A Spirituality for Brokenness , livre ebook

Turner Publishing Company - Terry Taylor

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95 pages

English

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Description

A gentle, clear guide to finding hope and help in troubled days.

“When you begin to understand what brokenness means, you will be armed with information that empowers you to take the steps that can turn your leaden feelings into opportunities for health and happiness. When you can accept (and perhaps even celebrate) your brokenness, you can cease your endless search for ‘healing’ and get on with your life, scars and all.”
—from Chapter 1

We each have broken areas of our lives. Whether from things that happen to us or as consequences of our own choices, there are times and situations where our very souls feel fractured.

With wisdom and profound personal experience, Terry Taylor guides you through a compassionate yet highly practical process of facing, accepting, and finally integrating your brokenness into your life—a process that can ultimately bring mending. He offers a clear-eyed, kindhearted method based on teachings and practices from many religious traditions, including:

Ancient Christian practice of Lectio Divina to face our brokenness
Tibetan practice of tonglen to generate compassion for ourselves
Jewish tradition of Sabbath-keeping to give us the space we need to mend
Muslim practice of hajj—pilgrimage—to bring the journey full circle

No matter your faith tradition, you will find lovingkindness and wise counsel in this useful, step-by-step guide to transforming these moments of supreme vulnerability into opportunities for reflection and spiritual growth.

Sujets

health

Terry Taylor

Spiritual

Self-help

Tibetan

Informations

Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	12 avril 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781594734212
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0850€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

To Mary Ellen Cozad Taylor, who gave birth to me and whose spirit served as midwife to this book.
The very time I thought I was lost, The dungeon shook, and my chains fell off .
-from a nineteenth-century spiritual
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Emotional First Aid
by Frances E. Englander, MA, ATR-BC, CPAT
1. W HAT D OES I T M EAN TO B E B ROKEN ?
An Encounter with Brokenness
The Root of Brokenness
Mending, Not Healing
The Long, Perfect Loveliness of You
2. S ABBATH : R ECOGNIZING Y OUR B ROKENNESS
The Most Important Step: Doing Nothing
Getting Away from the Screech of Dissonant Days
The Benefits of Doing Nothing
Taking a Daily Sabbath
A Word of Caution
Taking a Weekly Sabbath
Taking a Longer Sabbatical
3. M AITRI A ND T ONGLEN : H AVING C OMPASSION FOR Y OUR B ROKENNESS
When You Do Nothing, Dark Things Begin to Appear
Making Friends with Yourself
Preparing to Practice
The Practice of Maitri
Leaning into the Pain
The Practice of Tonglen
Giving Tonglen a Try
Using Sabbath, Maitri , and Tonglen Together
4. L ECTIO D IVINA : U NDERSTANDING Y OUR B ROKENNESS
The Power of Story
Traditional Lectio Divina
Bringing Lectio Divina to Brokenness
Bringing Lectio Divina to Your Story
Taking Lectio Divina One Step Further
The Impact of Lectio Divina
5. P ILGRIMAGE : F INDING M EANING IN Y OUR B ROKENNESS
Why Go on a Pilgrimage?
The Power of Hajj
A Failed Hajj
Stages of a Pilgrimage
A Successful Hajj
Hajj Alternatives
Facing the Proverbial Dragon
6 L ABYRINTH : M OVING O N WITH Y OUR B ROKENNESS
An Ancient Practice
A Symbol for the Journey
A Practical Method for Walking a Labyrinth
Labyrinth Alternatives and Suggestions
A Sacramental Journey to Hidden Wholeness
7. T HE Y OGA OF C REATIVITY : T RANSCENDING Y OUR B ROKENNESS
Turning Lead into Gold
Developing a Sustainable Spiritual Path
The Gifts of Creative Expression
Creativity as a Spiritual Practice
Making Creativity into a Personal Yoga
The Discipline of a Spiritual Practice
Turning Wounds into Light
8. T HE T HIRD J EWEL : S HARING Y OUR B ROKENNESS
The Importance of Community
Connecting to Community
Considering Your Community Experience
Sangha as a Spiritual Practice

Afterword
Additional Resources
Acknowledgments
I cannot adequately express my gratitude to my partner, Fran Englander, for all that she contributed to this book. I would also like to express deep thanks to my friend and spiritual advisor, Joe Grant. Among those I wish to acknowledge for their key role in bringing this book to print are my editor, Marcia Broucek, and her predecessor, Mark Ogilbee.
A number of friends and mentors have nurtured me over the years with their kindness and love: Miss Merita Levine; Sr. Josepha McNutt, MSBT; my Aunt Helen Murdock; Leonard Cox; Mimi Ferry; David Cook; Jim Douglass; Fr. John Dear, SJ; Cindy Humbert; mentors Robert and Ruth Brooker; friend and collaborator Hollinger Bernard; my fifth-grade teacher (known to me only as Miss Putney); and my seventh-grade English teacher, Beverly Silvasi. I also wish to thank Thomas Merton, Ram Dass, and Claire van Vliet for their creative inspiration. I am indebted to Dr. Steve McCabe (my hand specialist) and Rhonda Curry (my hand therapist) for helping me to mend physically. And finally I want to thank Anita Mclaughlin, Don Feeney, and all the other pilgrims who have been part of my mending journey. Even though this book is dedicated to my mother, its healing spirit flows from my father, Carl Taylor, who became my friend when I was in my thirties.
Introduction
M any of us who feel broken on the inside seem to be perfectly okay on the outside. We don t necessarily suffer from injury or illness; our lives may not have been turned upside down by catastrophe. Yet we still feel a sense of alienation or separateness from the world around us. Perhaps you are among the thousands who just feel broken and can t explain why. You may not have a dramatic story or traumatic past, yet you may feel out of sync with friends, family-even yourself.
As I crossed the threshold of my fiftieth birthday, I began to have a more urgent sense of brokenness, a feeling that has plagued me my entire life. And as I talked with friends, I found, to my surprise, that many, if not most, of them also felt broken in some way-not acceptable to others or themselves. I learned that many people suffered the way I did:
The woman who has struggled with eating disorders all of her adult life;
The couple who, after working for thirty years in the same jobs at the same company, were both fired when the plant closed;
The talented athlete who, because of an automobile accident injury, can no longer compete and feels that her life has lost its meaning;
The eighty-two-year-old man who fought his way across Europe in World War II and has since spent his life trying to come to grips with what he did in the war and what the war did to him;
The brilliant young man born with cerebral palsy who cannot find a productive livelihood;
The woman who seems to find herself in abusive relationships over and over again;
The young man who has always felt unaccepted within his family because his mother was a prostitute;
The young woman who witnessed her older brother s suicide when she was only twelve and has felt responsible for his death all her life;
The many men, women, and children I know who have experienced violence (physical, mental, emotional, or sexual) directed at them or their loved ones.
Most of us who feel broken try to find something or someone that will fix, repair, or heal that sense of brokenness. Unfortunately, that search is more often than not fruitless. What is fruitful is the journey inward to name and understand our brokenness so we can begin the mending process. What we need are clear-eyed and kindhearted ways of understanding and moving through our brokenness.
The great psychologist Carl Jung once said that in all of his years as a therapist, he had never encountered anyone whose problem, at its core, was not fundamentally spiritual. If our problems are fundamentally spiritual, then it would seem reasonable, even necessary, to use powerful spiritual tools to address them.
In my search for ways to alleviate my own anguish, and perhaps that of others, I have explored many spiritual tools from the world s great religions. As the director of Interfaith Paths to Peace, my work is to bring practitioners of different religions together for events that will spark dialogue and better understanding. Over the years, I have heard how brokenness is felt by men, women, and children around the globe. I have experienced the power and richness of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and other religions. I have learned that we can encounter the transcendent in the midst of our lives, whether we live on the magical Celtic island of Iona or on the banks of the Ohio River, where I currently reside. And I have come to discover many healthy spiritual practices that help people deal with problems in their daily lives.
The walls that have traditionally separated the world s religions are becoming porous, allowing spiritual tools and practices to flow between and among them. I find Protestant friends embracing the Christian Orthodox practice of repeating the Jesus Prayer. I know Jews who embrace Buddhist meditation practices. I know Catholics who employ the Prayer to the Four Directions from Native American spirituality. More than at any other time in history, we now have the possibility of using spiritual tools and practices from all religions to address our brokenness in ways that we might never have thought possible a generation ago.
As I have looked further into these many religious traditions, I have begun to understand that if we turn to a spirituality uniquely tuned for times of brokenness, we can transform our moments of supreme vulnerability into opportunities for unhindered reflection and spiritual growth. As I began to find spiritual tools that helped me, I started offering a workshop titled A Spirituality for Brokenness. Just as I clarify at each workshop, I ll be up front with you: I am not offering healing. I am not an authority. But I have lived, and am living, this journey of mending, and I will give you as honest a version as I can of what has helped me and, I believe, can help you with your own journey.
I have found seven steps in particular that have helped me formulate a spirituality for brokenness, and I want to share them with you in this book:
1. Recognize your brokenness: The often-neglected tradition from the Jewish and Christian faiths of taking a Sabbath or a regular period of rest and reflection is a simple practice (but often difficult to actually do ) that can help you suspend judgment about your situation and see your brokenness more clearly, which will have a profound effect on your attitude toward it.
2. Have compassion for your brokenness: The Tibetan Buddhist practices of maitri and tonglen are two interrelated meditation techniques that can help you gain a deeper and more compassionate awareness of your brokenness, and the brokenness of others.
3. Understand your brokenness: The Christian method of Lectio Divina , which is essentially an expanded way of studying the stories of scripture, is a helpful tool for getting a fresh perspective on your own story, especially the formative incidents in your early life that shaped your sense of brokenness. Using the practice of Lectio Divina can help you transform your story from a source of pain to a source of understanding.
4. Find meaning in your brokenness: The Muslim practice of hajj , making a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to a holy site, can be a literal or a virtual journey to a place that is sacred for you or to a key place where your story developed. Returning with new eyes can help you find the meaning in your experience.
5. Move on with your broken