The
first three tributes and poem were originally published in the Spiritual
Directors International newsletter Connections.
A Tribute from Rose Mary Dougherty, SSND
I am very grateful for this opportunity to try to piece
together my memories of Jerry, to wrestle with questions
like: What do I most remember about Jerry? What is
important to say?
No matter what the particular memories—and there are
many from the long years of working together—the words
that come to mind are those of Thomas Kelly, “Be very
faithful to that wistful longing. It is the Eternal Goodness
calling you to return home.”
These words became the hallmark of Jerry’s life, as I
experienced him. He paid attention to that wistful longing
and he urged others to do the same. He found expressions
of it in his drawing to the good and beautiful, and in the
urgency he felt about proclaiming and defending the right
as he saw it.
We didn’t always have the same sense of what was right. I
remember calling him on his dogged tenaciousness. “Why
are you so stubborn?” I asked. He said to me in all simplicity,
“I’m not stubborn. It’s just that this is the way I see it, and I
have to stay with it till I see differently.” That was the truth
of his life, the way he lived, the way he loved.
In September of 1984, I celebrated twenty-five years of
vowed life as a School Sister of Notre Dame. Jerry wrote a
prayer for me at that time that continues to have relevance
for me, as I suspect it does for Jerry. It now becomes my
prayer for Jerry, and for all of us who knew him:
Oh Lord help us to feel you;
help us to know how precious we are to you,
That we might become at least half so precious to ourselves.
Move within us, according to your desire,
Ease our hearts, melt our harsh edges
So that we might sense how intimate you truly are.
Guide us, God, in an ever more complete embrace of you,
that we might bear more of your endless embrace of us,
and thereby embrace ourselves.
Keep alive within us, Oh Christ, your most precious gift to us
Which is our burning, longing, wordless yearning for you.
Grant to us the courage and the vulnerability and the dignity
to claim our hunger for you in every moment, celebrating
in each instant the pain and delight of our longing.
Touch us beneath our will, opening us where we cannot
open ourselves. Healing us where we cannot heal ourselves.
And, in the vibrant mystery of your Spirit within us
accept our eternal gratitude for every act of goodness that
comes to us from another or through us for another, for every
nourishing way that souls may touch each other,
For every bit of love we share, and for the wonder,
The tender laughing touching calling beautiful wonder.
Rose Mary Dougherty, SSND is Senior Fellow for Spiritual
Guidance for Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. She
worked with Jerry May for 25 years.
A Tribute from Mary Ann Scofield, RSM
“The deepest act of love,” wrote Gerald May, “is not help or
service; it is immediate, attentive presence” (“What I Think
I Know About Love,” Shalem News, Volume xix, number 1).
And that is how I will always remember Jerry: a person
so grounded in God that he was attentively present to
others in an accepting, encouraging way, a way that enabled
goodness to come to the fore and growth to occur. He had
a grandfatherly presence: a pipe-smoking, eye-twinkling,
unhurried, welcoming kind of love. A love that did not put
on airs; a love that laughed easily and embraced much.
I first knew Jerry through his books, which conveyed his
extraordinary understanding of God’s ways with human
hearts. For many years, Care of Mind/Care of Soul served
as my principal reference for the formation of spiritual
directors. His writings—foundational for describing the
relationship between psychology and spirituality—expressed
such warmth and compassion and gentle humor that I longed
to meet him. And when I did, I was not disappointed!
The opportunity arose in 1989, with the inspiration to
explore the formation of a network for the nurturing and
support of spiritual directors. As a first step, I picked up the
phone and contacted a few spiritual directors around the
country whom I knew or had heard of or read. Jerry’s name
was on my list. He actually answered the phone himself,
listened graciously to my request, and without hesitation
agreed to participate
When Spiritual Directors International began formally
in February of 1990, and we were forming the first
Steering Committee (subsequently renamed “Coordinating
Council”), I again called Jerry and invited him to become
a member. Given his many other commitments, he said
he’d be happy to be of service but could only be on
conference calls. However, when the Council met in
Washington, DC, he did join us. In subsequent years his
involvement with Shalem and its many outreach programs
led him to curtail other engagements and withdraw from
the Spiritual Directors International Coordinating Council
in 1993 (Jerry joined Shalem as a full-time staff member
in 1983. From 1983 to 2005, he served there as Director
of Spiritual Guidance, Director for Research and Program
Development, and finally as Senior Fellow in Contemplative
Theology and Psychology). I remain deeply impressed by
his simplicity and availability to the new beginnings of
Spiritual Directors International. His graced presence and
perspective influenced all of us.
When the Spiritual Directors International Guidelines for
Ethical Conduct were being formulated, I personally had
several conversations with Jerry about them. Convinced
that spiritual direction is a vocation from God, Jerry
cautioned us against “professionalizing” this ministry and
recommended instead that we keep the focus on guiding
and accompanying those who already felt this call from
God. With typical self-deprecating humor, he wrote of his desire
to avoid being a “pest” to directees, and stressed the need for
directors to be “exquisitely prayerful, completely humble,
and full of faith in God’s goodness and mercy” (“Don’t Be
a Pest,” Shalem News, Volume xxi, Number 2). Jerry had
a heart truly awakened to God. Our world lost a gifted
spiritual director, and I lost a treasured colleague and friend,
when Jerry died on April 8th at age 64, surrounded by
family and friends.
Mary Ann Scofield, RSM was the first Executive Director
of Spiritual Directors International and is a Mercy Center
Burlingame staff member.
A Tribute from Tilden Edwards
On April 15th, the Memorial Service for one of the most
influential contemplative spiritual writers and spiritual
directors of our time, Jerry May, was held in the packed
chapel of the Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Maryland.
Jerry had died a week before at the age of 64, after a long
struggle with congestive heart failure, cancer, and related
complications. The memorial service was a great celebration
of his life,complete with balloons; family; colleagues; witnesses to
his spiritual heart, his prodigious influence on people’s spiritual
lives, and his phenomenal sense of humor; and singing of
four chants that he had composed over the years.
I had asked him to join the staff of the Shalem Institute near
its beginnings in 1973, and he had been a vital presence ever
since. He was on the staff of our first program for spiritual
directors in 1978, and he continued on the staff of that
program rightup to his death. During these many years
he wrote eight books, including pioneering works relating
spiritualand psychological development in acontemplative
perspective. The books include: Simply Sane, The Open Way,
Pilgrimage Home, Will and Spirit, Care of Mind, Care of Spirit,
The Awakened Heart, and The Dark Night of the Soul. A ninth
book will be published posthumously on his experience with
the Spirit in the wilderness. All of his books in print, as well as
his audio tapes, are available from the Shalem Institute.
Jerry was a member of one of the earliest Coordinating
Councils of Spiritual Directors International. He was
passionately dedicated to a view of spiritual direction
grounded not in a professional model of counseling, but
rather in the historic charism of people with deep spiritual
hearts who were recognized by others as a soul friend with
whom they could meet in God’s presence, heart to heart.
In a Shalem newsletter he once spelled out a very helpful
spectrum of different ways of being a spiritual companion
(of which the above description is one way), which inspired
my own version of that spectrum in my last book, Spiritual
Director, Spiritual Companion.
I was privileged to be in mutual spiritual direction with Jerry
for 20 years (an hour for him, an hour for me). Through
all his spiritual evolution and ups and downs, I was awed by
his steady, absolute trust that God is real, good, and, as St.
Augustine would say, closer to us than we are to ourselves.
He had an extraordinarily vulnerable heart open to God,
and he wanted God to be God, through all dimensions of
his life, Shalem’s life, and the world’s life. God graced him
with a delicate, ever-mysterious, but real intimacy.
In his later years he moved toward a more informal,
spontaneous, give and take sense of his spiritual companioning
relationships. Besides the people with whom he met in
person, he carried on extensive e-mail correspondence with
many people who sought him out. A little known dimension
of Jerry’s life was his deep antipathy to war, stemming from
his experience in Vietnam as an Air Force psychiatrist.
He helped write the scripts for a number of the annual Memorial
Day concerts on the grounds of the Capitol, which were
nationally televised by PBS. Those concerts sensitively
empathized with veterans and counseled compassion. In
2003, the Fetzer Institute published a booklet they
commissioned him to write which he titled, “From Cruelty
to Compassion: The Crucible of Personal Transformation.”
He was convinced that such a transition in the world requires
intensive attention to the interior spiritual transformation of
individuals. (The audiotapes from a workshop of his on this
theme are available from Shalem.)
I hope that Jerry’s pioneering contemplative writings will
continue to feed the burgeoning numbers of spiritual
directors in the world, especially those who are drawn to
attending the Holy with a contemplative heart. And for those
who knew him, I’m sure their lives will continue to be
inspired by the free, wise, and radically God-loving
spirit he so steadily manifested. Certainly I am one of
those grateful people.
Tilden Edwards is founder and Senior Fellow, Shalem
Institute for Spiritual Formation, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Remembering Jerry May By Tony Sayer
1
just the other night i realized he was truly gone from us
i went out to look at the stars
the Twins were holding the moon in their hands
they had overturned its bowl of light
2
he was our teacher and soul friend
but he is gone from us
no more will we hear that strange beguiling voice
strong enough to flatten all pretensions
soft enough to make your soul lean forward
no more will we see his stylish slow fandango
which he managed standing still
or even sitting in a chair
to any kind of music at all
no more will his scrawl grace our proffered pages
no more books
(well, maybe one or two
as befits a prolific dead author)
3
he was our teacher and soul friend
but he is gone from us
who filled himself by keeping himself open
who was just himself
in the most ordinary way
which turned out to be
extraordinary
who did not think it too mean a thing
to sense a mystical depth
even in us
and blew softly on the small flame within
who taught us a grave and powerful mantra
“remember
the only state you are in
is the state of Maryland”
4
to tell the truth when i first met him
he was already as good as gone
he looked like death warmed over
he could have said like one before him
“as for me i am already being poured out
i have fought the good fight
i have run the race
i have kept the faith”
though if he had said it
he would have struck a pose
and
silent laughter
would have glittered in his eyes
and played at the edges of his mouth
for he was quite simply
beyond pity
beyond drama
beyond heroics
it was good for us to see him thus
to see death dealt with so lightly
for him (and for us)
grace means freedom
not just
freedom from death
but
freedom for love and delight
and to live means simply this
daily turning toward love
in all things
in all circumstances
5
the bowl of light is upended
and he is gone from us
he is up there now
or out there
or in there
(wherever the there of paradise is)
he is hobnobbing with John of the Cross about the Heart
Sutra
and delights to discover
they both understand it
he is showing Teresa how to move to a hiphop melody
and delights to discover
she is one fine dancer
all his gifts are gloriously magnificently in play
for if heaven is any kind of a heaven at all
it is a place where
the true worth of our gifts
comes clear
even to us
6
he is gone from us
but we have his books
our memories
our faith
small things all
but more than enough
and
(the bowl of light overflows)
he has one last gift for us
7
the stars shine with pale dignity
the Twins are holding the moon in their hands
they have upended its bowl of light
empty full
grief and joy (and presence and absence)
all mixed together
all splashing down
i lift my hands
for my friend’s last gift of
(what else)
rich dark silence
Tony Sayer is a United Methodist minister who lives in
Asheville and serves two small churches in Polk County, North
Carolina, USA. He is currently in spiritual direction formation
through Shalem. This poem was written and presented as the
opening meditation for his spiritual direction peer group
