I was having lunch with an old friend a while back. We don’t do that as much as we used to. That’s real life, I guess. But we’ll sit over Thai food and talk about the details of our mundane lives and do what friends do: comment, offer advice and perspective, sometimes when it’s asked for. Often when it’s not.
I hadn’t seen him for a few weeks, so I bounced my recent mood off of him, how I had been feeling a bit restless, in transition, kinda expectant, in annoying contrast to the remarkable (and for me, unusual) contentment I’d been enjoying for the past 6 months (political reality notwithstanding). He nodded, threw out a comment or two; nothing that seemed to stick. So I said, “I was kinda hoping you’d have some kind of insight or direction for me.” Because that’s what he’s good at. He’s not a “super-spiritual” type, but he’s a devout follower of Jesus, and he has this uncanny ability sometimes to read my life and offer near-prophetic nuggets that have often helped guide me through cloudy periods.
“Tell me again what you’re thinking,” he said. So I did, summarizing my vague feelings into 3 bullet points that took about 30-45 seconds to recap. His eyes kinda focused somewhere over my head, and he smiled in the middle of it all. “While you were talking, I got the impression …” and he began to unload some perspective and suggestions about my situation. Some was new stuff, some was an echo of things I’d been feeling recently that I hadn’t mentioned to him.
And it occurred to me that that’s often how spirituality works: in response. Together.
I could have sat for hours quietly meditating by myself, waiting for clarity. Sometimes it happens that way. But within a matter of minutes, with him sipping his unsweetened iced tea, he managed to tap into the whispering of the Spirit, the voice of intuition, his gut impressions, and pull out at least a bit of wisdom that I could latch onto.
“Life is with people,” the saying goes. And we are capable of solitary spirituality. (Interestingly, I wrote about this very thing.) But there seems to be a shift in the power dynamics when we are not alone. Maybe echoing Jesus’s words that “where two or three of you are gathered,” or the rabbinic saying that “when two are sitting together and words of Torah are spoken between them, the Divine Presence rests with them” (Abot 3:2). It’s a spiritual reality. When humans get together, especially when they are intentional about it, there is a synergistic boost.
There is a flow, an exchange. It can happen on the purely physical level, on the intellectual level, but it also happens on that spiritual level. My friend is able to tap into that substrata of reality and pull out wisdom lying beneath the surface.
The Apostle Paul in the New Testament wrote about the abundance of spiritual abilities (gifts) distributed among people, and how each is necessary and somehow ignited when people gather together.
Like when a friend tells you about a weird dream they had, and all the pieces seem perfectly clear to you, and you offer some reflective insight into what was going on in their head.
Or how when you’re praying or meditating with others – even like a Quaker prayer meeting, sitting there in silence – the spiritual energy is intensified. (That’s how they got their name, derisively: because sometimes they’d actually shake from the intensity of feeling.)
Or singing together, especially in harmony – something happens. You can actually feel it.
This is sad news for an introvert (like me), but it reflects the simple truth that we apparently need each other. (“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you,’ and the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!” – 1 Cor 12). Somehow, the divine participates with us when we’re together. We should expect it.
It wasn’t just the talking. It was the listening with intuitive ears open, the expectancy of participation from the third presence – the divine conversation partner. It was the recognition and acceptance that Truth and Wisdom, clarity and insight, are available when we’re together. Sometimes I’m the ear, sometimes I’m the mouth, the hand, the foot. Sometimes you are.
That day, my friend was the voice of perception and insight as I tried to summarize the complex and nebulous feelings I’d been experiencing. I spoke, he listened. And then he told me what he heard, what he saw as I spoke. Things beyond the words, images through the fog. The voice of Spirit in his ear while I was talking.