recognizing that even someone that you consider to be an enemy, for want of a better word, still has an essence that is sacred. That's a tough one to live with. What it does is, that you're not spending a lot of time racking up complaints like "did you hear what he did today? Or what he said?" Instead of doing that, you look at them and again, picking up a ServiceSpace phrase "Where is the Daily Good? Where is something wonderful happening? Where is something that you could hold onto? Where is the hope?"
I think what the difference now is, that you can't have hope without also acknowledging the reasons for despair. Otherwise, I mean, you're really being naive if you don't see the whole picture. I think our spirituality needs to both see the shadow - see the difficult things - as well as the hope behind it. When we did this project called the 'Practicing Democracy Project' (the material is all on the website) a lot of times we found that what was really important was to re-vision some of these things we take for granted and put them in spiritual terms. For instance, we did a piece on the National Parks in the United States and we did a Visio Divina practice where we asked people to look at pictures from the parks and recognize the beauty that it was offering and be grateful for that. That kind of an exercise reminded us of what's beautiful, what's possible, what's available and what we can be grateful for. So, there's different things like that which can be done to counter the despair - like gratitude and so forth.
Charles: Well, that's great. You anticipated my question, which is, "what does this have to offer in a time when it's so easy to have despair that’s kind of overwhelming?" I heard some of that in what you just said. If there's anything more you'd like to offer, feel free. If you feel that was enough, that's fine.
Mary Ann: I would simply add that I think one of the things that people are trying to develop or increase their capacity for is empathy. To be able to recognize and to walk in someone else's shoes. There's this film that just won the ‘Academy Award’ in 2024 for ‘Best Documentary’ called '20 Days in Mariupol’, that puts you on the ground in this Ukrainian city as it is being destroyed by bombing. You really can feel tremendous empathy for the people, but at the same time, compassion is something that's a little different.
Compassion is where you move towards someone to see if there is a way that you can be of help. So not only do you recognize your feelings for someone, but you try to figure out, is there something here that I can do? Or perhaps as the Serenity Prayer goes, there are some things that you can't do, that aren't yours to do. I think there's constantly all of these practices that ask you, "Is this for me? How can I apply it?" Maybe it's not the one. Maybe you can't do all 37, that's quite a challenge. But to pick out one or two and really work with it, I think is important.
Charles: I love that journey from empathy to compassion. That was beautifully framed. Thank you. Another dimension of our time and it is part of what makes ServiceSpace possible is the rapidly evolving technology. There are so many gifts that (technology) gives the world, and yet it also has people often spend much more time relating to screens than they might be, we might be, I might be - to the living, breathing world in all of its different expressions. I wonder what spiritual literacy might offer in terms of finding a healthy balance between the wonder and gifts of technology and the wonder and gifts of the living, breathing world?
Mary Ann: I don't think that we would make a big distinction there.
Charles: Okay.
Mary Ann: Now, maybe that's because we've been working with screens or the written word for so long. We used to irritate friends that did a lot of traveling by saying, "oh yeah, it's nice that you got to see those lions out in Tanzania, but we just watched this wonderful documentary about them and we got even closer. And then they're going, oh no". So, it's not that much. It's that technology has broadened our field of vision and knowledge and it's amazing what that means in terms of where you feel you fit into the world. I have to give a shout out again to ServiceSpace because ServiceSpace created an AI for Spirituality and Practice. So, we have the Spirituality and Practice Bot. You ask it a question and it goes through the 65,000 pages of content on our website and comes up with an answer. And it's been fascinating to us, because we created all this content, but it's been fascinating to watch the AI put it together in interesting new ways.
And sometimes we hadn't even noticed that about what we were doing. So, I think there, I think that I'm going to be pretty positive about technology. I do think that it's important that people be aware of what the technology people themselves have said, particularly about social media and some of the warnings that they're giving about AI. But that I don't actually see as one of those things that's ours to do. I think it's theirs to do.
Charles: Alright, well maybe one last question before, I hand this back over to Janessa to field questions from the field. And it's this, Mary Ann, would you speak to us about life as a sacred adventure?
Mary Ann: Oh, that's the first line of our book and yes, I think life is a sacred adventure because if you believe, as I do, that everything that you do and everything that you encounter in a day or a week or a month has spiritual significance, or is, or can be a spiritual practice for you, then life becomes an adventure.
Everything is an adventure of expressing that. And I'll give you an example. We are in the process of doing a redesign on the website. And one of the new areas we are adding is going to be called passions and pastimes. What we're doing is we are looking at the kinds of things that people are passionate about that have spiritual significance to them.
An example might be, animal care. We have these two wonderful cats and my husband says that his first spiritual practice of the day is cleaning the cat litter. Taking care of these animals is a spiritual practice for him. And at the same time, their affection, their response, the fact that they are living beings that have their own personalities and that are different from us - that is fascinating to watch. And so, everything can have a fascinating, or wonder-filled wonderful, quality to it. If you're looking at it and saying, ah, this is where my spirituality is being expressed: somebody that knits, somebody that plays golf, somebody that works with children.
Where do you come alive? That's what we mean by the passions and pastimes. We're going to be saying yes, spirituality is often expressed through prayer and devotional practices. It may be expressed by your relationship to nature, but it's also expressed through these passions that you have, these pastimes where you spend your time, there's a reason you spend your time that way. And that's because it's making you feel alive and feel that life is an adventure. How's that?
Charles: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Janessa.
Janessa: Thank you, Charles. Thank you both.
Mary Ann: Thank you, Charles.
Janessa: Thank you both for the conversation. We'll get him back here in, a half hour or so to close this out. But I'm delighted to engage in this conversation with you, Mary Ann.
I actually want to start with a question on my own. You will not remember this, but I first met you at a fundraising course that Lynn Twist was doing somewhere in the Redwoods, at this beautiful place. And I didn't know who you were, but she said, “oh my goodness, we have a celebrity in our course.”
And she brought you up to the front of the room and she pulled out this dog-eared copy of Spiritual Literacy. And she said, "this book has been foundational to my spiritual understanding. I refer to it every day. I love this book. I love this woman". And, she sang your praises. And I wanted to know, did you know that she was such a fan of yours before you took this course. I think it was called 'Fundraising from the Heart'. And, so I wanted to know how that, and then if you would, since ServiceSpace is all volunteer, there's no fundraising, but how do you see spiritual literacy even in something -you know, the Bible says money calls, money the profane- even in something as profane and secular and worldly as money, how would you, do you see that through a spiritual lens? And then a little bit about your connection with Lynn Twist.
Mary Ann: Okay. Well, with Lynn... Well, we knew of Lynn because we knew her book The Soul of Money. We also knew that she is on the Board of Directors of the Fetzer Institute and we have received funding from the Fetzer Institute. They funded, for instance, that Reverence project that's on the website and some other things, the Democracy Project. So, we knew that Lynn knew of our work and I went to - I think it was Wisdom 2.0 or some conference in which she was speaking.
And the woman from Fetzer introduced me to Lynn and she said, "oh, I love your book. I read it every day". And so, I was really thrilled, but when I went to the workshop, I didn't know she'd introduce me like that, I was totally stunned when she walked into the room with a copy of Spiritual Literacy and she'd post it all over the place and then she read it as the opening and then she made a video for us to use, which I think is linked off the review of the book on the website.
So, I think that she's an example of someone that discovered in the book this kind of universal spirituality that is not necessarily tied to any one tradition, but it embraces all of the traditions. And, so I think she just saw it as value like that. And in terms of fundraising, which we do need to do, we actually asked the AI that ServiceSpace made for us, “What are some good reasons to donate to spirituality in practice?” And it was fascinating; it came up with five reasons that I hadn't necessarily ever put my finger on.
The idea is, that what you hope with fundraising is that people will see what you are doing is something they also embrace; that they support; that they want to see done in the world. So, in our case, this idea of spreading the value of spiritual practice and even broadening the definition of what is spiritual. To say that you can be spiritual if you sing in a choir and that's where you come alive, or you can be spiritual when you're volunteering at your child's school. That may be your practice.
With fundraising, I think what we need is for people to say, “This is a need that's being fulfilled by this organization that I want to support.” That I hope they see the value of.
For instance, really nobody else is reviewing movies as consistently as we are, from a spiritual perspective. I mean, there are people who review movies, and they look for spiritual figures, or something. But we're talking about all the Hollywood movies and what you can see as an example of transformation or of love. So, we're hoping that people will recognize that this is unique work, and that it's a way for them to express- money is a way that you express your commitments. And so, money is your vehicle of being in service. If you can't do something yourself, you can at least support those who are doing something.
I know for me personally, at this point, supporting Doctors Without Borders, or the International Rescue Committee for all the work they are doing with all the people that are suffering in the world; that's a way of me being spiritual when I send a check, that check is a spiritual gift.
Janessa: So instead of seeing it as a profane, filthy, worldly thing, almost imbuing even money with spiritual significance, seeing it through that spiritual lens?
Mary Ann: Oh, definitely. It's a way to extend the reach of what you can personally do, because, by supporting an organization, you are helping them reach more people. So, we have, we do run online courses and so forth, but we have at least 60,000 pages of free content, and we're building it all the time. That's something that somebody can support, they can say: “Well, I want people all over the world who understand, for instance, understand a movie as having something to teach them about how to live a spiritual life.”
Our current favorite movie of the year is a movie called “Perfect Days”, and it's about a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo. It just follows his day.
And you think: “Who is this person?”
But you just love him because he is incredibly present to every moment of his day. He goes to lunch in a park. He takes a picture of the glistening leaves in a favorite tree. He's kind to people. He goes to the bath club, and it's a bathhouse, and it's obviously hot. An old man has fallen asleep, and he reaches over and fans him.
Now see, that's kindness and beauty. He sees beauty all through his day. So, we identified about six or seven of our practices in this one character.
Now, I would hope that people will see the value of having a movie reframed in spiritual terms. Because once they see that, this character can recognize… You know, he walks out of his house every morning and he looks up at the sky and smiles a Buddha-like smile. And you think: “I want to live like that. I want to bring that to my day.” So that's the point. If you believe this is an important way of looking at the world, then help the people that are trying to do that who only have so many resources. So, they need more.
Janessa: Right. So many ways to support and help that work. Thank you! And for the movie recommendation!
This is a question from a listener in the Midwest. She says: “I understand that as a high schooler in the 1960’s, you wrote an award-winning magazine essay on Vinoba, Gandhi’s spiritual successor. (Vinayak Narahari "Vinoba" Bhave was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. Often called Acharya, he is best known for the Bhoodan Movement. He is considered as a National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mahatma Gandhi.)
Can you say more about that? What inspired you about Bhave and any relevance today as you reflect on that?”
Mary Ann: Oh, that's wonderful. Well, you know, I must have. Unfortunately, I don't know where that essay is. It must be someplace in all the memorabilia of my life. What happened was there was a contest with the Atlantic Monthly for essays, and I was taking a writing class, and my teacher submitted it, and it won an award.
But I know that what I liked, was, of course, that Bhave was pretty much the successor to Gandhi. But it was his courage and his determination to just go out there and walk all over the country in India and say to landowners:
“Hey, consider me another son and give me a piece of your property, and then I'll give it to the poor.” And it sounds like a great idea, but just think of the courage it took to do that! And to get- I forget what the total number is of what he did.
Some of our greatest spiritual teachers throughout history have been courageous.
Gandhi was courageous.
Martin Luther King was courageous.
Bhave was courageous.
And so they model that quality, that stance in life. And then we are encouraged by them, to have courage in our own life.
So, I think that is what drew me to him; certainly draws me to him now. I am not quite sure what I wrote as a 17-year-old, but it must be-
Janessa: Wow. Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on that?
Mary Ann: Yeah.
Janessa: But how interesting that even in high school, you were drawn to spiritual leaders and spiritual giants like that.
Mary Ann: Yes. See, that was after Karachi. That was after living there, and I was fascinated by the history of the subcontinent and had taken some classes on that; so, I'm sure that's how I discovered him.
Janessa: So, we have some great questions, and I'll remind our listeners too that you can still ask and submit your questions.
This is from Susan: “How do you, Mary Ann, see how spiritual literacy is enhanced by direct contact with trees or different kinds of plants and different types of sentient creatures besides humans, creatures outside of domesticated settings?”
Mary Ann: Well, I would say I love trees, so that's going to be easy.
Janessa: Do you have a favorite tree?
Mary Ann: We have California Oak right outside our window. A really big one full of squirrels at the moment. Although, we also have some coyotes wandering around, so I hope the squirrels are safe.
Let's just say that when we say: “Everywhere you turn, you see the face of God.” That isn't just people that you see the divine in. You see the divine in trees. I see the Divine in things. I see the divine in flowers and the sky. It's the idea that everything is a part of sacred. The theological term would be panentheism. Saying that everything is in God and God is in everything. But you could also see it as Thich Nhat Hanh’s wonderful concept of inter being:
“That everything is interbeing with everything else. The tree is interbeing with us because the tree is providing the ingredients that we need for our breathing. And everything is connected. And when you start with that basic concept of connection and everything is in everything, then all the beings and not just sentient ones, I don't know why they say non-sentient beings. As I said, rocks are sentient.“
How do we determine what a rock is to me? It is. And I think of that, and that's part of what I've actually learned from Sufism, from being part of a Sufi order, is that, you'll notice for instance, that Sufi musicians will ask permission of their instrument before they play it. And, you'll see them acknowledge it.
And, as you finish your prayers you would kiss your prayer rug in gratitude for its part in your prayers. And for everything there is a relationship with every aspect, sentient or non-sentient. It's important to not make spirituality just about just the human thing. It's not a human thing, it's an everything thing.
I hope that answers that.
Janessa: Goes back to your reverence idea. Reverence in everything in our lives. Marie Kondo, you know that book, Spark Joy. She says we should be surrounded with things that give joy because they want to be admired and appreciated. They want to give us joy and we also, in turn, want to be appreciated. Even the non-sentient. I love that.
Mary Ann: I had an experience when we were writing our book. I had an experience of feeling like some of my wedding presents that had been put in a cabinet and never been used: I felt as if they were crying out to me saying use me, use me. And it made a point to me,
Janessa: don't lock me up in a cabinet.
Mary Ann: Yes. Right.
Janessa: And did you bring them out?
Mary Ann: I did. And when we moved, I made sure that I brought some that had never gotten used. They didn't just go to Goodwill; they came with me so that I could give them a chance.
Janessa: That's great. I bet they were thrilled. Let's keep going on down the list here. Here is a question from a caller about, please share with us how you came to be a Christian Sufi and how that enriches your life?
Mary Ann: It's an interesting story about what you need in your spiritual life. Frederick and I are members of a church in New York City, in Greenwich Village called Judson Memorial. And Judson is very devoted to the social justice movements, to the prophetic ministry, the gay rights movements started there. They recently have been doing a lot of work with the sanctuary movement for immigrants. There we even had a minister who used to go around Times Square and offer cookies to the prostitutes so that he could talk to them about their human rights. There is this whole history in this one church of being socially active for justice. But they didn't have much about spirituality. They didn't talk about it. They didn't have meditation classes. They didn't have, we had prayer of course, but they didn't really have any kind of emphasis upon the contemplative life or the spiritual life.
And after we wrote about spiritual literacy, we found a lot of people came to us to talk about spirituality, because the ministers weren't doing that. And at that time, we discovered Rumi. And for a person who had been a political science major, I never understood poetry until I found Rumi. And then it just totally touched my heart. I got it, I understood what he was saying. Kabir and Camille Kaminski were offering a workshop at the Omega Institute in New York. Kabir is the Sheikh for the Mevlevi order that was founded by Rumi. And they have both translated a lot of Rumi's poetry. I went to the workshop, and I just had a real deep connection to the two of them. In Sufism you talk about a teacher's barica, meaning their grace, that they are feeling. It would be similar to say a Hindu teacher who gives Darshan say. And I just felt like there was something there for me that I really wanted to know more about the path I was interested in.
All of Sufism has an enormous emphasis upon what they call “adab”, which means courtesy practices. And there's an adab for everything. There's an adab for your relationship with your teacher, with your fellow circle members, but also with things and I loved that. So I went to the teacher, I went to Kabir and I said, well, here's the thing. I've got this long history of Christianity. My husband is a Christian minister, but I really would like to study this more deeply. I love the practices. I want to do them regularly. And what did he think about it? And he said that Rumi, the peer of the order, had followers who were Christian, who were Jewish, who were Zoroastrian, and he never asked them to convert to Islam, although Rumi was obviously a Muslim.
And Kabir said, I would never ask you to convert. Rumi would not ask you to convert. He said, I practice surrender as a Muslim, but you can practice surrender as a Christian, in the way of Jesus. And it was possible with his blessing to adapt, to bring what I knew about the transformational path of Christianity that was taught by Jesus and see that it was also expressed in the transformational path of Sufism. That is how I ended up practicing two religions.
Janessa: So inclusive and non-judgmental, and it's beautiful. Just a quick follow up from a caller, Carol. She asked if the spiritual alphabet is similar to the 99 names of Islam? Have you matched the sacred names to the alphabet?
Mary Ann: We haven't, but you're right. It is probably a direct match. I'd have to go through and do that though. But certainly, things like gratitude and love and beauty and generosity. I love this phrase, and I identified with this immediately when I really began to explore Sufism more deeply. There is this phrase about doing the beautiful, you want to do the beautiful, and beauty is an important practice for me. I love the idea that your practice is to do the beautiful.
Janessa: Earlier, Mary Ann, you mentioned that at this time we can't just sweep the shadow under the rug. We have to acknowledge the shadow and then look for hope. Where has the shadow come up for you, in this work? And what has gotten you through those challenging times or experiences?
Mary Ann: I think the hardest part is that we live in an intentional community and a retirement community. And most of the people that live here, have had lives of service. That was part of the qualification to come here. You had to demonstrate commitment to a cause and so we have people a lot of ministers and professors from various universities and seminaries, but we also have somebody from the Heifer International, the founder or one of the lead people like that, or other nonprofits. And typically... I hesitate to say "typically" but this group is pretty progressive politically and also pretty worried at the moment. And so, consequently there tends to be... We have a shared lunch every day and we get assigned our seating differently – it’s computer generated -- so we don't end up with the same people every day. And it seems as if there are just some tables... Sometimes you get a table and all they can do is talk about the last president. I'll follow this example and not mention him by name. And the thing is that there is so much animosity going on there. And I find that to be a shadow element.
Whatever you give attention to grows and if you're constantly giving attention to how much you hate someone, you're not going to see what the alternative could be or see how you can cope should that person end up in power again. So, I think for me, the shadow would be this tendency to create enemies and to hold people as enemies.
There's a wonderful Sufi teacher, Jamal Rahman, who talks about the fact that you have to make a distinction between someone's actions and someone's essence. And everyone has the essence of the sacred, of the divine.
I think that's a shadow element that we have to deal with because you can just get incredibly stressed if you're constantly finding reasons to hate someone. I think that's an important shadow element. Yeah.
Janessa: I'm going to try to squeeze in one more question before our final one. Here's from a caller: "You've been with your husband for 50 years. Can you speak a bit about relationships as a spiritual practice? Or what are some important lessons you can share?" And you've worked with him, so that's pretty amazing.
Mary Ann: Yes. We've worked with each other from the beginning. Well, we are complimentary in terms of our talents and our gifts. We laughed and said we were able to come to New York because he could read fast and I could type fast.
And in a sense, learning to recognize what your unique gifts are and how they interact, how they inter-mesh with the other person is important. Now, it may be that you're just twins, that you have the same skills and then that's great. Then you can help each other and support each other in whatever your gifts are.
But there were times when I was kind of frustrated because he's a very high energy person and I have a button that says "slow is beautiful." [Laughs] And so I'm kind of like, "Oh, I can't keep up with him." And yet I realized that I fed off his energy. And so rather than seeing it as something that would make me feel bad about myself, I just turned it around and I said, "Oh, I can feed off his energy." And at the same time, he feeds off my attention to detail, which he's too fast sometimes to take care of. So, I think the main thing is really learning who you are and how you are different and how you are alike that makes a long-term relationship work.
Janessa: Beautiful. Thank you. That's beautiful. And congratulations on 50 years together in marriage.
Mary Ann: Yes.
Janessa: That's an inspiration.
Mary Ann: Thank you.
Janessa: I've got one final question which we ask all of our guests. How can we, in the Awakin Calls community and the broader ServiceSpace ecosystem support your vision and work in the world? I know we're already doing some of that but let's invite you into an even greater possibility. What comes to you?
Mary Ann: Well, I think one of the things that's been difficult in the growth of our organization is that we are so small. There's Frederick and myself. We have a couple of editors, an office manager and an arts person. But this whole enterprise has always been done by less than five people and that's difficult. And so, for instance, in our new redesign, we're planning to have a video portal where we have little videos of, for instance, people talking about their passion.
We would love to send some of the students from the nearby colleges into LA to talk to the skateboarding community and find out – why are they passionate about skateboarding? Because skateboarders see the city entirely differently than the rest of us. They look for different things. So, we're fascinated by that and we'd love to have a little video about that.
I think for us, what we're hoping is that one, people will let people know about the website, will spread the word, will sign up for our newsletter and tell people about all these resources. But also, as we look for ways to engage with people -- I think that's our
I think what the difference now is, that you can't have hope without also acknowledging the reasons for despair. Otherwise, I mean, you're really being naive if you don't see the whole picture. I think our spirituality needs to both see the shadow - see the difficult things - as well as the hope behind it. When we did this project called the 'Practicing Democracy Project' (the material is all on the website) a lot of times we found that what was really important was to re-vision some of these things we take for granted and put them in spiritual terms. For instance, we did a piece on the National Parks in the United States and we did a Visio Divina practice where we asked people to look at pictures from the parks and recognize the beauty that it was offering and be grateful for that. That kind of an exercise reminded us of what's beautiful, what's possible, what's available and what we can be grateful for. So, there's different things like that which can be done to counter the despair - like gratitude and so forth.
Charles: Well, that's great. You anticipated my question, which is, "what does this have to offer in a time when it's so easy to have despair that’s kind of overwhelming?" I heard some of that in what you just said. If there's anything more you'd like to offer, feel free. If you feel that was enough, that's fine.
Mary Ann: I would simply add that I think one of the things that people are trying to develop or increase their capacity for is empathy. To be able to recognize and to walk in someone else's shoes. There's this film that just won the ‘Academy Award’ in 2024 for ‘Best Documentary’ called '20 Days in Mariupol’, that puts you on the ground in this Ukrainian city as it is being destroyed by bombing. You really can feel tremendous empathy for the people, but at the same time, compassion is something that's a little different.
Compassion is where you move towards someone to see if there is a way that you can be of help. So not only do you recognize your feelings for someone, but you try to figure out, is there something here that I can do? Or perhaps as the Serenity Prayer goes, there are some things that you can't do, that aren't yours to do. I think there's constantly all of these practices that ask you, "Is this for me? How can I apply it?" Maybe it's not the one. Maybe you can't do all 37, that's quite a challenge. But to pick out one or two and really work with it, I think is important.
Charles: I love that journey from empathy to compassion. That was beautifully framed. Thank you. Another dimension of our time and it is part of what makes ServiceSpace possible is the rapidly evolving technology. There are so many gifts that (technology) gives the world, and yet it also has people often spend much more time relating to screens than they might be, we might be, I might be - to the living, breathing world in all of its different expressions. I wonder what spiritual literacy might offer in terms of finding a healthy balance between the wonder and gifts of technology and the wonder and gifts of the living, breathing world?
Mary Ann: I don't think that we would make a big distinction there.
Charles: Okay.
Mary Ann: Now, maybe that's because we've been working with screens or the written word for so long. We used to irritate friends that did a lot of traveling by saying, "oh yeah, it's nice that you got to see those lions out in Tanzania, but we just watched this wonderful documentary about them and we got even closer. And then they're going, oh no". So, it's not that much. It's that technology has broadened our field of vision and knowledge and it's amazing what that means in terms of where you feel you fit into the world. I have to give a shout out again to ServiceSpace because ServiceSpace created an AI for Spirituality and Practice. So, we have the Spirituality and Practice Bot. You ask it a question and it goes through the 65,000 pages of content on our website and comes up with an answer. And it's been fascinating to us, because we created all this content, but it's been fascinating to watch the AI put it together in interesting new ways.
And sometimes we hadn't even noticed that about what we were doing. So, I think there, I think that I'm going to be pretty positive about technology. I do think that it's important that people be aware of what the technology people themselves have said, particularly about social media and some of the warnings that they're giving about AI. But that I don't actually see as one of those things that's ours to do. I think it's theirs to do.
Charles: Alright, well maybe one last question before, I hand this back over to Janessa to field questions from the field. And it's this, Mary Ann, would you speak to us about life as a sacred adventure?
Mary Ann: Oh, that's the first line of our book and yes, I think life is a sacred adventure because if you believe, as I do, that everything that you do and everything that you encounter in a day or a week or a month has spiritual significance, or is, or can be a spiritual practice for you, then life becomes an adventure.
Everything is an adventure of expressing that. And I'll give you an example. We are in the process of doing a redesign on the website. And one of the new areas we are adding is going to be called passions and pastimes. What we're doing is we are looking at the kinds of things that people are passionate about that have spiritual significance to them.
An example might be, animal care. We have these two wonderful cats and my husband says that his first spiritual practice of the day is cleaning the cat litter. Taking care of these animals is a spiritual practice for him. And at the same time, their affection, their response, the fact that they are living beings that have their own personalities and that are different from us - that is fascinating to watch. And so, everything can have a fascinating, or wonder-filled wonderful, quality to it. If you're looking at it and saying, ah, this is where my spirituality is being expressed: somebody that knits, somebody that plays golf, somebody that works with children.
Where do you come alive? That's what we mean by the passions and pastimes. We're going to be saying yes, spirituality is often expressed through prayer and devotional practices. It may be expressed by your relationship to nature, but it's also expressed through these passions that you have, these pastimes where you spend your time, there's a reason you spend your time that way. And that's because it's making you feel alive and feel that life is an adventure. How's that?
Charles: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Janessa.
Janessa: Thank you, Charles. Thank you both.
Mary Ann: Thank you, Charles.
Janessa: Thank you both for the conversation. We'll get him back here in, a half hour or so to close this out. But I'm delighted to engage in this conversation with you, Mary Ann.
I actually want to start with a question on my own. You will not remember this, but I first met you at a fundraising course that Lynn Twist was doing somewhere in the Redwoods, at this beautiful place. And I didn't know who you were, but she said, “oh my goodness, we have a celebrity in our course.”
And she brought you up to the front of the room and she pulled out this dog-eared copy of Spiritual Literacy. And she said, "this book has been foundational to my spiritual understanding. I refer to it every day. I love this book. I love this woman". And, she sang your praises. And I wanted to know, did you know that she was such a fan of yours before you took this course. I think it was called 'Fundraising from the Heart'. And, so I wanted to know how that, and then if you would, since ServiceSpace is all volunteer, there's no fundraising, but how do you see spiritual literacy even in something -you know, the Bible says money calls, money the profane- even in something as profane and secular and worldly as money, how would you, do you see that through a spiritual lens? And then a little bit about your connection with Lynn Twist.
Mary Ann: Okay. Well, with Lynn... Well, we knew of Lynn because we knew her book The Soul of Money. We also knew that she is on the Board of Directors of the Fetzer Institute and we have received funding from the Fetzer Institute. They funded, for instance, that Reverence project that's on the website and some other things, the Democracy Project. So, we knew that Lynn knew of our work and I went to - I think it was Wisdom 2.0 or some conference in which she was speaking.
And the woman from Fetzer introduced me to Lynn and she said, "oh, I love your book. I read it every day". And so, I was really thrilled, but when I went to the workshop, I didn't know she'd introduce me like that, I was totally stunned when she walked into the room with a copy of Spiritual Literacy and she'd post it all over the place and then she read it as the opening and then she made a video for us to use, which I think is linked off the review of the book on the website.
So, I think that she's an example of someone that discovered in the book this kind of universal spirituality that is not necessarily tied to any one tradition, but it embraces all of the traditions. And, so I think she just saw it as value like that. And in terms of fundraising, which we do need to do, we actually asked the AI that ServiceSpace made for us, “What are some good reasons to donate to spirituality in practice?” And it was fascinating; it came up with five reasons that I hadn't necessarily ever put my finger on.
The idea is, that what you hope with fundraising is that people will see what you are doing is something they also embrace; that they support; that they want to see done in the world. So, in our case, this idea of spreading the value of spiritual practice and even broadening the definition of what is spiritual. To say that you can be spiritual if you sing in a choir and that's where you come alive, or you can be spiritual when you're volunteering at your child's school. That may be your practice.
With fundraising, I think what we need is for people to say, “This is a need that's being fulfilled by this organization that I want to support.” That I hope they see the value of.
For instance, really nobody else is reviewing movies as consistently as we are, from a spiritual perspective. I mean, there are people who review movies, and they look for spiritual figures, or something. But we're talking about all the Hollywood movies and what you can see as an example of transformation or of love. So, we're hoping that people will recognize that this is unique work, and that it's a way for them to express- money is a way that you express your commitments. And so, money is your vehicle of being in service. If you can't do something yourself, you can at least support those who are doing something.
I know for me personally, at this point, supporting Doctors Without Borders, or the International Rescue Committee for all the work they are doing with all the people that are suffering in the world; that's a way of me being spiritual when I send a check, that check is a spiritual gift.
Janessa: So instead of seeing it as a profane, filthy, worldly thing, almost imbuing even money with spiritual significance, seeing it through that spiritual lens?
Mary Ann: Oh, definitely. It's a way to extend the reach of what you can personally do, because, by supporting an organization, you are helping them reach more people. So, we have, we do run online courses and so forth, but we have at least 60,000 pages of free content, and we're building it all the time. That's something that somebody can support, they can say: “Well, I want people all over the world who understand, for instance, understand a movie as having something to teach them about how to live a spiritual life.”
Our current favorite movie of the year is a movie called “Perfect Days”, and it's about a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo. It just follows his day.
And you think: “Who is this person?”
But you just love him because he is incredibly present to every moment of his day. He goes to lunch in a park. He takes a picture of the glistening leaves in a favorite tree. He's kind to people. He goes to the bath club, and it's a bathhouse, and it's obviously hot. An old man has fallen asleep, and he reaches over and fans him.
Now see, that's kindness and beauty. He sees beauty all through his day. So, we identified about six or seven of our practices in this one character.
Now, I would hope that people will see the value of having a movie reframed in spiritual terms. Because once they see that, this character can recognize… You know, he walks out of his house every morning and he looks up at the sky and smiles a Buddha-like smile. And you think: “I want to live like that. I want to bring that to my day.” So that's the point. If you believe this is an important way of looking at the world, then help the people that are trying to do that who only have so many resources. So, they need more.
Janessa: Right. So many ways to support and help that work. Thank you! And for the movie recommendation!
This is a question from a listener in the Midwest. She says: “I understand that as a high schooler in the 1960’s, you wrote an award-winning magazine essay on Vinoba, Gandhi’s spiritual successor. (Vinayak Narahari "Vinoba" Bhave was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. Often called Acharya, he is best known for the Bhoodan Movement. He is considered as a National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mahatma Gandhi.)
Can you say more about that? What inspired you about Bhave and any relevance today as you reflect on that?”
Mary Ann: Oh, that's wonderful. Well, you know, I must have. Unfortunately, I don't know where that essay is. It must be someplace in all the memorabilia of my life. What happened was there was a contest with the Atlantic Monthly for essays, and I was taking a writing class, and my teacher submitted it, and it won an award.
But I know that what I liked, was, of course, that Bhave was pretty much the successor to Gandhi. But it was his courage and his determination to just go out there and walk all over the country in India and say to landowners:
“Hey, consider me another son and give me a piece of your property, and then I'll give it to the poor.” And it sounds like a great idea, but just think of the courage it took to do that! And to get- I forget what the total number is of what he did.
Some of our greatest spiritual teachers throughout history have been courageous.
Gandhi was courageous.
Martin Luther King was courageous.
Bhave was courageous.
And so they model that quality, that stance in life. And then we are encouraged by them, to have courage in our own life.
So, I think that is what drew me to him; certainly draws me to him now. I am not quite sure what I wrote as a 17-year-old, but it must be-
Janessa: Wow. Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on that?
Mary Ann: Yeah.
Janessa: But how interesting that even in high school, you were drawn to spiritual leaders and spiritual giants like that.
Mary Ann: Yes. See, that was after Karachi. That was after living there, and I was fascinated by the history of the subcontinent and had taken some classes on that; so, I'm sure that's how I discovered him.
Janessa: So, we have some great questions, and I'll remind our listeners too that you can still ask and submit your questions.
This is from Susan: “How do you, Mary Ann, see how spiritual literacy is enhanced by direct contact with trees or different kinds of plants and different types of sentient creatures besides humans, creatures outside of domesticated settings?”
Mary Ann: Well, I would say I love trees, so that's going to be easy.
Janessa: Do you have a favorite tree?
Mary Ann: We have California Oak right outside our window. A really big one full of squirrels at the moment. Although, we also have some coyotes wandering around, so I hope the squirrels are safe.
Let's just say that when we say: “Everywhere you turn, you see the face of God.” That isn't just people that you see the divine in. You see the divine in trees. I see the Divine in things. I see the divine in flowers and the sky. It's the idea that everything is a part of sacred. The theological term would be panentheism. Saying that everything is in God and God is in everything. But you could also see it as Thich Nhat Hanh’s wonderful concept of inter being:
“That everything is interbeing with everything else. The tree is interbeing with us because the tree is providing the ingredients that we need for our breathing. And everything is connected. And when you start with that basic concept of connection and everything is in everything, then all the beings and not just sentient ones, I don't know why they say non-sentient beings. As I said, rocks are sentient.“
How do we determine what a rock is to me? It is. And I think of that, and that's part of what I've actually learned from Sufism, from being part of a Sufi order, is that, you'll notice for instance, that Sufi musicians will ask permission of their instrument before they play it. And, you'll see them acknowledge it.
And, as you finish your prayers you would kiss your prayer rug in gratitude for its part in your prayers. And for everything there is a relationship with every aspect, sentient or non-sentient. It's important to not make spirituality just about just the human thing. It's not a human thing, it's an everything thing.
I hope that answers that.
Janessa: Goes back to your reverence idea. Reverence in everything in our lives. Marie Kondo, you know that book, Spark Joy. She says we should be surrounded with things that give joy because they want to be admired and appreciated. They want to give us joy and we also, in turn, want to be appreciated. Even the non-sentient. I love that.
Mary Ann: I had an experience when we were writing our book. I had an experience of feeling like some of my wedding presents that had been put in a cabinet and never been used: I felt as if they were crying out to me saying use me, use me. And it made a point to me,
Janessa: don't lock me up in a cabinet.
Mary Ann: Yes. Right.
Janessa: And did you bring them out?
Mary Ann: I did. And when we moved, I made sure that I brought some that had never gotten used. They didn't just go to Goodwill; they came with me so that I could give them a chance.
Janessa: That's great. I bet they were thrilled. Let's keep going on down the list here. Here is a question from a caller about, please share with us how you came to be a Christian Sufi and how that enriches your life?
Mary Ann: It's an interesting story about what you need in your spiritual life. Frederick and I are members of a church in New York City, in Greenwich Village called Judson Memorial. And Judson is very devoted to the social justice movements, to the prophetic ministry, the gay rights movements started there. They recently have been doing a lot of work with the sanctuary movement for immigrants. There we even had a minister who used to go around Times Square and offer cookies to the prostitutes so that he could talk to them about their human rights. There is this whole history in this one church of being socially active for justice. But they didn't have much about spirituality. They didn't talk about it. They didn't have meditation classes. They didn't have, we had prayer of course, but they didn't really have any kind of emphasis upon the contemplative life or the spiritual life.
And after we wrote about spiritual literacy, we found a lot of people came to us to talk about spirituality, because the ministers weren't doing that. And at that time, we discovered Rumi. And for a person who had been a political science major, I never understood poetry until I found Rumi. And then it just totally touched my heart. I got it, I understood what he was saying. Kabir and Camille Kaminski were offering a workshop at the Omega Institute in New York. Kabir is the Sheikh for the Mevlevi order that was founded by Rumi. And they have both translated a lot of Rumi's poetry. I went to the workshop, and I just had a real deep connection to the two of them. In Sufism you talk about a teacher's barica, meaning their grace, that they are feeling. It would be similar to say a Hindu teacher who gives Darshan say. And I just felt like there was something there for me that I really wanted to know more about the path I was interested in.
All of Sufism has an enormous emphasis upon what they call “adab”, which means courtesy practices. And there's an adab for everything. There's an adab for your relationship with your teacher, with your fellow circle members, but also with things and I loved that. So I went to the teacher, I went to Kabir and I said, well, here's the thing. I've got this long history of Christianity. My husband is a Christian minister, but I really would like to study this more deeply. I love the practices. I want to do them regularly. And what did he think about it? And he said that Rumi, the peer of the order, had followers who were Christian, who were Jewish, who were Zoroastrian, and he never asked them to convert to Islam, although Rumi was obviously a Muslim.
And Kabir said, I would never ask you to convert. Rumi would not ask you to convert. He said, I practice surrender as a Muslim, but you can practice surrender as a Christian, in the way of Jesus. And it was possible with his blessing to adapt, to bring what I knew about the transformational path of Christianity that was taught by Jesus and see that it was also expressed in the transformational path of Sufism. That is how I ended up practicing two religions.
Janessa: So inclusive and non-judgmental, and it's beautiful. Just a quick follow up from a caller, Carol. She asked if the spiritual alphabet is similar to the 99 names of Islam? Have you matched the sacred names to the alphabet?
Mary Ann: We haven't, but you're right. It is probably a direct match. I'd have to go through and do that though. But certainly, things like gratitude and love and beauty and generosity. I love this phrase, and I identified with this immediately when I really began to explore Sufism more deeply. There is this phrase about doing the beautiful, you want to do the beautiful, and beauty is an important practice for me. I love the idea that your practice is to do the beautiful.
Janessa: Earlier, Mary Ann, you mentioned that at this time we can't just sweep the shadow under the rug. We have to acknowledge the shadow and then look for hope. Where has the shadow come up for you, in this work? And what has gotten you through those challenging times or experiences?
Mary Ann: I think the hardest part is that we live in an intentional community and a retirement community. And most of the people that live here, have had lives of service. That was part of the qualification to come here. You had to demonstrate commitment to a cause and so we have people a lot of ministers and professors from various universities and seminaries, but we also have somebody from the Heifer International, the founder or one of the lead people like that, or other nonprofits. And typically... I hesitate to say "typically" but this group is pretty progressive politically and also pretty worried at the moment. And so, consequently there tends to be... We have a shared lunch every day and we get assigned our seating differently – it’s computer generated -- so we don't end up with the same people every day. And it seems as if there are just some tables... Sometimes you get a table and all they can do is talk about the last president. I'll follow this example and not mention him by name. And the thing is that there is so much animosity going on there. And I find that to be a shadow element.
Whatever you give attention to grows and if you're constantly giving attention to how much you hate someone, you're not going to see what the alternative could be or see how you can cope should that person end up in power again. So, I think for me, the shadow would be this tendency to create enemies and to hold people as enemies.
There's a wonderful Sufi teacher, Jamal Rahman, who talks about the fact that you have to make a distinction between someone's actions and someone's essence. And everyone has the essence of the sacred, of the divine.
I think that's a shadow element that we have to deal with because you can just get incredibly stressed if you're constantly finding reasons to hate someone. I think that's an important shadow element. Yeah.
Janessa: I'm going to try to squeeze in one more question before our final one. Here's from a caller: "You've been with your husband for 50 years. Can you speak a bit about relationships as a spiritual practice? Or what are some important lessons you can share?" And you've worked with him, so that's pretty amazing.
Mary Ann: Yes. We've worked with each other from the beginning. Well, we are complimentary in terms of our talents and our gifts. We laughed and said we were able to come to New York because he could read fast and I could type fast.
And in a sense, learning to recognize what your unique gifts are and how they interact, how they inter-mesh with the other person is important. Now, it may be that you're just twins, that you have the same skills and then that's great. Then you can help each other and support each other in whatever your gifts are.
But there were times when I was kind of frustrated because he's a very high energy person and I have a button that says "slow is beautiful." [Laughs] And so I'm kind of like, "Oh, I can't keep up with him." And yet I realized that I fed off his energy. And so rather than seeing it as something that would make me feel bad about myself, I just turned it around and I said, "Oh, I can feed off his energy." And at the same time, he feeds off my attention to detail, which he's too fast sometimes to take care of. So, I think the main thing is really learning who you are and how you are different and how you are alike that makes a long-term relationship work.
Janessa: Beautiful. Thank you. That's beautiful. And congratulations on 50 years together in marriage.
Mary Ann: Yes.
Janessa: That's an inspiration.
Mary Ann: Thank you.
Janessa: I've got one final question which we ask all of our guests. How can we, in the Awakin Calls community and the broader ServiceSpace ecosystem support your vision and work in the world? I know we're already doing some of that but let's invite you into an even greater possibility. What comes to you?
Mary Ann: Well, I think one of the things that's been difficult in the growth of our organization is that we are so small. There's Frederick and myself. We have a couple of editors, an office manager and an arts person. But this whole enterprise has always been done by less than five people and that's difficult. And so, for instance, in our new redesign, we're planning to have a video portal where we have little videos of, for instance, people talking about their passion.
We would love to send some of the students from the nearby colleges into LA to talk to the skateboarding community and find out – why are they passionate about skateboarding? Because skateboarders see the city entirely differently than the rest of us. They look for different things. So, we're fascinated by that and we'd love to have a little video about that.
I think for us, what we're hoping is that one, people will let people know about the website, will spread the word, will sign up for our newsletter and tell people about all these resources. But also, as we look for ways to engage with people -- I think that's our
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