Unpacking The Lord's Prayer

Somewhere before Matthew and Luke was most likely a text that was the source of their common threads, but we'll never see it. So extrapolating from these two storytellers as to what may/must have been said requires more than a literalist view of the two texts' recounting this often repeated prayer (for which most of us seem to have defaulted to Matthew). But the question I have pondered so many times is not “what exactly did Jesus say” but rather, “what was his intent in this teaching?” So despite not having an imprimatur of any religious organization, I am finally going to take a crack at what this itinerant country preacher may have intended for his audience to understand about prayer.

In order to attempt this we first need to understand two things about the speaker, Yeshua of Nazareth, whose name we Anglicized as Jesus. First of all, while there is no evidence that he was formally trained as a Rabbi, Jesus clearly had a good handle on the sacred texts, quoting frequently and selectively from them to make his points. He is, from most of what we can extrapolate from all of these stories, at all times very intentional and consistent about his message, his context and his intent.

Jesus declared himself a “jubilee” messenger – referring to the Deuteronomic rule (Deut. 15:1-11) that every seventh of the seven year periods (that is, every 50^th year) is to be a Jubilee year, marked by forgiving all debts, freeing all prisoners, caring for the poor, the widows and the children – using a reference to the same from the book of Isaiah (Is. 61:1-2). However, true to his philosophy, Jesus intentionally left out the last phrase of the passage dealing with vengeance. Jesus was very intentional. He never refers to the wrath or vengeance of God, but rather only refers to the healing, loving and forgiving nature of God. He used scriptures and events to teach a specific message, and that message is the second part of our understanding his contextual framework.

Jesus’ message through all of his teaching was a revolutionary understanding of God, the nature of God, and the nature of “God’s kingdom.” Kingdoms were plentiful in ancient times, and mapped out a domain of influence for each king. Jesus used this metaphor as a way of describing his theological foundation: God was not elsewhere – apart from us, ruling over us – but rather was very real and present, in and among all of us. “The kingdom of God is at hand,” he would say, “as you are in me and I am in them and they in me.” He had a unitive theology; that all things were one and united by the same loving force, like one big family. We are inseparable from God but likewise God is inseparable from us. In an age where Gods were thought to reside on a mountain or in the center of the temple, Jesus taught that God not only belonged to all but was resident in all. So let’s see if we can see his understanding of the scripture and his theology evident in this prayer.

Right from the outset, he changes the game, calling God, “father” (implying the one big family). Matthew’s text even adds the descriptor, “our” (like all of ours, not just some of us). And some translations refer to the idea that he used the word “abba,” the familiar form of father: “daddy.” This was not the El Shaddai of old, nor was it the king who lorded over us like some benevolent master. It was intentionally familiar, familial and personal. And least we get all bound up by the masculinist term of father/daddy (as opposed to mother), let’s look at the role of parents in Judea at that time. Parents were fairly equal, though different, long ago. There was clear understanding that both mother and father were necessary and equally important. Fathers typically taught the trades and mothers taught the values of life. Both were essential. So why father then? Because father’s role was to teach purpose – how and what to do to be a contributor in life. And to be certain a father was not absent – off at work – as in modern times. Dads were always present, in the home, working at the house and very present. A father was meant to be purposeful, helpful and always present.

But what then are we to make of the reference to heaven? Doesn’t that connote the sky kingdom and the sky god? Not if you take a further look at how Jesus defines heaven. Heaven is not out there, not some future destination. Heaven is right here, right now. Heaven is among us and. He even goes so far as to say that it is “within you” (Lk. 17:20-21). So this daddy, this teacher, was a very present member of the community, of the family and of life in the present moment. Jesus’ intent was to demystify the concept of God; to make God real and present and palpable.

“Holy (sacred, blessed) is your name.” If we now understand God to be within the very life we are living, Jesus is calling that sacred. Life is sacred and holy. But remember that, as a Jew, Jesus learned that one could not say/speak the name of God, not because of its specialness, but because once anything was named it became separated – by name – from anything that was not that thing. Speaking the name of God would be suggesting that God was some thing, some entity, apart from other things, and certainly apart from us. That is the most sacred aspect of God; that God, being a very real and present aspect of everything, was inseparable from anything – that God was everything and everywhere. That is what holy and blessed really means.

“Thy kingdom come.” Then Jesus returns back to his core theological construct: The kingdom is

here, there and everywhere, and that life-intent that is God is already in action in every element of all creation (on earth and heaven). It seems obvious at this point that Jesus simply means “god is here, among us, already, right now.” Enough said! But here comes the one-two punch!

The first hit refers back to a scriptural reference. Jesus reminds his followers not to take more than enough. The reference to “daily bread” comes from the story of manna in the desert. The Israelites were wandering in the desert and supplies were low, so the story goes. In answer to their hunger and prayers, their God provides something bread-like that appears in the morning like dew. But it came with a rule: take only enough for one day. If anyone took more than a day’s supply, it rotted and would become toxic to them. The hoarders actually died. God’s rule of abundance is that “enough” is all you need. So Jesus’ reference to that story is a reminder (not a request) to the pray-er (not the one prayed to) that we only need “enough.”

And right on the heels of that is the knock-out punch about how forgiveness works. It seems to be a bit of a tricky turn of the phrase, but the pivotal word is “as” – “forgive us as we forgive others.” For most of my life I heard that phrase as a meritocracy: when I forgive enough others, I get to be forgiven, or if I forgive others I will be forgiven. But that was never a part of Jesus’ teaching. Or I thought it may have been some hold-over of the eye-for-an-eye morality of the Greeks in the area. But in fact, just the opposite was Jesus’ message: that you are already, and always forgiven. The nature of this loving God, that is love and life itself, is that you will always be forgiven – even before you think to ask for forgiveness. Remember the story of the Prodigal Son? The passage reads that, before the son was able to even ask his father for forgiveness, “while he was still a long way off” his father saw him, had compassion for him and “ran out to embrace him and kiss him.” God’s forgiveness is not dependent on our having done it first. But knowing Jesus’ understanding of the presence of God, god’s forgiveness is part and parcel with our forgiveness. God-in-us forgives us through each other – it’s how God is made manifest. It is seeing the God in the other as we forgive them or they forgive us. That is God’s love visibly in action!

And in conclusion… Jesus ends his prayer instruction with the oddest phrase of them all, “lead us not into temptation” or in other translations “deliver us from the test.” Jesus taught that the purpose of prayer was that it altered the pray-er (your father already knows what is in your heart). So what might he have meant with the reference to temptation. I have a couple of theories that may explain this one. First of all, the time he spent in the desert before starting his ministry is still fresh in Jesus’ mind. He clearly felt led into his path of teaching and healing. Could he have felt led into that time that tested his spirit and was hoping that others might not have to endure the same?

Many exegetes note how fond Jesus was of the Psalms, and certainly the Psalms are a part of every Shabbat service. The Psalms are rife with references of being put to the test and of being tempted (mostly by wealth and power). The Psalmist seemed to wrestle with his own temptation and the fear that God might turn away because of his weakness or, worse yet, that God would put him to the test! That being the case, Jesus might have been drawing on a common theme from worship.

Now Matthew may have a different take on the prayer and adds the element of evil (or in some translations “the evil one”). But that does not fit with the teachings and philosophy of Jesus. It may well be an editorial comment either added because Matthew wanted to appeal to the cultural norms of the people to whom he was writing. Or it may have been added by a later editor as part of the doctrine of the church of the time (a practice that happened with all sacred texts throughout time).

But more in keeping with my hypothesis that Jesus felt that the prayer was more about how one prayed (more to alter the pray-er than to bend the divine ear) he may have included that line as a last piece of training. “Master, teach us how to pray,” may not have been answered by this teacher with a rote formula. More likely he may have said something to the effect of, “It’s not what you say but who and how you are when you say it! Remember, God is already in you, and in me. God has already given you all you need. God has already forgiven before you could even recall the sin. And this God, would never, ever lead you astray!” Amen.

Be Careful What You Ask For

Years ago a friend and mentor told me that every day he said a kind of prayer to know God's will for him. He said it with full earnestness, and then one day he was smacked right in the face with a challenge that was way bigger than he had ever imagined. It became his job but he told me, "Be careful what you ask for - you just might get it."

I have been asking for a way to learn how to stay vulnerable while doing the work for which I trained throughout my adult life. It turns out that there isn't really a way to learn it - like there is no step one then step two. Nor is there a way to just put one's big toe into the pool of vulnerability to test the water temperature. It appears to me that vulnerability, as a state of being, either is something you are
or you aren't. It's kind of like being pregnant - there is no such thing as somewhat pregnant. And my lesson of late is that it is the same with vulnerability. You either are or you are not.

So it has come to the point where I must jump into the deep end of the pool and decide to live this way. There is no other choice - I cannot turn back and and stay defended and closed any longer. It is no longer a choice I will make. And what has opened up the deep end to me is that I had to let go of the fear of "what will people think?" The answer came pretty clearly to me over the last few days of training in which I have been participating: They will think I am being vulnerable. And overall that is not such a bad thing.

Brene Brown says that vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability. It's stupidity! So it's not like choosing to be vulnerable and live life from a more transparent stand means walking around naked all day or through a tough neighborhood alone at night. It means creating safe places and conditions for vulnerability to live and pull us all together. And with that it means knowing that home and among friends are some of those places. At least it is where I am starting. And the more I practice that with the ones I love and trust, the more I am able to know how to bring it to life in the public world. Wish me luck!

Wrestling the Angel

For the past two years I have been researching and writing about the dark night of the soul, that place which on the outside looks like some spiritual desert, but inwardly is where the ego is stripped of its death hold on what it thinks it knows of the spiritual realm. On this journey I have met real life mystics and everyday people having mystical experiences.  I have had the blessing of friendships that are transforming and I have lost a few very dear ones as well. In many of these instances, had I not been studying the dark night, these special moments may have zipped right past me or thrown me into an unexpected downward spiral. But somehow I was graced by each of those occurrences and have come out just a tad more aware as a result.

Over the next few months or so, I will post bits and pieces from my thesis as I rework sections for publication.  I hope that which I have captured in this research can provide guidance or sustenance to fellow travelers who wrestle with their own angels or demons (do we ever know which it is that has grabbed us from behind?)

I think Rev. Renita Weems captured it best in the opening of her book, Listening For God: "No one is ever prepared to endure the long silence that follows intimacy. No one is prepared to face it when it comes after lovemaking. No one is prepared to face it when it comes after a season of intimacy with God. It is the hardest thing to talk about, and it is the hardest thing in the spiritual journey to prepare for. The long silence between intimacies, the interminable pause between words, the immeasurable seconds between pulses, the quiet between epiphanies, the hush after ecstasy, the listening for God – this is the spiritual journey, learning how to live in the meantime, between the last time you heard from God and the next you hear from God.

I would be honored if you'd let me know what you think.

Mystical Moments

When we talk about true mystical experience, it seems as though the general thought is that anyone who has a genuine connection with the divine floats about in some kind of mystical state 24/7. However none of the mystics ever seem to report it that way. What is more the case is that they (and we) have scattered mystical moments; small glimpses of what that connection looks and feels like. It is here one moment and slips away as soon as we try to latch on to it and hold it as our own.

Actually the term mysticism and mystical were not even part of our language until the 15th century, so the early "mystics" did not even refer to themselves or their experiences as mystical. But as the church tried more and more to make god and spirituality more other-worldly, they pushed the experience of the divine into the realm of the non-human - and we have been trying to get it back ever since.

Truth is: mystical moments happen all the time but because we tend to be looking for the big kahuna "aha" experience, we don't recognize them. You know what they are: a baby's smile, catching another person eye-to-eye, sunsets and sunrises, a rose blooming or a crocus poking its way through the last snow, and so many more. In fact every instant there is another moment that is mystical and transcendent. and when you start to see them, life itself becomes more beautiful and precious.

The trick in the whole mystical experience is to be awake and aware enough to notice each time when we forget that life is filled with mystical moments and slide back into our routines. Dan Millman wrote a book once called No Ordinary Moments which really captures this understanding.  But we don't need near death experiences to wake us up - we need only to wake up. Then you'll see why the so called "mystics" lived quite ordinary lives - but were filled by the abundance of mystical moments they allowed themselves to experience.

A Light in the Darkness

I have a wonderful friend who is a magnificent stand for light and laughter in this world, but recently was compelled to write to her in the wake of the murders in Newtown, CT.

My Dear Sweet Friend

How I love you – and how I adore and embrace your message of light and laughter as a service to this world.  But I have been watching your posts over the last two days since the most recent horrific event in our world has unfolded. And there is something that just doesn’t sit right with me. In many of your posts you say that we ought to turn off the media and delete those stories in an effort to send our message to that same set of sources that they should stop the hype and backward glorification of these killers and perpetrators. And for me that is too passive.

To any act of violence there are three courses of action: retaliatory violence (attacking back in some form of revenge), passivity and non-violent resistance (taking away the power of their status seeking), and a third way that is active, positive action.  I am of the third way. I cannot simply turn it off least they (the media or some future on-looking perpetrator-to-be) think I don’t care or can’t be bothered. Well I am bothered – I am bothered beyond my ability to contain myself in non-action.

But let me say a bit about how I perceive your message of hope.  It is not wrong – not in the least.  In fact it is the only message we should preach.  It is the context of that hope with which I have issue.  Just as you cannot see in total darkness, you cannot see in total light.  If we look only for the positive in our world, accent only the good that exists, and turn our backs on the darkness, the hatred and the violence of our chaotic world, we run the risk of being blinded by the light.

Life is painful and chaotic, and that pain is exacerbated by hoping for or wishing that is would somehow be different than it is.  Suffering, says the Buddha, is caused by trying to deny the reality of the now and wishing for something better. We first have to accept that there are people in this world who are so alienated and lost that their only thought is to inflict that pain on others.  Whether we call that evil or the devil or mental illness does not matter. Whether that manifests in genocide or warring or the slaughter of innocent children (close to home or on the other side of the planet) is irrelevant.  It exists; and my first calling is to recognize that it does exist.

It is against that pain and suffering that you and I have been called to stand as a beacon. It is in those dark places that we have to shine even more brightly. But I must first acknowledge the pain and suffering and then with the greatest compassion light a candle of hope. And that hope that we bring is the hope for and in human connection. Our greatest darkness happens when we are alone and unconnected to others.  Our greatest lightness is when we are embraced in the loving arms of another. Murder, genocide and war are places where the human fabric has been torn apart, where lost and alone people can somehow ignore the brotherhood or sisterhood of the human on the other end of their weapon. Killing cannot happen any other way.

Love is the antidote, caring and compassion are its vehicles. Every sage who ever walked on this planet has instructed us to love our enemies, not just our friends. Anyone can love those who love. Anyone can shine brightly when surrounded by others of the light.  That is the easy part. But to stand up with tears of grief streaming down your cheeks and shine a ray of hope, is the really hard part of this work. To name the darkness and embrace another, to become a contagious infection of caring and compassion and spread love where there is none, that is the real work.

So I will not turn it off – not because I get some twisted horror-movie thrill out of human carnage – but because I am called to stand up to evil and darkness and not back down, and not dampen my light. The hope I peddle is that if and when we love each other, there can be no more of this pain. (And I just want to say that I am as crushed by the death reports coming from Afghanistan or the Gaza strip as I am from Newtown CT.  Every soldier was once a baby rocked by his or her mother; every one of us had a beautiful future in front of us and brought a sparkle to our parent’s eyes.) We need to spread the message that the best action to prevent violence is the bonds we forge between each of us when we love and embrace each other.  In a message to the parents of the children that attend our school, I said that now is the time to start talking to the other parents, get to know them, make them part of your family – love each other as your own.

Now is a time of action, and the battlefront is where the darkness is the deepest.  Your message is right on but my request is that we wage radical love in those darkest places of the human experience. I can love more powerfully than anyone can hate, and when you and I join together, that becomes exponentially greater. And that is how we will win, one at a time; one more at a time; every time we say “we” and we mean one more person that the last time we said it. And we will overcome the darkness.

Spiritual Practices

Today I had a great conversation with a spiritual companion for my class on spiritual practices.  Our basic question was what constitutes a spiritual practice? We each use a different one; she using labyrinth walking and I practice lectio divina. We were noticing that when not followed with regularity neither held nearly the power as when engaged in on a regular (daily) basis. It's like conditioning, I said, if I don't exercise on a daily basis, the fitness factor is reduced and the pain quotient is immensely higher.

So the question to ponder is, can any discipline be a spiritual practice? We considered the following: herbalism, wildcrafting herbs, sweat lodge (building and using), and then drifted into hunting - like deer hunting, tending animals, talking to wild animals, well a lot of different ideas.  And the bottom line was it was more the way in which one engages in the discipline more than the actual discipline.

So what actually makes for a spiritual practice we concluded was:
1. It must be done with consistency and regularity
2.  It must be entered into prayerfully, meaning taking the time to center your mind and being and becoming open to the lesson or awareness to be presented.
3.  It must be an activity that requires or calls up mindfulness (weight lifting or walking or doing the dishes can all be done with a high degree of mindfulness whereas sleeping can't).
4.  The activity and the associated mindfulness must be reflected on to look for the lesson of the day/moment.
5.  One must then capture, write about or reflect on that lesson.
6.  Finally, the lesson needs to be brought into the world whether by living that lesson or by engaging with another person on the lesson and its meaning.

I recently watched the new Jackie Chan version of The Karate Kid where Jackie tells a young Jadaen Smith that "Kung fu is in everything." Well in much the same way, spiritual practice is in everything. Try it out with anything you do and let me know if it works.

Whose Prayer?

Here’s another one of those thoughts that I have that may not be terribly popular. It has to do with how we pray and with the essence of prayer. And sorry - this is a bit longer than usual.

The great teacher Jeshua of Nazareth almost never answered a question directly (Another sorry, about the Josh thing. Folks tend to get flaky about his popular name if you do anything less than take him literally. So, because I am going to say something quite possibly viewed as blasphemy, I won’t use it). In fact, I read somewhere that of the nearly 200 questions put to him, he directly answered only three! Furthermore, when teaching a lesson, he invariably taught – as in he never varied from this pattern – through paradox, metaphors and parables; stories that were intentionally puzzling to the listener. Yet against this backdrop, nearly every person I know views the “Lord’s Prayer” as a discrete formula to be taken literally at face value, or at least to be memorized precisely.

Why? Why would his pattern be different for this one lesson? Remember, this is the same man who actually ridiculed formal prayer as either empty or something tantamount to show-boating. Always the consummate Rabbi, what if Joshua was staying true to form? If we suspend our literalist thinking for a moment and examine this instruction – his answer to the request, “Master, teach us to pray,” – through the lens of the other 99% of his teaching style, we just might see something else. Let’s start from the top.

“Our Father in heaven.” As he continually taught, the kingdom of god is now, here, and most importantly within you and me. Why then a reference to a heaven (elsewhere)? Might this instead be a reference to the kingdom among us and within us and not to a divided world of heaven and earth or heaven and hell? Jeshua was fervently interested in having his followers see the kingdom in the here and now. Furthermore, I am told (though I have never read the original text) that his word used for father was the child-familiar equivalent of “daddy” again suggesting that such a “heaven,” if not inside us already, may be closer and more accessible than the priests wanted us to believe. Then, almost as a wake up call he adds, “Thy kingdom come.” Might this perhaps be a declarative or even stated as a done deal? But wait, there’s more.

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” follows in the same vein. This is spoken into a time, not too unlike our own time, when whatever might be “god’s will” is clearly NOT being done. The truth is that human willfulness was the rule of the day (and still is). Thus this phrase and its later partner, “forgive our sins as we forgive others,” seem most surely to be a Jeshuan trap. It is more like a double trap, actually. First of all, attaching our forgiveness to our own praxis of forgiving is quite simply ludicrous. Our egos have very little ability or capacity for true forgiveness – they are too concerned with being right and better-than. But secondly, and more importantly, following a literal path we are trapped into hoping that god’s forgiveness could or should be earned by anything we do. The teacher never said either of those – in fact he always said exactly the opposite, in nearly every story, parable or teaching. You are already forgiven; you can't do anything to improve your chances; the kingdom is with(in) you.

So what could possibly be going on with this “how to” manual for prayer? There are two killer requests that need to be addressed before we answer that. “Give us our daily bread” and “Don’t put us to the test.” One of the greatest failed test stories in the bible is the manna in the desert. Our daily bread most likely refers to the daily allotment while in the desert during their flight from Egypt. The tribes were instructed to trust god and to take only enough for one day. Any more than “enough” would rot and turn poisonous, which of course, owing to our human scarcity model, was exactly what happened. Test failed!

Dare we even pray not to be put to the test – the test of our trust in god? C’mon, our very lives are an antithesis of that 24/7! How often do we free fall into our trust in the divine? I don’t know about you but I regularly trust and rely on me (and my effort, intelligence and perseverance) more than I remember to trust and rely on god.

But knowing this, our great teacher must have been lining up a litany of human errors to show us how praying should not be concerned with our human worries. What’s more, our prayer should not – cannot – be about our trying to get it right! We have not gotten it right, ever. It is almost – from this perspective – a mockery of our neediness for rules and boundaries of right and wrong (“Master, teach us the right way to pray – the only way to pray, the way that if we do it correctly, we will be assured of being better than everyone else.”) So he just stacked up a short list of our most stupid and non-spirit-filled errors, for fun! “Look guys, don’t even go there, no one can teach you how to pray, not even my cousin John. Prayer is about getting to human nothingness in order to let in the divine. Empty yourselves and you will be closer to real praying.”

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to teach the simplest things. It is the conundrum faced by all the great spiritual teachers (who, by the way, all used koan, metaphor and parables to confuse and get their students out of their heads). The instruction which I can most likely envision from Jeshua – to sit down, shut up and listen –would not have made good press for whomever was writing the story. So we got this… this, “Lord’s Prayer” concoction. I am beginning to seriously doubt that it was OUR lord’s prayer – ever – it is so out of context with the rest of his teaching. Unless, of course, he was following his standard formula of confusing the logic out of us. You will have to decide that one for yourself. Meanwhile, you’ll have to excuse me – I think I need to go empty my cup once more – it is too full to receive anything else!

Rethinking Church

I love my daughter! It's not just that she is a brilliant scholar and theologian; it's that she is an explorer - or maybe she is a guide to my own exploring. Whatever! In any case she recently noted that she was rethinking church (and truthfully, I really don't know what she was referring specifically to). But it got me thinking. Yea, church - the whole concept and set of practices we hold about church - needs a radical make over.
I am thinking that we need to turn it literally inside out. Let's just look at three simple aspects of church. First of all, what if we stopped thinking about going to church all together - I mean stopped thinking that it is some place we go. Because when we go inside the church building, we have entered into an exclusion of others - we have walls around us that hold us inside all safe and sound (not even noticing that in doing so we are walling others out). So what if we start letting church to come into us in a way that turns us outward, that tears down the walls and propels us outward toward others? What if?
And what if we stopped thinking of prayer as something that we do or even chose to do but rather that we got prayed. Richard Rohr says "prayer happened and we were there!" For years I have been thinking more like life lives us and that we are in service to the greater life force that flows through us. Well prayer is just like that. Prayer is our attempt to get out of the way and let the spirit of the divine flow through us and out into the world. What if we started getting prayed?
Then what if we stopped thinking that god was out there - as in anywhere other than everywhere, including every cell of you and me and everything everywhere? How might we act if there was no heaven apart from earth, no place to get to if we got it right? How would we act if we only had right now and recognized that we are inseparable from one another but were actually all entwined as one great living whole?
I want to be that church - that re-thought church!

Praying the Rosary

Yesterday I had an appointment at one of the large teaching hospitals in Boston that has a significant women's practice. And as I was walking away from my appointment I came across a small group or protesters with signs about abortion being murder and killing and such. But what struck me was the elder man in the middle of the group in what was an obviously different state. He was praying the Rosary, working his way around a string of beads. I hadn't heard the Rosary in years and the whole vignette stopped me in my tracks.

I don't know what your beliefs are on the subject, but I know mine, and while different in many ways from the philosophy on the signs, I was moved by this man's presence. First of all, I don't see many people praying in public, at least not many who are not at all concerned with what others may think. There was not self-important "look at me pray" element like some TV evangelist. The man WAS praying and clearly deeply into it. His state reminded me of what I read in one of Merton's texts, that prayer changes us not god. It was spiritual and holy, not righteous.

But beyond that, his presence reminded me of my lost practice of ritual prayer. I fancy that I have some kind of conscious and real conversational relationship with the god of my experiencing, and so my prayer over time has become more of a fireside chat than formal. But what Merton says is true - for me, as well, if I recall. There is a power to ritual prayer that is not present in my conversation, even if some of the associated "theology" and concepts are contrary to my current set of beliefs and experiences. The power is that ritual lifts us from normal space/time experience into what Rohr calls "liminal" or threshold experience - that space where we are neither here nor there and we can become open and opened to what is trying to make its way into our consciousness. I remember that I experienced my calling, way back when I was 17, after pulling an all-nighter prayer vigil where I literally prayed every ritual prayer over and over for something like 12 hours.

It is something I too often forget, but thanks to a bunch of people I might never have talked to, I got re-grounded in a tool of spirituality that I had forgotten for some time. Even if I don't believe in Mary's intercessory role or ability, I am grateful for the man and his Rosary.

Spiritual Fitness (Yom Kippur)

My friend Peter and I have this running discussion on spiritual fitness. We got it in our heads that spirituality is something that either gets flabby or is exercised and is kept in shape - that in other words, we are not just gifted with spirituality, it doesn't just happen or just exist - it takes a certain discipline. So we started getting carried away with the discussion and the analogies of late. It seems to us that the fitness center is life itself - life, seen for what it really is and not through our illusions or denials. Life provides all of the stations of the universal gym of spirituality! Stick you face in that and go to town!

But then there are also spiritual exercises that in and of themselves tone up our spiritual fitness. (The discussion continued and spread through my friend Jeffrey.) These are literally physico-spiritual movements and positions - like yoga positions - that, in doing them, help tone and shape the spiritual muscles. And they come from every tradition: from yoga (when one surrenders to the position and no longer fights it) and the simple act of humbling oneself by getting on your knees; to various vipassana postures from Buddhism, the twirling of Sufi dance, and davening from the Jewish traditions. Each of these movements lifts us from our human and mundane experience and shapes and forms our spirituality. It is a workout routine with different stations!

But why bother? For me, I have no choice. Let me explain. I have a spinal injury that resulted in my left calf receiving no impulses and as a further result in atrophying that muscle. If I do not exercise daily, I am in pain by mid-afternoon. I suppose I could choose not to exercise and have the pain, but to me there is no choice. Spiritually, I am in the same place. I suppose I could choose not to exercise and have the hollow ache of lacking spirit or lacking the experience of god's presence in my life, but to me that is not a choice - ergo the only alternative is getting on my knees, stretching in the lotus, whirling in ecstasy, posturing in reverence, and rocking in prayerful experience at the east wall of the the life I see all around me.

The final element of Yom Kippur, Jeffrey tells me, is tachlit - the spiritual version of a hot soapy shower after weeks of hiking in the backwoods of Maine, or just that refreshing one after my exercising; letting the water wash away all of the sweat and smells of the spiritual workout! The whole thing is one big fitness routine. I get it! Now if you'll excuse me, the gym is calling - gotta go!

Rest

Weird day. I awoke in a rush and did my usual routine but somewhere in the zoom lost my phoneberry. (unrecalled by my conscious mind - I had put it in my briefcase). In a panic and rush I left home (I thought) without it. I found it though when it vibrated in the silence of my car. I had been meditating on the fact that the world I am in is whirling much too fast and I want to get off. Calling home I told my compassionate wife that I needed to have a day of grace and relaxation - I just wished I could have a mini sabbatical.

I got to my first appointment and found that she wasn't there - she had just been called into an emergency meeting and left apologies for the missed meeting. Cool! Found time called wife again and found myself saying, "gee god sure answers quickly." So I checked in with my next two appointments just in case it was a divine plot to answer my request. 11AM said, I just can't meet today, let's reschedule," and my 1PM confirmed. It was now 9:30 and I went home to write and reflect on how wonderful it was to ask for time to rest and have it appear so quickly.

I remember Carolyn Myss saying once that things show up in a timeliness that is equal to your living in the present. Wow! Good connections, eh! And now I am contemplating going to bed at 9PM. I need some rest, thank you, God!