Centering On The Spiritual

Interfaith Group Aims To Satisfy Hunger For Spirituality  

by Debra Lawless

            For the Reverend Anne Bonney of Chatham, the bench at the weather station on Morris Island, high on a bluff overlooking Monomoy and Nantucket Sound, is a sacred place.

            "I go to meet God there on a regular basis," Bonney says.

            Bonney, who retired from her three-year post as minister of visitation at the First Congregational Church of Chatham in December, recently founded The Spiritual Life Center (SLC) at the church. Her co-director is Dawn Tolley, also of Chatham, a certified life coach.

            Before she entered the ministry, Bonney worked as a freelance interior designer in Atlanta. Then, at the age of 35 and a mother of three, she enrolled in divinity school, earned two master's degrees in theology, was ordained and began her second career in the church.  

Four local residents made a pilgrimage to Iona in the Hebrides last fall. Clockwise from left: Dawn Tolley, Amy Middleton, the Rev. Anne Bonney and Mary Rosenbach.  PHOTO COURTESY OF ANNE BONNEY

          “Now I’ve moved to a different level of working with interiors,” Bonney says. “I use it so much. The visual is so important.”

            This spring the SLC, which is an interfaith organization, will sponsor a potpourri of activities such as contemplative prayer, a retreat for Christian women suffering from abuse, a Celtic perspective on Christ, Benedictine wisdom for those living with chronic illness, and a workshop on the sacredness of the ordinary, to name a few. It also offers spiritual direction, life coaching and pilgrimages. This winter the Rev. Bob Bermudes gave a workshop called "Understanding Christianity and Islam." Many other authors, clergy and lay leaders are scheduled to lead groups this spring.

            The SLC is not just for churchgoers or people who belong to organized religions. Bonney says there is "a hunger and a need in people for a deeper life that isn't necessarily related to the creeds and doctrines of the church.

            “We become lost to ourselves in all the busyness, noise, franticness, war, violence. This world is a very agitated, anxious place to live,” Bonney adds. “Our dream is to be that place where someone can find that inner calm, that center that gives us life and energy. We could be called a well of living water. A place where people can find their best selves.”

            The Rev. David Erickson, pastor of the First Congregational Church, agrees that people “seem to have a sense of incompleteness or a yearning.” He says that when people yearn for change, the world offers them many answers: a new weight loss scheme, quick profits from real estate, ways to get rich. The SLC can provide a more profound answer, he says, adding the SLC is "something I’ve wanted to see happen for a long time.”

            Last September seven Congregational Church members traveled with Bonney to Iona, a small island in Scotland's Inner Hebrides which has been a site of Christian pilgrimages for centuries. Today Iona Abbey is an ecumenical church and the island is the site of a Celtic Christianity revival.

            "We had an incredible time opening our hearts and lives to the Celtic Christ,” Bonney says. The group continues to meet monthly and is planning another trip, perhaps to a western state. “Pilgrimage is very much a part of one of our offerings.”

            Bonney and her husband Kent, a retired Delta Airlines pilot, spent many summers in Chatham before moving here in 2003 and restoring a 1920s house near Chatham Light.

            Bonney is interested in the world’s religions, and has studied Hinduism in depth.

            “My God began to move outside the traditional box. I became much more interested in prayer," she says. "Where all the world religions really join hands is in prayer. Each religion really has a very deep sense of the inner life and God within the world.”

            For 10 years the Congregational Church has been the home to an interfaith group, The Spiritual Gathering of Women, which is the brainchild of Miriam Erickson, David Erickson's wife. David Erickson says the interfaith group was “never specifically Christian in nature. A lot of people say, 'I’m spiritual but I’m not religious.' Some people don’t trust religious institutions for some reason. The Spiritual Life Center is an opportunity to continue their journeys which they wouldn’t do in religion." The SLC is also establishing a Spiritual Gathering of Men which David Erickson will lead, and is stocking an "inspiration room" in the church with books, CDs and music pertinent to the spiritual life.

            Bonney's interest in founding the SLC began when she earned a certificate in spiritual direction in Tucson, although she adds that “you can’t be credentialized to do God’s work." There she met a woman who had opened a similar center in Colorado. "We talked and talked and talked," Bonney says. Since then "it's been a dream. I began to have a vision."

            Bonney finds the sacredness in the ordinary. She’d like to ask a small group of people to choose what they consider a sacred spot in Chatham, and then describe that spot in writing. She’d then like to lead a pilgrimage to those spots and "experience the holy."

            For more information on the SLC's spring schedule, call Bonney at the First Congregational Church at 508-945-0800. Classes and workshops are offered at various times of the day and pre-registration is not required for most.

3/27/08