Story Time

The nine stories in this collection originated as sermons in Amory, Mississippi. There were seventeen in all, before the congregation had enough and asked me not to do that anymore, but to return to the old comfortable way of telling them what they had already heard, and fully expected to always hear, as a confirmation of all they hoped to be so.

The fact that Jesus told stories and never said anything about doctrine, theology, creeds or catechisms did not deter them in their quest for these things. And so it was that I was led to other ways of shaking up the Just So world of my congregations in Amory and Batesville in Mississippi, and at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in Greensboro, North Carolina, and introducing them as I was able to a world waiting for them to live the life that they alone were capable of living, in redeeming, atoning for and transforming their world as those “thus come” to be “the way, the truth and the life” in their time and place as Jesus was in his.

My success rate in achieving that outcome was probably the same as Jesus’ was.

However that may be, here are nine stories for your consideration.

Madonna with Child

She walked past the plate glass window

next to the booth where I sat with my friend Bill

in the worst hamburger joint on the eastern seaboard,

eating a dripping grease burger

oozing with melted Velveeta cheese of all things

with fries fresh from a year in the freezer.

She was twelve months pregnant, maybe thirteen.

Sashaying her first pregnancy

down the walk and through the door,

showing everybody who she was

and what she was carrying,

beneath her red spandex top,

and navy blue spandex tights,

stopping traffic and conversation,

as all onlookers

(And who could look away?)

paused in what they were doing

to honor, marvel at, rejoice in, worship, relish, adore, and remember

the wonder of a vision

equal in every way

to the one that stunned the angels

who announced the Messiah’s birth

with their hallelujahs, backflips, somersaults and high fives—

and as redemptive!

She redeemed the day, the week, the year, our lives, all of life,

forever, throughout all eternity.

And I carry her memory in my heart

to revere and esteem:

Mary, the mother of God,

ordering a grease burger with fries

and sanctifying the moment, and all gathered there

by the wonder of her grace bestowed upon us,

utterly transforming the ordinariness of our lives.

The Way of Soul Is the Way of Life

As conscious egos, we are full partners with our unconscious (so-called because we are not conscious of her/him) Self in effecting a growing union of conscious with unconscious, incarnating it in our life, and creating a life worth living.

The Psyche (Soul) needs us to be its hero, championing the unconscious with compassionate, mindful, awareness, and assisting its emergence into light by bringing it forth into our life.

Our questions to answer are: How might we assist the unconscious and its urge to conscious realization? How might we enable Psyche to know itself? How might we live out the truth of unconscious reality in our life?

“Know Thy Self,” one of the inscriptions in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece, is a message from Psyche to Psyche by way of human consciousness. The Oracle speaks for all to all, hoping for ears to hear.

In our dreams, we perceive dark messages from Psyche, bring the light of consciousness to bear on them, and return each night for more, seeing deeper, knowing more fully, what waits to be known, understood, and acted upon—incorporated into our life—transforming all of life.

The heroic task is to ascend from darkness into light, and descend into darkness with light, and back from darkness into light, on and on… We seek what is unknown, unconscious to us, in order that it might be known, become conscious to us, and through us, to all people.

Ours is a mission of the ages, from the ages: To see with understanding, and to live and act with knowledge—knowing, even as we do, that as the darkness deepens, it also widens, and we plumb the unknown forever: “If you went in search of it, you would not find the boundaries of the soul, though you traveled every road, so deep is its measure”—Heraclitus

In order to fulfill our mission, we have to accept, and assume, the role that is ours to play in the unfolding of the Great Way—the Way of Tao—upon the earth. That Way is the joint way of consciousness with unconscious (Yin and Yang)—conscious dipping into unconscious, transforming experience into metaphor, symbol, poem, realization and ritual—making connections which transform the way life is lived, and going back to draw more from the unconscious source as a wellspring of living water, bringing life to life.

The problem is that we, as conscious egos, can supplant—and have supplanted—the Great Way (the Tao) with our own, personal, way, Xing-out the unconscious as a factor to be taken seriously in our life. Our plans and agendas interfere with our living in allegiance to the unconscious, and working its “will and purpose” into our life. We treat the unconscious as an irrelevant remnant from the distant dawn of the species, a storage room of sorts where we might keep old memories, with nothing helpful to offer in assisting us on our way.

The story of Adam and Eve is the story of the species cutting itself off from the unconscious ground of existence, and going its own way. Our place now is, as it has always been, that of finding our way back to Eden, and living out of our relationship with Psyche/Soul forever.

We take up the work of doing this by realizing that every night our dreams call us to an honest assessment of how things are with us, of how things are in our life.

We cannot kid ourselves in our dreams. But, we can deny what they reveal to us about us, and interpret them to suit ourselves.

Our dreams mean one thing, and we take them to mean another. This is always the downfall of those who consult the Delphic Oracle.

The Delphic Oracle continues to speak to us through our dreams, and we continue to misinterpret what we find there, because we serve our own agenda.

We know what we want, and don’t care what we need, or what needs us. “If we aren’t winning (that is, getting what we want), we are losing!” is the mantra of those who serve their agenda at the expense of every other consideration.

“Mindfulness leads the way.” We have to catch ourselves in the act of turning away from our task of collaborating with the unconscious in undertaking the Hero’s Journey by mothering ourselves, birthing ourselves, overseeing ourselves, into becoming who we are.

We are what we need to do the work that is ours to do, but we have to be mindful to know it.

When we say what we have to say, we hear what we need to hear, and know what we need to know in order to do what needs to be done.

It takes being free of agendas, will, fear, desire, judgment and opinion to say what we have to say, to know what we know. We have to stand apart from our investment in our life, from our stake in having things go our way, in order to live the life that waits to be lived in collaboration with our Soul/Self within.

It helps to have a group, a community, of like-minded people who can remind us of what’s what, and what needs to be done about it. The importance of the group, of the community, is to declare to us, over and over: “I Ain’t ‘cha Momma!” And: “You are your own responsibility!” And: “You have to be doing your own work!”

The importance of the group, of the community, is to declare to us, again and again: “The Messiah is not the Messiah! You save yourself by listening to yourself!”

The importance of the group, of the community, is to tell us, again and again: “Get out of the way, and stop jamming the signals!” The signals are always coming up from our deep Self/Psyche/Soul, hoping we will be listening today.

We jam the signals by thinking constantly about what we want, and don’t want, and how to get it, or escape/avoid it.

All we know is what we like and don’t like, want and don’t want. That isn’t nearly enough. We have to know what our deep Self/Psyche/Soul knows—and incorporate it into our life.

Knowing is the ground of being. The source of doing. “Be still and know”—what’s what, and how things are, and what needs to be done about it. That is where it all begins

Knowing knows what it knows, and what it does not know. That’s knowing!

Seeing with “the third eye” sees what it sees, and what it does not see. That’s seeing!

The kind of knowing that knows, the kind of seeing that sees, stems from being present with what is present with us in its fullness, its allness.

Seeing into the heart of things is the foundation for action appropriate to the occasion. We act from seeing/knowing.

Action that flows from will, desire, fear, judgment, opinion cares not for what is needed, and serves only what is wanted.

Being present with what is present to us in its fullness, its allness, is being present without emotional attachment, without will, desire or fear—or judgment, or opinion!

To live without will, desire, fear, judgment or opinion is to be open to what is happening in a way that sees into the heart of things, knows what’s what, and what needs to be done about it—and what can be done about it—does what can be done, and lets that be that.

Our role is to understand how easily we drift away from the path, turn aside from the way, and wander into wastelands of illusion and deception.

We have to focus on our destiny, our calling, to be stewards of soul, and know that everything depends upon our being loyal, dedicated, and unwavering in our allegiance, faithfulness and fidelity to soul, guarding its interests and tending its concerns.

We have to devote ourselves to learning the language of soul, and coming to know soul.

For example, soul doesn’t care a thing about computer passwords. Passwords belong to a world Soul inhabits, but does not belong to. We may struggle to remember passwords, install software, and backup our computer, but these are not things of soul.

Soul cares about beauty, mystery, poetry, music and dancing.

Soul cares about symbol and metaphor, pathos and love.

Money and due dates are not soulful things. Soul cares more about sandlot football than Super Bowl games. And drama? Oh, please!

Soul is into beach walks and meditation, and yoga that doesn’t go off on what pants you wear.

Soul is all over babies, and anything that has life about it.

What’s trending and fashionable isn’t soulful.

Slow is soulful. Fast is not.

Thunder is soulful. Loud and noisy is not.

Horses are soulful when they are not wearing roses.

Houses are soulful when they are homes and not showcases.

Natural is soulful. Pretentious is not.

Profit, exploitation, wealth and privilege are their own rewards, but they are not soulful.

The list goes on. Pay attention! Make your own list of things that are soulful and things that are not.

We have to make a covenant with one another to move from soulless living to soulful living, and to do so consciously, mindfully, relentlessly, daily.

We are changing the thrust and direction of our life—living with a new purpose and a new orientation—living consciously in light of what is important, essential, to us, because we say so, because we know so.

As we do this, we will be living counter-culturally, and we will not be good for the economy. But, the culture and the economy are killing soul. This is evident by the symptomatic nature of life in the world around us—and it is up to us to get things moving back toward the unconscious source of life and being.

To do so, we have to consciously redefine the sacred for ourselves.

Sacred is soulful. We have to live lives that honor what we hold to be sacred.

Plastic is not sacred. Sports are not sacred. Fast and loud are not sacred. Are not soulful. We have to do less of these things.

Each of us has to make our own list of things that are soulful/sacred, and devote ourselves to the service of the things on our list.

Our lists don’t have to agree. We will transform the world if we live out of our own list of sacred, soulful things—consciously, mindfully, dependably, religiously!

We don’t have to compare lists, defend our list, explain our list, justify our list, ask if our list is sacred/soulful enough. We only have to make a list—and live in ways which reflect its central place in our life.

Make a list of sacred, soulful things, and live from it. Honor it. Devote yourself to it. Live with the list in mind. Live in its service.

We have to make the sacred real in our life, but it has to be what we say is sacred to us, not what someone else tells us is supposed to be sacred. We say so!

We have to live to identify the sacred, and make it holy unto us in ways that are apparent by the way we live our life.

We live to make what is holy, sacred, soulful to us apparent in our life.

Buy into this. Talk your friends into buying into it. You aren’t selling them what you say is sacred, you are selling them on what they say is sacred.

Books are on my sacred/soulful list. I read every day. Music is on my list. I listen to music every day.

Make your list! Tend your list!

Don’t hang out with people who can’t tell you what is sacred to them, or who are not serving it in their life.

If someone tells you something that is sacred to them, ask them how they serve it in their life, and how often they work it into their life.

Work what is sacred to you into your life often. Daily is not too often. See how many things are sacred to you, and how often you can serve them.

The world is dying for people who live in ways that serve and honor soul. They are seeds in the earth, yeast in the dough, lights in the darkness, the hope of the world.

The Stone of Life

Find a stone that attracts you. Claim it as a sacred (to you, anyway) object of meditation. You are the stone carrier, the stonemason, the stone. You activate the power of the stone through reflection and realization. Spend time with the stone on a regular basis, cultivating a ritual of recognition and reorientation, with the stone without connecting you with the stone within.

One stone to contain them all.

The Foundation Stone—What is important/meaningful to you? What did you do today that was meaningful? What did you do last week that was meaningful? Where are the meaningful places for you in each week? What do you do to incorporate meaningful times/experiences into each week? You have to live out of your connection with what is important to you, meaningful to you. Establish that connection, nurture it, nourish it, tend it with time and attention. You cannot live your life accidentally, mindlessly. You live your life in relation to what is meaningful to you. You have to intentionally, mindfully, place yourself in the service of what is meaningful to you throughout your life. Your foundation stone is the heart of what is most meaningful in your life—live grounded in it, mindful of it, every day!

The Cornerstone—“The stone the builders reject becomes the chief cornerstone.” What is rejected by the culture, and hence by the people of the culture is our personal, individual, connection with our Heart, Soul, Mind and Body. With the culture, it is all about the Head. In the culture, feeling is subservient to thinking. This is to reverse the proper order of things. In the natural world, thinking is subservient to feeling–and the invisible world is the foundation of the visible world. In the natural world, we feel, sense, what is right in a situation—what needs to be done there—and then think out how it is best to do it.  We feel, sense, where we want to go, and think of the best way to get there.  We have to work to establish, and maintain, right relationship with Heart, Soul, Mind and Body. We do that by thinking about our connection to these deeper, older, aspect of ourselves, and tending our relationship with them by opening ourselves to what we are feeling/sensing/intuiting, in the time and place of our living and reflecting on our experience with “more than words can say” (or thoughts can think). We have to practice regularly “getting a feel” for our situation, and sensing what needs to be done about it, and then thinking how best to do it.

The Boundary Stone—Your boundary stone is what makes you, you—what sets you apart, identifies you as unique, individual and irreplaceable. It marks where you start and everyone else stops. It establishes what is your business, your work, your perspective, your view point, your personality, your character, your standards, your values, your traits, your preferences, etc.–and not someone else’s. You are here to live your own life–to be who you are. Carl Jung said, “You are who you always have been, and who you will be.” Let the stone remind you of you, connect you with you, and call you to live out of who you are and what you have to offer in each situation as it unfolds before you.

The Grave Stone—We only have a certain amount of time in which to bring ourselves forth in meeting our life, and expressing the gift, art, genius that are ours to present to the world through the way we live in it. Because we die, the life we live in service to The Stone of Life, is essential and irreplaceable. The stone is a symbol of the sacred nature of our life—of ourselves.  Therefore, we must not die before our time. Our commitment is to The Stone of Life. We must not hurry the time of our dying, but live our life in full service to the stone that we hold, and to the stone that we are.

You are the stone carrier, the stonemason, the stone. Live in ways that honor this truth and make it so.

The Foundation of Good Religion

The foundation of all good religion,
world-wide
(Universal, should there prove
to be religions in other parts
of the universe)
is expressed in the four primary symbols
of Christianity–
devoid of the theology surrounding them:
Bread, Wine, Water, Cross.
The Water is the amniotic fluid of birth.
Every birth is birth by “water (and blood) and spirit,”
with the “spirit” being the spirit of life and being.
We are all united by the water of birth
and the spirit of life.
We are all alive,
but we have no idea what that means,
where life comes from
and where it goes.
We are awash in mystery from the first–
the foundational fact of good religion.
The Bread reminds us that the bread of affliction
is the bread of life.
The Wine declares that the cup of suffering
is the cup of salvation.
And the Cross does not represent
a vehicle of execution,
but the burden of growing up
and bearing the opposites,
the contradictions
and polarities of our life–
and it encompasses all of the initiation rites,
and rites of passage,
of the species,
as well as evidencing
the primary place
that trials and ordeals
hold in the life of all people,
serving everyone as the
impetus for growth and maturation,
and enabling us to discover
the hero who resides unknown within.
These symbols unite us all.
Everyone knows out of
our own experience
the validity of each one
and their place in our life.
They are the ground on which we stand,
the source from which we proceed
to form,
shape,
and define the life we are living.
And we need no theology
to tell us something we already know
by having lived it.

The New Religion

The new religion will connect you with the life that is yours to live, and help you live it.

The new religion has no interest in separating you from your money, or getting you to sing in its choirs, or teach its Sunday schools, or recruit people to the new religion.

The new religion is not going to tell you to smile because God loves you, or tell you that it loves you just as you are.

The new religion will tell you it needs you to join it in the work of transforming the culture and the world for the sake of both.

The new religion will tell you that we are here to make ourselves more like we ought to be than we are, and, in so doing, make the culture and the world more like they ought to be than they are.

The new religion will tell you that being more like we ought to be than we are means living in sync with ourselves, and in accord with our life—living at one with who, and where, we are.

The new religion understands that we need a culture that connects us with ourselves, and enables us to live in accord with our life—to be at one with who, and where, we are.

The new religion understands that it all has to work together: religion, culture, world, to produce individuals who can be true to themselves, and live the life that fits them.

The new religion will tell you that we all have a life that fits us the way our shoes fit us, or our dentures.

The new religion will help us find the life that fits us, and help us live it, in being, and becoming, who we are within the context and circumstances of our life.

The new religion will tell us we cannot have what we want without changing what we want. Our life goals have to be commensurate with our life.

The new religion will put itself between the life we are living, and the life that is ours to live, and help us live with a foot in each world—this is called walking two paths at the same time.

The new religion will help you find a new collection of symbols, metaphors and rituals to ground you in the sacred, and center you in your life—the life that is your life to live.

The new religion will tell you that you can’t be responsible for other people’s craziness. Or for their moods. Or for their behavior. You can only be responsible for yourself, and live in ways appropriate to the occasion in relationship with others, and let them do with it what they will.

The new religion will require you to decide for yourself what is important in each situation as it arises, and live there in ways that honor and reflect that.

The new religion will require you to recognize what is the central, highest/deepest, value in your life, and to live in ways which honor and reflect it.

One of the tenets of the new religion is: No Lip Service Allowed! We do not say something is true for us that is not true for us.

Another of the tenets of the new religion is: No Talk! Do! We do not talk religion in the new religion. We live it. Everything we say is so has to be validated in the way we live our life.

In the new religion, we can’t say, “We don’t hate gay people or black people,” when the gay people and black people can’t tell the difference. We live in ways that make plain how we feel, where we stand.

There is no Bible, as such, in the new religion, but people read the hallowed literature of all ages–prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction–led to what resonates with them by what resonates with them, reflecting on their experience and the experience of others, in forming new realizations and growing in their understanding of themselves and all things.

In the new religion, we do not talk about what we believe. We talk about what we have experienced, and about what we are doing in response to what we have experienced, and about what we need to do in further response to it.

In the new religion, there is no theology, and no doctrine. We believe in our life, in our work, in our gifts, in what needs us to do it, and in doing it.

In the new religion, we believe in seeing, hearing, and understanding. We believe in silence. In inquiry and imagination. In play and laughter.

In the new religion, we believe in health and wholeness. In bearing the pain of our contradictions, and integrating our polarities.

In the new religion, we believe in reconciling our conflicts, and living on the boundary between yin and yang.

The new religion will demand that we honor our bodies, and listen to them, giving them things they need, and not giving them things they don’t need.

The new religion will not be concerned with abundant life for all eternity, but with abundant life for here and now.

Symbols of Transformation

Carl Jung wrote a hefty book entitled “Symbols of Transformation,” and I like the title so much, I’m using it here. I trust that Dr. Jung would be kind in his response to my pilfering his term.

Take all of the symbols of the Christian Church—the Bible, the Promised Land, the Manger, the Cross, the Empty Tomb, the Bread and Wine of Communion, the Water of Baptism, and all of the rest—and put them on, say, the Communion Table. Now, rake them all onto the floor. Our task is to put them back on the table reclaimed, reconsidered, reimagined, reinterpreted, reconstructed—and quite alive and well.

We could start anywhere, but to give you a sense of the nature of the work before us, let’s start with the Virgin Mary and the Manger on Christmas Morning. This isn’t going to go very well if you don’t play your part. You have to understand your role in the whole show if there is going to be a show—which there hasn’t been in over two thousand years, when the high priests and politicians of the early church took the people out of the show entirely, and told them that they could only come as far as the Communion Rail, and must never consider approaching the Host on the Altar or any of the Holy of Holies that were the divine prerogative of those charged with their oversight and supervision, and the salvation of the people.

And that, of course, was just fine with the people. They were off the hook, free to be penitent, forgiven and redeemed, with nothing asked of them but an occasional offering, a few Hail Mary’s and an Our Father here and there. Oh, they had to believe what they were told to believe, and take everything on faith with no questions asked, but that was no problem. Theirs was an easy glide to life everlasting. Never mind that religion devolved into the “empty bell,” the “clanging cymbal,” the Apostle Paul spoke of—and the “tale told by an idiot—full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” of Shakespeare.

All of the symbols of the Church became, in a twinkling, nothing more than the presiding officials said they were. All were defined and explained by the doctrines and dogmas, and what wasn’t understood, or understandable, was “taken on faith.” And that was that. We had the catechisms to keep us warm.

Our hearts had nowhere to go and nothing to do. Religion was all in the head. The heart was an empty region. A wasteland of the soul. Meaning was nowhere around. We could go to church, but our hearts weren’t in it. Our soul was not to be found. We were the soulless ones, going to hear someone talk about saving our soul. How about just finding it for starters? But we didn’t—we don’t—know where to start looking. And the spokespersons for the Church couldn’t/can’t tell us because they were/are as soulless as we were/are.

A good place to start is with those old symbols of the Church. They contain all we will ever need. But. We have to reclaim them. Reconsider them. Re-imagine them. Reinterpret them. Reconstruct them. And here’s the worst part. We have to do the work ourselves. There are no priests to do it for us. They will be busy doing their own work. Saving themselves.

We all have to save ourselves. “Work out your own salvation,” says Paul to the Philippians (2:12-13), “with fear and trembling—for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Working out our own salvation comes down to working out our own life. It comes down to understanding that it is all up to us—and we can’t do it alone. But we make the first move. It is crucial that we understand that we have to make the first move.

When we move toward our life, our life moves toward us. When we start walking, the path opens before us. When we stop waiting for someone else to tell us what to do to be saved, to be alive (which is the same thing)—and see for ourselves what is happening, and what is called for, and what needs to be done about it, and do it, there you are. Doors open where, as Joseph Campbell would say, we didn’t know there would be doors, and the angels minister unto us, and the Inner Guides show us the way—where only a moment before, there was no way.

I’m going to begin with the symbols of the Christian Church—but it could be with the symbols of any church, of any religion. All religion starts out as good religion, as the touchstone between human beings and numinous reality that can be felt, sensed, intuited, known, but not understood, explained, defined, said or told. But then religion slips over into bad religion, and starts explaining, defining, saying and telling. Doctrine and theology become stand-ins, surrogates, for that to which they refer, and it all goes to hell rather quickly.

Our place is to turn that tide by reclaiming, reconsidering, re-imagining, reinterpreting and reconstructing the symbols that connect us, even yet, with the divine. Come, then, let us play together with them, and in playing, call back our soul from its self-imposed exile in the hinterlands, which it reckoned was better than dying a slow death at our hands, ignored and cast off as it was from our life. At-one with soul, playfully and compassionately, we take up the transformation of the world!

But, first things first: The Virgin Mary, the Manger, and the Bebe Jesus. You know the story, the old-old story. It’s time for a re-write.

Look closely at your life. Where is the Manger there? Where is your life telling you there is no room in it for your life? You just said, “Huh?” didn’t you? But, you also know exactly what I mean, don’t you?

You have a life that you aren’t living, and you know it. You may not think about it, but, when you do think about it, you know there is more to you than meets the eye—more to you than you know, more than anyone knows. And you wonder, don’t you, who you might have been, what you might have done with your life, if… If what? If your life hadn’t interfered? If you hadn’t gotten married? Had children? Lost the baby? Gotten the divorce? Been run over by the 10,000 things?

Look at it like this: There is the life you are living, and there is the life that is yours to live—even yet.

And there is the Christ. The Anointed One. Anointed for what? Anointed by God to live the life that was his to live. “For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Break! Break! We have to take a break here and talk about God. “God,” the word, the term, is another symbol that goes on the Communion Table, and onto the floor. When Carl Jung hung the phrase from the Delphic Oracle on the lentil of his house, “Invoked, or not invoked, the God is present,” that word “God” did not mean, or imply, “The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, and of Jesus Christ His Only Son Our Lord.” And we have to do the work of cleansing the word “God” from its accumulated inferences, assumptions and references that have built up over the past two thousand years and counting.

“God” is a symbol for the Numen, the ineffable, the un-say-able ground and essence of awe and wonder at the heart of experiences that transcend normal, apparent, reality and transport us into the realm of mystery and grace. People still go there, but we all used to live there–in the ever-present presence of more than words can say.

The symbol, the name “God,” meant something in those days. “God” conjured up actual experiences with the divine holiness at the heart of life and being. Nowadays, “God” means “The Man Upstairs.” That’s ridiculous. There is no man. There are no stairs. And everybody knows it, and no one knows God-As-The-Mystery-The-Wonder-Guiding-Directing-Infusing-Our-Life-And-Our-World-With-Meaning-Purpose-And-Vitality-Beyond-Imagining-And-Certainly-Beyond-Saying.

That’s a problem. The problem. The problem of existence. We live, but we do not know why we live. We do not know for what we live. We spend our life looking for something to live for–for some reason to be here, now. That was not a problem with the Ancient Ones. God as Mystery and Wonder was a steady presence, a constant companion, ordering their world and their life. That is the God who is God!

Any God who can be defined (“God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable,  in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth”) is not God, but an idea, a concept, a definition.

The Numen cannot be defined, said, told, explained, comprehended, understood… The Ineffable is beyond words. “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” And so, I will use the term “Numen” in place of the word “God,” because “God” has been co-opted, shanghaied and transformed into a definition–and no symbol can be defined, because its meaning is always more than words can say, and you have to know what a symbol means before you can understand what I’m talking about when I use the word that stands for the symbol.

And you can only know what the Numen is by having a numinous experience, an encounter with sacred wonder, mystery and awe.

Break’s over. Back to the matter at hand.

Jesus was the Christ, anointed by the Numen to live the life that was his to live. You are the Christ, anointed by the Numen to live the life that is yours, even now, to live. “For it is the Numen who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for its good pleasure.”

Just as “The Numen was at work in Christ, reconciling the world to itself,” so the Numen is at work in you to redeem, reconcile, make whole and make well. If you are going to take all that other stuff on faith, why not take this on faith—and live as though it is so?

Your place is to say “Yes!”—both to the life you are living and to the life that is yours to live–the life you were cut out to live before you were born–the life that no one but you can live–that life that is waiting on you to live it within the life you are living.

This is called walking two paths at the same time. How do you do that? You have to work it out. “You have to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” No one can do it for you. It’s all up to you. Well, not all of it. Just the first step. You have to take the first step toward, well, toward YOU!

Toward your life—both of them: The one you are living and the one that is yours to live. You have to get them together, and live both of them.

Let’s back up. Where is the life you are living being inhospitable to the life that is yours to live? Where is the life you are living telling you there is no room in the inn? That there is no place for you to birth the Christ (Yourself) into the life you are living—no room for you to begin living the life that is your life to live, the life you are called to live, the life you were born to live, the life no one but you can live in the life you are living? It’s impossible! It’s out of the question! Forget it! You cannot do it—because there is no place, no time, no money, no room?

Where are you being tempted to forget your other life (Your real life) again? To tell your soul to find its way back to the hinterlands because you don’t have room in your life for the life that is your life to live? That’s where the Manger is to be found in your life, right here, right now, today. “Away in the manger, no crib for his bed…” That’s you the song is about. And you, and you, and you… and me.

We have been singing our song all these years thinking it is about Jesus. And now, we hear that Jesus is about us—about you and about me. Jesus is us. We are Jesus. Bringing forth the Christ within us. We are the Virgin Mary and we are the Bebe Jesus in the manger. Our Virgin Mary side is in labor striving to birth our Christ side into our life which wants nothing to do with either side.

Where is your life striving to come forth, and finding nothing in the way of encouragement and cooperation? Where are you blocking the birth of your own Christ? Where is your King Herod side coming after your Bebe Jesus side? Whose side are you on?

This is the approach to take with all of the stories of the Bible, and all of the symbols of the Church. Another example: The Conquest of the Promised Land.

Joseph Campbell said, talking about the stories in Deuteronomy regarding the Conquest: “Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife—except abroad. Then you should put all males to the sword, and the women you shall take as booty to yourself.” (The Power of Myth (p. 215). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition). He goes on to say, “The Hebrews were absolutely ruthless with respect to their neighbors.”

You can read about the Conquest of Canaan in Deuteronomy, chapter 7 and following, but there is a succinct summation in verse 16: “And you shall destroy all the peoples whom the Lord your God delivers over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them.” What do we do with this? As with the Manger, so with the Land of Promise.

Your Canaanite side stands before your Joshua side—and Joshua can have no pity.

Toward the end of my career, I preached an object lesson sermon each Easter Sunday. The object was a pottery egg, about seven inches high and four inches in diameter. But, not your typical Easter Egg. The potter had opened up a portion of the egg, from which protruded a curled, scaly dragon tail, which was joined by a clawed rear foot breaking out of the egg.

My point was this: “You think in terms of Happy Easter with it’s brightly colored hard-boiled eggs, and baby chicks, and soft, white, bunnies. That’s a happy fantasy. Here’s a real Easter Egg for you—and if you are smart, you will have nothing to do with it. When this baby hatches, it will eat you alive!”

I continued, “All this talk about New Birth doesn’t mention the Death Of All That Is Old. Well. Nothing comes without something going. Your New Life In Christ will eat your old life alive. That is what Easter is all about. Jesus died on the cross, and now it is your turn. Do you have what it takes to pick this egg up off the fresh cut grass of spring and carry it home with you? Whether you do or not, don’t kid yourself about ‘Happy Easter’! Jesus comes out of the Empty Tomb like Joshua entering the land of Canaan. He’s going to sack, pillage and destroy everything you knew and loved. Or, do you think Paul was only joking when he said, ‘I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!’ (Galatians 2:20)?”

And do not think here in terms of Christ and you—think in terms of YOU and you. You are the Christ, remember? You are the Bebe Jesus being born in you and through you into this present moment in time, which is inhospitable and un-receptive—and your Bebe Jesus side has to face up to your Herod side, and, like Joshua entering Canaan, show Herod a thing or two.

This is the struggle that follows you throughout your life. Every Hero’s Journey follows this exact path, the middle way between mutually exclusive contradictions: Jesus and Herod, Joshua and Canaan, you and YOU.

And you, like all of the heroes before you, have to work it out. You have to come to terms with how things are and how things also are. You have to make your peace with being torn asunder—and take up the work of reconciliation and integration, healing and restoring, breaking down the dividing wall and making peace—in an “I believe, help my unbelief!” kind of way.

And so it goes with every other sacred symbol of every religion that has ever been. But you have to do the work of making it so.

The Bread and Wine of Communion? Stop thinking about the body and blood of Jesus.

The Bread of Affliction is the Bread of Life. The Cup of Salvation is the Cup of Suffering. Understand how this is so—how this fundamental spiritual truth that is true across the ages, in every time and place throughout time—plays itself out, over and over, in your life.

And so on with all of the symbols that are still capable of being living symbols to eyes that see, ears that hear and hearts that understand.

The Fight for Life

We fight to free ourselves

from the presumptions, assumptions, inferences, conjectures, speculations, suppositions, deductions, judgments, opinions and conclusions

that form our perspective,

force us to live in a world we generate from within,

and prevent us from seeing things as they are.

Compassionate, mindful, awareness

transforms everything it perceives.

May we all live to be so free!

The Peace of God

There is no political solution to the religious problem—there is no solution at all. This was Jesus’ realization in the wilderness and in Gethsemane: There is no solution.

The religious problem is the problem of religion, of all religions. It is the problem of seeing, hearing and understanding. It is the problem of “everyone just getting along.”

If anything is clear from 5,000 years of recorded history, it is that we cannot get along. We cannot get along without imposing our rules on them—without making them like us. This is the problem. They do not take well to us and our rules. They take exception, raise objections, and work ceaselessly to find ways of turning the tables and imposing their rules on us.

As a species, we have tired everything we could imagine to work it out. We have tried buying them off, wiping them out, and sealing them off. We have also tried sealing ourselves off. Yet, they would not go away. They were always still there, refusing to disappear, looking always for ways of getting the upper hand and disappearing us.

How are we all going to solve the religious problem of seeing, hearing, understanding—and agreeing among all of us that the way we all see, etc. is The Way to see, etc. for everyone everywhere, over time and space?

How are we all going to get our hearts to sing as one heart? Same page, same verse, same tune? That is the religious problem, for which there is no solution.

This was Jesus’ realization in the wilderness and in Gethsemane. It wasn’t Satan who appeared in the wilderness, offering the political solution (“You can conquer all the kingdoms of the world and compel them to do as you say!”), the economic solution (“You can turn stones into bread and water into wine and give them all of the physical necessities and pleasures of life, and bribe them into doing your bidding.”), and the religious solution (“You can throw yourself off the temple and the angels will bear you up. You can dazzle them with miracles and they will rush to do your will.”). Jesus was quite capable of imagining these scenario’s himself. And of seeing the emptiness of each one.

The trouble with all of these “solutions” is that there would be no oneness of heart among the people, no common bonds, no good faith relationship within each individual, and among all individuals within the global community. It would be a sham existence, a loss of soul world-wide, as people gave themselves up for political expediency, economic well-being, religious appearances. Jesus could separate the people from their hearts, perhaps, by issuing commands and decrees, or buying them out, or hypnotizing them with the aura of his glory, but he could not give them one heart, one soul, one mind. They would have to come to that on their own—just as Jesus had to come to it on his own.

Jesus had no solutions to offer. He did not have a political alternative to, or a way out of, the situation with Roman occupation. His best recommendation was to “Go the second mile, turn the other cheek, love your enemies, and eat what is set before you.” His advice did not sit well with John the Baptist, who demanded to know, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we wait for another?”

Jesus’ “solution” was “revolution,” but revolution understood differently from the way it was thought of in his day—or any day. Jesus’ way of revolution was the way of accommodation-without-surrender to the oppressive rule of Rome. He recommended being clear about who we are, and what is of true value, and living in light of that in each situation as it arises—letting the outcome be the outcome. He went to his death as a way of demonstrating to his followers the extent to which they would be expected to live aligned with that which is of true value in each situation as it arises, and demonstrating the consequences they would be asked to face, the price they would have to pay. His disciples missed the point, seeing, instead, his death as being a substitute for their own, and not a precursor of it.

Christianity, as Jesus would have practiced it, is not about killing anyone. It is about dying. Dying to all that is important to us, and living to all that should be important to us. It is about serving the values that make us human. Yet, here is the test: Who decides what is to be done? We do! And, how good is the good we call good? How valuable are the values we recognize as valuable? Who is to say? We are! And there could be a bit of conflict of interest at work in all of our estimations!

Joseph Campbell, in The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, said, “A Hindu text says, ‘A dangerous path is this, like the edge of a razor.”

Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate…for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” And, “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and those who find it are many.”

The spiritual journey is along a path that is like searching for Ariadne’s Thread to lead us through the maze, in living the life that is our life to live within the life we are living.

We live between coming to know what we know—that is, knowing what our unconscious knows, knowing what we know unconsciously and intuit with our conscious mind—and thinking we know what we are doing. And kidding ourselves is what we do best! But, what are we to do? The Dalai Lama said, “The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.” Rumi said, “If you are not here with us in good faith, you are doing terrible damage.” And good faith begins with ourselves. We have to keep good faith with ourselves, and know what we know, including when we are kidding ourselves and when we are resonating with the deep truth of our own heart and soul.

In Luke 6:1-5 Jesus is accosted by Pharisees for allowing his disciples to pluck and eat grain on the Sabbath, which Jesus justifies with a reference to David entering the Temple and taking consecrated bread to feed his men. Codex Bezae offers this addition to the text: The same day, seeing someone working on the Sabbath, he said to him, ‘Man, if indeed you know what you are doing, then you are blessed. But, if you do not know, then you are accursed and a transgressor of the Law.’ And his prayer on the cross was, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Do we know what we are doing, or do we only think we know? How do we know? Yet, we have to act when the time for acting is upon us. To refuse to act because we are afraid we don’t know what we are doing is to risk the reprimand delivered to the servant who buried his talent because he didn’t want to make a mistake in investing it. No matter what we do, we take a chance on being “damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

“What a dangerous path this is, like the edge of a razor!”

There is no solution to working it out, no recipe for doing it. We cannot disappear the problem, erase the tension, dichotomy, polarity between knowing and not-knowing, between what is good and not-good. What is good is also not-good from some point of view, and what is not-good is good from some point of view. We live within the animosity of opposites! And make our peace with our ambivalence and contradictions the best way we can.

The Dalai Lama is a fitting example of what I’m talking about. The Prince of Peace and Compassion in our contemporary world, the Dalai Lama lives out the theme of nonviolence and loving-kindness throughout each day, in all times and places. And yet, and yet… He is able to carry out his mission and message within the protection of a country with a nuclear arsenal—and his personal bodyguards carry automatic weapons. Make sense of that if you can!

The way I make sense of it is to say this is the dichotomy that is at the heart of all that we do. This is where we live. This is the reality of our life. What is true is countered and contradicted by what is also true. And there is no solution! No escape. No freedom from the tension, the dialectic, of contrary truths. “What a dangerous path this is! Like the edge of a razor!” And we cannot walk it alone.

We can hope to find our way along this path only on the strength of our connection with a community of the right kind of people—a community of people who see, hear and understand, of people who are cognizant of the rifts and divisions—the ambivalence and contradictions—at work within the heart of each individual within the community, and are no strangers to the difficulty of the task of discernment and living as those who are transparent to themselves.

A community of the right kind of people, which I refer to as a “Community of Innocence” because it has nothing at stake in its members, but exists solely to help those who belong to it with living their life—the life that is theirs to live, that only they can live, would enable us to:

Regain our balance, recover our equilibrium, restore our sense of direction and our connection with the Foundation Stone at the center of our heart and soul;

Realize and remember what is of central importance and of supreme value to us, and vital to our experience of life and being: What brings us to life and imbues our life with meaning and purpose, without which our life is an empty shell;

Enable us to us to remain mindful of our core—and to live out of it—in responding to the needs of the moment in every moment;

Remind us to be cognizant of the principles of “leverage,” and “working distance,” in the work to influence each situation as it arises toward the good that is possible in that situation, so that we lay aside our agenda (Our belief—in what should happen, for instance—our doctrine—“This is the way things are, and this is the way things should be!”—our theology—all the rationale supporting our position—our ideology—the cultural or religious values which we espouse and serve in working to make things like we think they should be), in order to see what is happening in the situation, and what needs to happen there for the good of that situation, and do what needs to be done out of the gifts and perspective we bring to the situation;

Listen to us as we talk about our experience in ways that enable us to hear what we are saying, and thereby experience our experience and reflect on it: What is happening in our life, what we are doing about it, how we feel about it, what is working and what is not working, what are the questions that beg to be asked, what is crying out to be said, what we need to explore and examine, what new realizations do our reflections lead to, etc.;

Invite us to experience and clarify our conflicts, contradictions and polarities: reconciling what can be reconciled, integrating what can be integrated, honoring and respecting the poles that require us to walk two paths at the same time, and bearing the pain of the tension between mutually exclusive and equally valid opposites;

Call us to remember who we are and what we are about—to know what we know, and practice our practice, in all times and places, no matter what: See what we look at. Feel what we feel. Know what we know. Listen to what we are saying. Do what we can do about what needs to be done. And let the outcome be the outcome;

And, go over it all each time we meet—because the world is geared to making us forget in the next moment everything we are clear about in this moment—snapping us into reacting without reflecting, without knowing, and without being who we are, where we are, when we are, however we are, no matter what.

The happy fantasy is to walk with impunity and immunity through the world. It ain’t gonna happen. The next best thing is to come to terms with the fact that “It ain’t gonna happen,” square ourselves up with it, and step forth into each situation as it arises, confident in our ability to handle whatever we find there. This is the magical mindset that allows us to live untouched by the worst the world can do with a “This, too. This, too. Now what?” frame of mind.

We have to find our way back to our heart. This is the Hero’s Journey—the path from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane—whose recurring theme is our own death and resurrection. The journey requires that we die to our idea of how our life is to be, and live out of our heart’s idea of how we should be. All of Christian Doctrine fits in here:

“Those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life (in the service of their heart) will find it.”

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ (that is, the heart’s true drift and direction) who lives in me.”

“I must decrease and he (That is ‘Heart’) must increase.”

In 1924, William Alexander Percy captured beautifully the essence of this struggle from death to life with his poem/hymn, “They Cast Their Nets in Galilee”:

They cast their nets in Galilee,

Just off the hills of brown,

Such happy, simple, fisherfolk,

Before the Lord came down.

Contented, peaceful, fishermen

Before they ever knew,

The peace of God that filled their hearts

Brimful—and broke them, too.

Young John, who trimmed the flapping sail,

Homeless, in Patmos, died.

Peter, who hauled the teeming net,

Head-down, was crucified.

The peace of God, it is no peace,

But strife closed in the sod,

Yet, children, pray for but one thing:

The marvelous peace of God!

The idea here of the peace of God being “strife closed in the sod” takes us back to the story of Adam being formed from the earth (of “the sod”), and that the “strife,” the struggle, the contention from the first is between our idea of our life and God’s, or our heart’s, idea of our life, and whose idea will be expressed in the life we live. The peace of God is the working out of that tension, that dichotomy, that polarity regarding how we will live our life over the full course of our life. There is no peace like the peace of being at one with ourselves, our heart, and the life we are living. May it become so for us all!