The Gospel According to Nikos

Forgive me. I have just watched for the umpteenth time the Last Temptation as brought to us by Martin Scorcese, William Defoe, Harvey Keitel and Nikos Katzanzakis. I cry every time; I get sick every time; I am turned inside out every time. I don't care that Matt or Mark or Luke or John didn't write it that way. There is more real "gospel" in that story than anything I have ever seen.

Does anyone really know the story? Why is it we wait for a Messiah or believe one to have been here? Is it so unbelievable to accept that god lives and beats in each of our hearts? Is that so difficult to believe that we have to make up stories of some superhuman god-like being that came and walked among us; to ascribe holier than thou characteristics to some other person? Is it so uncomfortable to believe that normal idiots and screw-ups like you and me would be chosen?

Well just look at the evidence. God ONLY chooses screw-ups. Not saints - you and me. The bible and history are filled with examples of the kind of sinful ne'er do wells that god picks for this work. (Still William Defoe dutifully plays the perfect one). But what about you? What about me? Aren't you perfect? Do you fight the voices in your head like I fight mine? Like I am called? C'mon! For 35 years I fought that voice calling me - and it has never stopped. Am I to believe that voice is god? I am so regular, so sinful so filled with sin, so average.

Is there a movie of a regular messiah - an everyday messiah? I wonder.

Apologies

Sorry, sorry! If these things get sent immediately upon posting then you got three versions of that last one as I successively saw different mistakes or typos. I don't know how not to have that happen.

Also a quick apology for my absence - I have a heavy reading load in my course and it consumed all of the extra time I might otherwise have spent here. KG

The Space In-Between

It's Saturday - the Saturday between "good" Friday and Easter Sunday. I suppose Saturday could get jealous - if it were that kind of a being. But such is not the case with this Saturday. Its purpose is very clear - to be a space in-between.

How should we observe In-Between Saturday? What happens on this day. I think for most of us it is just a day to get over or through. But imagine THAT first one - the the one that was not yet In-Between. The darkness was all around, the execution had happened, the curtain in the temple had been ripped and the earthquake had really shaken everyone. They probably hid and got drunk trying to numb it or just blot the whole damned thing out. Half horrified, half scared out of their minds (who was going to be next to suffer that fate?

Saturday - a time of crouching in the corner and thinking waaaay too much. Who am I? Who was he? What do I really believe - if I can ever believe in anything again? We don't talk much about Saturday as "Holy Saturday" (I think perhaps traditional Catholics still do). But this is the truly "holy" space. It is the in-between space where god does god's best work on us. It is only when we are sufficiently disturbed, sufficiently ripped out of our made up "realities" that we are not deafened to the Divine message. It takes going into the in-between space (what Richard Rohr calls the liminal space - the threshold betwixt and between) to get the real work done.

Real persons of faith know this place - they know that this is the only place where faith becomes just that - faith. This place of not knowing, and of not trusting one's own mind and senses - this is where faith is forged. Everyone who was there on Friday, who had any wherewithal with which to perceive anything, knew what happened! And Easter, well, SOME of those who were there saw and believed (blessed are those who did not see and still believed) and some could not. I somewhat suspect that those who saw and believed, and those who didn't and did, were the ones who went deep into the In-Between space that Saturday.

It is difficult to stay in the In-Between spaces. We are an instant gratification culture. We want it now. We even manage and expedite changes - thinking we are in control of it all. But Saturday - Holy, In-Between Saturday, teaches us to sit and wait - a skill we have all but lost. That is how I intend to spend today - sitting, wondering, waiting, scared....

Faith's Bottom Line

I have written several times about how belief is that which you do when there is no reason to believe, but I want to make some clarifications to the general idea. I also noted that I had recently read Richard Rohr’s book on Job and how Job had never doubted the existence of god. When these two come together, it requires some explanation.

God is. Period – end of story, good bye, thank you very much! There is no ifs ands or buts about it for me. And yet with that, I concede that there is no scientific evidence to “prove” god’s existence. It is my belief, my faith that I stand on when I assert that. But let me be clear that it is not my saying so that makes god exist for me. I exist in god’s world, and I exist as a part of the overall divine manifestation in this world. My faith and my belief has only to do with my understanding of that and my relationship with that.

I had heard that a great master was once asked if he believed in god. He answered that he existed in god’s kingdom to which the questioner repeated, “but do you believe in god?” This ping pong match continued for several rounds with the master never conceding to answer the direct question of belief. Ultimately he said tat those who “believe in god” suffer from and live in a world of doubt.

So these two exist: belief and is-ness, and where they come together is in the verse from Mark 9. I do believe (I am certain the god is) help me in my unbelief (those times when I need evidence and proof). Job is the embodiment of this human struggle between an absolute faith in the existence and reality of god and a human need to hang one’s belief on some evidence or sign of objective reality.

Choose or Be Chosen

I have been observing the function of focus lately in an attempt to see how focusing on the divine altered the experience of life. The great news is in fact that doing that, like focusing on beauty or seeing love in others, has a marvelous effect. Suddenly the entire world looks sacred and holy.

In addition it was my intent to actively choose this focus. While all of us have that part of the brain that concentrates our focus on foreground, relegating all else to background, actively choosing to focus on this or that engaged the RAS and its focusing function. When in the middle of that mental conversation it hit me how arrogant or ego-centric it was to assume that my choosing made the sacred appear. It was not m choosing at all but in fact that god had already chosen me – all of us.

I cannot pretend that I am choosing god – god has already, always chosen me. And there is nothing in my choosing that can alter that, except that I forget and turn away from time to time. But each time I turn back there is god waiting, accepting, and welcoming me back. So while I do have a choice (whether to look away or toward god’s light) it is not my choosing that makes it so. It is that god has – long before you or I ever had this thought – chosen us, in the very act of giving this life to live.

The thought suddenly relaxed me – like my shoulders dropped from their tensed p position – like feeling as if it was all a huge effort I had to do. It isn’t. It is quite easy, Kris. Just shut up and accept the gift (I am not good at receiving gifts – much better at giving I think). Oh I am certain I will forget this lesson and turn away, but as it always has been, all I have to do is turn back and remember, effortlessly, and there it is. I think this is what others have called surrender.

A Wordless God

Yesterday I was talking with my Spiritual Director and found myself saying something I had not really articulated before - how difficult it is to use words to describe the spiritual experience. Oh, at times I have claimed that others had co opted words like god to mean something other than what I think and experience (definitely the bearded Moses-esque grandfather figure on high). But that wasn't what occurred to me yesterday.

It is my experience and belief (and I am not claiming this to be the truth that others should believe - it is just how it occurs to me) that god is not only the life force that causes us to breathe but that which is in, through and around us in so interwoven a way that it could not even be isolated on a DNA or RNA chain. God is in the conception, and it is god that births us. God is present within us from before we were and is certainly the unifying one after we have ceased to exist on this earthly plane. Thus we are born knowing god - but if so, what happened?

We happened; words happened; events happened; and meaning happened. As we assembled a meaning and identity in our youths we left behind the one thing that we absolutely, intimately knew in search for words and meanings and skills to cope with our living life. And along came the theologians - attuned to the yearning sense inside each human - and gave us words to describe both the feeling and the source. But the horrible thing was that the words took over the experience and became the full extent of the meaning.

I was talking yesterday about how I missed the experience, of how I seemed to well up and choke on some words in hymns we sang in church. When I was pushed to identify that feeling, it resembled the longing and "missingness" I feel for my dad (who died some 41 years ago when I was only 18). I know god, and I believed in a historical Jesus, and I am awed/inspired/humbled by the thought and reaity of the crucifixion, but I was missing something, and there were no words to label that something.

I miss the being of being one with god. I know that sense and I have known that oneness. But when I try to describe it there are no words - because it comes from a knowing as old as I am that predates my knowing all these nifty theological words. I feel it tug in me and call to me to sit with it swirling around in my blood and bones and between the cells, vibratinng the chromosomes. It is a presence that is not distinguishable from my presence (when and if I am ever fully present). There may be zillions of names suggested for what that is, but I don't know them. I only know that when I don't pay attention, when I am not awake - as in fully present - I miss that and am missing who I am that I am. And isn't that what god called himself?

Focus, Focus, Focus

I haven't written in a few weeks because my focus has been elsewhere - in a book. It was not a focus I intended but a required one for a class I am about to begin. I was focused on depression and on the sadistic twist of fate that results in those least capable of coping being hit hardest with this disease/disorder/state.

But what I notice most is the function of focus played in mental health and mental unhealth. As the spiral of depression kicks in on someone, their focus turns downward to the pain, the losses, the what ifs, until even movement, or walking or swallowing saliva is an event of momentous effort. But what seems to be a common thread throughout these books is the role of one's focus.

I recall from my undergrad and grad work the research of the Gestalt movement and their description of the Reticular Activating System - a central part of the inner brain's functioning. The RAS is like a switching servo-mechanism that distinguishes foreground and background so that we don't get overwhelmed by the zillion stimuli bombarding us at each instant. In essence, the RAS is our focusing switcher. Yet I see no reference to it in any of the depression literature I am reading so far.

The reason I am fascinated with focus comes from another recent event. I was talking to a friend about his infatuation with a woman with whom he said he was in love. I related to him how I had re-fallen "in love" with my wife during the year of preparing for her 50th birthday extravaganza. Each day I had done something requiring my focus on her and with each day became more infatuated. I know it sounds cold and unfeeling, but I suggested that his state was more a result of his intense focus, the dozens of daily text messages, the hourly anticipation of seeing her again - the intensity of his focus may have been more the issue than anything else.

Does depression work the same way? Is the RAS part of the cause or solution in depression? If so, what little is there to focus on when one lives in austere poverty - nothing but loss and refuse and vacant lots or deserts. Is my friend's focusing actually the root of the intensity of his love? And if what we focus on alters our emotional state, what choice might we have in shaping our moods, our successes and failures and our fidelity and relationship successes? I don't know but it sure seems like it is worth asking. And when we turn our focus to god, and begin to focus daily or even hourly on that relationship with our god, what might we notice then. I don't know but it surely seems like it might be worth the try.

I do not mean to lessen the personal tragedy of depression for those going through it nor suggest anything less about its toll on people and societies. I am only wondering if there might be a connection with the RAS and with the function of focus.