So I Am Getting Older

When you are young, you tend to think of yourself as immortal and as a result life may not mean much. Life is taken on a personal level and is a banquet on which we feast. But as you get older and begins to contemplate your end, mortality and the eventuality of death, values begin to shift - you can see more clearly what is really important and what is trivial. Problems are placed in a greater perspective and as a result are not taken so personally. Wanting what you don't have is seen as a waste of time as you realize that you have always had what was needed to get through - after all you made it to here.
And because death is the source of all egoic fears (as Tolle teaches) you begin to learn a new and freer fearlessness - not the bravado of youth but a fearlessness borne of having made peace with death itself. Life moves from a quest for personal survival to an experience of thriving, opening and surrendering. I guess aging isn't all that bad

Net Intimacy

There is - I think - a deep human longing for intimacy. However, given today's fractured society where everyone bustles along with ear buds plugged in or cell phones lodged between ear and shoulder, it seems we are even less connected than ever. I noted the look on a passenger in a car the other day as her driver chatted away to someone else while toodling along the highway - it was sad! Families are scattered from Michigan to Maine and Boston to Boca and often neighbors don't even know each others' names.

So we turn to Facebook! I have noted with growing alarm the number of intimate details that have been revealed on people's FB page - arguments with lovers and spouses, pain and grief over life situations and all nature of political, moral and ethical views. Not that it is inappropriate to express one's views, au contraire! I am happy people can express views and have a language for their feelings. What concerns me is that those same people (or me too) might not have an intimate friend to sit beside, or whose shoulder they might weep upon, or with whom they secretly confide a new, budding love. Have we lost that?

There are times the all three of us will be in the home office all working away on our respective computers - and not saying a word to each other! OOOO! The family that 'nets together, gets together! When I notice it (not always because I am focused on work, or my son on his homework), I try to interrupt the separation and bring us all into conversation. But I worry about others, about the strange mixture of aloneness and the loss of boundaries that exposes one's innermost self to the passing public. I fear that my 11 year-old son might grow up thinking that he is having a relationship with someone because they txt each other and that he is expressing himself because he has an array of emoticons! And I wonder if the Amish might not be so strange afer all! Reports show that suicide rates, though quadrupling in our society are lowest and staying put among the Amish and among cultures with lower technology.

And of course, as I write this, I think I had better call a close friend and talk about it!

It's Just Perfect!

Last week I gave a lecture at the Sloan Business School of MIT on the topic of rapid assimilation into a leadership or management position. Throughout the talk I fielded questions on disharmony and disagreements - the thought being that if one has done a good job selecting and interviewing, there should be a lowered probability of problems. At one point I even asked the audience how many people had the experience of being hired for a job and finding out after the fact that either the job had radically changed or that there were some deep dark, and untold secrets that had not been revealed during the interviewing process (nearly all the hands went up).

Ignoring the irrational expectation that a company should reveal its warts prior to your becoming an insider, the really big problem that lies at the base of this discussion is a belief that a perfect world is one in which all live in harmony. As far as I can tell that belief is the single most destructive belief in the world. It certainly has been the source of more marital problems than any other belief! It just isn't how things are. We are each unique in our being and in our understanding of our world view. Just as no two fingerprints are the same, no two personalities are the same. That is the fun part of life. I wouldn't want to marry someone just like me (how boring is that?) and it would almost feeling like talking to myself were I to work with someone just like me.

Believing that we should have no disagreements also stifles creativity. Nothing really creative can come from agreeing with each other. But in disagreeing - and doing so vehemently - we are forced to find a new solution. The more invested we are in the two poles of a disagreement, the greater our creativity has to be. Our inability to engage in disagreements is further exacerbated by our not knowing how to disagree, debate, and find solutions without taking things personally. Our society - the ME society - has taught us that everything is about us. "If you like my clothes, you must like me" translates into "if you don't like my ideas, you must hate me." And now I can tweet you with what I am doing at any given instant. C’mon: Do we really think that our lives are so important that anyone would be interested in knowing that it is time to take a shower or that you are standing in line at the Stop and Shop? I hate to be so blunt, but we need to get over it! Life is not about you – your life is not about you. Life is to be lived in service to and relationship with others. And relationship is all about working out the differences.

I don’t know if my audience heard the message, but the answer to “what if you and your boss disagree?” and “what if the mentor you have is at odds with the person you report to?” was, and still is, forever, “work it out!” That is the stuff of life, and that is just perfect!

True Authority

Pain is - in my mind - the great teacher. I have often said that we learn little or nothing from our successes. What we learn (if you want to call it that) is that whatever we just did worked. But with pain - the kind of real pain that comes at the end of a 2x4 smack across the head, or the kind that comes from deep suffering - with pain comes introspection.

When we suffer, we begin to inspect what just happened. We look at the events leading up to it, the triggers, and we inspect the reaction we had to each. We take things apart and crack the code. We begin to piece the puzzle together in new and different ways. We are opened, at last, to learning because the great teacher - pain - has spoken.

Those who have suffered - the poor, the oppressed, and the true victims of this world - know this lesson and they have a wisdom that speaks volumes of what it means to be human. They can speak with authority about what life is and about what it means to be human. Their authority is never wielded with power and cockiness. And they listen far better. I think perhaps this is why Jesus taught the poor and oppressed, and why Gandhi wove his own clothes and walked with the Untouchables.

The wisdom and character that one receives from suffering and pain is compassion. There is not artificial way to develop compassion. Do Kings and Presidents wield compassion (I am hard-pressed to find one, and alternately nauseated at the media events of former presidents hugging a widow or an appropriately cute child in the hurricane shelter) - no I think that for the most part they have no clue, because the have never suffered great pain. Richard Rohr, my teacher of late, gave a talk once called "The Authority of Those Who Suffer" and I think he nailed it. That is the real authority of "been there, done that" only it's more like "been there, ouch, got that lesson too!"

The Splendid Torch

I listen to the oldies station in Boston, and yesterday I heard one of those place-and-time specific songs that threw me right back to when I was maybe 23! I suddenly was flooded with scenes of what I was doing at that time and the choices I had in front of me. Back then I had all of my body parts in tact, schooling, opportunities and yet... it seems that I lacked the urgency to decide.

Thoreau said once that we live in the "arrogance of a tomorrow." Back in 1972 I thought I had all the time in the world. Youth is like that! I had ideas (like I do now) of writing, something I had always liked, but must have felt that there was mo much more time. I got the chance a couple of years later to co-author with my mentor and remember calling my mom the day the book arrived from the publisher with my name on it. It was too fantastic to be real! That was 1976. I think that is when I caught the bug, but I let it go dormant until just a few years ago - 2006 to be exact, when I started writing again.

We are pushing for a December deadline now - just because we said so! That is how I live now, as the author of my living. It won't happen unless I do my part. I guess the nostalgia induced by that song made me take a long look at what I hadn't done and shoulda, coulda, woulda! I don't normally do that, but I have long held as my theme a passage by GB Shaw called "the Splendid Torch." Sometimes I live it and many times I seem to have forgotten.

Shaw wrote, "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. [geez I love that phrase!] I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

Well George, I think I need to crank up the lumens to catch up for some less-than-bright times. Oh and if you are wondering, 1972 was the year of "Day by Day," "American Pie," and "Roundabout" but the song I heard yesterday, that I used to sing as I shuffled across the campus at Penn State was Bill Withers' "Use Me."

Respect the Net

This past weekend I was part of a spectacular wedding. What made it spectacular was not the dollar amount expended (it was actually done on a shoestring, comparatively), nor was it the stunning beauty of the bride (though in fact she was just that) nor the swarthy handsomeness of the groom (ditto). What made it spectacular was that it involved family and friends in a very unique and special way.

The bride is a Brazilian from a small coastal town an hour’s flight north of Rio called Aracaju. Aside from the fact that she speaks little English and communicates with her new husband through their mutual Spanish and the expressions of her always sparkling eyes, she had come to our area to get married here first so that her citizenship might be made easier; leaving the formal hometown wedding to take place in November. That meant that all of her family who could not make the trip were still back home and would miss the event.

Not if we could help it. So the internet jockeys among our friends who were putting together all the arrangements, arranged for the friends and family to be in one room with a computer hook-up via Skype. We, at the other end had a series of digital cameras and webcams trained on the entire ceremony, and bingo, the world got smaller! The most special part was about three-quarters of the way through the ceremony, they turned up the volume in the Brazilian room and the family spoke to their daughter, granddaughter, and sister. Though most of us present spoke no Portuguese, the international language of joy and pride and tears was more than enough to know what was meant.

Lately I have been ragging on the Twitter-hyped world of obsessed technology. But I lay that all down today because somewhere in Brazil, a grandmother is boasting to her friends about how beautiful her child was walking in the sunlit path toward her new life; how tender the kiss was and how radiant she looked on her first dance – because she was there and saw it all. That was spectacular!

Spiritual Discipline

Spirituality is a discipline not a concept, and of late I have been undisciplined. I have not been attending church services, I have not been praying at the beginning, end and/or the middle of my days, I have not been reading sacred literature. All of these practices and more are the disciplines of my spirituality, and I have become lazy and lethargic. Well it is not that I have become that - it's more like that is who I am and the disciplines take me away from my natural state.
I exercise every morning, and people always say things like, "Oh, you are so disciplined. I wish I could be like that!" That is not, I explain, discipline. I exercise because I have no other choice. Without exercise my left leg, orphaned by an athletic injury that cut off much of the nervous impulses that once went there, starts cramping up around 3PM or so. I HAVE to exercise!
But it appears as though my soul does not go into spasms if I forget to pray one day - and the next - and the next after it. It just withers and atrophies until one day I wake up all cranky without the slightest reason for why. My spirituality takes effort, routine and training. I believe the definition for discipline is a practice that shapes and molds the spirit. Without the regular rigor of those exercises, my soul looses shape - without the slightest hint. It just goes away.
Last night I did a whole mess of sit-ups for the first time in a while and my stomach aches today. It's a good ache, the kind I want to feel again in the pit of my soul.

Father's Day

So I am a few days late but after a recent conversation I have been thinking about what fatherhood really means. And I think we have it backwards a bit. What we really might mean when we honor fathers is not how we fathers as cool and groovy, but perhaps how very honored we are to be "father" to some one.
So for me, I have been thrice honored. The gifts I have been given are beautifully unique and wonderful. My eldest is a blessing of the deepest spiritual kind. She has always been able to put into words those mysteries most of us can only feel. Her gift of speech, her wisdom that has been evident since her childhood and her passion and compassion are wonders to me and I have had the honor of being a steward of her as she grew into what she is today.
My second is spiritual in a different way. She has always had a sixth (and maybe a seventh and eighth) sense about people. She can read a room like a book and can actually see how you are feeling without your ever speaking a word. And her touch - her touch is nothing less than divine healing. She is sensing incarnate and has turned that into a gift she uses to heal any with whom she has contact. But beyond that this one is a peacemaker. She is a truth-teller and an arbiter who cannot be ignored or dismissed. She WILL change you!
And my son, my word, what an honor to be gifted with him! He is sensitive - I don't have any other word for it - he feels things with an amplification that makes him like a receiver. Sometimes I have to be careful what I expose him to because he feels it so deeply. We don't know how he'll turn out (he's only 11) but his gift is already evident. No less articulate than his sisters, this one is destined for another type of greatness.
So this Father's Day I really did get some gifts - the gifts that just keep on giving. You can't get better than that!

Ordaination

Yesterday I witnessed an ancient Rite of Passage, one that has been handed down through thousands of years. The ordination of priests was first described in Exodus (though in typical ancient Judaism, with sufficient quantities of blood splashed about) and has been a ritual observed for consecrating our spiritual leaders since the earliest of times. It is, however, a double-edged sword. In one ceremony the ordinand is both lifted up as a leader, and humbled forever into the servant's role forever placing the ordained person in an irresolvable paradox.

Perhaps that paradox is purposeful as it serves to keep the priest in the question, and it is only in the not-knowing state that one is clear enough to see, feel and experience the Divine. Perhaps its purpose is to make certain that the power of spiritual leadership is never abused (which, history has proven, is so easily done). I cannot say - I just don't know. But as with most ritual, I am certain it is on purpose!

But the culmination of the Rite, is a point when the other priests, and ordained who have mentored and taught the new initiate lay their hands on the ordinand and pass the blessing and the paradoxical commission on to her. I am told by those who have received this, that it feels light a lightning bolt passing through your body.

Yesterday I witnessed the ritual of ordination for probably the 10th time, though for me it felt like the first time. I got to see that ancient tradition passed on to my daughter. And for me it was an out-of-body experience (I can only ask her what it was like up there). And I will let her tell others whether the lightning struck.

But what I can say is that the greatest gift a father can receive is to see his children honored - in form and title (like Reverend, or Doctor or whatever). It is the most unbelievable and breathtaking experience. Yesterday was one such day, and the power of that blessing really hit me - like a lightning bolt passed right through me!

Gifts

Least anyone reading my last entry (On Becoming An Elder) think me a depressive or negatively-oriented person, let me just add that life itself is a gift. Everything about is a gift - especially the present (time)! But do we really earn gifts or are they given, just because the giver wants to give? I think the latter, whether the giver is life, the cosmos, god, your best friend or a family member. Gifts are given, not earned.

Whizzing past 60 at relatively break-neck speed, celebrating its passage in living color, with family and a great many friends, but in celebration of life is how I would have wanted it - and befitting my attitude on life and living. This is all a gift. So much of my experience in life - the greatest percentage by far and away - is just given to me as a gift. I delight in every moment and even in retrospect have fully embraced the few lumps and bumps of my own screw-ups.

So if these gifts are not of my doing but the lessons of my failures are, then I can only lay claim to those. Oh sure - did I actually DO the accomplishments? Yes, I ran the Boston Marathon, yes I hiked the Himalayas, yes, I have DONE so many things of which I am proud. But these occur to me as the gifts of my privileged life - the gifts I have been given. Without the gift, they would not have been nearly as possible. So, yes, I did something with the gifts I was given. And when I messed up the opportunity - the gift - I learned, and grew, and gained. The gift never lost its giving properties.

So I seem to have talked myself into a corner here. Life is a gift (but only when I/we receive and do something with it), the lessons of failure, were sourced from a gift, that I could only receive after I got the lesson. So I either have to claim it all as mine, (given to me to do with and/or fumble as best I can), or recognizing them all as gifts, step back and be thankful for the abundance of gifts I have been given.

On Becoming an Elder

Well, it's official: I am now 60 years of age. It doesn't feel any different - really. Oh there are things like I can't life a refrigerator anymore and a solid day of construction makes me ache all over, but other than a few aches and pains, my mind still thinks I am something like 48, to pick an arbitrarily stupid figure.

But this number comes with some titles and labels, the main one of which that I would like to adopt is "elder." Now being or becoming an elder carries some trappings with it. For example, it is precisely twice the age we swore never to trust anyone older than, back in the 60's. It probably looks a tad silly for an elder to be rocking out to AC/DC, so my view of myself as a rocker may need some alterations. But most formally, an elder ought to be a mentor, not to anyone specifically, but to society and people in general.

So what is it that I have to give? On what do I offer my mentoring? All I really have to claim solely as my own are these scars - wounds from various battles - and lessons taken from really screwing up royally. But, you see, that is the wisdom of aging. We don't really learn much from our successes. We simply note it and say something like, "Cool, that worked!" But our failures - wow - we ponder them; we slice and dice and analyze them until we figure out where we went wrong and use the pain of the failure to make certain that the lesson sinks in so that we don't repeat the same mistake.

Several years ago I wrote an op-ed piece on what I called the "Shadow Resume" - the compilation, not of all our good accomplishments, but of our lessons taken from the crash-and-burn failures. That is what I have to offer today - I survived all of those tough, painful, don't-want-to-do-that again stuff. Perhaps it is all any of us really can lay claim to.

Unraveling The Threads

It is funny how this process works - this introspective thing, I mean. As I have been rapidly approaching the completion of six decades of residence on this orb, a date which is now less than a month away, I have been on a quest of unraveling the icon of self-ness which I have fabricated from the strands of memories, events, accomplishments and failures, to discover what lies beneath and beyond all of that. In two recent blogs I have peeled that down to the raw, naked "so what, now what?" However, that has all been about discovering who and what I actually am in my authentic self. But what then of god?
Following the same logic - that the concept of god is mostly a fabrication of myths and beliefs passed on to me by others, sewn together with experiences and reflections of my own - then what is or might be god that is not that when and if we are able to strip that away? The theologian John Ackerman makes the beautiful distinction between the god of our experiences and the experience of god. It raises the question of whether we can ever, really experience god's god-ness devoid of our preconceived categories and language for those experiences. Is it possible to have an authentic experience of the divine? I cannot speak for anyone else here, as I am certain to offend the righteous, the devout believers and he "faithful," so I will speak only of myself.
I have entered on a quest of discovery to seek the authentic experience of god without categories, words, theologies, epistimologies, and eschatologies (don't you just theo-babble!!). I choose to call this phase of spiritual development the Seeker phase (for lack of any better term). I feel like a Seeker. Armed with only a knapsack, a notebook (as it were) and nothing more, I have strapped on the proverbial hiking shoes and headed out into the wilderness of not knowing. These posts have been postcards from that trek, notes along the way as I continue to explore my unknown world. I would love to invite you along and ask that those of you who read these posts occasionally check in with me. Am I making sense? Do you take issue with these precepts? I will never know by myself, just as I will never know who I am without being in relationship with you all. Well? Is there anyone out there?

Undoing the Self (part II)

In recognizing that the self, which we have so long identified as who we are, is not the authentic self; and in stripping away layer after layer of evidence to that effect, we are left standing naked before god and the universe. The question we face in our nakedness is, "If I am not that, then who am I?" Our introspection leads us to what might be called our potentialities. But even these have taken on a different quality. No longer do we see our potentialities as what we can or might do or accomplish. Our true potential is to be used in whatever service each situation might require of us - to be an instrument of god's workings.

When I stop to think of that, I am forced to realize that I am not all powerful, I cannot "do" everything and this aging body certainly is not capable of what it once could do. That notwithstanding, the requirements of being an instrument of god's workings in the world seem far larger than any of that which my ego-driven self has been or ever will be able to perform. But that isn't the issue. It is god working through us, not our (willful) working of what we think god wants of us. There is a difference. I think that the 12-steppers slogan of "let go and let god" means that (though their arrival at that slogan and interpretation of its meaning may vary greatly).

This is no blind faith, It is a step out over the void like the Indiana Jones scene before he throws dirt on the invisible path. It is Moses in the desert saying "Okay, but I don't know why you would pick me!" It is the blind Saul going to the home of his enemy, Francis stripping off his clothes and stepping into the arms of his bishop. No slogans here! Just fear and trembling... and stepping forward, saying "Here I am, take me."

Hope

Hope is the power of the present moment that serves to interrupt and alter the current path of past-to-future that we perceive as existing within our worst-case fears, and moves us in the direction of possibility.

Undoing the Self

I think for the most part, developmental theories have it all wrong. Most believe that the tasks of growing, developing and maturing are learning what it is that we can accomplish and do with our lives. And while to an extent that is true, we make a critical error in assuming that is who we really are. As infants we make this discovery that we can grab and manipulate the things of our world. So as we grow we layer on that basic belief that the more we can do and control the more a unique individual we become. This, the theorists claim, goes on throughout our stages of establishment and generativity to a point when we can no longer sustain that level of output identified with our self concept. Thus in later years we are told we enter a period of decline and begin preparing to die! Erikson even says that we either get that as a level of acceptance or we fall into despair.

But what if our task as mature adults is not simplification and decline but one of recognition of the essence of who we really are? The complexity of the veil, the disguise we have concocted and used as the projected (false) self through all of those years, begins to unravel and be exposed for what it really is. Wisdom begins to recognize all of the actions and accomplishments as delusions and begins to detach from them in an effort to rediscover the true self that is already, and has always been, there. Simultaneously we begin to uncover the in-dwelling god that as well has been there all this time, from whom we have succeeded in distancing ourselves through all or our doing.

However, because we have such an investment in the idol we have constructed out of our accomplishments, this transition often does not happen without some significant disruption of the self, or more accurately, of the ego. Thus many only come to this realization after a near death experience, after a debilitating injury, after the body begins to fail. In the sadness that may fall into despairing over the lost trappings of our youth, we turn inward to contemplate (some for the first time) who we really are if we are not our doing-ness and our accomplishments. The great sages have been preaching this message for eons – that we are not what we do but how we are that matters. (part II to follow)

Fractal Spirituality

Okay hold onto your suspenders for this one. I have been trying to make sense of all of the literature on spiritual development and to the best of my understanding it fails on two counts: One, most theories of spiritual development start with a presupposition of some religious belief system and track the development of individuals through and around that systematic belief. Two, most of the spiritual development theorists if not all seem to follow along with the same stage theory as cognitive development (most of which tracks through youth and teen years but stop at young or middle adulthood).

I would like to play with a different theory of development - fractal theory. In the mid seventies, scientist who had been studying chaos in nature found that instead of pure randomness, that which seemed to be chaotic actually followed extremely complex but self-repeating patterns. Everything from shorelines to crystal growth patterns seemed to fit these complex patterns produced by interacting forces. The name fractals is credited to Benoit Mandelbrot, an IBM mathematician and Harvard professor. The easiest way to describe a fractal is by looking at a head of cauliflower. If you were to look at one clump of the whole head up closely it would look exactly like the whole head, and if you broke off one flowerlette it too would look like the whole head and so on. Ferns, river deltas and the ubiquitous 70s paisley are all fractals. And so is, I contend, the growth, pattern and development of the individual spiritual experience.

But what is most remarkable about fractals is that there is something undiscoverable about them. While much of the pattern can be reduced to complex formulae, when it is reduced to its smallest element the pattern is still there in its entirety (not totally reduced and understood) and when looked at through the widest perspective that same undiscoverable element seems to be present. Its puzzle cannot be known - only seen and observed. Furthermore, there is no real stage system to its increasing complexity, just greater and greater complexity revealed.

It seems to me that we grow our spiritual side in this beautiful, complex and ultimately puzzling way. Some element of what I believe today has within it the imprint and patterning of what was set in place originally in my DNA and early prayer life. And why my unfolding is different than yours or Luther's resides as well in the magnificently complex intertwining of the fields and forces that shaped this life. Mandelbrot's original question concerned measuring the shoreline of Great Britain, causing him and his students at the time to wonder about the forces patterning coastline development. So too is our spirit shaped, moved and modeled by those great unseen forces within and without us.

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.

What Is Hope?

Like nearly all Americans today, I watched and listened and hardly dared to breathe, least I miss a moment or a word. But I started realizing that it wasn't about the man. I started hearing people of reason acknowledging how much work we all had to do. I heard a leader talk in realities. No flowery platitudes, no campaign promises. Just realism and challenges and hard work ahead. So why is it that I feel so hopeful?

I have grown tired of empty suits and political rhetoric. I am wearied from chest-thumping machismo and might-makes-right mentality. I have been worn down by far too many agendas. I need to have my feet planted flatly on the floor.


I don't need to hope for things to come. I don't live my today in the promise of a hereafter. I need to be present - here - right now, and nowhere else. and when I see another who looks like that is what is up for him, I am heartened and lifted up.

I don't know if he can live up to the expectations but I know that those whose expectations are unrealistic will certainly be dashed. I do not know if he will win over his opponents, but I am certain that those who think less of him will find all the evidence they will need in future days. But I am filled with hope today, because one man told his truth. I am encouraged today because the cameras saw all the colors of the faces. I am uplifted because I saw strangers smiling at each other and embracing in the cold air. And I really really want to believe that we can be more together than we are separately, and that something started today that is unique and different in the world. It started today - and I felt it and saw it. And that is what hope is all about.

The Well of Grief

In honor of the surviving family and lovers of Jon Choate and Rebecca Raboin, I submit this brief poem by David Whyte:

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface of the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown away by those who wished for something else.

By David Whyte from Close to Home

Words Fail Emotions

There is a fundamental problem we have as humans and that is that we invented words and then made the mistake of letting them become the feeble container of what we really meant. Though poets can write volumes in just a few short lines of well-chosen words, somewhere around the space of emotions, words just fail.

I am certain that if you look up the word "love" in a dictionary it would say something like "a warm fuzzy feeling about some person or thing." And I am equally certain that such a definition doesn't enter the neighborhood of the length and depth and breadth of the actual feeling I have for my wife or my children. That definition (or any definition) doesn't have the color, depth, vibrancy, history, pain, joy, pleasure, and myriad other dimensions that my love has at any nanosecond.

And grief, I believe, is more complex.

I was reading my daughter's blog as she prepared to eulogize her step-dad Jon Choate, and let the half dozen other responses from friends and family sink in, really touch my inner being, as I read through them. And I am in awe at the texture and dimensions of grief/love that abound in and through all of that discussion. That we humans are capable of such love and only then open to such pain and loss is beyond miraculous. It is stunningly beautiful. There are no words when smiles and tears and love and pain all embrace each other simultaneously. There is only being.

My friend Bill had a daughter born 18 years ago so severely handicapped that she never walked, talked or even fed herself. Faced with the option of institutionalizing her, Bill and his wife decided to love her for as long as she lived. That commitment ended last weekend as Rebecca finally slipped into death. Though there were so many times it felt like a burden, Bill never stopped loving and caring. And now he still cannot stop. He doesn't know how or where or what it looks like. Grief has that depth of love in it that only lovers and parents and real risk-takers know.

I am proud and honored to be part of a family that so easily and openly expresses emotion, and who so fully risk loving. And with all of our words, we don't even come close to what we know each other to be feeling. I love you guys!