In the spiritual life, what we think we are doing is actually being done to us. All we can do is to say yes to it.
Richard Rohr, Lesson Three: Your Life is Hidden With Christ
Papa’s Home International is not just for us or about us. But it is the story of what happens to us.
I write on, Quarantine Day 13, which marks our temporal distance from Spain. I resisted “coming home” because I feared losing what we had experienced of God in and through our time there. But the whole time we were in Spain, Papa’s Home International (PHI) was incubating. And PHI is emerging phoenix-like during our Quarantine. It is not located in a space– neither just Denver nor just Alhaurin de la Torre. It is, more exactly, a state of being, an energy, a presence. It’s however we can empower you to…
provision your everyday pilgrimage ™.
We had you, our dear readers, in mind on our journey from Jan. 20 to March 25 in Spain. As Fr. Rohr’s quote reminds us, “what we think we are doing is actually being done to us.” We have been developing tools of perspective and integration as we have gone on this pilgrimage. Like you, we don’t have answers for this odd time we’re in, but we are quite happy to share in this journey with you.
As of today, April 8, 2020, what we are saying yes to is
- Provisioning: during this time of COVID-19 “opportunity”, we all have the privilege of putting our lives back together . While many of us still have jobs are or are able to reinvent ourselves into an uncertain future, some we know have lost all their usual moorings of job, home, and even identity. We are beginning to realize all that we have we had taken for granted. We see clearly how interdependent we are. In recent days as I attend webinars for small business owners and contractors, I realize that all of us are impacted by some version of sheltering-in place and various social distancing protocols. But we lack—and need—different Provisions for many of the basics of life in this Brave New World.
- Everyday : people usually think of pilgrimage as being like the Camino de Santiago described in the beautiful film, The Way. Pilgrimages are bucket list items, exotic, expensive, and once-in-a-lifetime. “Everyday” implies ordinary, pedestrian, and uninteresting. On the other hand, we know unexpected wonderful things were done “unto us” in the everyday in Spain and we are eager to unpack those with and for you. We are beginning to unpack these embodied learnings that were meant for sharing!
- Pilgrimage: ahh, the key word! A pilgrimage is usually a journey undertaken with others for a set length of time. It is one that takes us out of the ordinary, usually with a spiritual goal in mind. All of us have entered a Star-Trek-like-wormhole with the entire planet and all the usual markers whereby we exercise control in life and over others are gone. Assumptions of daily life are no longer “obvious.” For example, we now realize that we are dependent on others. Our health and well-being depends on the kindness of others and hand-washing/mask-wearing conscientiousness of strangers to slow the spread of COVID-19 and minimize its impacts on neighbors, the expanding “front-line” heroes, our economy, our future jobs, and the resurrection of whole industries (hospitality, retail, energy, sports, and performing arts ,to name a few).
We had a beautiful, self-created bubble during Spain’s “emergency alert” lockdown that began March 14. It was during those early days of lockdown that we experienced God in what emerged as a “rule of life” to bring structure to our days in that wormhole there.
We believe this is one tool that can be especially helpful for all of us while the sheltering-in- place is in effect in most communities around the world. I want to add that this structure is born out of my life as a Type 3 entrepreneur who has advised business owners for the last ten years:
Rule of Life for Your Everyday Pilgrimage (TM) Under Shelter -in-Place…And Beyond
- Maintain morning wake-up routines (personal care! exercise! coffee!)
- Read spiritually grounding materials out loud to get more of your senses involved (we like devotional materials like the Center for Action and Contemplation Daily Meditations, Pray as You Go )
- Take time for individual prayer / contemplative “sit”
- If you have a partner, practice gratitude and intercessory prayer or a mindfulness-holding together with them.
- Create an “arc of the day”: an intention of what your day should be focused on
- Courageously simplify your arc! Don’t over plan!
- Consider this like making the charcoal sketch on the canvas before painting
- Share this with your partner or colleague
- Go about the day staying focused in the present. Guard your heart from being overly driven by objectives or schedules or interruptions or distractions/demotivators or information overload.
- Continually recalibrate your arc based on questions like“Am I staying mostly in the True, the Good, the Beautiful during whatever I’m doing?” OR “Am I acting with greater concern about how others will perceive me, with focusing solely on my own goals, or with being jerked about by my own impulses?”
- Perhaps once an hour, get up, walk about, and connect with nature somehow. Reflect, recalibrate, and give thanks.
- End work on time and kick back! (Especially you CEO’s!)
- Close your day with a contemplative sit ( or like me, as you drift off to sleep)
YOUR TOOLKIT: Whatever our experience of race, if we have unresolved pain or color-blindness or other forms of denial, it will either have been transformed or it will be transmitted. I encourage you to take some time to journal about your sense of racial identity or lack thereof. Is there a part of Jon’s story you resonate with? What have your BIPOC experiences or relationships been like? How is that similar to or different from others you grew up with? What would you want to leave behind or see transformed from your past? What one thing is yours to do going forward?
