What Then Is Love?

It’s a strange thing trying to act like a metaphorical cocktail stick stirring mysticism and life coaching.

During the summer I undertook a Diploma in Life Coaching. As a twisted contemplative, I thought such programming was the chattering end of the capitalist imperative for my and other peoples’ attempts to run faster, with less baggage, to further places. This surely is the goal of coaching - the drummed up and hapless optimism which fuels the very human but ultimately conservative need to belong, to compete, to succeed.

Almost two weekends ago I attended a conference called ‘Mercy not Sacrifice’, which I found fascinating, edgy and sharp. It was a Feminist interpretation of Hosea’s God calling for love and not death to be the heart of human worship, and this was a community of precise feminist thinking which celebrated an economy of life.

What’s this got to do with Life Coaching?

Well, its two fold. I think good life coaching can give you legs in this culture. In other words, courage. If it’s surgical, passionate and if it’s purified it can cut to the chase very sharply. But, how do you keep life coaching sharp? Well, you hold onto the contemplation of love, you hold onto the idea that for every problem there is not just a solution, but an antidote to keep the beauty of balance. You hold onto the ideal of complexity. You allow contradiction, paradox, confusion and you keep an eye on the end game which is to assist the person to connect with themselves across the desert and rest at that oasis. Life coaching can, amazingly, deal in the local currency of freedom. And just like a good doctor the training for a good life coach is being able to reach a good diagnosis. A person might be suffering overload, not because they HATE THE GUTS OF ALL THEIR WORK COLLEAGUES, THEIR FAMILY, THEIR FRIENDS, THEIR NEIGHBOURS, ACQUAINTANCES, ANIMALS etc., but because every time their soul tries to steer them towards, or away from something - to integrate, and to create meaning - and their spirit begs to talk, they end up going shopping. They’re refusing the call of the wild because it can feel something like loneliness - well, at the beginning it can, at least. And so they flee. Good life coaching has the potential to give a person legs because it can present, nay, dangle courage before their eyes.

Does this sound righteous and unbelievable?

And aspirational?

And a product of our capitalist spirituality of always doing, and never being?

And theological even by railing against fear, i.e.,’be not afraid’?

Ultimately,I think the word here is edge, and the adjective is keeping. Keeping the edge. I heard at the conference that Dan Berrigman SJ, keeps his edge through purification, prayer and community living. Is this still life coaching. Contemplative coaching, perhaps?

I hope so.

Contemplative coaching is what I’m doing when I’m stirring up the passion of mysticism, the ideology of mercy, with the practicality of goal setting. Who says the end game for coaching isn’t a soul heard? A spirit rested? A body respected? An ‘unknowing’ borne? An endurance sexed up?

- Oh, that’ll be me I guess.

So, welcome to the wonderful, whacky but exacting world of contemplative coaching and join me in on the merry task of drilling for peace.

For further details, please see the Contemplative Coaching category or contact, Christine Clear