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!

The Worst Thing About the Bible

The worst thing about the Bible is that it ends. The Bible can’t end! There is no stopping! The Bible is expanded by every life in every age. We are writing the Bible even now! Revelation continues! Revelation is ongoing! The Truth is always breaking in upon us anew! We are always saying, “Now, I see! Now, I get it!” Going, “Eureka!” and dancing naked in the streets.

The worst thing about the Bible is the canon is closed. You can’t close the canon! Truth evolves, unfolds, comes forth in time, over time, through time, with experience gained from living our life. Truth is experience with life over time.

Truth is delivered unto us via our experience with the here and now of our existence. It is not some statement, some formula, some doctrine concocted through divine revelation (Though all realizations of truth come to us as divine revelations breaking into our world from some other world, though the other world is within us, not outside of us), and passed on through the centuries to the present moment.

However, it is also the nature of truth that we recognize the truth of our experience reflected in the experience of those who have gone before us. So, the Bible, and the Tao te Ching, and the I Ching, and the Bhagavad-Gita, etc., speak to us today—but to only those of us who have experienced the truth of these sources in the daily events, trials and ordeals, of our own lives. Apart from our experience, the profound wisdom of others is only talk, talk, talk. We hear what they are saying through the ears of our own experience. The truth recycles in each age—but has to be experienced anew in every age.

Everyone in every age has to learn to hit a curve ball. You can’t learn that from some book of doctrine. You can’t learn anything you need to know from a book of doctrine—except that what you need to know is not in there, and that it is only after you know what you need to know that you can connect here-and-there with what you find there.

The Bible is a wonderfully shameless compilation of ways to do it, and ways to not do it: “This is what they did, and this is what happened. Now, and in every age, “the old has passed away and, behold, the new has come.” And each age has to figure out how to hit a curve ball in that age—or to throw one. How many ways are there to throw a curve ball? Or to hit one? We all have to figure it out for ourselves. And we can’t tell anyone how we do it. Hitting a curve ball is one of the great mysteries of every age.

Children have to figure out how to do it for themselves. Parents can’t tell them how to do it. Children are facing situations and circumstances their parents never faced. Each age comes up against things no other age has ever come up against. The experience of the species is good only for encouraging us to step into the unknown in the knowledge, and with the assurance, that it has been done by every age before us, and we are still here. If they did it, we can do it. They had what it takes, and we have everything they had. So, bring the day on! We will figure it out as we go.

We are on our own with only the stories of how things have been done in the past to guide us. And, we need access, over the full course of our life, to ALL of the stories in All of the traditions in order to weigh one against the others and decide for ourselves what to do here and now in the time and place of our living.

When the canon was closed, it was as though the Authorities (Those who know best and must be pleased) of that age said, “This is all you need to know.” And they altered some of the stories to better reflect what they though we should know, and they omitted other stories so as to not dilute the truth.

The truth cannot be diluted! It can only be expanded, enlarged, deepened and broadened by the additional stories of each new age. The stories in the Bible, and all the ones in all the other traditions and ages, expand, enlarge, deepen and broaden all the other stories—and the additional stories of each new age—through contradiction and dissonance. The contradictions and the dissonance within, between, and among the stories in the Bible, and out of it, are the cracks where the light of new realization—new revelation—breaks in.

Of Roles, Wants and Values

We have to consciously bear the pain of the contradiction between the requirements of the life we are living and the requirements of the life that is ours to live.

We are born into a certain context. The time and place of our birth—the family, the society, and the culture we are born into—the intellectual and financial resources that are ours to access and utilize—place restraint upon us, and lay out opportunity before us, and we are, to a large extent, who our context tells us—requires us—to be.

Not only that, but also there is something necessary and essential about remaining as we are, and working with it—and allowing it to work its magic on us—in bringing us forth, growing us up, and eliciting the qualities of character that lie latent within us, awaiting external circumstances to stir them to life, and call them out. The Biblical injunction to “remain in the state wherein you were called,” and the old saw, “Bloom where you are planted,” speak to this point. Our role in our life is not without its place in the work to bring us more fully to life. So, let the teachers teach, and the nurses nurse, and the doctors doctor, and the cab drivers drive… And let the roles we play play their part in the production of ourselves in the life that is our life to live!

We have to step out into the life we are living—unfolding, emerging, there into the life that is ours to live. For, in addition to our context and our role, we also have a spirit, a soul, a heart and mind that are unique to us. We have gifts, proclivities, perspectives, interests, talents and abilities—the combination of which makes us unlike anyone who has ever been born, or will be. We are more than our family, society and culture (or even ourselves) expect us to be, or imagine that we can be.

We live out our life between who we are and who we also are—between who we are expected to be and who we have within us to be. And, we have to work it out.

Working it out is the task of life. Walking two paths at the same time, living in two worlds in a way that allows each world to play off the other, to bless and grace the other, so that together they make possible more than either could ever be without the other.

Joseph Campbell said (In The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers) that we have to live in two worlds—the inner world and the outer world—in such a way that one compliments the other, and is just what the other needs to be itself, complete and whole in its own right. He said we are born into the culture and society and family we are born into, and have to honor the terms that greet us upon arrival. But, he said, we must not allow this world to dictate to us how we should live. We have to follow our own heart, which may do violence to the structures of family and culture. Indeed, it’s the opposition that pulls us forth, enabling us to define ourselves over against the definition that is handed to us.

We shape who we are by knowing who we are not, by knowing what does not resonate with us, and by seeking our own family, society and culture, which may be quite different from the one we were born into. We may have to “leave our parent’s house,” and find our own way in the world—clarifying our values and discovering what is meaningful to us along the way.

Campbell speaks often of the central place of a clear system of values in living so as to bring forth the life that is ours to live within the life we are living. He said that “the commonality of themes in world myths, (pointed) to a constant requirement in the human psyche for centering in terms of deep principles.”

Those “deep principles,” are the stuff of literature and spiritual writings through the ages and religions of humanity. All the themes are found there: Guilt and Redemption, Death and Resurrection, Sin and Forgiveness, Lost and Found, Bondage and Freedom, Truth and Falsehood, Attachment and Loss, Suffering and Salvation, to mention a few. Campbell noted the shift of attention away from “the literature of the spirit,” and the wisdom of the ages, to the information technologies that create the world we live in this moment of our living—without reference to, or regard for, the worlds that may have preceded this one at this very time of our life. But, he said, humanity does not come from the computer, “but from the heart.”

Campbell said, “The one thing that turns the human beast of prey into a valid human being is compassion. Just living with one’s heart open to others in compassion is a way wide open to all. The thing to do is to live in your period of history as a human being, holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system’s impersonal claims upon you. Follow your feelings, trust your feelings! Are you going to be a person of heart and humanity—because that is where the life is, from the heart—or are you going to do whatever seems to be required of you?” (The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers)

We stand between the roles we are asked, no, required, to play, and the values that are worthy of us, and settle for what Adam and Eve settled for, wanting this, and wanting that, and wanting that over there: “So when they saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,” they picked the fruit and had their fill (or words to that effect). Only to discover we can never get enough of that which cannot satisfy.

Seeking satisfaction, we chase after what we want, from shiny beads, to silver mirrors, to oceans filled with treasure islands—running from one thing we want to another all our life long, looking for, for—what was it now that we are looking for? We don’t know. We never stop long enough to name it. “Fortune and glory”? Maybe that’s it. We know only that we don’t have it, and we want it, and we can’t pause to talk about it, because we might miss it if we do, so off we go, to the pony with the braided tail and the golden saddle, and the house on the hill with the grand piano we cannot play, and the sailboat in the harbor we don’t have time to sail…

Children are asked by adults, “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” Like wanting knows something. What does wanting know? Only what looks enticing. Yet, it guides our boat on its path through the sea, ricocheting from one wonderful nothing to another, until we run out of fuel and drift in despair for having lived all our life long, and never once found anything worth living for.

We can want what we do not value—what has no value. This is a problem. How do we find our way from wanting every pretty thing to the central ground of that which is both valuable and meaningful? This is the quest of the spiritual journey.

The full scope of that journey is the distance from living in the service of what we want to living in the service of values that are valuable. This is the meaning tucked away in the old prayer, “Thy will, not mine, be done”—and the meaning of Jesus’ words: “Whoever seeks to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life in the service of that which is greater, and wilder, and deeper, and more outlandish and absurd than anything they are capable of wanting, or imagining, or doing, will save it” (Or words to that effect).

We are left with laying wanting aside, and taking up the work of valuing the values that are truly valuable—and at the heart of life and being in all religions worthy of the title: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-discipline, compassion, truth, honesty, dependability, dedication, loyalty, grace, justice, good faith, respect and civility…

Aligning ourselves with—and living to express, exhibit, and make concrete—the values that have always been honored as valuable, puts us on the path the saints and bodhisattvas have traveled before us. And, it has nothing to do with what we want, but with what is wanted of us, with what is asked of us—and it would be a lasting wrong to turn away from that path in the service of some attractive nothing.

Discernment and the Community of Innocence

Discernment is at the heart of all good religion, and all good science. It is at the heart of life itself. Anthony Stevens and John Price say, in their book, Evolutionary Psychiatry, that the Platonic meaning of the word “science” is “the discovery of things as they really are.” Jesus said, among other things that are equally relevant, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Science and religion are about finding, and aligning ourselves with, things as they are.

Discernment has always ranked high with Quakers, many of whom still meet together in silence in Meeting Houses, not churches, to listen together, and discern the leading, or the leanings, of the spirit at work in their midst. One can request an audience with a Discernment Committee when standing before one’s future, with a marriage at stake, perhaps, or a job, or a move across the country or an ocean.

We can learn some things from Quakers, and it wouldn’t hurt to have an association with them when it comes to finding our way in the world. That’s finding Our Way in the world, which is not to be confused with just any way, or anyone else’s way. It is the Way that is uniquely, individually, personally our own, even though, as it sometimes turns out, we don’t want to have anything to do with it.

What we want doesn’t have anything to do with it—to do with anything. What we want is the most irrelevant of things. That is one of the aspects of truth that sets us free. What we want doesn’t matter. Our place is to find the work that needs us to do it—the work that makes our heart sing, whether we want to admit it or not—and do it. We are set free to do what needs to be done, what needs us to do it. That’s what discernment will do for us.

The path to enlightenment and fullness of life is found in living so as to be transparent to ourselves, and to be open to each situation so that it is transparent to us. Once we see ourselves as we are (and also are), and each situation as it is, what to do flows naturally as a stream goes downhill. Seeing is knowing what is happening, what needs to be done in response, and what is capable of being done within the restraints of the situation—and is doing what can be done with the resources available to us, and within the limits imposed on us—and is being awake, aware, alive and responsible to the time and place, the here and now, the yin and yang, of our living. Seeing—discernment—is the path to living fully in response to the moment of our living.

Discernment comes in two forms, the personal and the communal, but in both, it is about finding our life and living it—within, and responsive to, each situation as it arises. We find our life personally, individually, and we find our life communally, as a community of like-minded people with no ideology, doctrine or theology to get in their way.

The heart of discernment is mindful, compassionate, awareness that sees what it looks at without judgment, willfulness or opinion. Discernment requires us to live transparent to ourselves as an individual, and as a community. Seeing means seeing ourselves—as we are and as we also are, which is how we are (as yin plus yang are Tao)—on both levels.

The central focus, purpose and ground of the community is the individual life of each member of the community. Individually, we have to be seeking and living our life. When we talk about our life, we have to talk about what makes our heart sing, about what we love, and how we are serving that with the life we are living. When we talk about our life, we have to talk about the source of our vitality—of our vital energy—for the life we are living.

We come together as a community to keep ourselves on track with our life, on the beam, in the center of our life’s will for us, need of us. The community helps us stay on track by asking about our symptoms and our dreams—sleeping and waking. Our symptoms and our dreams are clues to how things are in our life, to what is happening, to what is trying to come to life in us, and through us, and how we are assisting or resisting it. Our symptoms and our dreams do not lie. If we want to know how it is with us, we have to look no farther than our symptoms and our dreams.

We are always slipping away from our life, and have to be redirected by our symptoms and dreams, and by the right kind of conversations. The right kind of community is good for the right kind of conversations. Is good for the right kind of questions. The right kind of listening. The right kind of community listens us to the truth of who we are, helping us be mindfully aware of ourselves, transparent to ourselves.

Self-transparency, living transparent to ourselves, is the sine qua non of life at one with itself, of wholeness and oneness of being. If we are not living toward self-transparency, we cannot be a member in good faith of the right kind of community. We have to be doing the work! Everything hinges on individuals doing the work of knowing who they are, and living in ways that express who they are in ways appropriate to the occasion, in each situation as it arises.

Rumi said, “If you are not here with us in good faith, you are doing terrible damage.” We have to learn how to live in good faith with ourselves and one another—and do it! Each member of the right kind of community has to be engaged in the work of finding and living his, her, own life.

The vitality of the community depends upon the vitality of each member. The community can be no more vitally alive than each person in the community. The community enables vitality in its members, and depends upon the vitality of its members, who, in turn, enable the vitality of the community and depend upon it for their own. The circle is complete and eternal, yet, each member of the right kind of community must live in the service of her, his, own vitality.

We live in the service of our life by doing what has life for us, what is vital for us, what causes our heart to sing and our soul to dance. We live with integrity when we live in ways that are integral with our life, with what is deepest, truest and best about us. We live with integrity when we live at one with ourselves, when the life we are living is an expression of what brings us to life.

As we live our life, we gravitate to—and create—a community of those who are living their life. This is the “like-minded-ness” of the community. “Like-minded-ness” has nothing to do with doctrine, theology or ideology, but with the realization that our life is central to our vitality, and our vitality is central to our life.

We cannot live any way at all and be vital, whole, vibrant and filled with the energy and joy of life. When we know that the quality of our life is dependent upon the nature of the life we are living, we seek those who can help us be centered in, and grounded upon, the life that is our life to live. We, in turn, help them live in ways that are centered in, and ground upon, the life that is their life to live. The importance of living centered in, and grounded upon, the life that is ours to live is what “like minds” understand, and exhibit in living their life.

And, together, “like minds” create a community that encourages and sustains vitality and life among the lives of those who make up the community, through the development of eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand.

Outlets of Grace

We are here,

Each one of us,

All of us,

Worldwide,

To be outlets of grace.

Grace is to be understood as “unmerited benevolence.”

Unmerited kindness, generosity, compassion, thoughtfulness…

An unmerited gift of exactly what is needed,

Where it is needed,

When it is needed,

Delivered precisely how it is needed to be delivered.

That’s grace.

And, it is not a way of getting what you think you need delivered back to you.

Grace is not tit-for-tat.

It is not “one good turn deserves another.”

It is not “I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine.”

Grace is not out for its own good,

Its own advantage,

Its own reward.

Grace is not a way of earning merit

On some universal scale,

Accruing credit,

Gathering interest

Compounded by the minute,

To be paid out in benefits and privileges

Over the full course of eternity.

Grace is not to be exploited in any way.

Jesus said, “When you bring grace to life in the lives of others,

Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

Do it and forget you’ve done it.

And don’t keep score.

That’s grace.

Think you’ve got it?

Not so fast.

It gets tricky.

Hang on.

Grace doesn’t make you a doormat.

A Mr. or Ms. Easy Touch,

Always there,

Never let ‘em down,

Like a good co-dependent,

An enabler,

Who can’t say no.

Someone to be used up,

Taken for granted,

Thrown away.

That’s not grace.

Grace will not be taken for granted!

Assumed.

Counted on.

Guaranteed.

Grace is anything but guaranteed.

Grace is a shocking surprise.

A wonder.

An unbelievable, astounding, amazing,

Windfall.

Such a once-in-a-lifetime event

That you would never think of it happening again,

Much less regularly.

You can’t get over it happening!

You can’t imagine that it would go on happening—

Day after day,

Year after year.

That is not grace.

Jesus not only raised the dead.

He also left the dead to bury the dead.

He not only healed on the Sabbath.

He also said, “No sign will be given to you except the sign of Jonah.”

He not only forgave sinners.

He also cursed an innocent fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season.

You never know with Jesus.

That’s grace for you.

You can’t count on it.

You never know when it might show up,

Or, if it ever will.

And, when you least expect it,

There it is.

And, yet, we are all here to be outlets of grace.

In order to do that,

We have to understand:

Grace doesn’t only happen to us.

It also happens through us.

Yet, we can’t plan it.

We can’t think it into being.

Our role is to be ready, willing and able,

And get out of the way.

This makes grace happening through us

Exactly like grace happening to us.

We don’t initiate it.

It isn’t our idea.

Before we know it,

We catch ourselves in the act of being gracious—

Just like before we know it,

We catch ourselves in the act of being graced.

Our place is to be ready (willing and able)

To offer whatever the situation needs from us.

Sometimes, we raise the dead,

And, sometimes, we leave the dead to bury the dead.

Sometimes, we turn the other cheek,

And walk the second mile,

And, sometimes, we shake the dust off our sandals

As a sign against the scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells.

You never know with grace.

You never know with us.

That’s grace for you.

Be ready, willing and able,

And get out of the way.

Of Dreams and Glory, and What Are We Here For?

Joseph Campbell said, “Where you stumble and fall, there is the treasure.”

The thing that prevents us from reaching our goal opens the way to the goal.

We step into our life with a career plan, a blueprint for success and an itinerary in hand, checking off the milestones as we achieve them, on our way to fortune and glory, and all the accouterments attached to that prize—and damn for all eternity anything that inhibits our progress, or blocks our path.

People are always seeking miracles to deliver them from misfortune, and usher them into prosperity and peace everlasting.

Well. What’s the greater miracle—to stand up from your wheelchair and walk without a hitch in your stride, or to accept the fact that you will never walk again?

Substitute wheelchair and walking for whatever you think is standing in your way, keeping you from having your dreams come true.

What is the dream? What is preventing the realization of the dream? Who is to say what is the dream and what is the prevention of the dream? When does prevention shift the direction of our and open the way to realization of our life’s dream for us?

What are we after? Who is piloting our boat on its path through the sea? Who is in charge here? Whose cooperation is required for us to step forth into our life as complete human beings? Whose side are we on?

What is the end of the road, and what is an open door?

We are back to the Campbell quote about everything that happens to us being “an instrument of our destiny”—pulling us forth, eliciting the qualities of character and personality— of heart and soul—that are ours to share with the world as gifts of grace and blessing—which we would never know we possessed without the external events that trigger our internal response.

What is good luck? What is bad luck?

Luck is an illusion switching from good to bad, and back to good, then back to bad—as our perspective shifts, and we look at our luck in light of changing ideas of what is a favorable wind and what is an ill one.

The people who live out their life wishing they could leap out of their wheelchair and go dancing, spinning and leaping, into the night, could, instead, dance with their wheelchair throughout their life, and see what that opens up for them, and calls forth from them, in deepening, broadening, enlarging themselves and their life in ways that walking normally could never touch.

I’m not suggesting that we should choose handicaps to bring out the best in us. I’m suggesting that we see whatever happens to us as containing exactly what we need to fulfill our destiny—and that we should live in relationship with what happens as though we chose it, and not as something we hate, despise, dread and wish to be rid of.

At the end of the movie The Jersey Boys, Frankie Valli, reflecting on his career, said, “They ask ya, ‘What was the high point?’ The hall of fame, sellin’ all those records, pullin’ Sherry outta the hat? It was all great. But the first time the four of us made that sound under the street light, our sound, when everything dropped away and all there was, was the music…that was the best.”

The challenge for each of us is to find our music, and live it—to let the music live us—and see everything that happens to us, both positive and negative, as an opportunity to further align ourselves with the music, dance with what life brings us, and become who we are—understanding that to be the fortune and glory it is.

A Meditation on Light and Dark, Part 2

William Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, said, “Without contrary/Is no progression.”

The work that saves us and saves the world is the work of recognizing, accepting, integrating, and reconciling our contraries, contradictions, polarities and irreconcilable differences, within and without.

White/Black, Light/Dark, Good/Evil, Right/Wrong are all dichotomies begging to be integrated, reconciled, harmonized and made whole.

Consciousness is ideally suited for the work of holding opposites together—seeing connections, finding similarities, making peace. But it is difficult work, requiring not only that we pay careful attention to the conflicts and contradictions that swirl around us, and through us, but also that we contentiously, and faithfully, feel the agony of being pulled in different ways—and live within the tension without trying to force resolution or solution, but allowing the way of things to slowly work its own way to a shift of being that transcends anything we could think to do, and transforms our life and our world.

When consciousness—awareness—shuns its responsibility, goes over into unconsciousness, and lives without awareness of its living, the light becomes dark and that’s that. This is the easy way out, and we opt for it on a regular basis. All of our addictions of choice are ways of numbing ourselves to the conflicts of our life. We don’t want to think about it. We cannot bear the pain. So we make ourselves unconscious, and pretend there is no problem.

Consciousness exists to make the unconscious conscious. It is not a matter of consciousness extinguishing the unconscious. The wellspring of the water of life is inexhaustible. We learn to swim consciously in the waters of the unconscious by learning to interpret our dreams, and reading the clues that open the inner world to exploration and realization, and aligning ourselves with the unconscious drift of soul that leads us to confront our conflicts and live the life that is ours to live.

Our work is to expand, deepen, enlarge, and broaden consciousness by listening to the unconscious, and reconciling, integrating, the opposites that make up our world. We feel strongly both ways—or several ways—about a lot of things. What we want is canceled out by what we also want. Ambivalence is a primary factor of everyone’s life experience.

I want to be the best father in the world, and I don’t want to be a father at all. The same thing can be said about every other role I play, have played, or will play—and, in all probability, about you and your roles. Our opposites, contradictions, and polarities are thresholds to awareness, awakening, maturation, grace, mercy and peace. We only have to recognize them for what they are, bear consciously the tension of their opposition, and allow them to shape us into who we need to be in order to live the life that is ours to live.

And all we want a shortcut to soft and easy, and happiness everlasting. Sitting with the agony of ambivalence is the first thing on our bad list. Getting rid of—or denying—our conflicts is what we do best.

We come from a long tradition of killing our enemies—of running roughshod over that which stands in our way, blocking our path. Killing our enemies seems to be simpler than entering into conversation with them, and becoming friends and allies. But, we never run out of enemies to kill. The history of the world is the history of warfare, and it has gotten worse, not better, over time. We are past the time of finding a better way to manage our conflicts.

The answer to the old Biblical question, “What does light have to do with darkness?” is, “Everything!” Light and darkness are one at the heart of life and being. Rumi understood darkness to be the cradle of light—the source of light. The Lao Tzu says, “The source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.”

Darkness is the enemy of light, because it strives to bring to light more than is seen to be light. Light doesn’t like to be enlightened. Enlightenment expands understanding, deepens realization, transforms what is known. We like things to stay as they have always been.

Darkness needs light to see itself, and exists to expand light, to deepen light, to become light—and light wants none of it. Darkness is the enemy to light because light resists enlightenment.

Light is attracted to darkness. Darkness is unconscious of conflict, of discipline, of opposition, chaos, mess. It’s easier to not know, and light yearns to not know what it does know, to know nothing, to become unconscious. Consciousness wants to shirk its duty and be unconscious of the pain of finding its way through contradiction and opposition.

Darkness is attracted to light. Darkness seeks to see, hear, know and understand—to experience itself and become itself. And yet, there seems to be within darkness itself a darker-darkness that likes things as they are there—murky, shadow, chaotic and chthonic. Perfect in every way!

Darkness is conflicted over light, light is conflicted over darkness. Both seek each other and are repelled by the other: “Love Me! Leave Me Alone!”

We are paradox to the core—opposites and polarities at the heart of life and being. And truth is found between the hands: On the one hand this, on the other hand that, and on still other hands, that and that and that!

We have to come to terms with how it is with us, and how it also is. We have to make our peace with the opposition at the heart of things, and consciously take up the work of integration and reconciliation.

The path to reconciliation, to integration, harmony and wholeness is conversation—dialogue with the dialectic—listening, hearing, understanding—with compassion for how things are (which includes how things also are), and patience with how things change.

Rumi says, “Be grateful for whatever comes/because each has been sent/as a guide from beyond.”

Jesus says, “Love your enemies.”

The enemy is our shadow, the darkness within seeking light, the light within seeking darkness.

Walt Kelly said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”

And it is up to us to work things out by placing ourselves at the midpoint of our polarities, and bearing the pain of the opposition, through transcendence and transformation to peace and harmony of life and being.

A Meditation on Light and Dark, Part 1

The Adams Family (You have to be old to know who I mean) were all nice people in their own way, but they were different.

How different can we allow people to be? How different can we allow ourselves to be?

How harmonized—how pasteurized and homogenized—do we have to be in order to be a community?

How different can we be and still be One—and still be a participant in community?

Differences become different-ness in no time.

Different-ness leads to suspicion, hostility, seclusion, exclusion, evasion, avoidance, shunning, ostracizing, bullying, tormenting, derision, humiliation, castigation, witch-hunts, lynch mobs, police forces, standing armies, warfare, and Armageddon.

It’s a slippery slope when we start thinking about Us and Them.

We better start re-thinking the whole thing.

We could start with ourselves,

And the concept of Light and Dark.

Darkness has always been something to avoid. Light has always been something to embrace.

Light is Good. Dark is Evil.

Since Zoroaster, ca. 2,000 BCE, we’ve thought of Light and Dark, Good and Evil, as being locked in a winner-take-all, fight to the finish.

STOP IT NOW!

The dichotomy can no longer be justified, or excused. The war is ended.

All the Light and all the Dark that ever has been or will be is floating around in each one of us.

WE contain the forces of Good and Evil, and it’s well past the time to start making peace and living together with the opposites within and without for the true good of all.

All it takes is a vision and a commitment to serve the vision with heart and soul, mind and body, all our life long.

It’s the next great adventure. Peace making. Within and without.

Good Religion

The people of the times that are at hand, need to take the tradition handed to them—whether Judeo/Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Muslim or any of the other traditions—and revise it according to the worldview of the Age in which they live. “You have heard it said, but I say unto you,” does not abolish the Law or the Prophets, but fulfills them—for that Age.

We are always about the business of bringing the Law and the Prophets up to speed in the Age of our living. If people held slaves, or were slaves, in previous Ages, they are not going to have, or be, slaves in our Age! If people of color, and gay people, and women, etc. were disparaged and disenfranchised in previous Ages, they are not going to be so treated in our Age!

In setting the scriptures (of whatever religion) as they have been understood aside, and revising the way they are to be understood, we do not abolish the Law or the Prophets—we fulfill them, and create conditions in each age in which the people are able to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect.

Good religion would connect all the sacred symbols of every faith tradition, and reinterpret them in light of the spirit of the age.

The task of good religion in every age would be upgrading sacred symbols of all faith traditions in each age to stand as doorways to unconscious (So called because we are not conscious of it) reality.

Good religion hands us spirituality without any theology, dogma and doctrine attached.

Good religion hands us spirituality straight from the heart—

From the heart of good religion straight to our heart—

Without any of the embellishments, improvements, alterations and enhancements

That bad religion is so proficient in producing and providing.

I wish we had another word for “spirituality,”

Because it is so encumbered with theological augmentation

That you can’t possibly be a spiritual person without “good theology,”

Which is always the theology of the person examining our theology,

As though what we think is more important than what we know.

Spirituality is knowing that can’t be thought, told, defined or explained as in:

“The Tao that can be said is not the eternal Tao.”

Spirituality is the experience of our connection with the Invisible World—

With the world of unconscious reality,

Unconscious because it is more than can be made conscious,

Except through symbols and metaphors.

We have to talk about the unconscious world of Spirit,

Of Spiritual Reality,

With symbols and metaphors because we cannot say directly

What we know to be so,

Because what we know cannot be said.

So we talk about “the wellspring of living water,”

But it isn’t an actual well,

Or actual water,

And how can water be alive, anyway?

The entire vocabulary of spiritual discourse is such

That you have to know what I mean

Before you can understand what I’m saying,

And without the experience of the Invisible World,

There is nothing that can be said

To enable you to understand

What I’m talking about.

But, that doesn’t keep me from talking.

Jesus said, “Let those with ears to hear, hear!” and talked on.

We talk to those who can hear what we have to say,

and, in so doing, we say what we need to hear.

Growing our way toward being perfect as “our Father in heaven” is perfect.

In Praise of a Second Life

When I ask, “What are you going to do with what remains of your life? How will you use your time in the time left for living?” I am met with blank expressions and empty eyes. Many, no, most, people don’t know what I’m talking about. Tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday for the vast majority of the world’s population. They hope it won’t be worse.

Yet, how to live what remains of our life is our primary problem, over and above all of our other problems. But, our other problems keep us from considering our problem.

We have a hard enough time paying the bills and deciding what’s for lunch—not to mention our concerns with our health, and what is going to become of us if this, or that, or that over there happens, and whether we will make it to retirement, or will have enough money to make it through retirement…

Fear, worry, anxiety and depression are all we can manage. We can’t think about the kind of life we might live—it’s enough to think about how to stay alive with a roof over our heads. We just want a little relief! A reprieve! Deliverance! Peace of mind! We are sure that our life will take care of itself—as it always has—if we can manage to pay the bills, and find some way to relax and enjoy ourselves.

People need help with the life they are living. They don’t need to hear about the life they ought to be living, in addition to the one they already have going. It’s hard enough paying the bills and having a little fun. They don’t need one more thing to have to do.

It’s a hard sell, talking to people about their life and how to live it, when they are focused on trying to make ends meet and get to the beach at least once this summer. But. It is an important sell, and crucial that as many of us as possible begin to make it.

Two things that stand out as evidence of an unlived life that is tired of being ignored, and is using the resources at its disposal to wake us up, get our attention, and lead us in the way of the life that is ours yet to live are symptoms and self-destructive choices and behavior (Which I see as one thing, not two—the choice elicits the behavior).

The people who do not want to think about the life they are living, and do not consider that there may be another life that is theirs to live, a life that they are called to live, and uniquely suited to live—are awash in symptoms, both physical and emotional, and self-destructive choices and behavior.

They say they don’t have time to consider the possibility and implications of a second life because their hands are full with trying to live the life they are living. However, if their symptoms and self-destructive ways were reduced, they would have more than enough time to work their other life into their present life.

Beginning to live their second life would transform their first life—the old would pass away, and all things would be new. They would not be adding one more thing to their list of things they already can’t get around to. They would be radically enhancing their ability to be alive on all levels of both lives in the time left for living—and doing things they cannot imagine doing, until they take up the task of doing more than they think they are capable of getting done.

What are you going to do with what remains of your life? How will you use your time in the time left for living?