Too Costly A Price

I joined in recently in an on-line discussion of the gun control diatribe (masquerading as dialogue). It wasn’t really a dialogue at all – just a bunch of angry, self-righteous people haranguing each other for the audacity to hold fast to a belief other than their own. So-called pacifists screaming (as best they can over internet type) at staunch defenders of their Second Amendment right to have a gun of their choice to defend their family and property; and the latter’s expletive-laden vitriol about how he will either kill or go to jail to defend that right.

That is not dialogue, and it is one of three main problems that lie at the source of this breakdown. The first problem is that there can no longer be dialogue.  We have lost the ability to discuss and dialogue with each other; unless of course you agree with absolutely everything I say, in which case, I contend, it is not dialogue. True dialogue is an exchange of ideals wherein listening occurs and through which both parties are changed. Dialogue is a creative resolution starting with opposing or differing points of view that results in a new, previously impossible (or improbable) thought. It cannot be reached when both parties start from the absolute point of view that I am right and you are dead wrong, and operate from a fundamental dualistic logic.  Right/wrong dualism renders anything the other person says automatically wrong and therefore not-listened-to. Where is the dialogue in that? So as a result, congress and my Facebook friends simply engage in angry positioning and demeaning name-calling.

But that is only one part of it.  The second source problem within the gun-control diatribe is that we have evolved into a state where we expect laws, legislation and other people to do the hard work or moral decision-making and critical thinking for us. It takes a ton of developmental work to build the capacity to think critically and in a fully mature way about such complex issues as justice, gun-control, global warming, sexual ethics, reproductive rights and human dignity (to name a few). These and other issues like them as immensely complex dilemmas that have no single or simple solutions. Yet as a society we want the simple solution; we want the silver bullet; we want washboard abs with only 15 seconds of exercise a day. 

Thirdly, we have de-evolved into a society who expects that if something is wrong, we can just take a pill to fix it, and that just is not the way things happen. And within that, we hold the expectation that someone else will do it for us. Dear friends, it is not up to someone else (be that chemistry and pharmaceuticals or law-makers and their polity) to solve our problems for us. These are ours and we need to take ownership and responsibility for the issues we have. Having a law that polices how guns are sold (we have one), or requiring background checks, or magazine sizes will not solve the problem of accountability and responsibility.

 

So the long and short of it is that there is a way out or through this fiasco, but it will take a huge amount of work. First and foremost, we need to take full responsibility not only for the creation of a solution but for the control and use of any firearms out there. In a way the platitude that “guns don’t kill; people do” is right. But until every person who owns or sells, or touches weapons of any sort (let’s throw crossbows and bows and other forms of weaponry in there) takes full accountability of how each weapon is responsibly used, we will continue to have the problem of weapons getting into “the wrong hands.” We need to develop the lost skill of critical thinking to begin to address complex problems and complex solutions in a more mature and rational way.  But above all, we need to re-learn the art of true dialogue.  That is a tall order, but the consequences of ignoring the source issues are too costly; innocent children’s lives being snuffed out before they have even begun to live; malls and theatres becoming unsafe places to go; and young men thinking that the resolution of an argument is drawing and firing some sexy weapon. When the statistics are frightening enough perhaps the work will be done.

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. They were simply trying to be present in the moment.  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 elsewhere 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 transcendant. 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 what is happening in the now. And each time we forget that life is filled with these mystical moments, we slide back into our routines of worrying about the future or wishing away the past. 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 in every moment. So coming back to the beginning of this thought stream, if we are actually capable of being present I suppose we could enjoy a mystical life.  The problem, as Ram Dass said, is to Be Here Now!

Baptismal Inheritance

Last Sunday, my pastor asked “what did we inherit through baptism?” I think it is far more than we suspect, however.  For many of us, we think that the great inheritance of our faith is that we have the promise of God; the promise of heaven and salvation.  But I think that misses the mark.  And to understand what that is, we need to look at Jesus.  Jesus is our model. Jesus was not something other than we are, or separate from us.  Yes, Jesus was the incarnation – the word and spirit in human form – but he was here to show us that we are all the incarnation of God’s word.  His message was consistently that what he had and how he was connected to God is what we have as well.  Just as Jesus and the Father were one, so are we and the Father one.

So here is the big “aha” about baptism, as revealed though the actions of Jesus, our model.  What Jesus inherited (and by extension what have inherited) in baptism was not a promise but rather permission. Through baptism we are given permission to be audacious and call ourselves children of God.  Through baptism we have permission to live larger than life. Through baptism we have been given permission to heal the sick, and to mend the broken hearted – literally to work miracles.

So I ask you this, if you had permission to be anything and do anything that you felt called to do, what would that be? If you had permission to walk into the White House, what would you say?  If you had permission to stop any economic or ecological runaway train, what would you do? If you had permission to love fully anyone you choose, who and how would you love?

Through your baptism you have been given permission to be God’s presence in this world, in this state, in this parish, in this family. You are God’s child in whom God is well pleased, and with that baptismal proclamation, you have been granted full permission to go and serve.  How will you use that?

Mysteries of Christmas

Did you ever wonder why angels always have to tell people not to be afraid of therm? Those people who have written about angels describe them as fearsome, with eyes that blaze like fire, or even that they are too fearsome to behold. So on that night when the birth we celebrate today happened, however it happened, the announcement was made to a bunch of hapless shepherds in the field by a bunch of fearsome creatures, whose first words are "fear not!"

Now help me out here: there are so many things we get wrong about the birth of Jesus, the date notwithstanding, and here is another one medieval painters (or whoever) got wrong. No "angels we have heard on high" and no "hark, the herald angels singing," what might have occurred was more like fright night in the back forty acres! These shepherds seem to have been scared out of their gourds! And for shepherds - who were the tough guys of the day (note that they had to stay awake all night to guard against rustlers) - that must have been pretty scary.

And if we can get past the riveting sight of the messenger to actually believe the alleged message that unto them a savior was being born, we have to deal with the shock of the rest of the scenario. In those days, when Caesar Augustus was supreme lord of most of the Mediterranean world and the Romans could play games with human lives for sport, the hoped for savior would have had to come in with some power and authority or it would never stand a chance. But all they got was a baby born to a homeless unmarried couple is some barn.

No. The story does not make sense that way! So the editors and writers had to make it better. After all, this is supposed to be god incarnate and that has to be special, different, and earth-shaking. And this, this unlikely story just isn't going to make it.  We humans need power, we need bombs and guns, and might - yea, real might! So we add layer and layer on to the most unlikely story ever told.

But the truth is that's what it was, and what it is - the most unlikely story ever told. Why would the power that created the universe reveal itself in the form of a frail baby? Why would the Almighty chose to come on behalf of an unmarried (read that as scandalous) displaced couple who don't even have a house or a room or a bed on which to lay their heads? Why? Because for thousands and thousands of years that is how the almighty reveals itself to us - not in power and might but in small frail, instances. We always wanted a god of war (read your Hebrew bible, a.k.a. the Old Testament) who could vanquish other gods and peoples. But we always got someone who was the unlikely hero.  We wanted thunder and lightning that would split boulders, but all we get is a small whispering voice.

So in the midst of all of the bling and pizzazz of modern Christmas celebrated on an arbitrary day in December may we all have the peace of mind required to put it all down and step away from the table long enough to notice the unlikely places, the unlikely people and the littlest things that show us how present our Creator really is. And may the overwhelming and mysterious power of that tiniest spec of godliness fill your hearts with warmth and joy tonight and in the days to come.

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.

Ending the Madness

"No one's religious anymore. Not anyone with any sense. Religion incites hatred, starts wars, and vilifies anyone who challenges its narrow-minded views." So starts an article in the Huffington Post UK version (by Felicity Morse). But where Ms Morse ended up with her article is not where I would go. So with thanks to her lead, let me turn a different way.

You're right, Felicity, and I hate it! I am sick of the divisiveness created by religions and religious sects. I am embarrassed when someone calls me a Christian and they mean that type of a person who thinks others are soiled, unclean or despicable because they don't say the right words.  Or when the mean some sort of narrow-minded bible-thumping "religious" fanatic that uses verses to their own defense and to the exclusion of others.

I can no longer find a religion that I can claim and yet I love God, and I do my best to follow the teachings of Jesus.  It's just that I do my best to also follow the teachings of the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zoroaster, and just about every other wise sage that ever graced this planet. And I do not believe that I am special if I believe in the resurrection of Jeshua, the Nazarene, or that I am damned to eternity in hell if I don't.

That type of dualistic thinking is the root of the disease that we now call religions. But that was never the message - not the message of the Nazarene, not the message of the Buddha, not the message of Hillel, not the message anyone who has ever listened for God has ever heard. In fact the message of all sacred texts is one of acceptance and inclusion - not hatred and out-grouping; one of forgiveness and compassion - not revenge and hatred; one of care-taking and respect - not one of dominion and dominance. Where we went wrong and got off that path, I don't know. But I do know that our very survival depends on getting back to it.

It is time for ministers and preachers and spiritual people everywhere to speak out that we are one.  It is time that we link arms and stand squarely in the path of those who would divide and vilify others. It is time we all band together and shout "Enough! No more! No mas muerta!" It is time to work for healing and bridge-building and forgiving. My heart is breaking - we cannot continue the way we are going.

Please - if you read this, pass it on! That's how we can turn this around. It's like Marge Piercy wrote in her wonderful poem, The Low Road:

It goes on one at a time,

it starts when you care

to act, it starts when you do

it again and they said no,

it starts when you say We

and know you who you mean, and each

day you mean one more.