Remember when deciding what you were going to be for Halloween was the most important decision in your life? Were you going to be a superhero or something more traditional, like a witch or princess or ghost? Did you have one of those creative Moms who could turn you into Peter Pan or a fire hydrant with a whirl of her sewing machine? My children were at a clear disadvantage in that department, having me for a Mom. I remember one year Kate was a mouse. We used sheets that I somehow stitched together and filled with wads of paper for fullness, and another year Geof was Goldy Gopher, the University of Minnesota mascot. I think I made the tail to go along with U of M sweatshirt and pants and a mask or maybe my talented sister made it for him.
Halloween was a challenge for me, but that's not to say I haven't worn many masks, many costumes in my lifetime. How about you?
The Costumes and Masks of Life
I have worn costumes called student, mother, wife and daughter and friend, business owner, spiritual director, teacher, and writer. For the most part I have loved those roles, and they have represented true aspects of myself and the life I have been privileged to live. However, there have also been moments when I have questioned my own authenticity.
Sue Monk Kidd in When the Heart Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions says, "We become adept at playing games, wearing masks as if life were a masquerade party." p. 47. She wonders, "Had my masks gotten stuck to my face?" p. 53.
Emotional Masks
I have worn the mask of confidence when feeling little or no confidence in myself. I have worn the mask of contentment and ease when my heart was breaking inside. I have worn the hostess mask when I would have preferred to be completely alone. I have worn a mask of courage, when I have been scared, and the mask of adulthood when I have felt like a child. I have worn the mask of seeker when I have instead been lazy. I have worn the mask of anger when what I really felt was fear. I have worn the mask of belief when I felt on shaky ground.
To quote Carl Jung, "We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life."
Beyond Costumes and Masks
Occasionally over the years we bumped into an identity crisis. Perhaps when our youngest child went off to kindergarten or when we faced an empty-nest or when we lost a job unexpectedly or a long-term relationship ended. Those raw times became doorways of discovery leading to our True Selves, or as Meister Eckhart identifies, "There is something in the soul which is only God."
What in you is only God?
How does our True Self radiate over and around the margins of the mask?
Who are you beyond masks, roles, work, skills, history, experiences and associations?
If all my identifications -- "Bruce's wife, Kate and Geof's mother and Maren and Peter's GrandNan, Betty and Dick's daughter, a spiritual director, a teacher, a writer, a friend --were suddenly stripped away, and some day they will be, who would I be? Who am I?
This is the work of these years. The work for today.
Today's Challenge and Opportunity
Many of our roles have already disappeared or at least are worn less frequently. Fewer costumes in the closet may make it easier to "embrace our new wisdom face as it emerges," says Angeles Arrien in The Second Half of Life, Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom. p. 45 or we may continue to mourn their loss, refusing to see they are two sizes too small or frayed around the collar. Send them to the resale shop. It's someone else's turn to use them wisely.
"Embracing our wisdom face, we can meet the challenge with which the eighth-century Buddhist Sage Hui-Neng is reputed to have confronted his disciples: 'Show me the face you had before even your parents were born.'" (Arrien, p. 51)
So how do we do this? This is the time to fully engage your spiritual practices. This is the time to know the part of you that is "only God." This is the time to get a bit uncomfortable and ask yourself what roles, masks and costumes you are having a hard time releasing. This is a time to "stop performing, pretending, and hiding to sustain our false identities and cultivated masks," (Arrien, p.48) and instead, "to be someone who is fully alive, a courageous explorer and adventurer who is willing to discover the true face that lies beneath family conditioning and cultural imprinting." (Arrien, p. 47).
Open yourself to a time of moving beyond what you have always done and whom you've always been.
This is a time of deepening.
An Invitation
Share the masks and costumes you are leaving behind and what you are discovering about your true essence. Angeles Arrien suggests stretching yourself in order to learn something new about yourself everyday. I would love to know about those discoveries and adventures.
On the third Thursday of each month I will introduce you to someone whom I look up to as a spiritual friend and teacher. The focus of my questions is on their spiritual practices and what nurtures their deepening spirituality.
This month meet Marian Methner whom I met when we were beginning our training as spiritual directors through Oasis Ministries. Along with meeting Marian here, I hope you will read her blog Moving Out Granni. First, here's what Marian wrote about herself:
I am a 70 year-old woman making my own map through the next stages of life with cardiomyopathy (heart failure). This is not a failure of the heart, but comes from following an irregular dance beat, cutting through jungles, and taking the Big Hook in the Sky when It lures me in.
I dreamed once that I was going to a well for water. On the other side of the fence two men stood. They did not see me. I was invisible. I know myself behind the sun and wind-weathered face when I look in the mirror.
I am a grace-filled mother and what we name mother-in-law to people who came into my life through love. I claim the role of grandmother, sister, auntie and friend as well as gardener, artist, writer, and sometimes spiritual director.
You describe your spirituality as "messy." What do you mean by that?
I am a process person and contrary to our beliefs, process does not flow from a to b. It is messy. Play is messy. Spirituality is messy when it is uninhabited by limits or rules. Here the Mystery truly enters in.
My life is a collection of bits and starts; therefore, my spiritual practices include bits and starts. I don't attend a church. I no longer believe many of the Christian stories that were a part of my young life. I delve into Buddhist and Zen practices and am intrigued by many Jewish teachings. I delve more deeply into women's stories of the Divine--the Mother/Goddess stories. I have been paving/playing/praying my own paths into the Mystery for at least 40 years.
What do you identify as an ongoing spiritual practice?
Before I sleep and when I wake up, I give thanks.
In the morning I make coffee, and I take a cup to the back deck where I breathe in and out, noticing the apples on their trees or the rose bush that has grown too big to flower. This morning I noticed a newly blooming, very small sunflower and smiled back at her.
That tiny sunflower became my sanctuary for a few holy minutes. While I was busy preparing food and space for an overnight visit from friends, the day became a Sabbath; a slowed down honoring the holiness time.
Along with moving through your day with awareness of the holy moments, what else contributes to the creation of Sabbath time in your life?
The practice of lectio divina, which is reading scripture and then spending time in prayer and contemplation with that reading. For example, this morning, a Saturday, I read from Soil and Sacrament, A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith by Fred Bahnson, and I spent time contemplating the following:
As we entered the driveway...a sign read: 'It's time to
slow down.' Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the
sanctification of time....(it) teaches a person to be 'attached
to the holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to
learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the
magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our
great cathedrals.
Thus, sunflowers become holy, and cooking for friends days become Sabbaths. What else do you want to say about your spiritual practices?
My practices resemble what Bahnson says about a Jewish community he describes in his book. "We are a nonrabbinic community...When a rabbi is present, people don't step up as much. We're a community about empowerment, whether teaching people to grow their food or say their own blessings."
How do you empower others in their growth as spiritual beings?
In my blog Moving Out Granni, I try to give voice to where I'm balancing on my growing edge. With my grandchildren, I try to channel my mother's loving self, not her or my own judgmental, cranky, sharp edge. Mother did caution "without a sense of humor we are lost."
Not only do we need to step up and be vulnerable, we need to lighten up!
Who have been some significant spiritual teachers in your life?
One of my teachers is Matthew Fox. Fox teachers Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality whose essence is that God is our Creator, and we are made in This image; therefore, we are all meant to be creators. We each need to step up!
Another teacher is Angeles Arrien. She teaches that we must take off our masks; unzip our armor.
What's in your current reading pile?
Soil and Sacrament, A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith by Fed Bahnson
How the Light Gets In, Writing as Spiritual Practice by Pat Schneider
Wanderlust, A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
The Golem and the Jinni, a novel by Helene Wecker
What other reading material do you want to recommend?
Original Blessing by Matthew Fox
Orion Magazine, a bimonthly, advertising-free magazine devoted to creating a stronger bond between people and nature.
What other words of wisdom do you want to share?
We are attendants at the wake of the old way, and each of us--through our actions, our thoughts, our work and relationships--is midwifing a new world into existence. This is our destiny, our meaning, our purpose, and when we come to our days with this awareness, when we sense the oak in the acorn of our beings, then we will have the energy to move mountains and shift the tides.
Jan Phillips, No Ordinary Time:
The Rise of Spiritual Intelligence and
Evolutionary Creativity
Thank you, Marian, so much for sharing a glimpse into your spiritual life; a spirituality that encompasses your entire life. You are a blessing in my life.
An Invitation
What questions do you have for Marian? What contemplative reading have you been doing and how has it mattered in the way you live your life?
