Uncomplicated Spirituality

I just came back from the wedding of good friends and I was very close to cry when the bride came into the sanctuary…but I didn’t….uf!!!(that was hard thing to do because I am a crying baby, even with Bambi I get so sad). Last night I went to bed very late sharing my heart and passion to a new friend that i just met. And as you know when I get excited I talked until I don’t have more words to say or until I need to go to bed.
I believe that after three years without any direction, I have realized that God is helping me re-direct my way through the many friends and new friends He is bringing into the table. I want to share with you the things I am learning about Spiritual Direction according to my favorite author, and let me tell you this explains my goal as a lead facilitator at Connection and my norm as a human being and believer of God. (I wont share the author’s name because If you know me you should know who he is anymore, hehehe!:

To be a witness means to offer your own faith experiences and to make your doubts and hopes, failures and successes, loneliness and woundedness, available to others as a context in which they can struggle with their own humanness and quest for meaning. Who really wants to make their struggle available to others as a source of growth and understanding? Who wants to be reminded of their weaknesses and limitations, doubts and uncertainties? Who wants to confess that God cannot be understood, that human experience is not explainable, and that the greatest questions of life do not lead to answers but only to deeper questions? Who wants to be vulnerable and say with confidence, “I don’t know!” To offer or receive spiritual directions calls for the courage to enter into the common search, confront our brokenness, and use this capacity to grow through wisdom and understanding. Spiritual directions means to listen to the other without fear and to discover the intimate, divine connections within your own stormy life history. It means to help others discover that their questions are human questions, their search is a human search, and their restlessness is part of the restlessness of the human heart–your own included.

To those with serious struggles and burning questions, i want to reach out with compassion and say: “You seek answers to what cannot be fully known. I don’t know either, but I will help you search. I offer not solutions, no final answers. I am as weak and limited as you are. But we are not alone. Where there is charity and love, God is there. Together, we form community. Together we continue the spiritual search” (H.N. Spiritual Direction)

Beautiful!! don’t you think so!!! What a magnificent statement about what leadership in the year 2008 should be. It is the way to become the father from the prodigal son. A father who can see beyond dirtiness and desperation, beyond insecurity and unworthiness; a father who can recognized his own wounds and embrace his son not from what he can not offer, or from what he can pretend to have; but out of care, love and compassion. It is a father who can say, “I see something wonderful in you, let me learn from you”.

After everything has been said and done, what we have to offer is our authentic selves in relationship to others. What matters most, what transforms, is the influence of a humble, vulnerable witness to the truth

Believe it or not, I am finally listen to God’s Spiritual direction in my life. New times are coming I truly believe that.

Once in a while I need to leave all these thoughts, words, labyrinths aside (because is too much thinking) and just share with you one of my many pleasures: Latin Music. Here is a great singer who has a very unique voice. I hope you can also find the joy of listening to this kind of art.

De ves en cuando necesito dejar a un lado todos mis pensamientos, palabras, laberintos (porque sino es mucho pensar) y compartir con ustedes uno de mis tantos placeres: Latin Music. En este video escucharán una voz unica y especial. Espero que puedan encontrar el gozo de escuchar este tipo de arte.

oh no!! my mind is going 90 in thinking miles(more questions). I have always been taught that “we need to be connected in Christ”, and without Christ there is not connectivity. The problem arise when I ask myself this question: if we have Christ, are we all connected? Even if I am connected with the source–meaning God–that does not mean I am connected with others (who also are connected with the same source). so how can that happens? I thought that only through Christ we can connect, right? so how come Sunday becomes a place of displacement with a pretension of connectivity?. Listen to this and it may sound as incongruent as it sounded to me: we come to meet on Sunday morning to get connected to God and to others, do I really get connected? or am I confusing connection with interaction? am I really creating a safe place for connection or it is just a comfortable day for interaction?. Then I ask myself that if connectivity only happens through God and I can not be connected to others unless I am truly connected with God, so how come this so unconnected person can create that which I lack? confused? me too don’t worry!! remember the beauty of asking questions is that we are not expecting an answer….yet. So I can visit you, drink many cups of coffee together, I could call you, even pray for and with you and still be as disconnected as we can be and as farm away from each other. But I can share a meal with two new friends that have never got together before and suddenly realized what connectivity is all about. May be Connectivity is not only assuming that if we are connected with God then we should be connected with each other. May be I do not create connectivity, I can not do it for everybody. It is an individual decision and sometimes extremely hard to make it corporal. So what am I doing or pretending to do on Sundays,  Connectivity or Interactivity. Help me here if you have any thoughts! (Honestly I think my philosophy class is messing with my mind)

No lo puedo creer mi mente esta viajando a 120 en kilometros de pensamientos. (mas preguntas). Yo siempre he sido enseñado que “necesitamos estar conectados en Cristo” y sin él no hay conectividad. El problema sale a relucir cuando me pregunto: si tenemos a Cristo, ¿estamos todos conectados?. Aún si estoy conectado con Dios eso no significa que estoy conecatdo con los demás. (que también estan conectados con Dios) entonces ¿como es que eso puede ser posible si tanto yo como los demas estamos conectados a la misma persona? yo pense que solo a través de Cristo nos podemos conectar, ¿verdad?. Entonces porque los domingos se convierten en un lugar de disperción con una pretencion de conectividad? Lean lo que a continuación escribo y posiblemente les suene tan incongruente como me sono a mi: Venimos los domingos a conectarnos con Dios y con los demás, ¿en verdad me conecto? o ¿estoy confundiendo conexión con interactuar? ¿Estoy creando un lugar seguro para conectar o un lugar agradable para interactuar? Depués me pregunto que si la conectividad solo pasa a tráves de Dios y no puedo conectarme a los demás a menos que este conectado con Dios, ¿entonces como es que esta persona que esta tan desconectada puede crear algo que no tiene? ¿esta confundido? yo también no te procupes, recuerda que lo bonito de hacernos preguntas es que no tenemos que tener las respuestas…ahorita por lo menos. Así que puedo visitarte, tomarme muchas tazas de café contigo, hablarte por telefono, orar con y por ti y aún asi estar tan desconectado como es posible y tan lejos uno del otro. Pero puedo compartir una cena con dos nuevos amigos con quien nunca antes había convivido y darme cuenta lo que significa la conectividad. Posiblemente la conectividad no es asumir que por solo estar conectado con Dios significa que voy a estar conectado con los demás, es posible que yo no pueda crear conectividad y que no lo pueda hacer por todos. Es una desicion individual y muchas veces muy dificil hacerla grupal. Asi que, ¿qué estoy haciendo o pretendiendo hacer los domingos, conectar o interactuar? Ayudame si tienes algún pensamiento (creo que mi clase de filosofïa me esta alborotando la menta)

When I spend more time with my Lord, there are many thoughts and feelings that appear into this very hectic mind. Spending time with God it means not only enjoying His presence in a very contemplative way, but also to open the window of the understanding of my own heart. This morning while a torrential raining storm was pounding the small community where I live and seated in my car waiting for the rain to be done so I can go to my Philosophy class; a group of questions came to me like a waterfall and without warning: “who am I?, where I have come from? where am I going? where do I belong and how can I be of service?” There were so intense that I have to shot down the thoughts and pretend nothing has happened, but even though I really tried to keep those questions away from my thoughts, they were already messing up every closet inside of me. Asking myself these questions create a lot of anxiety because most of the time I don’t really know the answers. But even though is scary to bring them into my thinking, they are part of me already. Then when I arrive to have coffee at the local coffee shop and start reading my favorite this is what I read, “Spiritual direction affirms the basic quest for meaning. It calls for the creation of space in which the validity of the questions does not depend on the availability of answers but on the question’s capacity to open us to new perspectives and horizons. We must allow the daily experiences of life–joy, loneliness, fear, anxiety, insecurity, doubt, ignorance, the need of affection, support, understanding, and the long cry for love–to be recognize as an essential part of the spiritual quest”. Then I realized is ok to have questions even though I don’t have the answers, because I believe all these questions will re-direct my life, knowing that the “ultimate source of spiritual guidance, comfort and knowing comes from God”….but as always when we start asking questions we need to face our humanity and brokenness…and that my friends is a growing pain, an “essential part of the spiritual quest“(all Italics are fragments of the Book Spiritual Directions by Henry Nouwen)

Cuando paso mas tiempo con mi Señor hay muchas  pensamientos y sentimientos que aparecen en esta tan complicada mente. Pasar tiempo con Dios no solo significa tomar un tiempo y disfrutar de una manera contemplativa su presencia, sino tambien el abrir la ventana del entendimiento de mi propio corazón. Esta mañana mientras una lluviar torrencial azotaba la pequeña comunidad en la cual vivo, y mientras esperaba que suavizara para poder ir a mi clase de Filosofía; un grupo de preguntas aparecieron como cascadas y sin ningun aviso: ¿Quién soy?, ¿De donde vengo?, ¿Hacia donde voy?,¿Dónde pertenezco? y ¿Hacia dónde me dirijo?. Fuerón tan intensas que tuve que cerrar mi pensamiento y pretender que no había pasado nada, pero a pesar de que trate con todas mis fuerzas de acallar esos pensamientos ya habían entrado a desordenar todos los closets de mi mente. Preguntarme esto muchas veces me trae mucha ansiendad ya que la mayoría de las veces no tengo las respuestas. Pero aunque es dificil recordarlas, son parte de mi y ya no puedo hacer nada. Después cuando llego a tomarme un café y abro las páginas de mi autor favorito esto es lo que leo: “la dirección espiritual afirma la conquista básica del significado. Crea un espacio en donde la validez de la preguntas no depende en la disponibilidad de las respuestas sino en la capacidad de las preguntas de abrirnos a nuevas perspectivas y horizontes. Tenemos que dejar que las experiencias diarias de la vida–la alegría, la soledad, el miedo, la ansiedad, la inseguridad, la duda, la ignorancia, la necesidad de afecto, de apoyo, de entendimiento y nuestra gran necesidad de amor–sean reconocidas como parte esencial de nuestra aventura.” Entonces me doy cuenta que esta bien hacerme estas preguntas aunque no tengas la respuestas porque entonces creo que estas preguntas me guiarán a hacer cambios de dirección en mi vida sabiendo que “el primer recurso de guianza espiritual, consuelo y sabiduría vienen del Espíritu de Dios”…pero como siempre al preguntarnos nos enfrentamos a nuestra humanidad y quebranto…y esos mis queridos lectores es un dolor creciente, “una parte esencial de la aventura espiritual”. (todas las Italicas son fragmentos del libro Dirección Espiritual de Henry Nouwen)

“I just know that I don’t know anything” I found myself in a moment in life where I need to make decisions about where I am heading. The word “failure” is as present as the air I breath. But if knowledge is relatively to the one who is thinking or talking about it, then “failure” will differ according from where the person is standing. So my failure is probably not your failure and vice versa, and if we include faith, then we can only see what we cannot see, I mean the big picture of God. Usually the big picture is never seen because I can not know what God is looking at because I have limited understanding. So I come back to what Socrates believed “the unexamined life is not worth living”. I am truly examining my life right now but in my quest of trying to understand what I can not understand a quote from Mother Teresa comes to my mind when she answered to Henry Nouwen about the complications of life, “Well, when you spend one hour a day adoring your Lord and never do anything which you know is wrong…you will be fine” (Spiritual Direction) KABOOM!!! what an amazing slapp on the face!! don’t you think so!….

“Yo solo se que no se nada”. Me encuentro en un momento en mi vida en el cual tengo que hacer desiciones y ver hacia donde me dirijo. La palabra “fracazo” esta tan presente como el aire que respiro, pero si el conocimiento es relativo de acuerdo a quien esta pensando o hablando al respecto, entonces “fracazo” sera diferente dependiendo de donde se encuentra la persona. Eso quiere decir que mi “fracazo” posiblemente no es tu “fracazo” o viceversa, y si a esto le agregamos “fe”, entonces yo solamente puedo ver lo que no puedo ver, osea la gran pintura de Dios. Usualmente la gran pintura de Dios es dificil de verla ya que yo no puedo saber lo que Dios esta pensando ya que yo tengo un entendimiento limitado. Asi que regreso a lo que Socrates creía “la vida que no se examina no vale la pena vivirla”. Estoy seriamente examinando mi vida en estos momentos, pero en mi busqueda que comprender lo que no puedo comprender un pensamiento de la Madre Teresa de Calcula se me viene a la mente cuando le contesta a Henry Nouwen acerca de las complicaciones de la vida, “bueno, cuando pases una hora del día adorando a tu Señor y que no hagas nada que tu sepas que es malo…tu estaras bien” (Dirección Espíritual) ¡¡ZAZCUATELAS!! Que tremendo cachetadon en la cara, ¿no lo crees?