At SGTI, we encourage our students to express their learning in creative ways. Today, we gladly offer this series of poems by one of our current students, Katie Spero. We are grateful for her permission to post them. Enjoy!

Estimated Time of Arrival
 
she starts to notice shoulders under a t-shirt in front of her
the atmosphere breathes his body out 
and it expands
breathes him in and it contracts
that one too
and the woman standing
grabs a seatback as the bus jolts 
green light
in 
pause
out 
pause
the voice wants to know
how can I love myself
when I am myself
who is breathing us
loving us
with life
 
who am I 
pause
I breath it in
it’s swept away 
silent nativity
sojourner
with a place to land
 
who is next in line to be loved
 
 
Don’t Give Away the Ending
 
An old couple walks onto the bus
Sit across from each other
Then next to each other
Then a few rows back
Whispering silently under the loud hum 
She sips water
I am thirsty
We are all a part
Apart is the illusion
Two small boys with big hair like me
Stomp up the two stairs towards the back of the bus
They shout observations 
A car with people in it
A car radio
"Right Leo?"
It sure is right
It is all right
Everything is part of the poem
 
The Watcher
 
The ego
picks up a pen.
It disappears
and I awake. I fall asleep
and it disappears.
 

Created by Jeanette Banashak:

​Dear friends,

We’d like to share a practice with you that invites you to engage with nature in a contemplative and compassionate way. The following is a guide for you to immerse yourself in a 1.5 to 2-hour nature experience that is inspired by facilitator, Phyllis Look’s, practice of Forest Bathing, nature walks, and Interspiritual Meditation. Nature Immersion incorporates 7 stages or experiences that correlate with the 7 steps of Interspiritual Meditation.
 
Forest Bathing, or shinrin-yoku in Japanese, was developed in the 80s in Japan in order to help relieve stress. As it has made its way to the West, the motivations to forest immersion are slightly different, but the science remains the same. Trees emit phytoncides, which is a substance that helps trees and plants protect themselves from harmful germs and insects. This substance affects humans who participate in forest bathing: reduced stress, lower blood sugar, better concentration, diminished pain, and improved immunity. We also generally feel better and happier after connecting with nature, even up to 30 days after your experiences in it. 
 
Developed by Dr. Ed Bastian, Interspiritual Meditation is a 7-step process that incorporates wisdom from the world’s contemplative religious and spiritual traditions. It is simultaneously a spiritual practice and a way of being. The steps include: motivation – may we be happy and healthy; gratitude – may we be grateful; transformation – may we be transformed; intention – may we be loving and compassionate; mindfulness – may we become mindful through our breathing; wisdom – may we become wise through our meditation; service – may we be in service to all beings.
 
In the experience/meditation, we take in nature through the senses, through the eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hands, and feet. We stimulate and engage our senses by being awake and alert to what we see, what we smell, what we taste, and what we feel.
 
For more information on Interspiritual Meditation, check out: https://spiritualpaths.net/
For more information on Forest Bathing, check out: http://forest-therapy.net/home.html
 
We hope you enjoy the journey and please feel free to connect with us to let us know how it goes.
 

©2020, Jeanette Banashak

As people on a dedicated spiritual path, we are always trying to do our best. We are not perfect people, but we are vulnerable human beings who play multiple roles and are beyond busy, so there will be times when we are off-balance and errors are made. Things said. Situations or people neglected. At times we may feel less than kindly toward ourselves— self-critical, judgmental, or disappointed. 
 
Feelings such as these keep us separated from our innate peace. It is wise for us to remember that mind states like these are sourced in the ego—our small, immature, wounded self—and that when we hold on to them, we perpetuate our own suffering. The opposite of the virtue of peacefulness is aggression. When we entertain thoughts and feelings that demean the reality of our basic goodness, we are at war with ourselves. 
 
When this happens to you, take a deep breath and make an adult-sized promise to yourself: a promise to thrive and be gentle with yourself. Feeling closed down, irritated, struggling with something you’ve said or done? Stop what you’re doing and open your heart to yourself. 
 
Place your hand over your heart. Feel the warmth of your hand covering your heart.
 
With the inhale, breathe in understanding, With the exhale, breathe out concern.
 
Breathe in self-forgiveness. Breathe out your disappointment in yourself.
 
Breathe in a feeling of kindness. Breathe out relief. 
 
Continue in this way until you return to a feeling of equanimity and balance. Rest in spacious awareness and trust that all is well. 
 
Receive what your wise self knows: You are a good person.
 
Receive what your faithful heart says: You are doing the very best you can.
​

©2015, Janice L. Lundy
Excerpted from Portable Peace: A Weekly Guidebook

Amy Halberstadt, Susanne Denham, and Julie Dunsmore discuss a model for affective social competence, which they describe as “three integrated and dynamic components: sending affective messages, receiving affective messages, and experiencing affect.” While the model was created with children in mind, we are wondering about the relevance of affective social competence as spiritual guides who often work in the realm of emotions – being aware of our own emotions, having emotion communication skills, facilitating our client’s understanding of emotions, etc.
 
According to Halberstadt, Denham, and Dunsmore, each of the three components (sending affective messages, receiving affective messages, and experiencing affect) encompass four abilities: awareness, identification, working within a social context, management and regulation. Sending affective messages has to do with the awareness of a need to send the message, identifying the message, sending the message within a set of rules, and managing the sending of the message as well as any false or real signals. In the context of spiritual direction the guide considers what messages they might send, when to send them, and how to send them.
 
Receiving affective messages has to do with being aware of the message, identifying the meaning, understanding the message within the cultural context, and managing the receipt of the message as well as any false or real signals. In spiritual direction this might look like being attuned to the messages our seekers are sending us, picking up on any clues they are offering, and discerning the meaning within their unique context.
 
Experiencing affective messages relates to being aware of my own emotions, identifying my emotions, understanding them within a social context, and regulating my emotional experiences. In the context of spiritual guidance, the guide does not ignore any emotions that might surface, but can bracket their experiences and tend to their emotions after the session in a time of reflection and perhaps supervision.
 
Each of the components ebbs and flows as the session unfolds. By integrating this model, the potential for deeper listening is present because we are ever aware of our own emotions while not being derailed by them. Halberstadt, Denham, and Dunsmore write that we can “integrate and control the overlap between these skill areas of sending, receiving, and experiencing emotions”.  In relationship, we send messages that influence how another receives them; what and how we receive messages influences what we send. Furthermore, we discern what we communicate next based on the interactions of our own emotional experiences and what our seekers share with us. 
 
Our hope as spiritual companions is to promote our shared humanity in a context of trust and care. We believe that the affective social competence model has the potential to deepen our practice for the healing and co-creating of a better world.

~ Jeanette Banashak, PhD, EdD

One of the most painful twists of living in the era of COVID-19 is that, in the midst of so much trouble and uncertainty, we have been largely unable to do the first thing we humans do in times of crisis: turn to each other. Gather. Our inner wisdom knows, instinctively, that other people are the place to go for help and holding, for grieving, for hope. 
 
Yet the situation we find ourselves in turns this all on its head. So many of the places we might normally find our particular slices of community—houses of worship, workplaces, schools, gyms, arts venues—remain closed. We know that staying in our homes when possible is itself an act of care, that obscuring our smiles with masks when we must venture out is love in action. Some of us have had no choice but to continue to report to work, or have kept working out of a sense of duty. Many have gathered in protest, affirming that systems of racist oppression are also a pandemic urgently in need of our collective attention. But most of us, most of the time, are living in worlds that are much smaller than the ones we knew in early March. Our hearts bear the weight of all that is missing. Our hearts bear the weight of all we have lost.  
 
It is in this climate of isolation and heightened emotion of all kinds that I recently embarked on a small project of communal care. Spiritual direction training formally prepares us to offer guidance in one-on-one and group settings. Over time, the practice takes on a life of its own, finding new forms in the checkout line or the waiting room or, in this case, in a repurposed tree branch propped up by the street alongside some blank notecards, markers, and a poster posing a set of questions: 
 
How do you feel?
What do you miss?
What do you need?
What is your wish for or promise to others/our city/the world?
 
I set these materials out in front of my home one morning, hopeful that the invitation to share would be of service. Before long, I looked out my window and saw the first response fluttering in the breeze. Soon there were many others. People stopped to participate, to read, and to talk to one another about what they were seeing. Responses have ranged from hopeful to despairing to deeply spiritual. 
 
Here’s what I hear as I listen to this project: 
 
Children miss their routines, and they really miss their friends. 
Adults miss theirs too, and the family they can’t visit.
People are keenly aware of their need for physical touch. 
Some people are lonely and frightened. 
Some people find cause for hope in this time of slowing down and reconsidering. 
A number of people are attuning to issues of racial justice and resolving to help make change. 
It matters deeply to people to feel a sense of community. 
 
As of this writing, the tree is still up. When I walk outside to check for new cards, holding them tenderly, reading them like small prayers, I feel my breathing deepen and my heart expand. Here is tangible, incontrovertible proof of the thing we are all a part of, and always will be, no matter what. As isolated as circumstances might lead us to be, we are not ever alone. 
 
Amen. 
​

~ Kitti O'Hallaron
Her services and writing can be found at thresheld.com

I Am
I am a blade of grass
a grain of sand
a leaf
a drop of rain


I began as a single cell
99% oxygen, carbon, hydrogen
nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus
.85% potassium, sulfur, sodium,
chlorine, magnesium
All necessary for Life


I am human complexity, effectively & efficiently
designed in body and soul
intertwined with Mystery divine
like all my human family
intrigued to grow and experience
the gift of life
alone & together


I am unique and I am everyman/woman/child
we all travel through the same developmental seasons
lived in and through the endless complexity & diversity
of human civilizations, past and present
we are one and we are many
all lived out on
mother earth


I am sacred, you are sacred, we are sacred
Birthed through the womb of timelessness
finite days given to be alive, aware, alert
to walk with one another
with and on mother earth,
caring, loving, respecting, honoring
self, other & mother earth
revealing Mystery as we go

~ Original art and poetry by emerging spiritual director and SGTI student,
​Elizabeth Ritz

Sometimes the way someone writes about something opens a new door of understanding for you. Or it pries open the portals of your just a little bit wider. We want to share a deeply moving (and insightful!) blog post by one of our SGTI alumni with those hopes in mind. 

Meet Marv Baldwin, a spiritual guide, and the gentle force behind Soul Journeys. He blogs regularly on his website and we were drawn to share this particular post where he writes about how to practice the presence of love. Now.

Enjoy!

Whether you have been doing it for awhile now or have needed to switch due to the Covid-19,  most spiritual companions have been using Zoom, Skype, or the phone to meet with our clients/seekers/companions. One of the things we are promoting now is using the phone more than Zoom or Skype. This may seem like the opposite of what you might have thought.  After all, if we are in the service of relationships, shouldn’t we want to see our clients (especially those of us who were meeting in person up until mid-March)?
 
In an article entitled Why Is Zoom So Exhausting, Beckie Supiano explains several issues with the platform: “The body language and other cues that we expect but can’t access; the way we monitor our own appearance; the stimulation of staring into faces at close range; the inability to take a break, move, or change our surroundings.” Where Zoom used to be an opportunity – and still is – now it is an obligation in professional and personal relationships. Many of us are suffering from the void that we feel after the calls and meetings. 
 
Supiano suggests that using Zoom is exhausting because we have constant access to monitoring our own non-verbal cues. When we talk on the phone with our seekers, we obviously still lack the non-verbal cues, but we do not feel a need to self-monitor, and we are less distracted by our client’s movements. This frees us up to access our intuition and trust the knowing in our own bodies without the distraction of our seeker’s face. On Zoom there is little physical distance between you and your screen, which may have implications related to intimacy. On the phone, we do not have a face right in front of us, allowing space for proper intimacy. Talking on the phone also allows us to move; we can change locations or even walk and talk.
 
There are certainly benefits to each of the ways to connect in spiritual companionship. The questions we are discerning right now are which ways promote deeper connection, integrity, and attention, and which ways might hinder deeper connection?

Submitted by Jeanette Banashak

Drs. Banashak and Lundy discuss their individual calls to become spiritual directors-guides and wonder if you may be experiencing something similar. Have you heard or felt a call to serve others by being a spiritual companion? 

SGTI's next 18-mo. training program to become a spiritual director/guide with an interfaith-interspiritual focus begins August 27.

Note: This cohort will begin on time as SGTI is primarily an internet-based program. If the presence of Covid-19 makes the first Chicago Residential Institute unlikely, it will be rescheduled as soon as possible, but online learning will begin anyway. We are currently accepting applications and filling the cohort. We hope you will consider joining us! Contact us for an application. 

We recently had a casual Zoom conversation about our thoughts on what it means to be a spiritual guide/companion/director during challenging times, especially these times of pandemic. Take a listen!

May peace be upon you,
Jan Lundy & Jeanette Banashak

And if you have a desire to serve others in this way as a spiritual guide, contact us. We're happy to talk more about it with you. We are now accepting applications for the 2020-2022 cohort which begins in late August. Learn more here.