Journal of Sacred Work

Today’s meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves….Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

     In a wonderful book titled A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, author Parker Palmer talks about finding the truth our soul wants to speak. The questions in our lives may create anxiety and fear, even though truth itself lies just beneath our fear. Seeing and hearing that truth comes when we are willing to "live the questions now" as Rilke so beautifully writes in the quote above. Living the question asks ego and intellect to stand aside for a moment, and gives our soul the chance to speak. Soul work, much like discovering the deep reaching beauty of a rose, is quiet and sometimes difficult to put into words.

     The early Quaker traditions included what has been called a clearness committee. Members of the community would be invited to help an individual achieve clarity with a problem or issue that today many of us would take to a therapist, pastor, rabbi, or priest. In the tradition of a clearness committee, two key convictions are embodied: guidance comes from the inner teacher, and we need community to help us hear clearly the inner teacher’s voice. The sole responsibility of the clearness committee is to ask open, honest questions that invite the soul to speak and the individual to listen deeply to the inner teacher.

     The beauty of the practice is not in interpreting for the individual, or in giving advice, but in holding that individual’s soul in trust. The ground rules for a clearness committee might be intimidating to some: if the focus individual cries, do not offer a tissue; if the focus individual speaks with humor, do not laugh aloud; maintain a neutral expression when listening or asking a question; allow the focus individual to refrain from eye contact for the time in circle. The rules are intended to keep us from invading the sacred space of the soul, and to avoid saying or doing anything that would draw attention away from the focus individual and onto the community members themselves. This is truly an opportunity to create and protect a sacred space.

     When we enter into and provide those we serve with a sacred space in which they can live their way into their answers, finding their truth that lies just beneath their fears, we have given perhaps the greatest of gifts. I wonder how often any of us are given the gift of a protected space for our souls. How do you, dear caregiver, experience this sacred space in your life?