When I left my family and familiar life behind 20 years ago and moved to a cabin in the hills with two dogs for a year (Running To The Mountain), I knew I was searching to fill the empty holes in my heart.
I knew I had come searching for something, but I needed to find out what it was.
It should have awakened me to see that my year of reading Thomas Merton’s writings suggested why I was there.
But it wasn’t until later, when I began working with my friend Sue Silverstein and the traumatized refugee children she taught and loved, that I began to understand the reality of it.
I was looking for spiritual direction. It used to be that the search for spirituality began in organized religion and was shaped by monks, priests, and rabbis—wise men like Merton.
It was Merton who taught me spirituality didn’t have to come from a church or temple; we all carried it inside of our hearts; in a sense, I came to learn that spirituality is a discipline of the heart.
It comes from the heart and lives in the heart.
My early life was marked by trauma, and trauma blocked and distracted me year after year from getting to the heart and knowing what I wanted.
Moving up to the mountains was a terrifying gamble, leaving chaos around me and leading to my falling apart.
I got help, asked more and more questions, and began to learn who I was and who I wished to be. That, wrote Merton, is how a spiritual direction begins.
Working with Sue then and now brought me to the light. I first felt my future in the hospice work I volunteered for. I felt that was where I belonged.
I had this same feeling this morning when Maria and I saw Sarah Harrington, the pantry director. I am just beginning to get to know her, but she has quickly become a friend.
She reminds me of Sue Silverstein, the teacher, and my closest friend. Sarah is pure of the heart, humble, and all about finding ways to help underdogs and people whose lives have been pushed against the wall.
We work together and understand each other. We both get and do the same things as they apply to our work together. She’s my first real texting friend.
Like Sue, Sarah fell in love with Zinnia, and her passion was instantly returned. Like Zinnia, she is all about quiet and gentle love. Like Sue, she and Maria – both artists – are connected like two college classmates.
Like some dogs, they understand without language. They know one another.
Like Sue, Sarah does good and lives good every hour of the day. No wonder she has trouble sleeping. No wonder I do. No wonder Sue does. No wonder Maria does. Like Maria, Sarah is embarrassed by praise but deserves an awful lot.
Sarah is different from me. She is quieter and more soft-spoken, like Maria in some ways and Zinnia in every way. Those two have bonded, no surprise.
Today, our hearts yearn for the same thing – finding ways to do good in a complex and sometimes cruel world. I struggle with the anger and hatred outside that are part of living out in the open. Like Maria, Sarah has no desire to live an open life and be known everywhere.
It is hard work struggling to care for people who are suffering and in need. None of them sleep. It often feels hopeless and overwhelming. It can also be the most satisfying work there is. It is spirituality revealed.
I’ve lived in the open for decades, for better or worse. I hardly notice it anymore. When I think of meeting Sarah today, I think of Tide Detergent, something I’ve never considered or thought about.
In one sense, I felt like I was in a chapel, as I felt like doing the refugee work or running my meditation class at the Manion. Helping needy people is where the spiritual direction leads. It is what it is about. There is something sacred about it.
Religion may be declining in many ways, but spirituality is growing everywhere. It is increasingly necessary, and more and more people are searching for it. Our institutions of government and religion have failed us; we will have to do it ourselves.
And we are—the food pantry reeks of compassion.
Sarah and I have talked several times about Tide. It comes to the pantry rarely; the grocery stores don’t give it out, and neither does the Pantry Collective.
Sarah told me about a woman who had seen the Tide and had nearly cried. She loved how Tide cleaned her clothes and always bought it before the family ran into trouble and could no longer afford it. For detergent, Tide was and is the top of the line.
Sarah had gotten her hands on 20 jugs of Tide, and within a day or so, they were all gone. The pantry hasn’t had one since, and Sarah asked me if I could help her get some tide for the pantry users, she loves to surprise and please her “guests,” as she calls them.
Tide detergent is a sometimes painful symbol for people struggling with food deprivation. It represents a life lost but not forgotten.
(If anyone reading this wants to buy some Tide and send it to the food pantry, you can do it by going here. Sarah put it on the Wish List today. She’d love to surprise the guests again.)
I said I’d try Tide Hygienic Clean Heavy 10x Duty Laundry Liquid Soap, Original Scent, 37 Fl. Oz, 24 loads, “He Compatible”$6.64.
Up on the mountain, I was and felt all alone in my search for spiritual direction. There is an Army of Good alongside me, and Maria, I am no longer alone.
My spiritual places are not in religious buildings; they are in the magical helpers I met along the way – Maria, Sue, Joanie In Memory Care, and a bunch of loyal and loving animals.
At the beginning of my search, I read that the search for a spiritual life begins by asking myself some agonizing questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Who do I wish to be? What is the meaning of my life?
I wouldn’t say I liked the answers; they were agonizing. That’s where the search begins.
I hardly had any answers. I had a lot of work to do, and I am still doing it.
The questions and answers all took me to the same place – my heart. I couldn’t plan my life or even heal it. But I did manage to find my heart, and I realized that the direction I wanted to take was doing things that came from the heart and lifted my heart.
I am no saint but a flawed and traumatized human being looking for a purpose in life and a safe landing as I get older. I found that with the refugee children, I found it at the Mansion, and I feel it at the very spiritual pantry.
Today, with Sarah and Maria at the pantry, I felt that this was why I had come to that mountain: and turned my life and my family upside down.
Henri Nouwen wrote that the discipline of the Heart makes us aware that spirituality is not only about listening to but “listening to the heart.”
I heard and felt it today at the pantry: Maria talking to Sarah like old friends, Zinnia waiting in the car for us, and me rushing around the room looking for pictures that would capture the moment.
I have learned a lot in this spiritual search, but the most important lesson was that it doesn’t matter what I am like to people or what people think of me. Spirituality comes from inside of me, flaws and all.
My trip is far from over, but I am visiting some beautiful places.
I bought two jugs of Tide tonight.
