REFLECTION

Recently I read a book on children’s spirituality. In order to get in touch with our own childhood, we are asked to reflect on own childhood-spirituality.  As I progressed through the book I realized that there were points in my childhood when people took my spirituality seriously.  People who paddled with me on my raft as I travelled both up, and down stream.  
 
At primary school we were asked to draw a picture of something in church. I drew a butcher’s shop with the meat hanging from the ceiling. My teacher asked what it was about. It’s the meat we find in church . Both of us new this was wrong. A few days later she came up to me and said when that happens in church; you look at me and let me know. Classes at the Sunday service would sit on long wooden benches with the teacher at the end of the bench. At a point in the service the priest said “It is meet and right so to do” We both looked at each other. She understood. My memory is positive with no chastisement for my 7 year-old error. 

About this time we went to an inter-denominational Sunday school at Cormas Fields, the local children’s playground. I asked logistical questions about a bible passages;  how did they get there; when did they come back?  to which the reply was “Annette, it doesn’t matter. It is what the story is saying is important”. What was the story saying I often asked myself. I remember other times where my options were affirmed and stretched. Yet also at the same time there was a growing awareness of my own private God, different from the corporate God of Sunday school, a none-verbal energy; drawing a silver ball God of love that I did not talk about.  A love that held me spiritually.

I left the seclusion of our small, church, primary school for a high school I found girls of other denominations and religions.  I also found comparative religions in religious studies classes. My concept of God broadened. My spiritual knowledge widened. At age fifteen I told my mother I did not believe in the virgin birth and that I was going to be Buddhist. I attached myself to a Buddhist temple where I learnt to meditate. Here I encountered a more contemplative spiritual side to God and to myself.  Yet, try as I might to get to Nirvana with Buddha as my guide, Jesus kept creeping in.  

As an adult I experienced gentle nudges. While in the territorial army - manning a check point for a map reading exercise -  a mystic experience occurred. I sat watching life around me in the rolling hills of Scotland. I had a sense that I was part of creation. The officials eventually found me where I recalled my spiritual experiences and was promptly sent to the sick bay as they thought I had sun stroke.  My concept of God was devalued. 

In the final weeks of my first year at university, I stood talking to the university chaplain who happened to be standing by the intercity bus stop.  I was telling him of my 18 year old sister’s recent death in a car accident and how on the bus I'd had a sense of God being present. You had a deep spiritual experience he said. I remember his black cloak flapping in the wind as he dashed off and asked, by the way, do you think that God is calling you to do something. What?  I volunteered at a local respite care home for developmentally delayed children where I spent many nights with a regressed catholic social worker discussing where God was in our lives. 

Seeing how uncomfortable others were at approaching me about my sister’s death and the taboo around it, I joined Cruse, a secular, voluntary organization that trained and supported regional bereavement counsellors. As a counsellor something stirred inside; I wanted to offer more though I could not articulate that I was looking for a spiritual component to bereavement counselling. 

There were numerous nudges that I managed to bury in the busy-ness of career and family. After dealing with postnatal depression I found I was pregnant for the third time. Abortion floated in my head.  My doctor said “I don’t know what your religious beliefs are; just make sure that you can go through with it." I did not know what my religious beliefs were either. No one had asked me. In the later stages of pregnancy, I sat like a whale out of water waiting and asking myself who was God and Jesus with the uneasy feeling that my God required a reciprocal arrangement and now I was being asked to do something. I not only gave birth to a daughter but also an active concept of God and Jesus. I spoke to a woman in our congregation, entering seminary who became my Spiritual Director. We are still in contact.

After ten years at St. Matthew's (Church of England) where my sense of social justice and service was nurtured, we moved to Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.  Here we were paired with a local Episcopalian church who were meant to be similar to our church of England. Whilst they were quick to recognize my organizational and educational skills, the conservative theology become problematic. I was not being fed spiritually; I was called a heretic as I did not believe in the absolute literalism of the Bible. Upset that my children were told they would go to hell if they were not good, I confided to a mother at the school bus stop. She said that most of the people in her church didn't believe in a hell and there were over eighty in their Sunday school. We joined the United Church where I was soon involved in senior Sunday school and other structures of the church at different levels. 

Seeing my involvement, and my passion for the bible, theology and spirituality, I was from time to time asked when I was going to be ordained.  I deferred each time. I had everything I wanted yet there was a searching: I was seeking for something more.  An Ordained Minister who I worked with said that she was going on a course for “continuing education that was just up my street”. It was a three week introductory course that culminated in a 4-year, M Div equivalent diploma in diagonal ministry. 

Here was a turning point; the liberation theology and the leadership through employment now had a name.  I found the experiential learning was my preferred learning-style, and I found my spirituality validated, even my silver ball God was accepted.

There was no doubt that I was called to being a diagonal minister in the United church. However; the committees and the political machine of religious organizations were cranking their cogs. Power struggles between committees resulted in my walking out on an interview in disgust. God was not present.  My interests were secondary.  My spirituality once again abandoned me.

Disillusioned I questioned my call and on a whim of nostalgia, I went to a local Anglican church where I was quickly pushed forward to Priesthood. Again, the political machine unwound and I pulled out. At a total loss and doubting God, my calling and spirituality, I enrolled in a Regis College course that was an introduction to ministry.  

As people approached me and talked to me about their faith and their journeys, I knew that I was exactly where I should be; doing what I have always done.  Listening to people as they talk spiritually. I sit, listen, nudge: a companion, a guide and a director.
I wonder what ‘call’ is.  Whether I am meant to be a spiritual director. At every session as a spiritual director, it is confirmed . The presence of God, the energy from the universe is there  and I become a spiritual conduit. 

I learnt as a child and young adult that I was not to express my own personal spirituality. Yet at the same time, others were always there to pick me up; to guide me on another path...yet another road. On each of these paths or river rides I find a spiritual  guide to walk with me in my mystical experiences. Others also sought me out  recognizing something in me; where I become a guide along their river. The river right now is at a whirlpool. I sit with organized religion pulling me under and an incredible prayer life pulling me up.

I sit with this juxtaposition, wondering. I know that a spiritual guide is on its way to give directions just as I pull others out of their whirlpools.  I am their spiritual guide.  I am at the Niagara river the whirlpool, lots of noise thunders from the falls far off. I cling tight to my bamboo raft. I am in the water spray covers my face. A soft compassionate voice says, here let me help you out of there, as they pull my raft to the side and we sit paddling downstream.  Ready for the next river ride… and the adventure continues. I pass another raft and give them my paddle… to paddle with me down stream. Spirituality continues.