Articles By: Emilie Griffin

It was a Friday in the spring—still cold weather in the Borough of Queens in New York City— when I drove up the long, winding drive to the Jesuit Retreat House on Long Island known as Inisfada.

At the time the property was large and the situation of the retreat house commanding. It was a late Victorian mansion with many stories. The house was set high on a rise of land. Steep stone steps led up to an elaborate front entrance. Such were many Catholic retreat houses I found in my exploration of the spiritual life. This one, like others, had been given to the Society of Jesus (no doubt by some Catholic family of the late Gilded Age) in the expectation that the good fathers would use it in their teaching, their spiritual formation of young men, and their renowned retreat work with men and women “living in the world.”

Are there times in your spiritual life when you feel completely stuck? Although I write about spiritual life and spiritual practice, the spiritual life continues to be a bumpy ride for me.

People keep asking me about “my” Advent book. My local women friends want me to bring copies to the next group meeting.  I oblige, and I notice how heavy the books are.  I lug them rather than bring them.  Suddenly I find myself thinking that Advent/Christmas is rooted in the material, the here and now.

Kate Campbell is a spiritual writer who draws on deep Southern roots. Born in New Orleans in the 1960s, Campbell is a songwriter whose music illustrates the power of her Baptist upbringing. Her father was a pastor, and she still loves and reflects much of the beauty of her heritage. Yet she also writes in the context of the conflict between Southern generations in a profoundly moving way. Kate Campbell is drawing on spiritual, cultural, and historical memory. She is taking a chance that memory might be the way to speak to every soul.

Campbell’s debut album, Songs From the Levee, was released in 1994, and she has released more than 10 albums of music that ranges from Southern folk to country to Delta blues to gospel and back again. She has collaborated with artists of deep faith, such as songwriter Pierce Pettis, whose iconic lyrics have spoken to thousands of believers for decades. Her distinctive style and willingness to approach issues of race, inequality, spirituality, and tradition blend to produce music that comes out of contemplation but leads into movement for change.

Campbell has been influenced by the South in many ways. For example, take the Southern literary tradition and Campbell’s fondness for authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty. Then there’s her Southern Baptist heritage with its strong biblical formation and the importance of hymn singing. Another major factor in her music came from growing up in the midst of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Out of her Southern past, Campbell has addressed racial tensions head on throughout her recording career. “These issues with race are things I feel strongly about,” Campbell explains. “I keep writing about them as a way to reflect upon the past and to hopefully dialogue toward a better future.”

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How does a song become a prayer? Perhaps not every song can lead us into prayer or deep reflection, but some do. One way this may happen is if we practice a kind of lectio divina when we listen.

Lectio divina—it’s a Latin expression—means holy or sacred reading. It describes an ancient discipline in the prayer life, especially practiced by Benedictine contemplatives. Usually the text chosen for prayer is not a hymn or song, but Scripture, often the Psalms. Of course the Psalms themselves are actually songs, originally meant to be chanted or sung.

When I interviewed the singer-songwriter Kate Campbell, I began to muse on how her song “In My Mother’s House” had affected me. Was this profound experience of memory and reflection somehow a clue to a deeper experience of God?

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I think that contemplation offers us a new, or deeper, way of seeing.  I was attracted to this kind of prayer, first, when I was working in the hectic environment of a major New York advertising agency.  It was rushed, competitive, time-driven.  I kept feeling the pressure and wanting some kind of refuge, a way to inner peace.  Prayer—especially contemplative prayer—seemed to offer that.

One of the things I noticed—once I began to pray—that I wasn’t just more attentive to God, but attentive to everything else.  I was able to notice things, even the simplest things, more readily.  I began to shed my sense of obligation, of being in charge of the universe, and began to let the universe—God’s universe—be in charge of me.

Elijah is a stirring figure. His name, which means “Yahweh is my God,” says much about his character. Some of us, like Eugene Peterson, were influenced by Elijah from childhood and youth. Others discovered him later. Either way, he has something vital to give to us.

Elijah teaches us about the undivided heart. He is all about being God’s person, God’s servant, completely obedient to him. This single-minded character is the governing quality of Elijah’s life, and it should be ours as well.

In his book The Jesus Way, one thing that drives Peterson’s discussion of Elijah has to do with worship. Worship, it seems, is one of the ways we may lose focus in our service to God. Distracted by pomp and circumstances, we fall in with false expectations of worship. We think large congregations are more impressive than small ones. We think renowned preachers are more important than simple ones. We plan our worship to impress others and to impress God. Most of all, we fall into ways of manipulating God. We judge the worth of our worship by what we “get from God” rather than how we give ourselves to God. Yes, this is a problem today, but it was also a problem in Elijah’s time. We want to take God captive, to put him in service to our needs and wants, when in fact it should be the other way around. We should be completely surrendered to God, completely attentive to him. That is Elijah’s message. That is the Elijah way.