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You are here: Home / Grow / Begin with the Raw Materials: A Reflection

April 8, 2016

Begin with the Raw Materials: A Reflection

I first saw our current home on an online realtor ad while visiting family down South. With just a few clicks through the agency’s featured photographs, I knew this house would be ours.  A dialogue between this house and me began that day and–happy to say–it continues even now.

At the time of finding that realty listing, the house where we were living wasn’t ready to be placed on the market.  For six solid, frantic weeks, my parents and I turned a lived-in bungalow into a polished gem. Our tiny old house sold in two weeks–right in the midst of the housing bubble burst– and our contingency bid was accepted for the new house.  We moved in with the help of a handful of people we really didn’t know.

We tend to call those kinds of occurrences “Fate”.

I have felt deeply entwined with my home ever since our first virtual meeting.  It has sheltered and nourished me during some of the most challenging times of my life.  My children have navigated their adolescence here.  My husband was lost here. In our early years of living in this house, he would struggle with active alcoholism.

But in time, he was also found here.

We all were.

After a handful of years living in this place, I developed a curiousity for Numerology.  I came to learn that our house was a “7”, an energy “…so deeply spiritual, or at least it is in its most positive expression, it requires us to take a retreat from the outside world to contemplate, meditate, and devote ourselves to God.” In the years since we’ve lived here, my home has directly inspired my devotion to God. Today, it still accompanies me on my journey of continued personal and spiritual unfoldment. This house is the very essence, the raw material, that I use toward a mystic partnership with the Divine. And A New EverAfter reflects that relationship.

This relationship is who I am at my core–as I am to me and as I am me to my God.  Yet, this is a relationship available to anyone. It is simply the journey home.

And it is a journey that is begun by simply…stepping in.

Opening the door

By profession, I am a Spiritual Director. To be exact, I make my living by companioning others on their own spiritual journeys. It has been said that “Spiritual direction has the primary intention of opening a door to invite God in“.

To enter our homes, and to open our hearts, the first thing we must do is walk in. Initially, that is all it takes: to Enter in.  Just as a home’s halls and corridors will lead you to the functional living spaces contained within, so too will the experiences and insights of your life help you navigate the journey of your heart.

A door is a raw material.  Stepping through it is the magical act of coming to know yourself and coming to deeply know God.

Our homes reflect our innermost beings–our preferences, our habits, our motivations, our compulsions, our comforts.  Self-awareness and Spiritual Growth are not independent of each other.  To know God, you must also know you. Our homes can help us get to both places. We just have to walk through the door and take a good look around.

Our homes are made from our free will. We choose the color palette, the furnishings, and decide when to do the laundry (or not).  The house itself is the raw material by which you then construct a home. A home with a heart only becomes so when the raw material given to you is interacted with, shaped, developed,  kept up, and utilized to its utmost efficiency. There is a choice in the use of your living space’s raw materials–and there is a deep sense of listening to the needs you have for your home that transform it from just a building to your personal sanctuary.

This process is not unlike the spiritual journey. The wood, the rock, the hands that we build our homes with are of God. Yet how we come to use them is how we also come to be with God.

“What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”

― Hans Urs von Balthasar

House #7

Enter faithfully

My home is humble, and it is also grand. It’s 1,800 square feet of early 1900’s carpentry on a small plot of a few acres.  It’s modest, but more than many ever get to shelter under. I have had a long-term vision to turn it into our dream home, but most of our resources go into its perpetual corroded pipes and basic upkeep.  God may shelter us, but s/he doesn’t promise us a rose garden.

Our homestead is lovingly referred to as “EverAfter” but that doesn’t mean this is our happy ending.  In fact, it’s often not happy and it’s definitely not yet our ending.

EverAfter is our journey.

That journey is home.  We traverse the multitude of life experiences right where we are standing. In this space, we seek God again and again. There are days when we turn our face from God because we feel too battered and bruised to listen.  God waits patiently in the doorways.  Then there are days when we find our joy and God dances with us in the kitchen.

This is a new type of EverAfter, one that exalts the process and not the destination.

Faith is ultimately what we come to trust. With all engagement comes risk–and the only way to live a life is to engage with it. We ensure our properties have had a proper inspection, but there is no way to ensure that your roof won’t leak five years down the pike. We need something to trust just to get us through the ups and downs of life. Faith gives us the courage to keep showing up for our lives.

Our homes hold up under gusts of winds and their foundations keep them steadfast.  Sure, our homes need to be maintained to keep us, but our souls need to be maintained to keep us too. No one taught us how to truly and authentically maintain our own souls. Thankfully, our homes show us how to be faithful.

There is no guarantee that we shall ever have a perfect fairy tale life.  To focus only on the “happily ever after” of your story means you are keeping yourself out of the beauty and glory of your life today. God wants all of us. Our mess, our clutter, our doubt, and our hope.  A new everafter turns the fables on their head and focuses on bringing truth, joy, and faith to your story today.

This EverAfter is not about the ending but about redefining your present. This is a new EverAfter where one listens to God each day as you build a strong foundation from the raw materials of your life.

There is a deep sense of trust and radical acceptance that eventually comes with traversing the Spiritual Journey. Yet it takes courage to first walk into a space where you’ve never been before. We are not promised lives of pure bliss, but we are promised an abiding presence. You just must be willing to enter into the awareness of that presence. Right now, that is all you need to do. Just enter in. Just be willing. The rest you’ll find down the hall…but that is for another time.

Reflection: What will it take for you to be willing to risk opening the door to your spiritual journey?

In subsequent posts, I will be digging deeper into how a spiritual journey unfolds. I will share with you specifically how my home helped me grow closer to the great Mystery. There are tools and techniques that I use to understand the Divine, just as there are tips and techniques I use to get a spot out and to alleviate cold symptoms. I will share those with you, too. My hope is that my journey may inform yours and that together, we may be the hands and feet of Divine Love.

Filed Under: Grow, Tend

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Bethany Ward | A New EverAfter
So what do *you* believe? Oh gosh, that is such a So what do *you* believe?

Oh gosh, that is such an interesting question for me. 

And I get it all the time.

I tend to refer to myself as a mystic. I believe that we all have the opportunity for direct access to, and union with, the Divine – and that those opportunities appear before us again and again, day after ordinary day. 

For me, the Divine is too expansive for any one expression, though I do have a personal relationship with the Mystery, of which I call God. 

I simply wish to live my life with that God revealing itself to me in new ways day after day. Sometimes that revelation is through Christian prayer, sometimes that is a reverence for nature, sometimes that is Zen Meditation, or attendance at Quaker meeting. Sometimes that revelation is a call toward social activism, and yes, sometimes it is a stir of a pot and a twinkle of my nose. 

When pressed, I might respond that I am a Jungian-influenced modern-day contemplative. 

All these varied practices represent, to me, a naturally resonant and responsible response to the glory of All That Is.

Though I dedicated the first part of my adult life, my academic career, and my profession to Unitarian Universalism, I am compelled to say that I currently do not have a religious affiliation. 
I simply choose to contemplatively and organically live out my spirituality, allowing the Being in All to make itself known in its multidimensional and multifaceted expression.

“ANY GOD I EVER FOUND IN CHURCH, I BROUGHT IN MYSELF.”― ALICE WALKER

Since my background is in Religion and Spiritual Development, I am able to translate diverse religious expressions into a deeply personal mystical experience that fuels my own understanding of the Divine and allows me to live a uniquely principled life tailored to my experience of a knowable yet unknowable God. 

This experience helps you too. I have an intimate understanding of many spiritual cultures and have a vast knowledge of where those traditions diverge and intersect. 

This approach helps you connect to your own beliefs and values as you consciously create your next chapter.

So...what do *you* believe?

#spiritualcompanionship #thisibelieve #faithstatement
It is difficult to describe what I do — in part It is difficult to describe what I do — in part because it is difficult to describe the breadth and scope of spirituality itself.

I often cheekily say, “I am a spiritual person...but not like that. Whatever the word “spiritual” has just conjured up for you...I’m not that.” ☺️

I jest this way because of how we individually and collectively [mis]understand the nature of spirituality itself. As it is largely [mis]understood, “spirituality” is everything from a moniker of the ego, to magical powers, to a flight of fancy.

I’m not that. 

Nor is true, authentic spiritual expression.

So what is authentic spirituality?

Academically speaking, the definition for “spirituality” is an “individual’s personal experience with wonder, awe, mystery, and/or connection to the whole.“. 

Simple as that. 

These are universal human experiences.

And...these universal experiences are in no way separate from the material. 

We are hardwired to connect. It is in our connection to ourselves, others, and All That Is that we find our deepest meaning and our truest fulfillment.

Spirituality encompasses all of what it means to be human. And to access and live from our spiritual sense is to be more fully—and happily—human.

Our innate spirituality asks of us:

“How shall I live my life?”

And...

“What values do I hold that will allow me to consciously create this life?”

In our modern world, we need someplace to go-and someone with whom we feel safe-to explore these big questions for ourselves.

This is the purpose of A New EverAfter —and the work that I do. I offer opportunities for your own deep learning and formative experiences that connect you to the most important aspects of who you truly are.

How do you personally define “spirituality”?

#authenticspirituality #spirituality #spiritualawakening #spiritualdirection #soulcare #spiritualcompanionship #liveconnectedlivewell
You asked: From where did 'A New EverAfter' derive You asked: From where did 'A New EverAfter' derive its name?

Each of us holds hope for our own lives’ unfolding. Yet we often encounter trials that instead leave us feeling disappointed and disillusioned. So many of us have encountered trauma, tragedy, and utter bewilderment and found ourselves saying, “it wasn’t supposed to be like this”.

A New EverAfter believes that we might restore our sense of hope by engaging in discovery and wonder, all the while remaining willing to follow the path toward true wisdom.

A New EverAfter does not promise a future that is nothing but bright nor made entirely of “happily”. However, it does know that trust in the process offers a true and lasting peace that can only come with engaging your spiritual nature.

Your spiritual nature may come to be understood through the intentional exploration of your own sacred story.

My desire is to help you enrich, reframe, and celebrate that narrative. No matter how you choose to explore your story within the varied services of A New EverAfter, together we will examine a new type of EverAfter, one that exalts the process and not the destination.

This EverAfter is not about a perception of a happy ending but about redefining your present and rediscovering who you truly are; mindfully, holistically, and practically. 

#spiritualdirection #spirituality #beginagain #hope #renewal #spiritualgrowth #spiritualjourney #authenticspirituality
I grew up in a fundamentally religious household - I grew up in a fundamentally religious household - as in Evangelical Christian Fundamentalist.

My parents were good, kind, loving, and gentle. ...But the religion I was steeped in was uncompromising, short-sided, and bigoted. 

As a child - with the limited perspective of childhood itself - I simply thought that this was how the world was constructed. 

That is, until I reached the curious age of 12 ....and heard the first chords of my first Indigo Girls’ song.

Instantly, my world expanded.

Where once condemnation, there was love. Where once judgement, now acceptance. Where once self-rejection, now self-understanding.

Those who expand our perspectives are the ones that have the most impact on us. The Indigo Girls invited me into a wider, more connected, and more loving world.

And....

this is exactly what Spiritual Growth does for us. It pushes out the walls of our existing containers and compels us to stretch further into love and compassion. 

Changes of heart facilitate spiritual growth.

Who has changed your heart?

Who has shown you how to push against the walls of your own narrow container? 

Who in your life has demonstrated their intent on making this place better for all people?

#spiritualawakening #spiritualdirection #spiritualgrowth #spiritualcompanionship #indigogirls #amyray #emilysaliers #getahammerandnail #letitbeme #shinemylifelikealight #letitring
The most important thing to me is spiritual growth The most important thing to me is spiritual growth because it gave me the true and lasting serenity I craved.

Learning how to engage intentional spiritual development has brought me out of my turbulent storms of overwhelm, disillusionment, and distrust.

In my darkest hours, bitterness and resentment had overpowered me. Yet, in choosing to get curious about my spiritual self, I found the tools that I needed for emotional repair. 

In time, I would recognize that my life’s circumstances could shape me into someone disconnected and cynical or I could be intentionally formed - through love - into the highest version of myself. 

Intentional spiritual growth has allowed me to reconstruct a solid foundation to finally come ashore to who I truly am.

#spiritualawakening #spiritualdirection #spiritualgrowth
In my years of serving Spiritual Seekers, I have u In my years of serving Spiritual Seekers, I have uncovered 5 foundations of spiritual living that foster deeper presence, lovingkindness, & continued growth. 

In the past weeks, I have been sharing each one individually and today we compile them into one comprehensive framework. 

While your spiritual life is unique to you, these foundations will be found in every person’s journey in some way.

1. Recognize the Promise: When we are in a state of disillusionment, we are disconnected from hope. Recognize that Presence is available to you and simply awaits your engagement.
2. Become the Calm Seer: In order to walk toward fulfillment, you must be willing to see things differently. Learn how to observe life in order to expand your perspective.
3. Know Your Spiritual Fuel: The Divine Spark ignites our souls in unique ways. Notice what aligns your heart and fuels your spiritual passion. Discover how to use your energies in expansive, not depleting, ways.
4. Understand True Worth: Not everything is meant for us. Learn the art of discernment by wisely evaluating the movement of your God-Source in your life. Come to know what is for you and what shall be offered up.
5. Move within the Knowable and Unknowable: Remain fluid in your spiritual growth. Rest in the ways that your God-Source has objectively demonstrated its love, protection, and guidance while remaining open to the wonder of discovery.

#spiritualseekers #spiritualdirection #foundationsofspiritualliving #spiritualformation #aneweverafter
The 5th Foundation of Spiritual Living is learning The 5th Foundation of Spiritual Living is learning how to move within the Knowable and the Unknowable.

Spiritual Direction helps us to remain fluid in our spiritual growth. It encourages us to rest in the ways that our God-Source has objectively demonstrated its love, protection, and guidance while remaining open to the wonder of discovery.

Spiritual maturity rests in faith’s assurance as it simultaneously distances itself from blind acceptance. 

A Spiritual Seeker is comforted by the guarantee of Divine Presence just as they acknowledge that their knowing is without certainty.

We have been implored to “Live the Question now!” by Henri Nouwen. “Do not now seek answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.”

#spiritualdirection #inspirationalmedisumship #aneweverafter
Spiritual Direction helps you to understand the tr Spiritual Direction helps you to understand the true worth of things in order for you to live a meaningful and principled life of greater ease. To expand...

I am returning to a conversation around the Five Foundations of Spiritual Living after of a bit of a self-imposed detour. ☺️

We left off the conversation with the third foundation of Spiritual Living: Know Your Spiritual Fuel. 

Today, we return to it by examining the 4th Foundation of Spiritual Living: Understand True Worth.

Not everything is meant for us. Intentional spiritual growth helps us to learn the art of discernment by wisely evaluating the movement of our God-Source in our lives. 

Through therapeutic listening, you may come to know what is truly for you and what should be offered up. 

How many times have you been caught in a loop of your own thoughts, trying to determine a “right” course of action? A lack of skilled discernment can leave you frustrated and exhausted.

Through the art and practice of Spiritual Direction, A New EverAfter helps you learn how to discern with wisdom and to seek mercy and grace in the process. 

Consider where you might now be in unease in your life. 

Ask:

🍄 What personal value do I hold that I can live into more fully right now?
🍄 Which action brings me into further intimacy with myself? my God? Others?
🍄 Does this decision promote reconciliation rather than division?
🍄 Am I moving with trust?

Contemplating these questions on your own will guide you further on the path to wisdom. Yet, as Henri Nouwen wrote, “the companionship of trusted friends allows us to see how God is at work”. 

Working with a Spiritual Director ensures that you have someone companioning you through your discernment process so that you might move with greater confidence and gentler ease. 

#spiritualdirection #theartofdiscernment #aneweverafter #spiritualcompanionship
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