop, 5:00 PM meditation on the beach
Saturday: 5:00 PM Devotion circle and dinner after
Sunday: Rest

These were the rhythms that we cycled through, week after week. In addition, we would meet once a week (during the Monday lunch scheduling circle) and talk about whether there were other things we wanted to do during the week. There were always things we wanted to do, and we managed to make time for a few of them! We hosted two night time concerts. Miriam would often make lunch on Wednesdays, inviting friends from the larger community in our neighborhood. Miriam also had a daily group prayer time, from 8:00 to 9:00 every morning, which was always optional since some of us have children and felt that it wasn't something we wanted to add to our days, as well as preferring a private prayer time.

Some people, looking at this schedule, will say that it is a LOT for a group of people to do together. Some people will say that it's not a lot at all. "That's not community," they say. "You barely do anything together!" That brings me to something that I will write about next week. To form a community that will work, you will need values that do not change, because people's opinions about your community will be many and varied, and you cannot shift with opinions. The things that are unchangeable will allow you to be flexible with other things, the things that can change. Your rhythms and schedules are like crops in your garden, you can change them depending on the season, but you always have the soil underneath, you feed it and take care of it, because your harvest depends on it. This is the deep stuff.

We have a long page of these values. One such value for us is that we do what we are able. We look at who we have, then we decide what to do. It works.

What/who do you need to do more?

Is your vision larger than your current community is capable of sustaining? The answer is not to get everyone to do more, but to ask what you need to grow. Do you need more people? Or more skills?

In our circle of deciding how our seasons will look, we take into account the fact that we have a musician and people who are experienced with guiding meditations. We also have good cooks and people who love gardening and are willing to champion it as a community practice. If we want more, do more of us need to learn to play music? Or do we need to invite more musicians to live with us? If we want to build an earth building, does one of us need to take a course on earth building? Do we need more gardening skills? More people to make our community healthier?

And after all this time, I can say that we always seem to need more skills and more people. We need people! It's something that comes up in our prayers all the time. You can pray for the things you need, and you can work on ways to find what you need.

There are so many variations on making your own community rhythms. I think that often people imagine there's only one way to make a community and see it grow, but the truth is that the need for community lies within all of us and there are as many different ways as there are walks of life. Be free to explore yours!

Next week I'll write about forming community values.

Beautiful Community: Adjusting Expectations.

Community is such a loaded word, isn't it? There seem to be words behind words whenever we bring up the topic of community. Sometimes I don't even like to call what we do community, because I know the word is stacked with meaning.

If there is anything I've learned in the fourteen years that I've lived in intentional community, it's that every person carries his or her own definition and expectations of what the word community means, what community IS. These expectations, which tag along whether we like it or not, can bring more trouble with them than almost any other part of living in community. They create a scenario where no matter what the current situation of our community is, there will be disappointment or frustration at how it's not measuring up. People have different ideas, different dreams. We bring our blueprints to the circle, lay them side by side, and nothing matches, the building feels crooked and clumsy.

The heart of these expectations, troublesome though they may be, is good. It's here that our deepest desires for connection lie, and in a community of people desiring true Christian practice, there is an even deeper and more central desire for the Kingdom of God.

What is the Kingdom of God? It's something Jesus talked about almost more than anything else, and it can very simply be described as a place where things move and breathe and sing in the exact way they were designed to, the way God wants them to. Where we truly love and feel loved. Where we see others as who they truly are, as beloved to God, no matter their rank or usefulness or stature.

At the heart of who we are as believers, we desire connection with God and connection with the way he wants things to be, and we carry all of these infant dreams and desires to our new community and lay them gently and tenderly down on the altar we've constructed.

But then we come up against the very worst thing about community. Its made of --ugh-- other people, with their own desires and dreams and weird breathing and annoying ideas and strange morning rituals and the way they look when they chew their food. What a contradiction in wishes we all are, made of our desire to be side by side and our longing to get away. The very substance of our answer threatens to tear itself apart.

But I think there's hope. There are some things we can do to soften this jarring difference between expectation and reality.

The one I want to talk about today is a very simple changing of expectations. It's so simple, but so profound that it moves everything off a shaky foundation and onto a solid one, right from the beginning. We need to come to the table of community with the understanding that a part of community is suffering.

It is the suffering that Jesus underwent as he loved and longed to be loved. He knew, though, that this love would be partly grief and disconnection.

But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

John 2:24, 25

At some level, because we are not God, we will disappoint each other's ideas of love and togetherness. You will insult my neatness with your messy scrambling, I will insult your spontaenaity with my desire for rules and schedules. (In reality, it will most likely be just the opposite.) Community, in many ways, IS suffering, a beautiful, refining, redeeming, abundantly joyful suffering.

Henri Nouwen says, "Within the discipline of community are the twin gifts of forgiveness and celebration that need to be opened and used regularly. What is forgiveness? Forgiveness means that I continually am willing to forgive the other person for not fulfilling all my needs and desires."

Of course it's not all suffering. The most amazing moments of my life have taken place in the garden of community: playing crazy games, surprising people on their birthdays, being surprised on mine, singing around a bright fire under the trees. It has been a wonderful, wild dance. But when I come up against my own desires and see the difference between the fantasy of community and the truth of it all, the fact that I disappoint and am disappointed, I remind myself that this pain is a part of any true, committed community. Walking through this suffering together produces beauty in friendship that goes beyond a simple similarity of interests. Walking through this, I have gained friends unlike any I could have imagined, in my first fluffy daydreams about Christian community, when I had no idea that it would hurt.

If you want to form a community, adjust your expectations. Have everyone adjust their expectations! And you will all be surprised by the brilliance that can come from the simple act of loving other people and experiencing life together.

Next week I'll address a more practical aspect of a thriving community: Finding your community rhythms.

The meditation of scrub scrub scrub.

We are back in Goa and there is much to be done. Miriam will be here for the full season (she'll stay until the end of March) with several people who will be coming and going to join in meditation and devotional practice with her.

Chinua and I (Rae) will be here for six weeks before going back to Pai to have our baby and continue on in our quest to form another Jesus devotional community there. While here we plan to soak in as many beautiful moments together with our dear friends, Miriam and Johanna.

But first, there is work to be done.

And I probably shouldn't even say "first", because there is so much community and meditation involved in good, physical work.

Especially the work of preparing a beloved space for time spent together.

Miriam has been the superhero here. With some help from the kids, our new friend Ulli, Johanna, and Jaya, she has been scrubbing all the monsoon mold from furniture and floors. We have to do this every year, and every year it feels like a big giant task.

But soon it is done, and the mattresses and cushions are out, the floor is clean, and we're ready for another season together.

The Meditation of Loneliness

Loneliness is suffering, and it can be crippling. We all have periods of loneliness in our lives, and in many ways it can be out of our control. However, I believe that loneliness can lead us to a place of understanding and peace, if we allow it.

Why am I writing about loneliness when this blog is about community? I could write a thousand posts about community--maybe at some point I will. My husband and I have lived in communities all our adult lives, including for the entire time we've been married. For me it's been since I was eighteen years old--that's fourteen years now! Chinua and I have lived in tiny bedrooms in large houses filled with people, we've lived in tents with other people around us, we've traveled on an RV with so many people that some of us had to sleep on the floor on under the RV or between the front seats. In more recent years our house has been next door to others in our community. We eat together, meditate together, walk to the beach together.

Intentional Community is our normal. We don't know any other way of life, and I could talk for hours about my love of community, my failures in being a loving part of a community, my successes... but right now, I'm actually feeling kind of lonely.

Chinua and I are beginning a new moment in the life of our larger community. We've moved to Thailand in order to begin a meditation practice and community here, which is exciting and interesting and full of possibility. But we're on our own right now (as "on our own" as any six person family can be) and loneliness is a new and unsubtle part of our lives. As I'm working through the loneliness I'm encountering in my own life, I thought I'd share a little of what I've discovered about loneliness over the years.

One, loneliness is inevitable. There isn't any way to escape loneliness because if you go deeply to the very center of who you are, in your inner being, you will find that you are there... alone. This will always be true, whether you are single or married, living alone or in community, in a big family or in a small family. Look deep inside and there you are, face to face with God, by yourself. This solitude doesn't necessarily need to be lonely, it won't be, if you have a full understanding of God in your life, touching your deepest heart, but few of us will be driven to this understanding without loneliness.

This deep reality of your solitude, if anything, becomes more clear in community. Community living forces us to come to terms with your aloneness. Maybe you've always thought-- What I really need is a group of like-minded people to live with, that's what will make me accepted, finally. You look for a group of fellow Christians, or vegans, or woodcarvers. But the deepest things are the hardest things to share and it doesn't take a long time of living with others to realize that you are clumsy in love, misunderstood, not comprehending. You open your mouth to explain your great idea for a new water system and someone shoots it down, and there you are! Alone! Or you've waited a long time to get married, but when you do, you see that you sit side by side, but you cannot climb all the way into your spouse's head, neither would you want to. You are one, but you are alone.

Two, loneliness reveals the gift of togetherness. Now that I am temporarily living outside of community, I treasure my loneliness because it reveals to me what a gift I've had, all these years, with all these shining souls in and out of my life, slamming doors and cooking and taking care of kids. I hold these memories like baby birds, the broken memories and the whole, shining ones, both. I remember coming home on the day that my daughter was born, sitting on the couch in one of the rooms of our flat, and how everyone sat around us in awe, touching her tiny face and hands. I remember how loved I felt. I remember all the times I felt like I belonged to something bigger than myself, the times I saw Jesus clearly radiating in a close friend giving something of his or hers away to someone who lived on the street and in those moments how in awe I felt of this wonder we have, this love. I also remember all the times I was selfish, the times I chose anger over forgiveness, being offended rather than understanding--it's easy to think, ah, this is too much trouble. But love is what God is made of, it is the gift he gives to us, it is miraculous that we reach each other. Loneliness helps us understand this miracle more clearly.

Three, feeling lonely leads to deeper understanding of our own true solitude. Right now, feeling lonely, I'm driven back to myself. If I'm truly aware of it and accepting, I begin to realize how much I normally cling to others in my identity. Who am I? I'm this person in the community, this cog in the machine. I'm this one. The nice one, the mean one, the emotional one, the artistic one. Whatever I identify myself as, it's coming from the larger picture of the group of people around me. There's nothing wrong with this -- it's part of the joy of community-- the day to day life, the love and kindness, the respect and fun involved in community living. But the discovery of my own solitude, of the fact that I don't know how to be alone, how to be who I am when I'm solitary, tells me that I have more learning to do.

I come around again and again, reaching out for something to orient myself by, and meet only myself, no other person to help me measure myself in terms of goodness or greatness or unworthiness in a human being. No words to tell me who I am, other than the true words from the heart of God, if I can bring myself to hear them. And this is the ultimate gift of loneliness. There is silence, when I quiet the wild and anxious thoughts that fly around, insisting that there should be others here, and in the silence I hear Jesus, I see God undoing another of the patches I have carefully laid over my heart.

Henri Nouwen puts it this way:

... by first embracing solitude in God's presence, you can pay attention to your inner, clamoring self before looking to others for community and accountability.*

And King David this way:

... I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me. **

At the center, alone, I simply am. I am not a role, a title, a job, a product or a producer. I am, and I am in the presence of the Great I Am, and this brings me closer to being like him, without all the rippling and striving among the litter of the day-to-day things of my life.

Four, loneliness gives understanding of the suffering of others. I don't think of loneliness as a true and good state of being. I think we are naturally alone in our inner solitude, but loneliness is a type of suffering, able (as any suffering is, if we allow it) to draw us to new truth about God and our way of relating to him, but something to alleviate if we can. As we grow closer to God and to the miracle of love that he gives so freely to us, we work with Him to alleviate suffering in the world. Part of that suffering is the deep, soul-crushing loneliness that pursues so many in our culture of isolation.

Understanding what it means to feel lonely lends new strength to our desire to welcome people, to help them belong. Helping others to come inside our circle comes at a cost, we know it's worth it because the loneliness we've experienced has been allieviated by Jesus in us. Our understanding of suffering gives us grace in our hospitality, patience in listening, fullness of heart in being present.

Taking action is always a way to work against suffering. Next time you feel lonely, don't let it drive you towards the TV or the large bag of doritos or the mall. Let it bring you nearer to your solitude, to the overwhelming love that is waiting for you in God's presence. And then let it inspire you to call someone you know is lonely, to invite an acquaintance over, to send a letter to someone who needs the surprise of mail that is not a bill or a flyer.

*From Spiritual Direction, by Henri Nouwen
**Psalm 131:2

The truth about new things.

Here's the truth. In the beginning of any new practice, you will encounter resistance. You'll encounter your own resistance and the world's resistance and even the devil's resistance.

Until something is a habit, it often feels too new, unsafe, something that you could fail at. Even after it is a habit, there are often reasons to put it off, or if you get out of habit due to sickness or sadness or worry, it can take a lot of bravery to restart.

-Imagine that you want to begin a practice of hospitality in your life. You dream of it, you're inspired by someone you know or have read about. You dream of weekly meetings of dozens of people in your home, all of them eating and happy and enjoying life. In your preparations, you begin to get a little worried. Where will you put everyone? Do you really have energy for this? Aren't you the most awkward person the world has ever known? What on earth will you say?

There is always a simple answer. The only thing people want from your hospitality is to feel welcome. Invite one person into your home and make her welcome. Feed her tea or feed her dinner. Do it with love, do it regularly, and when you feel like it's a simple thing, make your circle wider.

-Imagine that you want to begin a practice of Lectio Divina. You think your circle of friends will really benefit from it, and when you invite people, they express excitement, but don't show up at your early morning circle. They slept in. After one or two times, you go back to sleeping in as well.

Keep getting up. Make one verse the song in your heart that sings all day long. Invite one other person who you know will come. When your practice begins to transform your days, let everyone know. Don't stop waking up with this song in your heart.

-Imagine that you want to begin a practice of deep prayer. You try but it seems that you are "troubling deaf heaven with your bootless cries."* You feel dry, you feel old, you begin to question this practice of prayer. Why ask God for anything if he knows everything already, you wonder. Why talk? You begin to grudge any words, you begin to be stubborn and silent.

Ahhh, try something new. Write your prayers in tiny letters on long sheets of paper, sing your prayers, paint them into canvases, keep a prayer journal, look up old Orthodox prayers and pray them, pray the Psalms.** This miraculous communication is never unheard! Don't give up. Don't turn to entertainment. Don't let the struggle quench you.

Life changes quickly and without warning. In our community we've had to learn to be flexible. The way we do things these days is we take a quick look at who we have with us and decide on what we'll do. We have three people who like to cook? Very well, we'll have an open lunch twice a week, to give a break to one person every week. We have a musician with a loud voice? Cool, we'll have worship circles on the beach. Each season demands its own practices, and we've become skilled at figuring out what we have the power to do. These are some of the most valuable times I've ever had, singing together, eating together.

I'll tell you a secret. I meet resistance every. single. time. Every time I'm cooking, or decorating, or getting ready for an evening on the beach, I run into it. I find myself wanting to pick fights with my husband, or run away, or go to sleep for a day. And I know now, after many years, that this is part of doing things that are hard and important. I have learned to grit my teeth, ask God for help, and go on with it. I know that the resistance only lasts up until I'm actually at the beginning whatever it is we've decided to do. It hasn't won, and I relax into enjoying the time with friends-- meditating, sharing life, singing, enjoying food.

I know that you can, too.

 *Shakespeare Sonnet 29

**I have prayed in all of these ways.

Meditation Series Part Two : Lectio Divina

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.

Psalm 119: 103

Lectio Divina very simply means Divine Reading. Formally it dates back to the sixth century, when the practice was started by Saint Benedict. I personally think it predates Benedict, though, going all the way back to David singing his songs in his caves, and on into the Jewish tradition of reading or singing words of those same song for hundreds of years afterward.

The beautiful concept behind Lectio Divina is that drinking deeply of the words of scripture is a powerful practice all on its own. God, through the words themselves nourishes us. The divine words take root, they transform us from the inside out as we allow them to enlarge us. It is a very different practice from study of the bible, which requires more mental exercise, discussion, and logical thinking. In Lectio Divina we lay effort aside and let the words work on their own.

Traditional Lectio Divina is made up of 1. Lectio, or reading, 2. Meditatio, or meditation, 3. Oratio, or prayer, and 4. Contemplatio, or contemplation.

At Shekina, we practice Lectio Divina a little differently, simplifying it into the same format that all of our meditation takes. The guide begins with the preliminaries, leading the group into quietness and a meditative state. The meditation itself follows.

The guide has prepared a few verses of scripture to read. He may give a small amount of background information if he feels it is needed. This is kept very brief and simple: "These are songs that King David wrote when he was fleeing for his life, over 2500 years ago."

It is wise to read eight verses of scripture or less. Likewise, if you are practising in a group, it is a good idea to carefully choose your passage, keeping the different people in your circle in mind. If you have people who are new or fairly new to the Bible, keep to simple, clear verses, rather than anything heavy in theology.

Read the whole passage slowly to give a sense of the context of the verses, then read verses with a large amount of silence between them. Ideally, take three to four minutes of silence between each phrase or verse. You may repeat the verse halfway through the silence, as a reminder, or simply read the verse once. Whether alone or in a group, the guide should always have something to help them tell time. Four minutes can feel long or short to the guide depending on how much they have entered into the text themselves. The guide can't count on knowing when the time is up.

If you are practising Lectio Divina, keep these things in mind:

We process things in many different ways. Often, with scripture or ideas, we process them intellectually, in study or pondering. The practice of Lectio Divina is an opportunity to let God speak through the words themselves as we breathe them into us. Consider allowing the more creative parts of you into your meditation.

Let the words grow inside of you. Test how they feel, what they sound like, how they are shaped, what pictures they bring into your mind. And do not be afraid of silence, of pictures that seem to go down different trails. Lead your mind gently back to the words, run them through your heart, and listen.

Remember that meditation is an exercise of the spirit, just as healthy eating and activity is an exercise of the body. Meditation is not magic, as physical exercise is not magic. You don't do crunches for one day and wake up to find yourself with an abdominal six-pack. Some days you may feel as though you heard the voice of God clearly, or you realize something in meditation that you never knew before. More often, you are nourished by the Divine words, uplifted by the Presence. A lifetime of this nourishment will cultivate a healthy soul.

Lectio Divina is a quiet moment to come to the water, to drink deeply of the water of life, to go back about life refreshed.

If you practice in a group and utilize the talking circle, you may find yourself tempted to argue points of the scripture, or bring up everything you know about the passage. Try to concentrate your sharing down to the very essentials of what you experienced during meditation today. As the word is living, you will have a very different experience with it than you did ten years ago. Allow this to happen! Don't attempt to keep your experiences stagnant.

Some ideal first passages for Lectio Divina:

Psalm 23, Psalm 63: 1-8, Psalm 40: 1-5 and there are of course many more.

My friend Evan Howard has just co-written a book on Lectio Divina. I haven't read it yet, but Evan taught us what we know about meditation, and I can't wait to get my hands on it.  You can find the book, Discovering Lectio Divina, Bringing Scripture into Ordinary Life here.

Meditation Series Part One: The Order for Shekina Meditation.

Here I'll explain the form our meditations take. It works really well for us, and it's simple and lovely. (I'll be using parts of the Guide to Meditation that Cate wrote for us.) Shekina meditation is guided meditation, which we do sitting in a circle. In our communities different people take turns guiding, and the guide leads the people in the circle through each part of the meditation.

Shekina meditation has four main branches, with an optional discussion at the end. 

During the introduction, the guide will explain a little about our meditation. For instance, "Welcome to Shekina Meditation.  By use of the Holy Scriptures, we intend to create a safe place for the Divine Presence to speak. We have experienced and believe that God desires connection with us, and wants to visit us with wisdom and love.”

There may be other things that the guide brings up during the introduction. I sometimes mention that we are not alone in meditation. We are together as people, in our circle, and the Spirit of God is present in the room, the Divine Presence. The guide may give a short background on the scripture being read, if it is a scripture, without giving too much instruction into what the scripture means, since the point of the meditation is to be open and allow the Spirit to speak to each person.

The second branch of meditation is what we call the Preliminaries.

During the preliminaries, it is the guide's job to prepare those who are in the circle for meditation. We often arrive flustered and hot, straight from rushing from somewhere or (for me) from giving children their breakfast. The preliminaries take us past that and into a quiet space, ready for depth and silence.

*If you are doing this on your own, you should make sure to spend a good amount of time on preliminaries. I have arrived late at meditation and missed the preliminaries and the meditation was a totally different experience for me.*

The guide directs the people in the circle to focus their attention on the different physical and emotional realities of the moment.

She draws attention to breath. To sounds. To the fact that others are in the circle. She directs the people in the circle to take their cares and imagine putting them away for a while. To make a quiet space of expectation. She asks the people in the circle to slow their breath, to be comfortable, to relax their shoulders. She uses a lot of time to do this, silence and a calm voice.

This brings the circle into the next branch of our form. The meditation.

We always have content during meditation, and in the coming weeks I will introduce several types of meditation. This part of the time will usually run from 20 to 30 minutes, or maybe longer if the meditation involves moving around or going out and coming back (contemplation of nature, for example).

The main thing the guide (or you, if you are doing this on your own) needs to remember is not to be afraid of silence. The silence always feels longer for the guide! Others may just be entering into a dreamy vision or true depth with a scripture and a jumpy guide can rush the moment. Give a lot of space. Less is more. I'll cover this more in the different types of meditation.

The last branch of the meditation is sharing.

To us, sharing is an extension of meditation, as the act of sharing and of listening to one another is an act of love and receiving from one another. It is acknowledgement that we aren't doing this alone, that we are together, even in our silence.

For our sharing times, we have a talking circle, passing a talking stick, a tradition that we got from Rainbow Gatherings, but which dates back to many First Nations tribes. The talking stick is a simple way to honor the speaking person. The rules of a talking circle are simple. The person holding the stick is the only one talking, with everyone else listening. The stick is passed around the circle and each person has the option to share or pass freely. We allow the stick to go around the circle twice, in order to give people more than one chance to speak. And the guide always explains the function of the talking circle, then passes the stick in order to let the person to her left or right go first.

During the talking circle, each person shares what occurred for him or her during the meditation. We really try to honor the time, to continue our quietness by listening, and when we have the stick, by not commenting on, correcting or responding to what any person says. It is a time to share briefly and personally, not a time to teach or give a long exposition. One of the main values of Shekina Meditation is to form a space that is open for people of any amount of experience with the Christian faith, from none whatsoever to years and years, so it is important that each person feels safe, welcome, and honored.

When the talking circle is over, the guide may feel led to offer a short prayer, or not. It is up to her to decide. She may also feel that it is a good idea to take a few more minutes of silence before heading straight into discussion. It really depends on how the group is, and how the meditation has gone.

There is often a time discussion after the talking circle, time that is more free. This would be the time for people to weigh in with their opinions and experience. (Respectfully, of course.)

And there it is, the structure we have been using for years now. The wonderful thing about this structure is that we find ourselves able to use it in any context, in any place. It is versatile and ready for the moment.

Next in this series, I'll be talking about the type of meditation we practice most: Lectio Divina.

Practice

"What is your practice?" you may ask someone. Depending on who they are, they may give any one of a myriad of responses.

"Sixty pushups, then a five mile run, every morning."

"A pint of ice cream in front of the TV after work."

"Sundays at the park, on a blanket, with a book."

"Scales for an hour, then whatever symphony I'm currently learning."

"Kung fu on Mondays and Thursdays."

In Christian spirituality, practice is essential if we want to walk a constant path, if we desire to transform along the way. Spiritual practice is anything repeated in the life of a believer, in the effort to move along on the journey of knowing God.

It could be the prayer you speak as you walk into the kitchen in the morning.

It could be a time of meditation, daily, or weekly.

It could be lighting the candles with the family in the evening, singing a song of thanks.

There are things that spiritual practice on the Jesus path is not. Our actions can not change certain immutable realities about God. With my practice I don't bring him closer, manifest anything or create anything. With or without my input, God is scarily brilliant, burning with love, less changeable than gravity. He simply is what he is: incredibly creative being, made up of good and love and terrifying strength.

The bizarre part is that there is a connection between us and this incredible being. We enter his presence knowing that we are there because he desires it to be so. He desires the space and time to dwell with us, to be circling our hearts as we wait. His heart is touched by our focus. He loves us. Crazy.

Practice is not a manipulation of God, it is not an act of changing the course of the stars. So what is it?

To put it simply, spiritual practice is a way of tricking our hearts to throw open their windows, letting light into our inner cramped, stuffy spaces.

When you practise something, you show up. As you show up day after day and you do the same thing, hopefully in the same place, you make a new crinkle in your brain. Something begins to click. You sit and your mind says, "Oh! Is it this time again? Already? Well, okay," and you've made it a hundred times easier to meditate, or pray, or open your mouth and sing.

I think the first place I discovered this was in my writing life. I learned to sit in the same place at the same time every day. I sat down and I wrote, just started. Usually, good things came. Somethings stupid, boring things came. But sitting down in that specific place unlocked the little attic door where the writing part of me lives. Doing it every day made sitting down and writing less like climbing a mountain and more like opening a door and stepping onto the front porch.

Now I rarely ever go a day without writing at least a thousand words. The more I write, the more I am open to words, thoughts and sentences appearing to me throughout my day.

I learned it next with meditation. Cate built an amazing community space in Goa, where we first started practising Shekina meditation. Now, four years later, just sitting in that space, looking at the way the light hits the red floor, I have all these memories of what it means to meditate, to sit with God in silence, waiting for his gentle words. I am immediately ready for meditation, just by sitting down. It is practice. I have good days and stupid days, where I can't reign my thoughts in. But over time, the good days out number the stupid ones by far. And the more I meditate, the more likely I am to be aware of love surrounding me all day long, the more likely I am to feel the abiding wonder of God.

There are so many spiritual practices on the Jesus path. The practice of humility, of kindness, of thankfulness, of trust. The practice of prayer and of singing. The practice of beauty and of hospitality. They are practices because they do not come naturally, without thinking, unless we have become so accustomed to the practice that they are as easy as breathing.

We do it because our minds are wonderful and slippery, capable of holding far too much information and swamping us with random trivia when we desire to be silent, or in prayer. We have to find ways to harness all that energy, to quiet the senses and make silence possible in our lives.

It's like traveling down the same road, day after day, to get home. You drive almost without thinking, keeping your eyes out for skateboards and children, for turning cars, but not really considering your route. "Home" has become engraved on your brain. So years later, after you move across town, you may be driving home after a long day and realize, suddenly, that you're on that old road home, headed back toward the old house. Your long practice has not allowed you to forget it.

This is practice. Carefully tracing out the road toward home, then taking that road again and again.

New beginnings

Shekina Community has been running in its current state for over four years now, but we have yet to really document all the twists and turns that we've taken in this marvelous life, while staying tuned with Jesus, who is straight and quick as an arrow.

So here is another beginning. In earnest this time, we will endeavor share our lives with you in words and photos. We invite you to join in with comments and emails. Let us know how our journey affects you, what thoughts come up.

For this post, I thought it would be good to explain a little of where we are. New seeds are being scattered, as Shekina as a meditative collective spreads a little further.

We have our first center, still thriving in Goa. Shekina in Goa operates for five months each year, from November to March.

Now we have little communities sprouting in Asheville, North Carolina, and Pai, Thailand. We have big dreams for land or communities in these two places. I dream of meditation retreats, of working to help local charities, of continuing our journey of knowing God and making space for him to reveal himself. We want to live intentionally, monastically, with gratitude for all we have and all we have been given. In the next posts I'll tell a little more about what we've been doing.

Post-Shekina Blues, what's the cure? (hint: more cowbell)

So we packed up and left India, and our beloved meditation center, three weeks ago. Shekina people went all directions, away from each other. It's just a short haitus until fall, when we all gather again in Goa again. 

That’s three weeks without the soothing sound of crows cawing incessantly in the background. Three weeks without the strong shekina circle of sharing. Weeks without seeing scripture in a some unexpected and revealing light. And yeah I said the crows were soothing.

Nourishment is funny. Neglect feeding yourself and you kind of start to shrivel. Keep messing around and you will need some kind of intervention, and not long after that, out come the defibrillators, and all the yelling and pounding, and ominous long beep and the shaking of heads.

Not that meditation is spiritual food, its not really, although I’m sure it looked like that’s where I was going with all this. No, Meditation is a form, its just one way to get the real nourishment in.

A lot of things can do provide nourishment. You know like truly entering into spiritual songs, hearing scripture explained by a gifted speaker, being in a crowded room full of prayer, patching the holes in your understanding by reading theology, or a quiet moment in your garden that is swimming with fireflies. Everyone has their own list I’m sure.

God is the real nourishment, and that connection is food for us. You need it like you need water. I do anyway.

Sure you can haul your shriveled malnourished defibrillator-ready carcass from place to place and make a great show of things. People might not even notice. But weaknesses always show up when strength is required. I don’t have to tell you life is a trial, do I?

That’s why I've got the blues. Honestly I was being spoiled by all the rich thick silences, the open and intentional spaces we created for nutrients, the watering holes. And I didn’t really even know it. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you've got till its gone.

So this post is turning out to be personal. Surely someone is thinking that I am selling something. But this is more of a confession than a testimonial. I know I’m putting in the terms of sage advice, but I am the real audience.

(buffalo emerging from water  - chinua ford)

Walking beside Lake Fewa in Pokhara Nepal (our latest homeish-type location), I tossed out a casual bit of trivia for my four children walking beside me. It was about how the majority about how animals spent most of their time eating or looking for food. Trivia for three of the four I should say, the youngest was surely had better things to do, like admiring the size of the buffalo poo in his path.

In fact cows and buffalo were strewn about in the unused rice fields by the lakeside, stuffing their faces with every shred of green in sight, like they always do. "They’re either sleep, or dead, or eating" I said. My son reasoned that they could not possibly moo and chew at the same time.

Then it went off in my head like a bell. In a bizarre and somewhat unromantic moment of connection with the natural world, I realized how famished I was too. There they were, fat and sassy and full of everything they needed to stay alive, think happy cow thoughts, and generally get sleek and fat, just as cows should be. I warned you that it was bizarre.

Famished for God, which is strange considering how abundant God is from one perspective. Then again, the consensus seems to be that God takes some seeking to find. Shekina community has slowly become a great place for me to do that.

Shekina Community is a community of travelers. And although shekina meditation could be used by anyone, it was developed by us and our friends and mentors as one more way to keep ourselves healthy. And its started to spread, with other spiritual communities and curious individuals trying it in their own way. But come on, meditation is hardly new, and far unique to Christians.

We just woke up to it, dusted it off a bit. Its been really transforming for many of us, so much for me that the thought of coconut trees and the sound of crows transports me quickly into worship. Our meditation center was surrounded by both.

But I’m sure you see the weakness of it all. You can't have some community or some practice as your only source of spiritual food. It was not my only inlet, but one so rewarding that I got a little dependant on it. But hey, here are worse things to be addicted to than meditation.

So, next challenge. How to practice meditation when I've been revamping the classic hours of prayer, vigils in particular. The night watches. I am a night person, but those hours tend to be unclaimed territory for me, vast expanses devoid of spiritual practice. I've been trying to seed them.

How practice community when you are not physically together. How to be strong, not weak, for the calling we have of sharing the life of God in our world of travelers. Things that require a strong and nourished spiritual body. 

Wow, I feel better already. At least I know what I need to do. 

The right phrase

We are growing this site inch by inch mostly for the fun of it. I think it's a very interesting experiment going on at Shekina, one that has been life changing for me.

I'm trying to write here as often as I think of it, (twice so far! woot!) to help give our tribe a voice, to shine some small light on this thing that has shaped my whole life. How do you talk about the things that matter the most to you? Maybe It's all about the right words. We are finding them now.

An aside: If you hear the phrase "slowly slowly" shouted from a man on a street corner in India, it's probably a good time to fake being cool walk and leave without looking back.

That's because if you hear it means you've probably done something embarrassing and moronic like; dropped your rupees and banged your head retrieving them, rolled over on your scooter while trying to set the kickstand, or blasted away a plastic chair with your unwieldy foreign thighs while waving goodbye to your friends upon exiting the local crowded chai shop. "Slowly slowly!" you will hear from some anonymous mysteriously smug stranger you had not noticed standing there before.

Any attempt to explain yourself, no matter how earnest, how obvious and undeniably true, will be met with the same phrase, "Slowly slowly" this time louder for emphasis. You should really just cut your losses and walk on.

You figure out (around the tenth time) that it doesn't have anything to do with speed, it just means be careful. Careful careful! After a little brow furrowing, anyone can kind of sort of connect going slower with carefulness. In a way. Kind of.

That doesn't make it the right thing to say in english. It's just another of the hundreds of endearing/infuriating little phrases you hear when traveling in this colorful wonderful paradoxical India. And in india it's just what they say, right or wrong.

Im a bit curious if anyone out there is simultaneously a) Indian and b) watching this site being built, and is feeling an irrepressible urge to shout that very phrase into the comment box?

Even if you did, I wouldn't be embarrassed, not of this site, notthis time. I'm enjoying watching it form before my very eyes as we wrestle it into being. honestly its fun.

Were using squarespace, which allows you to edit on the fly eight in the browser without any programming at all. In fact, two of us are doing it at the same time now. Fun, chaos, building!

Ok, end aside.

right now the big question is, how will this Jesus-minded traveler hippie neo-monastic-light, international intentional seed tribe tell it's story? what words do you use?

It's a simple idea, with a long history. Its hard to explain, but easy to experience.

How to go forward?

Easy. Slowly slowly.

;)

One Man's Opinion

So what are people experiencing in Meditation? Wow, great question. heres an answer (randomly selected from a pile of perfect answers) from someone new to the practice...

Today was my fourth time experiencing Shekina Meditation. However, it was my first time experiencing an imagination meditation. Rachel led the meditation. She chose the passage from the gospel story where Jesus miraculously calms a storm during a boat trip across Lake Galilee with his disciples. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. At the beginning of the meditation Rachel led us to the shore amidst the crowds of people where Jesus was calling us to himself. We were encouraged to really experience being there. This was such a powerful experience for me. There was chaos on the shore—lots of people, and lots of commotion and confusion. Then I saw Jesus. He was amazing; I was enamored. Coming into his presence made all the chaos and confusion seem insignificant. He was so pure, strong and trustworthy. My soul was fully attracted to him. I felt peace. I felt safe. I felt fulfilled. I couldn’t even remember, let alone be bothered by the fact that a seemingly life-threatening storm was coming. I felt healing just by dwelling in this place where Jesus was. But then, we were led into the experience of the storm while crossing the lake. This experience was not so ostensibly pleasurable. I suddenly became confused. I didn’t understand why this was happening. The meditation became difficult at this point. But there was another breakthrough. I realized that the way I was feeling was similar to the other disciples in the boat. How quick we were to let our troubles and fears fog our minds, to turn back and doubt Jesus. But then Jesus calmed the storm, restored our faith and brought peace to our souls.



Let me say I’m not the type to have such profound experiences, which is why I was so surprised and thrilled that I had this one. I came to faith four years ago. For the first two years my doubts were based on intellectual struggles. I’ve pretty much dealt with those and now have a strong intellectual foundation for my faith. However, for the later two years up to the present, many of my doubts have more been based on not having enough of a fulfilling, personal, experiential relationship with God. Being that I don’t seem to be the type that’s wired for the more charismatic type experiences, I think I may have discovered a very powerful life-transforming spiritual discipline here with Shekina Meditation, especially through imagination meditation. It facilitates a personal encounter with Jesus, which in turn grows my relationship with him. All it takes is some time to sit down and imagine being with him. It’s so powerful because I know that it’s not simply fantasy imagination. I know that in doing this something real is actually happening. The Holy Spirit is present, truly ushering me into the presence of Jesus. Jesus is actually really ministering to me in this time. He’s renewing my mind and feeding my soul. I’m definitely coming back for more.

.....

Nice one! and also, here's a groovy icon. Although I don't  think they are sacred (sorry my earnest orthodox family!) and don't use them at all in my own practice, I love the artwork. And yeah, I think I get it, visual meditation.

Shekina Meditation, like a block party, only quieter.

So here it is, a tidbit from a hebrew speaking person who has been coming to the meditation times with us. She wrote this in a shout out to some friends, and thought it was a good insight to share...

"Mmmm mysterious! Let me explain, for some days now I've been meditating on "shekina", which in the Hebrew simply means "to dwell" (shochen) Exodus 25:8 " ... Let them build Me a sanctuary that I may dwell (shocen) with them"

The letter goes on with more words from the Tanach and some seasons greetings, but the main point is right there. It's a good excuse to talk about part of the point, the reason behind of the whole thing, which might come in handy just about now.

It was something she said after the meditation jumped out to me like an indian cow on the highway. She mentioned that when she moved into new zip code in Israel, she had to talk about where she was and who she was, just a run of the mill newbie discussion with her budding hebrew skills.

Turns out she had to say the word for neighborhood (שכונה -Shechonah) and neighbor (שכן-shochen) alot. Did you catch it?  It comes from the same root word that we get shekina. A surprisingly common and familiar word to use for lofty God concepts, don't you think?



Dwelling, house, abode, living place. Dwelling meditation. Yeah, I like it.

So go with the thought, with the implications. God wants to live with you, in your hood?

Now that's something to meditate on. Often when we start, we invoke the hope and expectation that God would do just that, reveal the presence among us, like right then and there. True, its a sobering even high goal for a one hour circle on a rooftop, if you look at it one way.

On the other hand, anything less might just be a waste of time.

P.s. The newly minted "Bizaam! Insights" category could be full of stuff like this, and better.  You know, lightbulb moments you might get during the meditation time and in discussions after. Even juicy musings on the the topic by frequent flyers. So come on down, weigh in and let it loose man, we'll supply the pulpit.

Okay, pulpit is too strong. Look, don't get all preachy, nobody likes a know it all. Just say what you learned like a normal human being, ok? ;)

The Countdown has begun!

As you can see, our website is completely up! Erm, well its in the works anyway. Just got its wings today, so if you are a shekina junkie, you can check back here real real soon and see our shiny new site. Until then, blessings!