I learned from Morton Kelsey, amplified by Abbot David Geraets of the Pecos Benedictine monastery, to keep a journal. Kelsey taught us to use a four-colored pen: black for everyday concerns; blue for dreams you record upon waking, and work you do with them; green for God events and revelatory prayer times, and your responses; and red for people who are “difficult.” That way, over time if there is too much black ink, you have no inner life; if it’s all blue, you’re too much into dreams; if it’s all green, you’re probably too “spiritual” for any good; and too much red, you’re in trouble! Of course, if there is no green, you are also in trouble, especially if you’re a clergy person. David would not continue in spiritual direction with anyone who wouldn’t take the trouble to do inner work with a journal.
One practice, remaining cutting edge for me, came from Sister Miriam at Pecos, in her talk The Healing of the Feminine, 1981. She discussed the question of people she had trouble with, in the Benedictine community of celibate men and women. The community was sacramental, Pentecostal by mission, and integrated Jungian psychology and spiritual direction into the mix. For Miriam, some community members were recorded in red in her journal. Sometimes repeated passages in red!
She had a fun Boston accent, and was quite winsome in confessing that for various community members, she found herself saying: I hate him! (Relevant topic?) By the feminine, she meant, along with David, being in relationship with Jesus, beyond all the daily community liturgy and work, which she said she did robotically for a long time, with no real life. (Clergy occupational hazard? David tagged it as accidia. See E. Underhill, Concerning the Inner Life, and Acbp. Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today.) Attending to the heart, the soul, the inner life, and Jesus’ presence there. She told of a young woman who was habitually angry, and her father taking her out to the country, leaving her there, telling her: Find your soul! Ramsey spoke of “souls starved by activism.” (in The Charismatic Christ)
Miriam took dreams (often disturbing) and her image of certain personalities, into private times of sitting with Jesus, and waited and watched for His wisdom and answers.
For a painful or disliked person, she sat and waited until Jesus gave her a name, sometimes an image, for the person. She didn’t use the term, but the Tibetan version is Tonglen, transformation of energy. With the “spiritual name” of the person, she received a change of heart, seeing him/her differently going forward, with a new emotional chord. I have done this: you feel the shift, a release, with joy and/or tears. It is often difficult. It brings a God-given “touchstone” for that person, i.e., emotionally experiencing them from God’s point of view. Healing. II Cor. 5:16-17.
(There is also the prayer of asking Him to show you His image of you . . . )
40 years ago! I practice it, I confess, when it is time again…with important, often life-changing results. Lenten inner work.
—The Rev. Dr. Clyde Glandon
Tulsa