Going Deep

Unless we go deep we cannot understand another’s context, emotions or even perspective because we will always be trying to make personal sense out of it first. Going deep requires accepting that “everything belongs,” just as it is, and everything holds within it the power to teach. But understanding this requires first surrendering control; something ego will resist with all his might. And if you can get over that hurdle, you can actually begin to accept that “everything belongs;” that even evil and darkness are part of the whole of the universe. Without that acceptance, however, ego will try to selectively accept some things (the good and useful stuff) and reject other parts as negative and useless.

But because all of creation is one, the so-called (or at least perceived as) negative stuff must be included within “everything belongs” or you risk not fully being open to learning. You have already begun evaluating before opening to what must be learned. And by extrapolation, you are only open to what you have already judged as acceptable within your limited scope. Only after going deep within yourself, and transforming the crushing blows of grief into compassion for your broken and defeated egoic self, can you accept all else in nature as part of the whole, as belonging, and as a perfect reflection of all else - including yourself. Until then you do not have the capacity for compassion. As the Buddha said, you must find compassion for yourself before you can have compassion for others.

It is the same with religious beliefs. One cannot fully comprehend another’s belief, spirituality, or spiritual crisis, until and unless one has first gone to deep places in which one’s own spirituality does not make sense - at least it does not make sense at the utilitarian, ego-driven logic level. You must allow your own beliefs to be challenged and to push you to deeper meaning making. Comfort with doubt and darkness must be accepted elements of your own beingness before you are able to look with compassion at another's struggles, another's torment, or another’s radical clinging to some fundamental structure. Compassion does not condone the values of the Taliban or ISIS, but rather can see through the hate and anger to the core of doubt and fear that must exist in order to demand such rigid adherence to those beliefs.

Then and only then can you ask, “What must I learn in order to love in such a way that the hurt, fear, and pain from which ‘the other’ must be operating is soothed and mitigated? How do I channel that type of healing love?” In fact, until your innermost self has been opened and transformed, most of us would probably ask, “Why even bother?” But once one has been opened, MLK’s assertion that “hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that,” takes on a new and deeper meaning. And Jesus’ demand to “love your enemies” is no longer spiritual ideal, but a possible reality.

On "Losing it All"

The graduation address at ANTS this year was drawn from the book "The Things They Carried" that (among other themes) described the characters of the story by the objects they had with them in combat - from canteens to pictures and bibles. We tend so often to define ourselves and our lives through the things we have, the things we own or, perhaps more accurately the things that begin to own us. At least I do - that is until a few weeks ago when became apparent that all of those things were about to become dust, ashes, memories, and lost.

I just lost a very big gamble - a company for which we had borrowed a lot of money to launch. In failing, all of that investment was lost, flushed right down the proverbial toilet, and lost. Well not entirely lost inasmuch as I still remain accountable to repay the vast amount of money borrowed in the first place.  But what went down with that company was a set of dreams, hopes, vacations, and a whole lifestyle we had hoped on in our retirement. Gone. Poof! In a matter of just a few weeks all of that was no longer something that I had - and now is something that has me.

In my meditations I am looking for the release - looking for the sense of nothingness and freedom that having nothing and owing a lot carries with it. And I find that I am still carrying pictures of that lost dream tucked into the band of my helmet. I am still carrying stories of what I would do if... in my duffel bag. I am still carrying all those things with me into battle. I want desperately to let go and to step into the humility of this new naked life that has been thrust on me pretty much against my will. And to tell the truth, I am not there yet.

Yesterday I laid on the floor in a crucifix position, praying for God to take my ego away.  "Go ahead - rip it out of my chest," I shouted out to the air that might be listening. And the only response I heard was a whisper that seemed to say, "When you are ready, you'll let go of it. It is the only thing standing between you and me."  Damn it, God, why do you have to be so right! Why don't you just let me wrestle you like your boy Israel instead of messing with my mind? Beat me fair and square instead of making it my job to surrender!

Then again, maybe that is what this losing it all is about. Being beaten at my own game.

Trust Fall

I am currently reading The Ascent of Mount Carmel by John of the Cross; the book in which he outlines the steps and process of the dark night of the soul.  John's description of the way in which one "prepares" for this journey toward god is huge - and risky!  Think of the preparation this way: you cannot be intimate (you know sexually intimate) by yourself - it takes two to do that tango!  But what you can do it prepare yourself for intimacy.  You can adopt the "position" of intimacy - open, vulnerable, hungry and waiting.  And to increase the sensuousness of it all you could even close your eyes and let your lover "surprise" your senses.  Love is a giant game of "Trust Fall."  Close your eyes, fold your arms over your chest, tuck your chin, lean back over the cliff, and let yourself fall into the arms of your lover.

John is saying somewhat the same thing about achieving intimacy with god.  You cannot do this willfully on your own.  But you need to adopt the position of readiness. That position, he says, is that you need to starve your senses, and get to a place of total not-knowing, because any thought that you might have about god or the experience of god is in the way of actually experiencing god this time and the next time, and so on.  Any sensation you have a longing for and any "knowing of what that connection may have felt like before, if still present inside you, will be looking to stuff this next encounter into that same wonderful place.

And god refuses admission to any of those boxes.  God cannot be described, containerized or labeled by any human classification system.  So all our thoughts and feelings have to be stripped away (and they do not go quietly) so that however and whatever is next in the smorgasbord of god-encounters can manifest however and whenever it manifests.

Now here is the thing we need to get: god is already and always there/here inside and with us.  And it is really all of our thoughts, emotions, feelings and memories (including the very moment we have one) of our encounter, our touching, that awareness that get in the way of having that awareness. Close your eyes and lean back!

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?

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.

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.