Spiritual Direction

January 16, 2017 By Judith Favor

Spiritual direction is an ancient ministry,
a unique one-to-one relationship in which
a trained person assists another person
in the search for an ever-closer union
of love with God.

“Spiritual direction explores a deeper relationship with the spiritual aspect of being human.
Simply put, spiritual direction is helping people tell their sacred stories every day.

Spiritual direction has emerged in many contexts using language specific to particular cultural and spiritual traditions. Describing spiritual direction requires putting words to a process of fostering a transcendent experience that lies beyond all names and yet the experience longs to be articulated and made concrete in everyday living. It is easier to describe what spiritual direction does than what spiritual direction is. Our role is not to define spiritual direction, but to describe the experience.

Spiritual direction helps us learn how to live in peace, with compassion, promoting justice, as humble servants of that which lies beyond all names.”

Liz Budd Ellmann, MDiv
Executive Director, Spiritual Directors International

Stillpoint offers a two-year training program in The Art of Spiritual Direction (click here for details), and also provides references and resources for persons who are seeking spiritual direction. Directors listen carefully to the unfolding of directees’ lives, to help them discern the ways in which God is leading them. Spiritual Directors meet regularly (usually once a month) with persons who are seeking to share and explore their journeys of faith. The term “spiritual direction” has a long, rich history, and the term is still used today even though the practice of spiritual direction consists much more of “holy listening,” rather than direction in the sense of offering guidance or direct advice.

A Spiritual Director is a privileged witness in the spiritual unfolding of another person. The focus is on the relationship between the “directee” and God, much more than on the relationship between the director and directee.

“As It Is: Spiritual Journaling”
(class starting soon!)

July 26, 2016 By Judith Favor

Monday, August 8th – Friday, September 2nd, 2106

www.spiritualityandpractice.com (Sign-up Webpage)

“As it is.”

These three little words embedded in the lines of a prayer taught by Jesus remind us to seek the workings of the divine “on earth as it is in heaven” — that is, to approach our many challenges in union with Sacred Presence. But how? One profound and reassuringly helpful tool to foster this sense of unity is spiritual journaling. Through contemplative writing, we get practice in recognizing and responding to our relationship with God, self, others, nature, work, and society just “as it is.”

Spiritual Journaling opens space to relate to deep questions:

What does this event or this emotion have to say to me?
What can this disappointment teach me about healing?
What does this discovery reveal to me about the presence and leading of the Holy Spirit?
How can my anguish over the suffering of this person or that group stir my love into action?
How can my felt sense of yearning guide me in taking the next best step in this situation?

Whatever spiritual path you are on, this e-course will equip you to explore interior, interpersonal, social, and sacred realities. Holy questions gleaned from scripture, poetry, and literature will offer a variety of perspectives on faith and doubt, action and reflection. In each email sent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for four weeks, you will receive:

An introductory reflection on the day’s topic
A tip for getting started with your writing
A special query to spark your thoughts and journal writing
A suggested action and resources for going deeper if you wish
A link to the “Practice Circle” (a community forum open 24/7 to share with others in this e-course and to receive guidance from Judith)

Judith began journaling when she was ten, in a small blue diary with a gold lock and miniature key. She chose a ballpoint pen, because she knew that writing in pencil would let her fudge the truth. In 1974, she began a lifelong love affair with keeping a journal, studying journaling as an art form and not only writing but also inserting soul collages, tree photos, and icons in her journals.

In 1981 she enrolled at Pacific School of Religion and then went on to be pastor of United Church of Christ congregations in San Francisco until the ministries of spiritual formation and writing laid claim to her soul. She now lives with her husband Pete at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California. Her heart is enriched by her work in spiritual accompaniment, teaching, and contemplative writing.

Judith invites you to freely express your full range of written reactions in this e-course — confused or certain thoughts, positive or negative emotions — because each aspect of the truth of yourself will reveal valuable insights. You may want to follow her journaling prompts exactly; you may also view them as a trampoline and record the bouncing associations that follow. This e-course gives you lots of freedom, most of all the freedom to follow your heart and the arc of your own life’s story.

(4 CEHs for chaplains available.)

Queries about Silence

October 14, 2014 By Judith Favor

Is silence collaborative, complicit?

“You know your part in this,” Sheriff Bowen once told him, and he did. Leo had not spoken up. He should have told someone about his brother torturing dogs. Leo knew he had been a coward.

from Silent Voices, Part One: Boy

Is silence the space between words, a pause between heartbeats?

That evening, Cordelia heard Leo’s baritone sounding the overture to an opus, one she would be hearing for nearly thirty years. It took longer for her to discover the complexities of this opus, to make out its woodwind harmonies, its percussive dissonances and its long, silent rests.

from Silent Voices, Part Three: Coming Together

Does silence signify absence? Does it entail presence?

Leo didn’t quite know how to be normal under the shadow of goodbye, although he had lived through it once. In Granny Phoebe’s case, he had her love to live up to. In Margaret’s case, his mother-in-law’s temper outweighed most everything else.

from Silent Voices, Part Three: Coming Together

Does silence make you nervous? Can it be menacing?

The silence that followed Leo’s departure was like a held breath. Chastened by her husband’s outburst, Cordelia wilted into a state of rebuke. Little did she know it would become a permanent condition.

from Silent Voices, Part Four: Wife

Is silence voluntary, even communal?

What are Leo’s mother and I doing here, sitting quietly like this, Cordelia wondered. Praying, she supposed, though neither said anything remotely prayerful. She didn’t want to break the peace by asking.

– from Silent Voices, Part Four: Wife

Is silence a refusal to speak, or to respond?

Nothing had ever been said about her husband’s mother leaving the convent. Cordelia felt the pressure to ask, but was relieved by the silence. She was not at all ready to hear about private matters between a failed nun and her God.

from Silent Voices, Part Four: Wife

How may silence and gender be related?

On this winter day she felt it again, the race of her pulse that propelled her to keep after him. “You may have uncovered a terrible crime. What will you do, Leo? You must do something about this.”

He hung his head and went mute, not for the first time. She was desperate for him to speak, to say anything, but he was too busy breathing. No matter how hard she pressed, no matter how urgently she pleaded, Leo kept his mouth shut, saying nothing for such a long time that she eventually stopped waiting for an answer.

from Silent Voices: Part Seven: Widow

Can silence be pleasurable, even palpable?

Nobody knows about our sexual chemistry during my first two pregnancies. Our secret. She used to wonder what the men at the bank thought when Leo came to work with his face aglow, but never dared ask.

from Silent Voices: Part Seven: Widow

Chapter One of Silent Voices

September 21, 2014 By Judith Favor

But this is not the story of a life.
It is the story of lives, knit together,
overlapping in succession, rising
again from grave after grave.
Wendell Berry, from “Rising”

1902 ON THE RUN

The boy slumped, forehead resting against the grimy window of the train. Leo removed his spectacles and put them in his shirt pocket. He couldn’t see much without them but that was how he wanted it today. He was too ashamed to look anyone in the eye. The past two weeks had been tense with accusations and threats. Now – all because of his younger brother – his family had been run out of town. He was furious at Albert, humiliated about being forced to leave his home in Montana. Leo had found a seat as far as possible from his family and pretended he didn’t even know them. His brother had a problem with violence. It was a form of madness, Leo thought. Albert’s madness had already caused more heartache than he could bear.

The last glimpses of home made his belly ache. After Dad announced they’d be settling in Oregon, starting over, Leo already hated it there, just as he had begun to hate it here. He kept his back to the aisle, shrugged Mother’s hand off when she touched his shoulder and ignored her until she went away. Tears rose, threatening to spill over. Leo tightened his throat, forcing back the tears, clamping his jaw so hard it made his molars ache.

“Bull.” That’s what Dad called his younger brother, sounding proud. “Loner,” he called Leo, sounding mean. He hated it when they made fun of him. Sheriff Bowen had said “solitary.” Leo rolled the word around in his mouth. Solitary tasted better than loner.

“You and I are a lot alike, son. We both tend to be solitary,” the sheriff had told him on that awful evening. “Yes,” he’d repeated, “we have something in common. That’s why I’m giving you a chance to get right with what you’ve done.”

Tears filled his eyes again. Remembering the sheriff’s gentle tone made his nose run. Leo wiped his coat sleeve across his face and hoped no one noticed. Mother told him to use a handkerchief but he didn’t have one now. Dad told him boys don’t cry and his younger brother didn’t. Albert – who told everyone to call him Bull – hadn’t shed a tear since he was in diapers, at least not that Leo had seen. They had to share a room but that was no place to let his feelings out. Leo went into the woods whenever he had to cry. Will there be any woods in Oregon? What if I can’t find any woods?

Alongside the tracks Leo spotted a railroad storage shed painted the same dried-blood color as the one he’d vomited behind a few weeks back. He shuddered in his seat, remembering what he’d heard on his way home from school that afternoon. Slugger, Albert’s buddy, was showing a second-grader what they’d done to a stray dog in the rail yard. “Bull said this here dog is shivering, let’s get it warm. You shoulda seen that dumb dog dance.” And I shoulda told Dad, Leo thought, except he woulda told me to quit making up awful stories. And to quit trying to get my brother in trouble. The bile rose in his throat again. He had to swallow hard to keep his breakfast from coming up.

Leo gazed unseeing at the rough terrain as the Great Northern labored into Idaho. His thoughts were in Billings, on what he’d been doing before Sunday turned bloody. His mother made him go to Mass but she didn’t care what he did the rest of the day as long as he was home for supper. Leo liked to ramble in the woods, moving up mountain trails and down steep ravines. Sometimes he sat on a rock, breathing the pine-scented air. Sometimes he’d see a shy animal go by. Occasionally he caught sight of a doe with her fawn or a buck with a great rack of antlers. Once he’d even spotted a mountain lion, the most elusive of creatures.

On that terrible Sunday, two weeks after his thirteenth birthday, he’d paused at the top of a ridge to look around. He picked up a pine knot, turned it this way and that, looking for the face hidden in it. He thought of pretty Alice, who sat in front of him in history class. Leo’s face flushed, remembering how embarrassed he’d been after splattering egg yolks on her pretty green dress. Maybe he’d carve a gnome for Alice, something to make up for his clumsiness.

He balanced the pine knot on his left palm and had just slipped the blade of his jack-knife into a seam when he heard something that made his ears stand straight out. It sounded like an animal in pain. Leo heard it again. The scream split the afternoon. Oh no, only a wounded creature makes a noise like that. Just yesterday he’d heard a customer tell Mrs. Mac that her beagle had disappeared. “I can’t imagine what happened to my little Buddy,” the woman said. She’d looked so sad.

He snapped his jack-knife shut and headed toward the trouble. Dodging branches on the ridge and sliding feet-first down a rocky chute, Leo gave no care to his britches. They were old, already torn at one knee, now ripping in the seat. The closer he got to the shriek, the faster and higher it came. Not just caught in a bear trap, he figured, but tortured somehow. The more the screams increased in pitch and intensity, the more frantic Leo felt.

Bursting into a clearing, he gasped to see his brother bent over a small dog, one boot on its hindquarters. He saw the flash of a knife and a quick spurt of blood. “Stop!” Leo shrieked in a high, girlish voice. But Bull did not stop. He slashed again, carving deep into the dog’s belly. Leo kicked the Bowie knife away and slammed his body against Albert’s, powered by adrenalin beyond the strength of his medium frame. Leo pummeled his huskier brother until Slugger pulled him off. By this time the dog had shuddered and gone quiet.

“What is the name of this boy, your brother’s friend?” Sheriff Bowen asked the night he picked Leo up. He spoke in a calm, even tone despite the gory details he’d just heard. To Leo, his words felt like boulders cracking the sidewalk.

“Sam Tucker, but he tells everyone to call him Slugger.”

“Ah yes, the Tucker tribe. Time to make another visit out to their place.”

“You won’t say it was me that told, will you?” Leo’s voice trembled.

“No, son, I protect my sources. But I will be coming to see your folks. I need to have a little talk with Albert.”

“I was afraid of that.” Leo blinked back tears. He suddenly knew that nothing would ever be the same. My life will never be the same.

Review of Colum McCann’s Trans Atlantic

September 20, 2014 By Judith Favor

TRANS ATLANTIC

By Colum McCann
Random House, New York, 2013
Hardback, 305 pages $27.00

Reviewed by Judith Favor. Published in Friends Journal, September 2014, pp 42-43

I yearn for writing that is transformational, and this beautifully crafted novel met my longing. Colum McCann braids together the passions of publicly acclaimed men – abolitionist former slave Frederick Douglass, WW1 pilots Jack Alcock and Teddy Brown and peacemaker Senator George Mitchell—with the private stories of feisty fictional women. McCann brings his characters to life through exquisite prose, gifting the reader with story lines that arc across the centuries and crisscross the Atlantic, interweaving Irish and American views and values.

Memorable scenes pulse with Quaker testimonies. In 1845 Irish maid Lily Duggan crosses paths with Frederick Douglass whose integrity and commitment to equality inspire her to escape servitude, sail to America and nurse wounded soldiers on a Civil War battlefield. The novel follows her daughter Emily and granddaughter Lottie whose journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. In 1919 they are influenced by two aviators who set course for Ireland, attempting a nonstop trans-Atlantic flight in a bomber they modified for peaceful means, a flight designed to heal the wounds of the Great War.

In 1998 Lottie encounters Senator George Mitchell in Belfast as he labors to negotiate the historic Good Friday Peace Accords. Mitchell granted the author access to his inner reflections, making para bellum a profoundly moving chapter, worthy of repeated readings. Mitchell’s inner light shines through McCann’s poignant portrait of the contemporary peacemaker who embodies simplicity, equality and integrity under intense international public pressure.

TransAtlantic is not a quick read. McCann’s truthful, tender pages invite pauses for deep thinking, remembering past peacemakers and imagining a more simple, just and equitable future. There is so much goodwill, humor and pure life force in every chapter that this book will lift the spirit of Friends and meet the hunger for transformational fiction.

Judith Favor is a member of Claremont Friends Meeting in Southern California.

Literary fiction seeded with Friends’ testimonies feeds her hungry soul.

About My Writing

September 2, 2014 By Judith Favor

What would you call this category of writing?
The Edgefielders is my great-grandmother’s hidden story. Public records show only birth, marriage and death dates so I composed a biographical novel to knit imagination into these bare facts. I invented scenes and dialogues to illustrate what happened before and during her four years at Edgefield.

How does imagination work with facts?
Margaret Mary was born in 1869 in rural Ontario and erased from family lore after she died in 1938 at the Multnomah County Poor Farm. I’d not heard of her until Aunt Margo handed me a stack of genealogy documents including a death certificate. Place of Death: Multnomah County Poor Farm. What? How could this be? Who sent my elderly ancestor to an institution for paupers?

Stories hold us together but hers had been deleted. I had to find out, even though it felt risky to probe into family shadows and secrets. Remaining elders had erased memories of Margaret Mary and they resented my questions. Shame went deep, it seemed, the shame of allowing Grandmother to end her life on the dole among strangers. I hate to stir up conflict but could not let this go. Someone had to bring Margaret Mary out of the dark and into the circle of light.

What did you hope to accomplish here?
Beyond telling a good story, my real purpose was to capture the truth of Margaret Mary’s soul and to illustrate the power of mutual spiritual care. The Edgefielders’ tales show how each person – no matter how poor – can contribute to compassion and generosity in the wider community.

And how did you do that?
Soul-seeing is tactile so I sat with my dearly departed ancestor and kept quiet, waiting for “something” to arise. The song of a canary evoked one story. The sensation of fingertips on a tiny golden cross brought forth romance. Cold bacon grease beckoned me into her melancholy, keeping watch with Margaret Mary where “the ocean moaned, tossing eternal waves of sadness against the shore.”

Where do meditation and imagination meet?
In stillness. And in love. Meditation offers a way to be with dread and fury, anxiety and confusion, to stay present to all those vulnerabilities we usually try to avoid. Meditation invites us to see through the surface of things to the light source of everything. Imagination arises from the power of love, the force of love between the generations. In this book, meditative imagination is the active, conscious practice of finding my way – with Margaret Mary – to the heart of Presence and recording what is revealed there.

GHOST RANCH AUCTION

August 22, 2014 By Judith Favor

Judith Favor has donated
signed copies of her books.

Please Visit Ghost Ranch
& Donate Generously!

The Edgefielders

August 2, 2014 By Judith Favor

The Edgefielders: Poor Farm Tales
of a Great-Grandmother

by Judith Wright Favor (2013)

The Edgefielders tells of a vibrant community of individuals from different cultures and faiths who were forced to live at Oregon’s state-run poor farm during the Great Depression.

Judith Wright Favor, a retired pastor and Portland native, was in mid-life before she came upon a document that shed light upon the dark secret: in 1935 her great grandmother, Margaret Mary Wright, was sent to the poor farm and erased from the family lore. Judith was outraged to learn that her great grandmother died among paupers at Edgefield.

She felt compelled to unravel the mystery. Why did her grandfather commit his mother to a public institution? What were the circumstances that led to this decision? What was Edgefield like during the Depression? Who did Margaret Mary live with in her final home? How did she get along with strangers of different races and religions?

With little to go on but a death certificate, Judith set out to discover the truth. Through the process of contemplative writing, she constructed a fictional story of her lost ancestor intertwined with strands of family memoir. Judith listened for lost experiences, explored layers of inherited guilt and gave voice to women and men whose livelihoods and homes disappeared during the Great Depression.

As the Greatest Generation passes on, stories of the Depression go with them. The Edgefielders: Poor Farm Tales of a Great-Grandmother keeps these stories alive for future generations.
The times were incredibly difficult, but their fates are not as desperate as you might think. Margaret Mary and her new friends adjusted. Tales of friendship, romance, marriage and even redemption arise from these times of hardship. The Edgefielders bridges this gap, conveying the love of ancestors as it crosses the threshold of time.

Look for The Edgefielders, available in print and as an e-book, on CreateSpace and Amazon, or order it from Powell’s!

What people are saying about
The Edgefielders …

“Sitting on the porch in the spring of 1936, Margaret Mary notices she feels free. Simply free, like seeing the sun after a wild winter storm.”
Such a sense of “freedom” in a “poor house”
strikes me as an oxymoron. Can one be really free under such dire conditions? This story is poignant, yet realistic. It takes sturdy yet delicate writing to capture the challenges of making new friends in old age while wondering about one’s absent family. This author does a wonderful job describing both!

Joanne Hummel, Local elementary teacher; observer of Edgefield Poor Farm for over forty years

This book will be especially compelling for those who know the importance of shedding light on family secrets, for readers interested in Oregon’s history, and for those who are drawn to Edgefield.

Dale Stitt, co-founder/director

A Journey Into Freedom – “When I listen, my whole life becomes the voice of God,” says Nurse Rachel. Judith composed these stories by listening to her great-grandmother and other inmates as they knitted new lives from tangled ends. Margaret Mary’s healing begins when a physician honors her goodness and godliness by first sitting with her in stillness, then querying her into self-understanding, strength, and forgiveness.

Charleen Krueger, Registered Nurse; Knitter

Within a decade or two the Great Depression will no longer be a conscious memory in our country. We will know it only through the history books. The personal experiences will disappear, except for novels like The Edgefielders. This is a rich and earthy tale of those who came before us. The author describes the challenges they faced and how they survived that trying time. This book is reminiscent in time, location, and even style of Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.

Tim Sunderland, Writer

The characters are very engaging. Vivid descriptions brought them to life; each one has such a gripping story. I can see how this book could be adapted into a screenplay. With more development of the characters, it could make an interesting television series. It probably wouldn’t sell on the regular networks but would appeal to a public television audience.

Judy Leshefka, Meditation Instructor

Who would have known that a progressive government in Oregon created this “poor farm” to provide housing and work for people like Judith Favor’s great-grandmother during the Depression after her husband walked out and her children could no longer care for her?

The author paints a vivid picture of friendship, romance, creativity, resilience and the mostly-harmonious blending of religions, races and worldviews in this lovely story of Margaret Mary and the Edgefielders.

Claire Gorfinkel, Activist, Writer

These stories gave me a chance to vicariously experience living in the Poor House, touching into the hardships, newfound friendships and down-to-earth spirituality of the Edgefielders. This book is a treasure, offering a glimpse into how freedom is discovered in the most unlikely places.

Barbara P. Anderson, Presbyterian pastor

This beautifully written book, with fully developed characters, is a personal story of life beyond economic loss. How many of us wonder where today’s poor, unemployed people go when they “vanish”?

The wondrous building of relationship between fragile economic survivors described in this book leads me to wonder about today’s homeless shelters. Unlike Edgefield, shelter placements – when available today – are usually transient. Thus, in our time, relationships between economically disadvantaged people are sadly transient as well.

In describing a hidden, even shameful, secret about residents at a poor farm from the past, I wonder if the author causes us to reflect on the possibility of the community formed at Edgefield. This possibility of community is mostly absent in our treatment of the homeless today.

An incredibly good read.

Karen Vance, Kindergarten Master Teacher

The Edgefielders – the book

August 1, 2014 By Judith Favor

Spiritual Direction

“As It Is: Spiritual Journaling”
(class starting soon!)

Monday, August 8th – Friday, September 2nd, 2106