Soul-friending: The light is calling and I must go ...
Where do you experience a place or person coming alongside you?
Listen to Pegge read Soul-friending: The light is calling and I must go …
Spiritual friendship in the form of spiritual direction and companionship brings solace, discernment, and is a sacred space to be heard, a time to experience belonging, and a deep breath of calming presence. I believe that compassionate listening through spiritual companioning can also lead to discerned action in response to your inner aliveness, and the movements of spirit that some name God.
I’ve been reflecting anew about soul-friending and spiritual care for my own heart in this intense changing season of my own life, for those I accompany and encounter, for the heartache and inspiring stories and experiences that come into my field of awareness, for the world, and for you—my dear friends and readers. I think it’s time to open the present of spiritual care with new inquiry, and I will share more about this powerful relationship and the value it can offer in Open The Present posts during coming months.
I’ve needed to brush especially close to nature this week to touch the healing and uplifting presence I receive when I make time to be outside. Perhaps you do too. As I write, the song lyrics “You’re in the arms of the angel / May you find some comfort here” weave through me from Sarah McLachlan’s song, “Angel” and I breathe into the past 24 hours and how I’ve experienced an embrace of nature and comfort.
Last night I abandoned my to-do list when humongous snowflakes buffeted the landscape. In a darkened room with two stories of glass windows, I basked with wonder at snow steadily reaching the earth, and the quiet softening of the landscape, then much later fell asleep gazing out the window at tree branches, intertwined and stark against the swirling snow. I felt their companionship, and arose to a pinkening dawn—around 10:00 a.m.—causing me to leap out of bed, take ahold of my iPhone and Canon camera to head to the river deck in my bathrobe, where the cleared skies, landscape, and 6” of fresh snow spoke, wow, wow, wow, show up, open the present! and I did, for more than an hour wrapping the beauty enlivening my heart and soul.
After shoveling snow for several hours, again the pink light bouncing around in 25 degree Fahrenheit caught my attention and got me safely off the roof from the ice dam I was clearing. Swiftly I began shoveling a path down the walkway and stairs to the river. A refrain began singing in me as the landscape whispered all around me,
“The light is calling and I must go.”
I didn’t reach the river in time to catch the pink glow on water, yet, sitting on a clump of snowy frozen grass beneath the dock, along the icy riverbank, silently watching darkening blue shadows and sky, the slowing river flow, the reflection of bare trees captivated me. I played with images, then simply rested in the stillness, my heart at peace.
In the nowness of light and darkness, and the many places we are called to face our own shadow and light dance, I recalled another time of noticing shadows and trees, while participating in Spiritual Directors International educational events with a theme of “Emerging Wisdom.” It was April 2016, and I wrote*,
Does your life cast a shadow upon structures, people, or places? Where, and when, do you experience light which illumines hidden beauty and reflects your essence?
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, a free morning offered an opportunity to walk for several hours. Alone, no destination in mind, I wandered the streets near the central plaza, each step deliberate, my iPhone camera in one hand. I stepped breath by breath, allowing myself to be led by instinct and curiosity. I picked up the pace, or paused, sprinted across a street to avoid a car, and even parked myself on more than one bench to listen or write in a small journal.
Throughout this contemplative walk to notice and appreciate, my gaze and attention drew again and again to tree shadows of stark branches—barely budding with leaves—a dark contrast to the rising sun. My eyes drew toward a cloudless blue sky at 7,000 feet of altitude, and I paid attention to the curious way branches reached toward and touched one another in a circular embrace, or interwoven entanglement. Bird song accompanied me when I myself hummed a tune. Tucked into a museum courtyard near yet another statue, the breeze created a shadow branch dance upon sand colored adobe walls. Shapes crisscrossed my skin and body, light and dark moving freely. My inner and outer awareness shifted into harmony, wholeness, and absolute acceptance of the moment, distinction and judgment absent.
A day later, Roshi Joan Halifax would describe spiritual companioning as coming alongside someone, similar as if two boats drifted together in a current. I experienced this shadow dance of branch and limb structures, and tree branch embrace or entanglement, as clues about how to be in relationship with my own story, and how we gather in community, a coming alongside one another.
In order to counter the suffering I see and encounter in the world, with people I accompany, and within my own skin, I need elemental places of wildness—trees, rocks, rivers, horizon views, shadow, thunderstorms, snow. Perhaps you do too. All of these elements assist me to become grounded in the here and now, with roots like a tree, and branches to move with ease in the wind.
Imam Jamal Rahman wrote, “In times of pain and suffering, spend time in nature, which Sufis believe has been graced with divine energies to absorb and transform human suffering. Silently, with feeling, ask nature to help you, and open your heart to experience peace and healing.”
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi asks, “What is our dance with God?” Reb Zalman, a holy man who helped me heal after my son died, again inspires me to dance while standing slowing down, and becoming still. Today I experienced:
Increasing slowness
wintering in Alaska,
time stands still, me too.
A landscape can befriend us offering the opportunity to pause, receive, accept, reciprocate, and penetrate into essence. A spiritual companion or guide will come alongside us during our leafing, shedding, stillness, and emergence when we seek to integrate shadow and light—a discernment of our next best step within our own life particularities. In order to bring peace and collaborative action into the world, we must learn to come alongside one another and ourselves—with acceptance, curiosity, pausing, and reverence.
I’m curious—where is your spiritual practice most enlivened?
What landscapes aid you to show up and listen, reconciling dark and light, suffering and joy, within the skin of your body—your dwelling place in this life?
Reflect
Pause and slowly read these field notes, that I noted during Emerging Wisdom SDI Educational Events, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, April 24–27, 2014.
Allow a phrase to choose you. Then give permission for the few words to evoke a wisdom of unfolding within your heart, body, and mind, offering guidance for that which seeks emergence in your soulscape.
“Vulnerability and mutuality is the path.” – Richard Rohr, OFM
“Spiritual friendship, companionship, and intimacy are the whole of the spiritual life.” – Joshin Brian Byrnes
“I don’t know how you feel. … I can never really know what your experience is. … But, I can come alongside you.” – Roshi Joan Halifax
“How do you care for yourself?” – Lynette Dungan
“When vulnerability meets vulnerability we have true intimacy.” – Lance Ng
“When we use the word contemplative, we’re using a word beyond recent trendiness.” – Richard Rohr, OFM
“When I’m on my deathbed, it’s not just what I’m experiencing. It’s what everyone else is experiencing too.” – Dennis Linn
“A yes to God in every guise is the opposite of what feels good, and continually is disarming our hearts.” – Mirabai Starr
“Can you have a spiritual practice without a community?” – Carli Romero
“We’re burdened and gifted with living in our moment of time.” – Richard Rohr, OFM
“Become a student with your own mind and heart.” – Roshi Joan Halifax
“The work of spirituality is to expand our freedom.” – Richard Rohr, OFM
Link Learn more about soul-care and spiritual companionship
In these coming days leading to Winter Solstice, I offer peace to you and yours.
Kindly share your thoughts, and the places in nature that accompany you. If you have a question or reflection about spiritual companionship or soul-flow coaching for the Dear Pegge column, post as a comment or e-me!
*Part of my essay and reflection questions were published in Listen: A Seeker’s Guide to Spiritual Direction, July 2014 Vol 8: Issue 3, published quarterly by Spiritual Directors International. As the founding editor, I concepted, wrote the cover essay, Ask Owl column, and edited Listen from 2007-2017.
Images are by Pegge, Autumn 2023, in Alaska.
What landscapes aid you to show up and listen, reconciling dark and light, suffering and joy, within the skin of your body—your dwelling place in this life?