“Dear Heart Come Home: The Path of Midlife Spirituality . . . by Joyce Rupp is directed at those who want to come to a deeper appreciation of Spirit and self. The author of five books including Praying Our Goodbyes, presents musings, poems, and vignettes from her journal as she considers inner work, the dark night of the soul, grief, prayer, transformation, healing, and hope. In each of these chapters, Rupp comes up with images that go to the heart of what she is considering. This sensitive author has the great gift of reading the spiritual meaning of her own experience. Dear Heart, Come Home is tailor-made for middle agers who are intent upon intensifying their spiritual journey.”
In this powerful little book, the author does not hesitate to mingle Gospel stories and their applications, with contemporary life stories that connect with the Gospel. She achieves a very striking and thought-provoking picture of the failures of today’s churches to face the real issues of modem life. Through the actual experiences of individuals we are faced with the obvious futility of imposing criteria for acceptance on the minor matters of liturgy, language, gender, money, etc., while refusing to address the major problems of poverty, discrimination and the rest. Without indulging in criticism, she nevertheless makes us see the contradictions. She gives numerous examples of the courage and humility of men and women who continue to believe in the future despite the injustices they have endured. The sub-tit1e of this book very accurately names those who would benefit from it, but it also offers a way of understanding for those who support people in the midst of the struggle.
We as Roman Catholics belong to a Church where openness, justice, and inclusivity are sometimes hard to find. And when these qualities do appear, they are often subject to suspicion. The paradox is that Jesus, the center of our Church, taught and lived openly and justly, welcoming all He encountered. Kathy Coffey’s Dancing in the Margins: Meditations for People who Struggle with Their Churches, offers meditations, poetry, and stories of ordinary people coming to terms with this paradox. Though relegated to the margins of the church, they discover extraordinary ways of being with, listening to, and accepting the spirit of Jesus.
Coffey begins by describing those at the margins, those feeling “betrayed by people and a system that were important to them, a church that they once honored. Now it has either viciously turned on them or blithely ignored them.” (12) She then suggests that instead of shattering into despair, these betrayed or ignored ones pick themselves up, seek the Divine Partner, and dance.
Why dance? Because, Coffey tells us, God is good, and our faith does not come only inside the box called Church. Faith and our faithful God come in all the ordinary, everyday events of our lives, like drawing water from a well when we are thirsty.
By encouraging us to dance, Coffey also reminds us that we must pray and go deep within ourselves to find not just the rules of the institutional Church but God’s truth for each one of us. Again and again, this wisdom is linked to the experience of Jesus, who also lived on the margins, ignoring the religious conventions of his day, talking with a Samaritan woman, touching a dead body, healing the sick on the Sabbath. If we go deep into the Spirit of God within, we find that we can live a fully spiritual life because God is present in us, even when it appears God is nowhere to be found at the parish, in the diocese or at the Vatican.
In addition to descriptions of those hurt, dismissed, or ignored by the institution, Dancing at the Margins offers poetry and gentle meditations on healing. And at the end of each chapter Coffey provides questions for study and reflection. Especially for those recently hurt by the institutional Church, this material could be quite useful, helping them to join the many men and women in and out of the institutional Church who have found a space to seek the holy in their own way.
For those of us who have been living on the margins for a long time, however, this book really does not provide the hope and inspiration for which we yearn. The stories are inspiring, but they are all too familiar. There are just too many of us living ‘on the margins” because the institutional Church is abusive. As one woman quoted in Dancing at the Margins suggests, some of us are no longer satisfied with being marginalized.
“Something about being Catholic is etched on my soul,” she says( 142).
Where can I find a book of meditations that will give me courage, daring, boldness and resolution to believe in and work toward a Church that is open, just and inclusive? What I`m looking for is a strong statement about my right to speak and to do what is just even if the Church fathers do not agree, I may sometimes welcome a meditation that inspires me to dancing. At other times l need one that leads to speaking clearly or disagreeing or even jumping up and down and shouting out loud.
“David Steindl-Rast, one of our Living Spiritual Teachers, is the author of many books and the founder/adviser to the worldwide ‘Network for Grateful Living’ that comes together at the interactive website gratefulness.org, a sister site of Spirituality & Practice. The 15 essays in this paperback—previously published articles, interviews, and transcripts of talks—cover 30 years in the development of his common sense spirituality. They explore three essential themes:
• Our Peak or Mystical Experiences
• The Sacred Traditions that Are Expressions of Our Spirituality
• Our Response to Our Spiritual Experiences
In her introduction to this collection, Joan Chittister commends David Steindl-Rast for giving substance to faith and reason for hope: ‘He refuses to be obscure. He resists being dogmatic. He disdains being simplistic. He is unwilling to be obscurantist. He himself is the epitome of “common sense spirituality.”‘
Steindl-Rast offers us a rich and deep take on spirituality. He writes about the vibrancy of true aliveness in everyday life; he suggests ways to bring out ‘the monk in us’; he ponders the delights provided by the link between art and the sacred; he reveals the benefits of living a sacramental life; he probes the mystical core of organized religion; he affirms the integration of shadow in Christianity; he explores the value of learning to die; and he revels in the spiritual practices of hope and gratitude. This paperback delivers on its promise of sharing the essential wisdom of David Steindl-Rast. Here are two examples:
On Play
‘Leisure is doing your work—doing anything you do—with the attitude of play. That means bringing to the moment at hand what is most important about playing, namely, that you do it for its own sake and not just to get it done. The monastic attitude is to do anything we do with wholehearted attention—with openness to meaning.’
On Hope
‘To have hope is not to seek the surprise of a Hollywood happy ending, which is unrealistic optimism. To have hope is to remain open to the possibility of surprise when everything turns out worse than we could ever imagine. Despair assigns reality a deadline, whereas hope knows that there are no deadlines. This is how hope truly thrives in the midst of hopelessness.'”