Neville Ann Kelly | Neville Ann Kelly, D.Min., Ph.D.

Integrating Direction

October 9, 2014 By Neville Ann Kelly

Christian spirituality relies upon faith, knowledge, understanding, compassionate action, and transcendent love. As we grow, we emphasize one or another of these dimensions, learning to integrate them consciously with time and practice.

Along the way, our different gifts, particular communities, and unique personalities can both help and hinder us in becoming all we want to become.

Just how each part of ourselves fits together into a whole can be quite a mystery! But discerning just this is often an essential step toward significant progress, but it rarely takes place independently. We need the experience of others, and the perspective they give us from the outside.

A skilled spiritual director recognizes that all these dimensions—and many more—contribute to the spiritual journey, and helps you discover how to distinguish each toward increasing wholeness and balance.

What is Spiritual Direction?

The idea of consulting with experienced guides has a venerable history across the world’s spiritual and religious traditions. Christian spiritual direction developed in the earliest centuries after Jesus as large numbers of men and women made their way to the Middle Eastern deserts seeking to pray and listen to those who later became known as desert fathers and mothers.

Over the centuries, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christianity developed distinct approaches to this ancient practice in their varied communities. While their settings, emphases, and practices differed, all held a common understanding that spiritual direction was a threefold relationship between:

A person seeking growth.
A listening companion.
The divine presence.

Who is a Spiritual Director?

A spiritual director differs from a pastor, counselor, or life coach. While the traditional term “director” seems to imply one person telling someone else what to do, its use in this context describes the process of mutual listening, support and challenge that originate in the client’s relationship with God, Spirit or however the divine presence is understood by that person.

Conversation with an experienced listener assists that individual identify and discern their own direction as revealed over time. A skillful practitioner relies more on an adaptable and personalized process of discernment than on exacting models or techniques, though traditional methods may be used as a starting point.

A spiritual “director” is more of a companion that listens with you to Wisdom, the true Guide. Supporting your development, the relationship challenges your blind spots and calls you to expand your vision beyond what you presently see.

Why Would I Want a Spiritual Director?

While churches, religious communities, and other organizations can offer teaching, mentoring and support for their members, your spiritual path may call you to a time of deepening and increasing growth. Such times can be greatly assisted by a qualified spiritual director who can companion you in venturing beyond your familiar territory.

Some people find periodic spiritual direction a key part of sustaining them through deepening and transition. Others establish long-term relationships with directors that may endure for decades. I have had the privilege of this kind of sustained relationship with a director.

Understanding your desire for direction and your options for finding one will help you discern your particular approach.

How Do I Find a Spiritual Director?

Traditionally, finding a director occurred either by an intentional search for a qualified person or serendipitous discovery of a compatible guide. As the ancient adage, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears” suggests, the latter means of discovery occurs naturally at the moment one is ready for it. When this occurs, it is a remarkable blessing of great worth!

If such a gift seems slow to occur, there are many resources available for finding a director, both online and in varied church communities and organizations. Many retreat centers offer spiritual direction, and a call or email to one nearby may be all you need to do to find just the right person. One helpful online international directory is the Seek and Find Guide from Spiritual Director’s International. There are many directors offering online, telephone, and face-to-face sessions that you can find by searching the Internet and contacting them.

Since spiritual direction usually lasts a full hour each session, most directors and retreat centers charge for this time-intensive ministry. Fees are commonly based on comparable services in the director’s geographical region. You should receive a clear outline of what your director charges and how you should pay them during your first session.

How do I Know a Spiritual Director is the Right Person for Me?

This is an important question, and is part of the initial discernment process you and your new-found guide will pursue. A director should provide introductory sessions that allow you to easily step away from that relationship if it does not meet your needs nor seem to fit.

A director will also be discerning whether he or she is the person for you as well, and may suggest colleagues or other resources that can assist you more fully.

Knowing whether the relationship is the right fit is a mutual discernment and an important step in both your journeys.

My Approach to Spiritual Direction

As a Roman Catholic with a strong Protestant background, I integrate Benedictine, Franciscan, Ignatian, and Carmelite spiritual traditions with contemporary developmental insights, upholding ancient wisdom while drawing from emerging knowledge about human interior growth. As a young Protestant, I was profoundly influenced by Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, a book that began my hunger for a fully integrative approach to Christian life, service, devotion, and discipleship.

I esteem one’s faith tradition as a rock to build upon, but I also know there are many times those traditions are either absent or seem to come up short at intervals in our lives. There are other times we feel called to deepen and extend our interior lives, but are not sure how to proceed.

With over four decades of contemplative Christian life, ministry, advanced theological and spiritual direction training, I work with a variety of Christian and other adults desiring to deepen their interior lives, whether due to a simple sense of calling to “more,” or during faith challenges and transitions.

How I Work With People & An Invitation

In the early 2000’s, I attended a two-year spiritual direction formation program that has deeply confirmed and influenced the way I approach the spiritual direction relationship. The program’s title, “Listening to the Wisdom of the Heart,” summarizes my intention as a director. I value personal integrity, transparency and compassion, and honor the wisdom already present in each heart as primary spiritual guide.

I serve a small number of Roman Catholic and Protestant individuals, as well as those from non-Christian religions and those who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious,” by offering both support and challenge for their journeys. Sessions take place via prearranged telephone, Skype or in person when geographically practical. I charge a negotiable, income-based sliding scale rate.

I am currently available to companion a few new clients. If you would like to arrange a conversation to discuss possibilities, please feel free to contact me via the form below. I will respond to your inquiry as soon as possible.

Thank you!

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Babel Now Reconsidered

June 27, 2014 By Neville Ann Kelly

What does the Tower of Babel have to teach us about standing on the margin looking “in” on Christianity?

Over the last posts, we have seen how the dispersal of people into distinct language groups as God’s punishment remains a popular interpretation of the story. We come to question this, suggesting there is a different kind of meaning that can help us see ourselves and our very divergent religious tradition from a new perspective.

Inspired by biblical scholar Theodore Hiebert’s (2007) conception of Babel as a parallel movement of two opposing forces, we have seen that:

Verses 1 – 4 describe what people naturally do: join together, uniting individuals through a secure, common identity.
Verses 5 – 9 describe the divine response of scattering people away from that comfort zone

The story unfolds first as a metaphorical explanation of the world’s diversity of cultures, suddenly separated by linguistic incomprehensibility and geographical distance. Secondly, God intervenes in humanity’s tendency to remain stably anchored in its own comfort zone of identity, whether ethnic, linguistic, or geographical. God’s in-breaking initiative, wherein multicultural dispersion and ethnolinguistic multiplicity move people away from the center.

That is just the movement urged by Pope Francis:

Truly to understand reality we need to move away from the central position of calmness and peacefulness and direct ourselves to the peripheral areas. Being at the periphery helps to see and to understand better, to analyze reality more correctly, to shun centralism and ideological approaches.

It is not a good strategy to be at the center of a sphere. To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. (Spardaro, 2014, p. 4)

Babel’s “two parallel halves” (Hiebert, 2007, p. 33) demonstrate the attempt to secure a community of mutual understanding so desired by Babel’s builders and its parallel divine antithesis, a complete undoing of the comfortable unity the city and tower provide.

Hiebert describes this inherent tension:

Attributing difference, that is, the extravagant array of the world’s cultures, to God’s intentions may simply represent a belief on the part of the storyteller that God as creator brought everything in the world he [sic] knew into existence, including its profusion of cultures. But it may also represent an understanding of the depth of the human need for identity and cultural solidarity, so that, left to themselves, humans—in this case, the family and their descendants who survived the flood—would dedicate their efforts to preserving a common culture. How in a world in which membership in a kinship group with a common culture defined human life in all respects, and outside of which an individual had no standing, could difference ever emerge? In such a world, cultural difference may have been considered possible only as part of a larger divine design, a design implemented by God’s own initiative. (2007, p. 57)

Herein lays the salient applicability of this succinct tale.

God’s intervention helps us step to the margin. The leap from kindred comfortability to the disruption of imposed difference takes us beyond the sameness of the center.

To move toward the unfamiliarity of the periphery is to move toward what is so “other” it is ultimately, inexplicably and mysteriously divine.

So what will see from out there, teetering on the apparent brink of unfamiliarity?

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References

Hiebert, T. (2007). The tower of Babel and the origin of the world’s cultures. Journal of Biblical Literature, 126(1), 29-58.

Spardaro, A. (2014). Wake up the world: Conversation with Pope Francis about the religious life. La Civilta Cattolica (I), 3-17.

The Gift of Dispersion

June 16, 2014 By Neville Ann Kelly

The story of the Tower of Babel is an important key to stepping outward into the margin where we can see “inside” ourselves.

labyrinth of stairs

We previously noted how traditional interpretations of the dispersion of people after Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9) have labeled the event as God’s punishment. We also noted the difficulty of this interpretation since this presupposes the imposed differences to be undesirable, suggesting a divine preference for sameness and homogeneity that lacks evidence in the very diverse acts of creation elaborated earlier in Genesis.

Additionally, judgment upon folks coming together to build the story’s tower curiously appears in opposition to the natural drive for cultural solidarity, identity and belonging that has often contributed to human safety and preservation. Why would following this natural inclination incur divine wrath and retribution?

A Simple Gift

More questions arise as some interpreters take the scattering as a profoundly positive—rather than punitive—occasion for greater interpersonal growth. For one theologian, dispersion provides a space for “subtle and sensitive conversations, to the plurality of meanings, to nuances, poetry, creativity, and individuality” (Moyaert, 2009, p. 230) yielding authentic, self-transcending, and hospitable dialogue even across imposing barriers.

True as this may be, if you’ve ever read the rest of Genesis, that does not seem to be what happened to these folks (or to many of us when we are suddenly surrounded by a strange crowd). Rather than spaciousness, human beings seem more fundamentally to experience foreignness as a threat. Think about how you guard your valuables on a crowded subway!

We might see this story differently if we move outside of traditional or idealized interpretations. Beyond divine punishment or cultural opportunity, there is something very fundamental here we can easily miss. This simple idea can make all the difference in our ability to flourish and grow.

Dispersion to the Margins

Essentially, building this kind of metaphorical tower is a natural human experience. We come together with others to create things that cement our collective identity, and that give us a name and a place. Realizing this inclination as part of our human nature, God’s intervention results from humanity’s natural desire to find identity and solidarity with other people. In this light, the divine act of dispersion simply moves the tower builders away from their comfort zones.

The scattering moves a unified “us” to a far-reaching multitude of very diverse “others.”

Rather than judgment inveighed against Babel’s builders, verses 1 – 4 of the story describe what people naturally do: join together, uniting individuals through a common identity. This fundamental perspective provides a critical clue to understanding the divine response of scattered dispersion in verses 5 – 9.

Dispersion, rather than punishment, sends us to the margin where we can begin to step outward to more fully see ourselves and our religious and spiritual traditions. As such, this well known Hebrew story suggests the need not only for the solidarity of cohesive identities, but focuses us on stepping out into divergent uncertainty. From this scattering, we are gathered to our commonly held, multilingual otherness.

What might being on the periphery mean for you?

What do you see when you look in on yourself, your spirituality, or your religious tradition?

References

Hiebert, T. (2007). The tower of Babel and the origin of the world’s cultures. Journal of Biblical Literature, 126(1), 29-58.

Moyaert, M. (2009). A “Babelish” world (Genesis 11:1-9) and its challenge to cultural-linguistic theory. Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, 36(2), 215-234.

Rethinking the Tower of Babel

May 2, 2014 By Neville Ann Kelly

Early on in this series “Why Christianity Must See Itself From the Outside,” I suggested that one key to seeing from the margin lies in listening to the different kinds of languages spoken within the Christian tradition. Let’s look at an ancient Hebrew story help explain why.

Remember the old story of the Tower of Babel? Just to refresh your memory, it goes like this:

In the beginning, everyone in the world spoke the same language. A bunch of Middle Eastern folks settled in a nice place—a plain near Shinar— and decided to make some more permanent structures rather than living in their bedouin-styled tents. So, they made a bunch of really strong bricks and built a tower.

Now the tower was really, really tall, and so they exaggerated quite a bit and said it reached all the way to heaven. The reason that they wanted it that tall was because they wanted to really stand out, but mostly because they were worried that their people were getting wanderlust and would disperse unless they had a “main attraction” keeping them powerful and together.

The problem started when God noticed what was going on. God said, “Look what they have done! If they are starting to do this, there will be no end to the possibilities. Let’s go down there and make them speak a bunch of different languages so they can’t understand each other and do this kind of thing again.” So, that’s just what happened, and everyone scattered into little cliques.

(Well, it sort of goes like that. For the official story—a short story like this is called a “pericope”—from the Hebrew Scriptures, see Genesis 11: 1- 9. )

The Common Interpretation

It is quite likely you know that this pericope has come to represent God’s judgment on arrogance. The people’s “scattering” is the result of their making a very bad move—building this tower— and a prevention of further transgressions. The people—originally unified—are dispersed as both a retribution for this action and a prevention for further “tower” building.

This interpretation has a very long history in all three of the original monotheistic religions: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. Here are some examples (you can find the books listed below):

al-Tabari, 9th century/2007
Gen. Rab. 38 (Hebrew Midrash)
Ibn Ezra, 12th century/1988
Irenaeus, Epid. 23, edited by MacKenzie & Robinson
Origen, Cel. 4:21

This is, thus, a venerable interpretation that has been with us for a very long time.

Let’s take a moment to look at this traditional interpretation respectfully from the “outside,” practicing standing on the margin looking “in” on the tradition.

So understood, Babel is explanatory and representative of an apparently undesired outcome: the differentiation and dispersal of humanity. Rather than catalyst for an enriching diversity, divine recompense for the industrious, Babel-building effort of the narrative’s protagonists mercilessly imposes cultural-linguistic differentiation upon the peoples of the world.

What is up with that?

Critiques of This Interpretation

Contemporary sensitivities regarding diversity and cultural inclusivity have questioned the validity of such an interpretation. Why would difference—in this case, so cataclysmically judged by God—be a punishment? What does this say about difference, or “otherness”?

Where might this understanding lead Christianity (and perhaps where has it historically led)?

God’s preference for sameness and homogeneity seems implied if diversity is a punishment.

Thinking in this vein, many postmodern, liberation and feminist theologies, among others, will challenge the assumption that differentiation is the devastatingly negative outcome traditional exegesis has implied (Croatto, 1998; Fewell, 2001; Hiebert, 2004; Míguez-Bonino, 1999; Oduyoye, 1984; Song, 1999).

Nonetheless, we find numerous scholars maintaining the traditional view, making it the dominant, “firmly fixed” (Hiebert, 2007, p.29) interpretive theme throughout commentary on the Genesis text (Sarna, 1996; Strong, 2008; von Rad, 1972; Wenham, 1987).

How Does Babel Help Us See “In” From the Margins?

So what might be a way to interpret what is going on at Babel?

More directly, what insight might this problematic passage give us as we stand at the margin, looking “in” on Christianity?

Next time, we will explore how the Babel story gives us a key means of stepping outward into a wider view, the marginal space of seeing “not from the center but rather from the periphery.”

building towers

References

Croatto, J. S. (1998). A reading of the story of the Tower of Babel from a perspective of non-identity. In F. F. Segovia & M. A. Tolbert (Eds.), Teaching the Bible: The discourses and politics of biblical pedagogy. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.

Fewell, D. N. (2001). Building Babel. In A. K. M. Adam (Ed.), Postmodern interpretations of the Bible: A reader. St. Louis: Chalice Press.

Hiebert, T., & McCormick Theological, S. (2004). Toppling the Tower: Essays on Babel and diversity. Chicago, Ill.: McCormick Theological Seminary.

Ibn Ezra, A. b. M., Strickman, H. N., & Silver, A. M. (1988). Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Pentateuch. New York, N.Y.: Menorah Pub. Co.

Miguez-Bonino, J. (1999). Genesis 11:1-9: A Latin American perspective. In J. R. Levison & P. Pope-Levison (Eds.), Return to Babel: global perspectives on the Bible. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.

Oduyoye, M. (1984). The sons of the gods and the daughters of men: An Afro-Asiatic interpretation of Genesis 1-11. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.

Origen. (2nd century). Against Celsus. Retrieved from the New Advent Web site: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04164.htm

Sarna, N. M. (1996). The Mists of Time: Genesis 1-11. In A. Feyerick (Ed.), Genesis: world of myths and patriarchs. New York: New York University Press.

Song, C.-S. (1999). Genesis 11:1-9: An Asian perspective. In J. R. Levison & P. Pope-Levison (Eds.), Return to Babel: Global perspectives on the Bible. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.

Strong, J. T. (2008). Shattering the image of God: A response to Theodore Hiebert’s interpretation of the story of the tower of Babel. Journal of Biblical Literature, 127(4), 625-634.

Tabari, M., & Popovkin, A. V. (2007). The history of al-Tabari. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.

von Rad, G. (1972). Genesis: a commentary (J. H. Marks, Trans.). Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

Wenham, G. J. (1987). Genesis. 1-15. In Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, TX.: Word Books.

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For other segments in the “Marginal Invitation” series see:

Introduction: Pope Francis on Embracing Multiple Perspectives

The “Overview” Effect

Part 1: Why Christianity Must See Itself from Its Periphery

Part 2: Why We Must See Ourselves from the Periphery

Part 3: Looking In at Christian Theology

Part 4: Seeing In Through a Fourfold Lens

Debated Origins of the Christian Easter Idea: A Both/And Approach?

April 18, 2014 By Neville Ann Kelly

In keeping with my recent series exploring how to see Christianity from the margins, Notre Dame’s near-celebrity theologian, Candida Moss, writes a few interesting “both/and” details about the debated origins of the Christian Easter idea.

Note how Moss includes pagan influences and the concept of uniqueness on the feast–and its underlying theology–in her discussion, though neither are made the sole contributors to Easter’s early development.

Did Christians really ‘steal’ Easter?

Opinion by Candida Moss, special to CNN

(CNN) – It’s that time of year again: the time when chocolate comes in pastels, cherry blossoms start to bloom and well-marketed religion exposés are released to the world.

In other words, it’s Easter.

Among the rash of sensationalist stories we can expect through the season, the annual “Easter was stolen from the pagans” refrain has sprouted again just in time for Holy Week.

Don’t believe the hype.

Perhaps most misinformed theory that rolls around the Internet this time of year is that Easter was originally a celebration of the ancient Near Eastern fertility goddess Ishtar.

This idea is grounded in the shared concept of new life and similar-sounding words Easter/Ishtar. There’s no linguistic connection, however. Ishtar is Akkadian and Easter is likely to be Anglo-Saxon.

Just because words in different languages sound the same doesn’t mean they are related. In Swedish, the word “kiss” means urine.

But the biggest issue for Christians is the claim that Jesus’ resurrection – the faith’s central tenet – might have pagan roots.

Even apart from whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead, many Christians claim that the very idea is unique.

There are other biblical examples of people being raised from the dead – think of Jesus raising Lazarus. But those people went on to die again. Only Jesus was raised from the dead to live forever.

But there’s a problem: Pre-Christian religions are replete with dying and rising gods.

Dionysius, most commonly thought of as the Greek god of wine, is one such example. He was lured to his death by the Titans, who then boiled and ate him. He was revived by his grandmother, and from his ashes humanity was formed, the Greeks believed.
Farther afield, Osiris – an Egyptian god-king who became ruler of the realm of the dead – was slaughtered before being brought back to life by Isis.
A similar story is found in the case of the Greek goddess Persephone, the daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter. Persephone was carried off to the underworld by the love-struck Hades. Because she ate pomegranate seeds in the underworld, she was permitted to leave only for six months a year.
Her annual resurrection is a metaphor for the changing of the seasons, and many scholars think that stories about dying and rising deities are essentially explanations for the coming of winter.
Then there’s Mithras, an ancient Iranian deity popular among Roman soldiers.
Among the many claims made about Mithras are that he was born on December 25, that adherents to his cult practiced baptism, and that he died and was resurrected.
The connections between Christ and Mithras are further amplified by the fact that the church of St. Clement, near the Colosseum in Rome, is built on top of an ancient Mithraeum.

The list goes on, and I’ll admit it’s a bit unsettling.

That’s why the accusations that Christians “stole” the Resurrection from the Pagans is so popular and rhetorically powerful.

If, as many Christians claim, Christianity’s against-the-odds success is in some way proof of its authenticity and truth, then what does it say that parts of its truth were stolen from religious movements that no longer exist?

Spiritual “Manifest Destiny” looks less persuasive when extinct religious traditions supplied the backbone for the modern-day Church.

But there are ways around some of these problems.

Lumping all of these stories of dying and rising gods into a single category obscures important differences between them. Some of those who rose as gods, for example, were mere human beings prior to their return. Jesus, in contrast, was divine before his death, according to Christian theology.

Also, some of the parallels between the traditions come from a later period (post-Christianity) or are completely unsubstantiated. The arguments about Mithras and Jesus, for example, have completely fallen apart in the past 50 years because there simply isn’t enough ancient evidence to support them.

We should also ask whether the fishermen who followed Jesus around Palestine would have known about (much less adopted) stories from ancient Egyptians and Babylonians.

Greek and Roman mythology circulated widely on coins, but would the followers of Jesus who first claimed that Jesus was resurrected have known these stories in great detail?

Perhaps, perhaps not.

On the other hand, many Christians claim that Jesus’ death and resurrection is subtly different from that of other ancient deities and, thus, that the resurrection of Jesus was a wholly new idea.

The problem is, these apologists are one archeological discovery away from disaster. In the meantime, they are trying to pry Christianity apart from other late antique religions in order to protect it.

Perhaps the real problem here is with the idea of uniqueness.

As the University of Chicago scholar Jonathan Z. Smith showed, there’s a huge ideological and religious investment in the idea that Jesus was unique.

But there doesn’t have to be. Just because one idea is influenced by another idea doesn’t mean that its meaning is determined by the chronologically prior idea.

The Founding Fathers may have been influenced by Greek classical tradition, but this doesn’t mean that we should interpret the Constitution in light of Aristotle. You can recognize both the importance and innovation of the Constitution and its roots in ancient European civics.

Rather than battening down the hatches and looking for other signs of uniqueness, Christians need to think about how meaning relates to tradition.

Christians didn’t steal Easter, but it probably wasn’t a wholly new idea, either.

Find the original CNN blog post here.

Candida Moss is the author of the Myth of Persecution and Ancient Christian Martyrdom and professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed in this post belong to Moss.