May We All Be One

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Opening Minds, Opening Hearts Season 3 Episode 11 with Colleen Thomas and Mark Dannenfelser

Episode Title: May We All Be One

Colleen: Hello, welcome to the final episode of Season 3 of the Opening Minds Opening Hearts podcast. This is Colleen. I'm here with my co-host, Mark. How are you, Mark? 

Mark: I'm doing well. Hello, everyone. This is really a nice opportunity for us to meet one more time to reflect on this season, isn't it?

Colleen: I know. This season has been challenging and enlightening. I like that word, enlightening, actually. Right. The word enlighten reminds me of the essence of this season, too, in some way, because enlightenment is not a Christian word. And in so many ways, this season has been all about expanding our view of God, The Divine, Ultimate Reality through conversations with people from other faith traditions.

And there's been a bit of time between our last recording, which you all might have just listened to, but our last guest was Sister Meg Funk. 

And it's been about a month since Mark and I sat back together, well, virtually together, to talk about what is staying with us from this season. And so we're here to just reflect together on what's been sitting with us and maybe to get us into that a little bit, I'll ask you a question, Mark, that you pose. 

Mark: I'll try to make up an answer. 

Colleen: But what's staying with you from the season or what's bubbling up to the surface now that we're actually reflecting back over this season? 

Mark: Well, I'm glad you used the word expansion, especially because we have had some time since our last guest that we interviewed to let that percolate, at least for me, that's what it's been doing. And there is this sense of expansion, this opening up, like a flower opening up when I reflect on all that's been said and implied. And one of the things that's sticking with me is the non-dual thing that we talk so much about.

We really posed 'What is non-dual?' to each of our guests, and so there was a lot there as I look back over that. And I think of expansion as a kind of stretching too, so it's been nice to sit back a little bit and stretch out. We might have said this at some point in the season, but we talk so much about attention and intention, especially in Centering Prayer, we talk about intention when we're practicing.

And both those words share that root that means to stretch toward. And so I'm feeling that. Like, what am I stretching toward? One of the things about non-dual was that it led me to a challenging reflection on if it's not dualism, if the practice leads us to something that's not dualism, it's non-dual, what does that mean, really?

And the word that was coming up for me was pluralism, which in my growing up was a bad word in my Catholic upbringing. It was like if you were pluralistic, it meant you were open to everything else. And we Catholics sometimes define ourselves as the one true church. So to accept or to even acknowledge other points of view about who God is and what God looks like and what we believe is really a challenge.

So that was a good challenge for me. And the clarification that it's not about many gods, it's one God with many expressions. So that was something that's really been sitting with me that I'm stretching myself to reflect on that more deeply. What does that mean for my own faith life? (Yeah.) How about for you? What have you been sitting with or percolating with? 

Colleen: What I am sitting with is my experience slowly, devotionally reading through Keating's Reflections on the Unknowable, which have given me ground to enter into these conversations throughout this season. I highly recommend to those who are listening, if you don't have the book Reflections on the Unknowable, get it.

And the very last chapter is actually a homily for Epiphany, which is that season that comes just after Christmas. So much in his writing speaks of this Ultimate Reality that has no name. And I remember really inviting all of our guests to explore their understanding of Ultimate Reality and how so many found it hard to describe or put into words.

And this relationship between Ultimate Reality and non-duality, which is hard to describe. I was really, really moved by our conversation with Kaira Jewel, who used this really vivid imagery, her experience of non-duality. The only way she could really share that with us was through stories. And then also with YYuria Celidwen, Dr. Celidwen, who I've actually now have her book and have been just beginning to let myself, I almost don't want to say even read it because it's like poetry. And she also is encouraging this relationship to the senses. And having an experience of God, which Mirabai Starr also talked with us about, you know, mysticism is this direct experience of God.

And so I think maybe what I'm sensing is a real shift in my own understanding of Ultimate Reality of God as an experience. Not a conversation about, or a thought that I have in my mind, but really just being in this mysterious relationship that opens me to other relationships with people who have their own experiences, people whose experiences are completely different from mine.

But because this Ultimate Reality, this God is an experience, our experiences all connect us with each other. That's what's coming up for me right now, is if I can live in the experience of God, I can be open to being in relationships with others, embracing them, embracing their experiences. 

Mark: Yeah, it's interesting too.

I was finding some of these terms seem nondescript in a way, like impersonal in a way. And even when you talk about mystery, and contemplation, meditation, it can be this kind of nebulous thing. And what I was hearing in a lot of our guests, too, is that it really comes down to a very personal thing as well as a very impersonal.

I think Cynthia said it that way, that Ultimate Reality includes the whole thing. It's a God that we can't fully define, but it's also very up close and personal too. Mirabai said that too, that we are to go toward the human experience, and she spoke so beautifully about her own human experience with all of it and avoiding that tendency to want to spiritualize it or what she called spiritual bypassing.

But Yuria also was using terms like friendship, kinship, and for Yuria, it was not just kin with other people in my life, but the whole of creation that were a kinship with that. I think she said, I'm a sibling of the entire community, something to that effect, you know, it's beautiful. So it's like this dynamic of the bigger that gets, this Ultimate Reality, it doesn't lose that very direct and personal.

If I could go back for a second, because one of the books that got us here in terms of the season was, you and I were reflecting on that book, The Common Heart. 

Colleen: Yeah, Netanel's book. 

Mark: Which was talking about these interreligious or interspiritual dialogues that Thomas Keating had initiated in the mid-80s or something, went on for 20 years.

And in the foreword in that book, Ken Wilber's writing, and he makes this very simple, I think an important point where he says that Thomas Keating did not, he's talking about bringing a group of very diverse religious and spiritual folks together, and he says Thomas Keating did not assemble texts, it wasn't about the theology, that he did not call together texts in a room. He assembled human beings. Wilbur goes on to say too, because of that, we need to look at that. Like what happens to us as real people in terms of the spiritual life? What is the spiritual life doing? He's got a lot of different terms for that, how we grow in that. And in the forward, he was using language from developmental psychology, but one iteration of that is we go from egocentric, it's just about me, to ethnocentric, where it's about others too, and we're interested in others, and then that goes to world-centric.

And that reflection of Wilbur's in the foreword of that book really, to me, was in evidence in all of the guests that we had, that it was this expansive thing that went out, but it included the individual, the personal. It was said in so many different and beautiful ways, Abdul-Rehman – AR, he invited us to call him AR – from the Sufi tradition. One of the lines he said that stuck with me was, how do we become, we, like us, as individuals, how do we become the means by which God enters the world? 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Mark: It's both broad and expansive and also comes down to the individual, how am I living that out in my real life as it is? 

Colleen: Yeah, and that line from AR brings me all the way back to the heart of Centering Prayer, Thomas Keating's teachings. The whole goal of the contemplative life is transformation. Transformation into what? From what to what? From this human, aware-of-my-humanness self into this divine being. This is our journey, a little less of self, more and more in God.

I'm also remembering Kaira Jewel sharing that story about the tree and the tree asking her, what's it like to be human? And her first response was a little in her head and then Her really connecting with the experience of being human, the connectedness, like the tree inherently knew that it was one of many, even though the trees of their own species were on the other side of the mountain.

But this constant awareness of togetherness and oneness that in our human experience, we can so easily lose touch with, lose access to this, oh, I'm not alone here. I'm connected to everyone that's around me. But, we have to practice this awareness. 

 (Gentle music starts...) 

In the Christian tradition, contemplative prayer is the opening of your mind and heart to God, who is beyond thoughts, words, and emotions.

Centering prayer is a method designed to facilitate contemplation. The method suggests four guidelines. One, choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God's presence and action within you. Two, sit comfortably and relatively still, close your eyes or leave them slightly open, and silently introduce your sacred word.

Three, when you notice you have become engaged with a thought, Simply return, ever so gently, to your sacred word. And four, at the end of the 20-minute prayer period, let go of the sacred word and remain in silence for a couple of minutes. The additional time invites you to bring the atmosphere of silence.

(Gentle music fades out...) 

Mark: Yeah, and everyone we spoke to, no matter what tradition they were coming from, had practices that supported that, whatever you want to call that, progression, maybe, or it's not even a good word, but It's more of a, like, being intimately in touch with our own humanness and then also not stopping there. And what brings us on to see the bigger picture.

AR called that the seduction of making our own view, he said our own faith the Ultimate Reality.

Colleen: Yeah. 

Mark: That's not it. That's a means to opening up to this thing. That's so much bigger than Christianity, Catholicism, Sufism, Judaism, whatever it is. Keating called that our creatureliness. I think Cynthia reminded us.

Like, we belong in this life, in this particular expression, the human being, but it's not that separate, in a sense, from the tree. 

Colleen: Yeah. And this way of seeing, too, that you were reflecting on, that AR brought to us, I also love how Sister Meg brought us back to the practice of Lectio as a way of cultivating a new way of seeing the sacred text that we read at different levels of understanding and awareness.

It just strikes me as so important to be reminded of right now in these times where there's so much information, so much news, so many opinions, so many ideas that are appearing as facts. That we are cultivating a way of seeing with divine sight, and as contemplatives, this is a really important time for us to nurture our eyes, our spiritual eyes in a way, so that we can see.

And that idea of sight, too. I can't remember, was it Netanel who says we can just call it Reality, like lose the ultimate, it's just Reality? And more and more, God as Reality is enough of an understanding for me. I find myself just praying to hold on, and by hold on I mean stay in truth, reality. You know, what really is.

And Father Thomas, who arrives at this place, too, likely influenced by all of these interspiritual dialogues in the Snowmass Conferences of just, in the end, saying, God is, God is 'ising'. 

Mark: Yeah, the isness of God is a term that Keating used, and Cynthia reminded us of that. What you were saying too, yeah, that Lectio and practices like that help us to engage that understanding and experience of God.

And then it's also beyond all of that, whatever we could conceive of. And Cynthia was saying that, that a God is beyond concept, and beyond words, and just is. It's a directness also. There's an is-ness, and no need for words at times. Just the beauty of having a contemplative practice, that we get to touch it from that perspective.

Cynthia said that we aspire toward the infinite and the infinite aspires toward the personal. I think she called it a two-way street or an exchange. Part of it is the personal and part of it is us doing the work in terms of our practice, engaging in that. And then there's also something else where God just takes over in that way.

We could do a whole nother season just on this season, just reflecting on it. We won't, just in case you're worried out there. We're going to go on for days here, but so deep. I, for one, and I hope you, our listeners, even if you've been following all along as these episodes have been dropping, make a point of going back over it.

It's so rich, some of what's been said and talked about on that. It's definitely worth revisiting as well. 

Colleen: Yeah. I think it's worth inviting too, especially our great hope with the podcast, is that, we have listeners beyond the Contemplative Outreach community, but we know and are so grateful to those who are a part of the Contemplative Outreach community who are faithfully listening to the podcast.

And for that community in particular, I want to offer this and even discuss it with you just in the short time that we have left for the season. This question came up for me when thinking about the last episode and thinking of Well, what is the value of interspiritual dialogue? What did Father Thomas sense would happen in his own spiritual life, committing to these interspiritual dialogues year after year after year?

For our community of Contemplative Outreach, how do we carry on the legacy of Father Thomas and his passion for interspirituality in the years to come? Because we can talk about the value of it, which we've been discussing, but how do we live this out in our own lives, personally, in Contemplative Outreach chapters, in our own faith communities? Where is interspirituality becoming real in your own life? I mean, I know for you, Mark, you're at this intersection because of your work in mindfulness, which is not from the Christian tradition, but what can you share from your own experience maybe in the mindfulness community with the larger Contemplative Outreach community about carrying on this legacy? 

Mark: I mean, one of the things that drew me to mindfulness as a practice, but also as a work that I'm doing, especially the iteration of it that I mostly work with, which is mindfulness-based stress reduction. That was a specific calling from the spiritual traditions - contemplative and meditative traditions and bringing the practices into healthcare in an effort to support people and help them with their own suffering. And that was a real appeal for me as a psychotherapist. The research was clear, even in the beginning, that it would help support mental health because that would be useful in my counseling work.

But as I've reflected on it over the years, it also appealed to me because it wasn't exclusive, it was inclusive. And I'm not saying this about other traditions or religions that they're all exclusive, but it risks that if you have to adhere to a very particular set of beliefs in order to be part of that in group.

And I think that serves a certain purpose and sense of formulating, having language, common language, and sense of community and all. But what I get, not only from mindfulness but from the Christian contemplative tradition too, is if you stay in it long enough in terms of the practice, it's going to go out.

I think this is happening within the Contemplative Outreach community also, but when you start labeling a lot of things, then it starts narrowing the field a little bit, and like I said, I think that serves a certain purpose, but ultimately there's more to it than that, which is why I think they probably came up with that term in those dialogues, the Snowmass dialogues of Ultimate Reality, or as Netanel said, just plain Reality.

That's inclusive, that's broad, that's pluralistic, it includes, it's not either or, it's not one or the other, it's not black or white or anything else, you know, left or right. I don't know if that's really answering your question, but that is the general pull for me is this God that is beyond all of the particulars, includes all of them, but is beyond that too.

Colleen: I think Sister Meg really modeled that, too. She is one who was very close to Father Thomas and credits him with introducing her to the interspiritual community that she served for her whole life. And remained a sister and when invited by, I think it was a woman from the Hindu tradition, she shared, invited her to learn her practice and she became a student of hers without conflict or fear.

I think fear plays a big role in hindering our curiosity to learn about another tradition. How can I practice a Hindu prayer form if I identify as a Christian? And yet, what an example Sister Meg offers us of a woman who is able to see this universal truth as expressed in, you know, she did send us, at least she sent to me, did I send to you the copy of her book?

Remember she was doing the book about yoga, but about the asanas, and their meaning in the Christian tradition, like, I'm not sure what I'm trying to suggest here, but the curiosity of God, if we trust this, what more can we learn about ourselves, about others, and about God, if we're able to, like Sister Meg, say, huh, I wonder how this applies to the truths in my own tradition, as opposed to saying, No, I'm not going to go there because that doesn't exist in my tradition.

Maybe it does. And I'm so grateful to people like her to explore the possibility that God is all in all. 

Mark: Yeah, and that maybe goes by different names. I mean, Jim Finley was saying this too. Maybe we asked him about Keating's idea of divine therapy, but Finley, as a psychologist, was saying that therapy was a way to deepen our awareness of our oneness with God.

He's using that language, but he was saying that maybe in the context of this Ultimate Reality too. And this was very much part of Keating's divine therapy too. Healing, even if it's from the discipline of psychology, leads us to the freedom to recognize our oneness in whatever you want to call that Ultimate Reality.

And so, it doesn't abandon our own language about that, or our own understanding about that, it's just, it includes all of it. And I think Centering Prayer helps us to formulate that, or understand that, or experience that, kind of concretize that in a way. And then you can see God in the tree. You're not making the tree God and having these many gods that are all in the forest, but you can see God in that tree, or you can see God in yourself, or in your neighbor, or your enemy. It has no limit to it. 

Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. No limit. Limitless. 

Mark: It's limitless. My term for God now is a they ness. Mm-hmm. Not like multiple gods, like they as a group, it's plural in the oneness, if that makes sense. So I like that term they, yeah. Yeah. God is not just father, that's just an image. 

Colleen: Maybe to bring us back around to end our, not just this episode, but the season, I'm looking at this quote from Father Thomas who says, "How do we grow in this new consciousness? Christ became a human being in order to show us how to do this. This was his way of manifesting the love of God, becoming one with us in order that human beings might become one with God. There's no escaping this being human.

Plug! That's the title of AR's podcast. There's no escaping this being human. And in being human, there's no escaping being in relationship with other humans. And it just strikes me that it's so much easier to lean in to otherness than it is to reject or avoid otherness. 

Mark: It's departing words we hear in Jesus, I think in John's gospel, that they may be one.

Colleen: Yeah. 

Mark: That they may be one. That's one translation anyway. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Mark: That's the whole thing is the oneness. That's where it's all going. Or already is, I guess, but we're going in terms of our understanding of that or experience of that. The oneness. 

Colleen: That's a beautiful place to end with our prayer for all of you who are listening, the Contemplative Outreach community and beyond.

May we all be one. 

Mark: Colleen, let me say too, I just, the sheer joy of working with you on this podcast and that we get to have these conversations and for all those who have tuned in to listen to these conversations. We have a real sense of that connection between us and between not just the people who listened, but all the people who are out there.

So thank you for that invitation to be part of this as well. 

Colleen: Well, there would be no podcast if you hadn't invited me to do it with you. So, I'm so grateful. Yeah, so grateful. All right, peace and blessings, everyone.