... Jeff Keyes Workshop
Fall, 2001

Wednesdays, Sept. 19 through Oct. 24 from 7-9 p.m. Nineteen participants (about 85% women) explored their true calling and struggle to bring its fire to life.

Jeff Keyes is a twenty year member of SJA and is an attorney by profession. Five years ago Jeff realized he wanted to enrich his spiritual life. His journey began by taking theology classes at the College of St. Catherine. Jeff will soon have his Masters Degree in Theology and Spirituality.

We began each session with a few moments of silence so we could enter into the present and out of our busy life.

Session 1: An Overview of the Spirit and the Journey.

Jeff Keyes talked to us about spirituality, as he interprets it. The definition of someone who has lost her/his spirituality he says is a depressed person. Spirituality is a process of living our life that gives us balance. Jeff says we need to find balance to have experiences of real joy. We always want or need more. We live in a society where we are taught to look to the future and not appreciate the present.

One of the impressive statements Jeff shared with us is, “we should confront the shadows in our lives as well as the light”. We need to look at the painful things.

Maybe it’s time to move on, to transform. Deep memories could percolate. Maybe we’ll find, deep down, there is a much more creative side to us that we haven’t had the time to explore.

Session 2: Opening Your “Sealed Orders”

“There is no correlation between busyness and fulfillment”(Keyes). Our society encourages us to stay busy, in fact, if we are not always busy we’re perceived as being lazy. There are always places to go and people to see. We also teach our children the life of busyness.

We live in a “society where instant gratification is the foundation of economic growth. That longing can be pushed away by making and spending money, entertainment.”(Keyes). I can certainly relate to those statements. As a compulsive gambler, I would rather go to the casino for a “quick fix” than deal with my life’s problems. There are millions of people who have compulsive behaviors such as gambling, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, eating, approval, etc. etc. These disorders temporarily meet our needs of staying busy and fulfilled. But as we all know, they are not fulfilling our passion for happiness and spirituality.

According to Keyes, the best part of growing in our spirituality is through our journey. The harder we work on our journey, the better our experiences. Instant gratification (i.e. compulsive behavior) keeps us from good experiences and from growing spiritually.

Session 3: Living in the Flow

Removing ourselves from the busy life we live can be a beginning for us. According to Keyes, “There is a need for a time of silence, a communion with the deepest part of our lives. The problem comes when we create a separation from the everyday. There is a tendency to dislocate what is ‘sacred’ from what is ordinary.”

We can take some time each day to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. This simply takes a ‘refocusing’. Examples are the glory of a meal; a kind conversation; the ultimate miracle of those things we take for granted. I am not suggesting that we turn each day into 24 hours of Zen. However, we do have the capacity to ‘break through’ and to turn moments into Moments.

Obviously, we can’t do this by gambling, drinking, overeating, etc. We can do it by focusing on each and everything we do. Live in the present. Maybe we could start by focusing for one hour a day for 15 days, then two hours a day for 30 days and so on. I know from my meditating experience (which is focusing on the present) that this improves my outlook on life. It offers me a better option in my life.

Keyes suggests we read the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “A study of what makes people happy in what they do. This is not a study of what brings pleasure, but rather fulfillment. It is essentially a spiritual work. It involves the experience of being so ‘in the moment’ that energy flows in harmony” (Keyes). I checked this book out yesterday from my local library. I look forward to reading it and applying it to my addictive lifestyle.

Session 4: Life Stages

In this session we looked at the life stages of Thomas Merton as a case study in the conversion journey to significance. Here we saw, through Merton, a conventional belief which most of us adhere to, that our religion is the only way to a spiritual life. Merton searched for ways to find spirituality and was successful through Eastern religions.

Merton saw in Zen Buddhism the breakthrough that was often missing in Western rational thought. In the West, the individual was always separated from the objective world. This separation and alienation is heightened in a culture of immediate gratification. Merton saw in Zen the ability to connect and to incorporate then his own religious model (Keyes).

Session 5: Christianity and the Life of Significance

Keyes states, “There is a deep need for a theology of life and participation in community ritual. The integrated spiritual life means a seamlessness between the community of faith, creative action/work, daily wonder/prayer, and personal relationships. At the core here is a theology of life which needs to be expressed”.

Mary Jo Kennedy and her husband have been attending SJA for three years. She is a Librarian and has worked for the State of Minnesota for 25 years. She has four grown children, one grandson, and another grandchild due to arrive in July. Mary Jo loves to write and appreciates the opportunity to report for the SJA Website.
If you were one of the nineteen participants of this wonderful workshop I’m sure you will agree it was well worth the time spent (in the workshop as well as the work we did on our own time). If you were unable to attend the workshop please try to attend the next one when offered, you won’t regret it.

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