Guest Blogger: Helen Mildenhall goes Off the Map
I met Helen in my scouting around for quality blogs for the Engaged Spirituality Carnival. I found more in Helen than I knew I was searching for...Helen lives in Illinois with her husband and two children. She hosts the blog Conversation at the Edge and is blog manager for Off The Map, an organization promoting’ otherlyness’, the spiritual practice of serving. --Beth, VTH Host
When I was a Christian, I didn’t think of everyday life as having intrinsic spirituality. Rather the opposite – everyday life was an unspiritual problem I hoped spirituality would resolve for me.
I tried to import spirituality into my everyday life so I could draw on it as a resource. I would get topped up with spirituality at church or Bible study. Or by spending time alone reading the Bible and praying to God. Then I would re-enter everyday life bringing my renewed supply of spirituality. Hoping it would be right there next time I needed it.
But that never worked very well. Somehow it seemed that spirituality was not a resource I could collect one place and use in another.
A few years ago I lost faith in church and Bible studies and prayer. All I had left was everyday life. I reconciled myself to this new reality and began to engage with everyday life instead of running away from it, mentally or geographically. I was pleasantly surprised to find at what I found when I opened myself up to all everyday life had to offer.
I didn’t abandon having values: instead I returned to the values I’d always believed in even before I was a Christian such as kindness and respect. I found myself appreciating all my relationships and conversations, not just those with Christians. I discovered there are amazing and special moments and opportunities in everyday life, waiting to be noticed by me.
I’d stopped thinking about spirituality because to me it meant separation from everyday life in a way I wasn’t interested in and couldn’t even relate to, anymore.
A couple of years ago I ran across Off The Map. I noticed that they thought of spirituality differently. They describe ordinary (everyday) attempts to ‘serve others’ as inherently spiritual. I was used to spirituality being narrowly defined and definitely something I had turned my back on. Now I’d found some people who thought I was spiritual just because I attempted to show kindness and respect in my everyday life. [Editorial note: in hosting Off the Map, Helen is teaching as she’s learning, about the joys and challenges of relating to the Other’!]
When I read the tagline of Virtual Tea House (engaging the spirituality of everyday life) I was pleased to see that same idea: that everyday life can be inherently spiritual. I picked up from Beth and the site the belief that as we connect with others in ways that bring out the best of our humanity, something spiritual is taking place whether we are using overtly spiritual language or not.
These days I think of myself as ‘almost an atheist’. I’m very comfortable not talking about spirituality at all. I know there are lots of people who react negatively to the concept – just as I did when I realized how much better it was to fully engage with everyday life than run from it. I’m also happy to hang with people who do talk about spirituality. As long as they don’t do it in a way which labels my way of living everyday life as ‘unspiritual’ and ‘wrong’.
I’m very pleased to have found people with whom I can talk of ‘living my everyday life’ and they talk of ‘being spiritual’ and we’re all referring to the same experience.
Check out what Helen Mildenhall is up to on Conversation at the Edge and Off The Map, an organization promoting otherlyness, the spiritual practice of serving.
The Virtual Tea House website became 'word-ripe' when, over a cup of jasmine green, I realized that the web has an expanding part to play in the communal aspects of spiritual growth.
One of my favorite hats, among several is: initiated firekeeper in the Sacred Fire Community. Hosting a monthly community fire circle, I'm being taught that the simple act of sitting around a fire with the intent of holding open-hearted space makes for some soulful community!
With a master's degree in religion, my career spans 20 years in end of life care and I currently work in the field of child abuse intervention and advocacy.
Here in beautiful Central Oregon, my spiritual homes of the high desert and the mountains are both in proximity. And for good measure, four hours away is Grandmother Ocean and the stunning Oregon Coast.
I'm making decent progress on the goal set by my mother early on: she taught us that the goal of humanity should be to become ever-more eccentric, i.e. more fully human.
Entering the 'forest-dweller' phase of life, I am honored to host the Virtual Tea House for all who wish to explore how our lives are enriched and made new a thousand times each day by the spirituality we embody. Exploring this engagement together is the purpose of the Virtual Tea House.
Welcome! Let's have a cup of virtual tea together and share what brings us joy, what we are being taught by life, how we are leaning into the Big Questions posed to us each day in sometimes 'distressing disguises'.