Congruency -- to Energize the Soul

But I could tolerate these things and more serious pastoral care opportunities, as long as they were congruent with how I viewed myself as pastor among the people. But incongruities grew to an intolerable level, including the flack I got when a junior high reader described Mary as "pregnant" while narrating the Christmas story (it's in the Living Bible text); the look of dismay on a parishioner's face when I would warmly welcome a less-than-genteel visitor to worship, or the congregation's "no" vote on a $68 cost-of-living increase in my compensation even though they said they were pleased with the way our church was growing. I decided that my life was too short to wait for the toughest converts to come around. That may be other peoples' work--it's important, certainly--but it isn't my work.

Alignment

My work is to be with people who are poised to make change--both within and beyond the stained glass windows. My work is to journey with leaders in business, non-profit organizations, the Church, and the academy, who seek to have their work reflect what they truly believe about themselves, God and the world, so I formed a company called Congruency. Our focus is to align the professional life with personal convictions.

Along with other offerings, "Congruency: Spirituality that Works" is a six-session program that invites participants to question assumptions about themselves, their work, and their religious beliefs and practice. In the Congruency program, we connect the sacraments to the energy centers of our body--there are seven of each (re: Caroline Myss' book Anatomy of the Spirit). As a Baptist minister whose religious upbringing was limited to just two sacraments, little dancing and lots of denial of the flesh, this scheme is quite a stretch for me. But locating myself on the edge (sometimes known as the fringe) is congruent with who I've come to understand myself to be.

But it’s not just this Baptist preacher who struggles with integrating her beliefs into her body—living so those convictions soothe, and not make us sweat. Plenty of other serious professionals are itching to find alignment. Here are some of their stories, drawn from the Congruency program.

Tom is CEO of an architectural firm. When he enrolled in Congruency, he described himself as a “complete personal and professional failure.” His firm had failed to acquire another company after months of negotiations. His marriage had disintegrated at the same time, and the two events were not unrelated in Tom’s always-processing mind.

He is a visionary, an idea-man, a big thinker. The first session of Congruency focused on the sacrament of baptism and our sense of belonging. In the ensuing days, Tom announced to his firm, “I don’t want to work here anymore.” It became uncomfortably incongruent for him to show up to work each day and face the status quo: demoralized employees who looked solely to him to “make everything right,” who were now, post-failed-acquisition, preoccupied with interpersonal squabbles because there was little else to do. Tom was fed up. He was making moves toward congruency. (By the way, finding congruency did not mean leaving his company.)

The second session focused on creativity, sexuality, and power. We dialogued about communion, and Jesus sharing wine with his disciples. Wine, after all, has the ability to take us out of our rational selves. So does sex. So does the Holy Spirit. Together we wondered at the wisdom of the Sufi poet Rumi, who suggests that the way we make love is the way God is with us. "If this is true," one seminary professor reflected, "this changes everything."

After Christmas, we gathered to talk about the energy of the heart and the sacrament of marriage. One woman, marking her 10th anniversary as an executive director of a small non-profit organization, announced how delightful it had been to take two weeks off. "I loved sleeping in," she said. Plus, due to a blizzard her vacation had been extended an extra day. That night, as she lay in bed thinking about resuming work in the morning, she started having chest pains. Was she having a heart attack? After a visit to the doctor, that medical condition was ruled out. But what was her heart telling her? She's listening to it much more clearly and closely now.

Ordination

Congruency meets in a beautiful indoor/outdoor garden. In the large greenhouse, living butterflies flit about, landing on people, plants and feeding stations. Participants are given "time alone in the garden" in silence, to pray, to reflect, to wonder, to be.

In our final session, we focused on ordination and extreme unction. The corresponding energy centers of the body were the central nervous system, muscular system, and skin. For Tanya, a young African American woman, reference to the skin seemed only negative. "For years," she said, "I have thought of myself like a banana. Tough on the outside, but easy to bruise. And today they're all over the garden as food--mashed up bananas. And then I noticed what was feeding on them -- butterflies."

Work may seem brutal at times. Of course, it can have noble purposes. It bruises us on occasion, wearies us, sometimes consumes us. My hope is that we come to an understanding of our work with the clarity of Tanya. How do we understand ourselves? Who are we, inside and out? Will we allow our core selfhood to become food for our thoughts?

I invite you to live with these wonderings. Notice the places of personal and professional congruency in your life. In the process, the incongruities may become clear--and unbearable to endure? I hope so. Might it be true that God invites us to shake off incongruities? To live with a yearning toward congruency is one way to approach spiritual alignment that nurtures the body, mind and soul.

Julie Cowie is a facilitator, business consultant and ordained minister. She lives in South Haven, MI, but you can also reach her via the internet at: www.BeCongruent.com.