A companionable way is a stumbling attempt to live first from interdependence amidst irreconcilable difference, to see with the heart first from connection and presumed good will. Stumbling may be the most important word there, because there is no way to “get this right” or encounter without “mistakes.” Beginning with interdependence requires difficult inner work to encounter our own deeply embodied traditions or habits of mind, laden in the subconscious and unconscious, shaping everything we perceive about something “out there.” This inner work is important because without it we may become inoculated against even a remote curiosity about centuries-long wisdom traditions from all over the globe—traditions that could contribute to global healing and relief of suffering, were they encountered in a more suitable fashion of exploration, humility, and discovery. At best, with the presumed good will and intention for inner work, living from interdependence becomes a practice, which may allow us to discover ourselves becoming more deeply devoted to others we’ve just met, strangers become companions.
Lastly, while I am a scholar within a particular academic discipline, the form of my reflections here will not be one of traditional, analytical argument within my discipline. Because primarily relational learning begins and ends in deep feeling, the traditional scholarly resources and genre of discourse available today are simply inadequate to my purpose. I think it’s fair to say most scholars do not appear to be the most emotionally savvy of us all. We can be the worst offenders of projection and transference. We may actually get socially penalized in our profession for overt emotional displays, except perhaps cognitive aggression. So we devote our lives to increasingly refined points of textual inquiry—what some have joked about as “learning more and more about less and less.” We may be driven by something deep within us, often incomprehensible to others, sometimes inaccessible even to us. Instead of delving within, we focus our work beyond—which can be useful, of course . . . until it’s not. Myself, I have found the rising awareness about—and in—deep feeling to be one of the most destabilizing learnings in my decades of scholarship. Better to pour that drive outside into rigorous scholarship than face it within, I thought. But then . . .
I was found and welcomed into an ancient-new, strong “container” in which to see and be seen, listen and be heard underneath and beyond all my words: a circle. Circle-way communities of practice, new configurations of power and speech, practices of psychological holding and being held while the deeper inner work of self-transfiguration happened . . . “Love” blossomed in ways and with companions it wasn’t expected or anticipated to be. “Church” happened within and then beyond traditional church walls, in communities of practice and holy intention. “Body” became a site of revelation, knowledge, and wisdom trumping all professions of gospel and law. “Knowledge” grew from seeds and in dimensions previously suspect and considered insignificant. “Family” expanded beyond bloodlines, with predictable backlash from blood-family. And “God” blew out of every box previously conceived or about to be conceived. And what was the ancient-new, strong container in each of these companionships, the holding spaces in which each attends to his/her own inner work and all co-create the sacred space within which to listen, lament, celebrate, and heal self and world? A circle space, womblike and holding, practiced and deepened by both women and men in holy intention. The final chapter of this text lands on precisely what this means and how the form holds all it does.
A Companionable Way Emerges . . .
This is an invitation arising from both the privilege of establishment and the painful gifts of exile. Its pathway to abundance and assurance within me emerged from a stable early family life, steeped in congregational Presbyterian Christianity. Hard work and good fortune have offered me a successful professional life, begun in the liberal arts before being drawn into “higher” theological education, and a blessed marriage to a handsome and tenaciously loyal man. Of course, he is now inevitably torn, perhaps even irretrievably, between his own sacred calling to “his church” and companioning the obstreperous, no less sacred calling of his wife whose “faith community” overflows our one, shared root-tradition. Dear souls . . . This unwieldy life continually disrupts certainties, which is understandably difficult.
Imagine our mutual surprise when the first year of his congregational calling ejected me into exile, a nameless space outside of our previously shared, sacred work. I landed again and again in spaces not immediately or obviously assured of sacred intention, at least as we had been trained to conceive of it. Over months, then years, I landed and grew to trust this Holy more and more deeply in a web of companionships of practice and observance, including Tibetan Buddhists, Jews of Conservative, Modern Orthodox, and Hasidic hue, practitioners of earth-centered spirituality (and those faithful to One they call Goddess), atheists, “nones,” and more. Without expectation or conscious intention for it, in these ways and spaces, persons and places, I discovered a depth of devotion to Jesus as Risen Lord as I traveled with and was nourished by those outside my tradition. The felt sense of this Jesus in the power of the Spirit still overwhelms me today. The felt sense and multiple-tradition receivings of it, however, mean mono-traditional language could never adequately describe it. Solely Christian-communal terms are simply insufficient. In an odd, counterintuitive conviction, I grew to trust Jesus so thoroughly to show up “on the other side” that I learned “He” was always there, the Christ-within Who needs no name within wordless devotion.
So what is a woman of faith to do when she senses the sacred, the Holy One, outside of her community’s “boxes,” more often outside her community of faith where she is Led than within its previous bounds or language? Leave church?3 Contrary to any expectation of leaving, all this led to unexpected leadership—elected roles in church and liturgical-curricular leadership in seminary and guild contexts of higher theological education. As each invitation to lead arrived, I discerned them with my multiply-traditional “community of faith,” which had fewer Christians in it by that time. All of us knew leadership was the path to share what I was learning from the peripheries, at the intersections, back into “the center” of my own Christian communion. I accepted the invitations, confirmed mostly by “outsiders.” Still, all along, a sense of dissonance grew—fears of disloyalty, even betrayal—right alongside incontrovertible fruit of Spirit and blessed assurance.
The Fidelity in Fear of Betrayal
Peter Rollins coined an important phrase for me in these years: the fidelity of betrayal.4 He delves into the complicated traditions swirling around Judas Iscariot, observing that salvation history within Christian traditions pivots upon Judas’s perceived-real betrayal of Jesus in the garden. This incontrovertible both/and would disconcert most Christians today, of course: Judas as necessary to salvation? Judas as faithful disciple with a difficult task? For so very many, faith can only mean an unshakable grasping of Jesus’s name, work, power, focused on certainties of light as previously conceived, named of old. Yet my own experience and the felt sense in my body convict me in a faith strengthened, deepened, broadened—so much so that I can now withstand in breathing compassion those who judge me falsely, condemn me without question, disregard me and my feelings in public and private ways. This blessed assurance and love from abundance has allowed me to move into the world with more risked compassion than I have ever known. Does my willingness to move into the fear of betrayal, even into a perceived betrayal “outside” of my own community’s norms, demonstrate less faith . . . or more?
Recently, I noticed that only one voice spoke in the dream above. “I have been betrayed,” it said. The map the dream-driver was given was somehow “misleading.” I began to look for when the word betrayal arose these last years. In the grotto, an important yet still inarticulate healing happened when I was invited to release an “inner betrayal” I knew not how to conceive.