There’s an event coming up in July which you ought to know about and some may want to attend.
It focuses on a vital, neglected principle of human existence: that our obvious capacity to make conscious and considered choices fits into a bigger picture of calling.
Each of us is called, and our choices take us either closer to our calling or divert us from it.
I’m not saying that we are each pre-destined to undertake a particular role, marry a particular person or perform a particular task, or that if we fail to do these things our lives will be pointless. We aren’t called to walk a high wire to find fulfilment.
Our calling is a general one which we must each answer uniquely – to become lovers, lovers of God, lovers of our neighbour and lovers of creation.
Usually, we are given an excellent start. As newborn, we find our security in the gaze of love. Before we have any capacity to analyse or articulate what is going on, we know intuitively what it is like to be held in loving regard and to hold the attention of another. We are born contemplative.
Unfortunately, this holistic and immediate way of being in the world has for centuries been suppressed by the quest for a rational and detached mastery of the world. There is a place for logical and technical perception, but never divorced from seeing things as a whole.
For example, scientists can warn and inform us of climate catastrophe, but it’s only by seeing in a polar bear stranded on pack ice the whole plight of our planet that we are moved to love and care for what we contemplate.
In contemplation we find the wellsprings of love, and it’s these energies that give our lives and the lives of others direction – spiritual direction. Our direction is wherever love is taking us.
You may not know this, but there is a network of people in the Church, including in the Diocese of Winchester, trained to help others find spiritual direction, to allow and encourage them, each in a unique way, to become better lovers of God, each other and creation.
Which brings me to the event: a conversation from 10.00am to 1.00pm, on Friday 7th July in the Wessex Centre, led by Zoom by a priest based in New York, Fr Luigi Gioia, a well-known author and leader of retreats worldwide.
In this conversation across the Pond, Fr Luigi is going to make connections between contemplative attention and spiritual direction, to help spiritual directors to set aside the need to be in control and instead to let love hold sway as they counsel others.
