The Right Kind of Conversation

We do not talk to each other mindfully aware of what we are doing.

Our talk revolves around news, weather, sports and commentary/opinion. When we talk about ourselves it is in the spirit of “look what has happened to me.” “I’m getting married, look at my engagement ring.” “I just lost my job, and don’t know what I’m going to do.” “The kids are doing great—let me tell you what they just did.” “The kids are doing terrible—you won’t believe what they just did.”

Our talk to each other is about the drama of life, of our life. We can’t get away from how good it is, or how bad it is, what is happening, and what we hope will–or what we are afraid will—happen next. The drama consumes us. Without it to talk about, we would have nothing to say.

Talking about what we talk about saves us from having to think about what we are saying (Or hear what we are saying), or about what we say in response to what is said to us. We say what we always say. The conversations we have today were the conversations we had yesterday, and the ones we will have tomorrow. We speak to one another in a trance state, hypnotically, mindlessly, going through the social ritual of reaffirming our place in the group by reenacting the rite of membership: “I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re all okay. Let’s do this again tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon.”

In order to be authentic, genuine, natural, original human beings, we have to have what we need in order to be who we need to be in each situation that arises in our life. We find that only in a community capable of engaging us in the right kind of conversation–a dialogue that brings our heart/soul/mind into the conversation, and engages us with our heart/soul/mind and our two lives: the life we are living and the life that is ours to live.

The right conversation is one in which those who are engaged in conversation are understood—and understand themselves–through the experience of being understood. When we make ourselves plain to others, we make ourselves plain to ourselves. When we become transparent to others, we become transparent to ourselves—and are “transparent to transcendence,” to use Joseph Campbell’s phrase. If you want to wake someone up, understand them in a way that allows them to understand themselves, by being listened to in a way that enables them to hear what they are saying.

Understanding ourselves is the prerequisite for moving in the direction of wholeness and integrity and sincerity, for coming to terms with how things are and how things also are—and how things need to be.  In other words, understanding ourselves is the prerequisite for growing up, and being who we are, where we are, when we are, how we are. We do not grow up without consciously moving from who we are/were to who we need to be to be who we are on the way to being who we are yet to be.

Carl Jung said, “We are who we have always been, and who we will be.” The work of growing up is understanding this, knowing it to be so, and living to be conscious of who we are, and of who we need to be, in each situation as it arises. We need a community to talk this over with—to allow us to talk ourselves into being who we are, and who we need to be.

When we dream, we dream about how it is with us—about how it is with us and our work, the work we came to do. Each night’s dream is a mirror reflecting how it is with us, our life and our work, here/now. As we work to understand our dreams, we work to understand ourselves, and to bring ourselves forth as it is appropriate to the occasions of our living. How many times during a week do you talk with other people about your dreams the night before? And, they to you about theirs?

When we talk, we have to talk about how it is with us, and our work, the work we came to do. We have to talk about how we are working with the conditions and circumstances of our life in order to accommodate ourselves to our working conditions, so that we might do the work that is ours to do, within those conditions and circumstances.

We have to talk about our balance and harmony, and what the destabilizing forces are at work in our life and how we might counteract them in restoring our equilibrium and homeostasis, in doing what needs to be done.

We talk to better understand what we have to say, and to understand what we are saying. It takes the right kind of community to listen us to the truth of who we are, of what we are doing, and what we need to do. We will never get it all said. There is always more to be said than has been said. Everything we say opens the way for more to be said. The deeper we go, the wider grows the world we are discovering, and it is always as though we are just beginning. The need to talk ourselves into greater understanding will be with us always.

Joseph Campbell’s comment, “Reflection on experience leads to new realizations,” guides us through our inner dialogue and our external conversations. As we say what our experiences are with our situation in life and with the work that is Our Work, we expand our understanding with new realizations. The more we talk, the more we discover what we have to say.

We are forever caught between the demands, requirements and restrictions of our situation and the work that is Our Work—and have to work things out between the often mutually exclusive requirements of both worlds. Our situation is the field of action, the canvas upon which we bring ourselves forth to share the boon of our being with the time and place of our living.

Our Work is what we are to do in the field of action, to bring forth who we are, offering the gifts we have to give, as blessing and grace upon the here and now of our living.  In doing that, we have to square ourselves with the contradictions and conflicts between the two worlds. There is the world of space and time, mortgages and dental appointments, speeding tickets and over-drawn notices. And, there is the world of instinct and intuition, nudges, hunches, flashes of insight and understanding, overwhelming encounters with meaning and purpose, wonder and radiance, and the aesthetic arrest of numinous reality. These are the worlds of Logos and Mythos. And we are to integrate the visible world of physical/somatic reality with the invisible world of spiritual/psychic reality.

We are to “take care of business” with regard to the two worlds—the world of our stiz im leben, our setting in life, and the world of our heart, soul and mind. We are to be who we are within the terms of life operative in this physical world of our birth and death. Between birth and death, we have a certain amount of time to come to terms with who we are—the truth of our own unique being—the “I” that only we can be—and with the facts of our life—the limitations and restrictions that shape and limit the expression of who we are.

We have to find ways to work it all out. We have to work with the givens of our time and place, and of our spiritual qualities, values, gifts, perceptions and ways of being, in producing a life that we can be proud of within the age and culture of our living.

This is called Walking Two Paths At The Same Time. We have to take care of business on two levels. The baby needs to be changed and fed, the dog needs to get to the vet, we have a project report to make for our job, and duties and obligations to meet, all related to our setting in life. And we have to live there in certain ways—in ways that take into account the gifts, art, genus, original nature and innate virtues that are ours to bring to life in our life—in ways that do the work that is ours to do in, and around, the demands of our setting in life.

We cannot relax this tension. We must bear consciously the pain of our twin responsibilities. We cannot r-u-n-n-o-f-t and join the circus, or the circuit of like-minded-world-renouncing-communes, or conversations, where we repeat our mantras, and wait for the world to end.

When we talk, we have to talk about our work, and our setting in life, and the difficulties we are having getting them together. Our setting in life is the matrix within which we do our work. It is necessarily difficult because the real work here is to grow up.

Our work will grow us up if we do it within our life setting. If we r-u-n-n-o-f-t to do our work, we abandon our work, and remain stuck between worlds, but a citizen of neither, repeating our mantras, our truisms, our trite, worn, sayings that lose all meaning cut off from our setting in life.

Our conversations are necessary to keep our “feet to the fire,” and help us do the work that is ours to do in the time and place of our living. If they are helping us escape, deny, discount, discard either the work, or our setting in life, they are doing harm, not helping us maintain the tension, and work with what must be worked with on the two levels—they are not helping us “work it out” at all.

Thus, we have to think about what we are saying. We have to talk mindfully with people who are capable of receiving what we have to say, and respond mindfully to us. The right kind of conversation connects us with the work that is ours to do within the setting of our life—and forces us to consider how we are working with the things that face us in a day, in bringing the eternal things forth, deepening, enlarging, expanding who we are and what we are capable of, and growing up.

Tools? Or, Props?

We live at cross-purposes. When the church says something is important, but then lives as though something else is important, it is called “hypocrisy.” In the world it is called “business as usual.” What we say is important in either place varies from person to person, from situation to situation, from time to time. What is important in both places, all the time, is money. Everything else serves the money motive. In the church, nothing is said or done that the members won’t like because they will leave the church, or quit giving. Things work the same way in the world. We don’t do anything that isn’t smart, meaning “that hurts the Bottom Line.”

The United States hasn’t ratified a treaty calling for an end to the use of land mines, because we manufacture land mines, and because the military finds them to be very useful, and because no one is placing them in our neighborhoods, pasture lands, and scenic vistas. We won’t work for an end to global warming because industries would lose billions of dollars reducing emissions, taxes would increase, the cost of goods and services would go up, and the American people would vote politicians out of office who voted for clean air. It wouldn’t be good for business to end global warming. If it isn’t good for business, it isn’t done. In the church or out of it.

“Business” is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. It has a life, and a mind, of its own. No CEO ever recommended, and no Board of Directors ever approved, and no meeting of the Stockholders ever ratified, a business strategy that was designed to produce less profit for the sake of a cleaner environment or a better world. American automakers could have been producing smaller, more fuel-efficient cars for the last 50 years. Larger, less efficient cars were more profitable. We go where the money is. If a profit can be made, a profit will be made. Profit At Any Price. We go where the votes are. And, between the two, we’ll choose the money as the primary vote-getter.

We talk about values, and about being “value-driven.” We write mission statements about service and love. But money is the value. The mission is to make money, and to make more money this quarter than last quarter. We will do whatever it takes to achieve that end—and not do anything that might prevent the realization of that end. We like the idea of compassion and the Golden Rule, but we have to pay the bills—and the more bills we are able to pay, the better–never mind whether they are the right or wrong kind of bills in the first place.

As a nation, we are experiencing the Revenge of the Canarsee Delawares. The Canarsee Delawares, you will remember, sold Manhattan to Peter Minuit and the West India Company for a handful of glass beads and a couple of silver mirrors (Okay, that can’t be substantiated, but it makes for good copy, and it was for next to nothing no matter what actually changed hands, and no matter what was used for barter, my point remains untouched). Well, the joke is on us.

The Curse of the Canarsee Delawres drives us to sell heart and soul, and the worthy future of the whole country, and the entire world, for glass and plastic, which we regularly send to the landfill to make room for more glass and plastic. The ghosts of Native Americans gather regularly on the edge of the Happy Hunting Ground, to peer over the side, to look, point, and roll about laughing. But, unpacking our latest purchase of glass and plastic and admiring its sheen and shine, we cannot imagine a life that didn’t promise more of this stuff forever. And running up the wrong bills is what we do best. This is so it, it’s disgusting.

How much of the stuff that does not satisfy is enough? How much do we need? Of what, really, does life consist? The church should be able to explore these questions. The church should be able to conduct experiments in living that are immune to the cultural fascination with money and profit (and with glass and plastic). Ah, but, the church has bills to pay, too, you know. As long as there is overhead, the church is going to be compromised in its ability to be the church. Or, to put it another way, the church is going to compromise its ability to be the church in order to “take care of business” and pay the bills. How to be the church and pay the bills is not a question we ask. We just pay the bills. And it also leads me to suspect that we cannot be the church and pay the bills—which throws “being the church” into a different way of doing church.

Progressive Christian congregations talk about being inclusive, but look around. Mostly middle to upper middle class, middle-aged to elderly, well-educated and socially astute people in every progressive Christian congregation. Mostly people just like everyone else there. And how many of us would keep coming if lots of people not like us showed up? If the Religious Right, say, moved in, and wanted gospel music sung to CD’s played over the sound system, and took over the announcement portion of the service (if not the sermon) to rail against the things we approve, and to applaud the things we oppose, how long before we stopped coming?

We talk about being inclusive, but if we include only gay people who think like we do, and African-Americans who think like we do, and Yuppies who think like we do, and Octogenarians who think like we do, how inclusive is that really? How many people can we include who don’t think like we do, and still have enough of us to pay the bills we think should be incurred and paid? You see the problem. The problem is that the church can be the church only if it doesn’t have to pay the bills. When it comes down to being the church, or paying the bills, the church pays the bills.

The smart thing to do would be to incur the right bills. What are the bills that we need to incur in the course of being the church? At what point do the bills that enable us to be the church become the bills that keep us from being the church? When the church has so many bills that the focus of the church is on how to pay the bills, and not on how to be the church, the church has crossed the line.

I retired after 40.5 years as a minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, and served 5 congregations in that time. That’s a lot of church board meetings. In every church board meeting the major portion of the time spent meeting was spent talking about paying the bills. I have never served on a church board that spent its time imagining how to be the church, wondering how to be the church, discussing new and better ways to be the church. Every church board has spent most of its time imagining, wondering, discussing how to pay the bills in order to keep doing what the church has always done. Every new program idea, or proposal for ministry and service, was evaluated in terms of its potential impact on the church’s ability to pay the bills. In order to be approved, a program or ministry idea has to be so innocuous as to be invisible, because, otherwise, it might offend someone, and they might leave the church, or stop giving, and then where would we be?

On another level, all the programs in all the churches look exactly alike. What is a church without Vacation Bible School, and music programs, and choir practices, and bell choirs, and covered dish dinners, and Bible studies, and Sunday schools, and men’s groups and women’s groups and youth groups, and mission trips to Mexico? If you don’t do church the way church is supposed to be done, people may get the idea that this isn’t a church, and stop coming, and stop giving, and then who will pay the bills?

At some point, the bills stop enabling us to be the church, and start preventing us from being the church, and no one has any idea of where that point is. The same thing applies in our own personal lives, and the same thing applies to the country as a whole, and to the world at large. At some point, the bills that enable us to have a life begin to keep us from living. At some point, we begin to live to pay the bills. And, we have no idea of where that point is—or, of what bills we should incur, and what bills we should never consider being responsible for.

We have to do a better job of paying attention—and of being right about what is important, and of living in ways which honor and serve that. We have to have a better idea of what it takes—of what we need, and why we need it. We cannot just spend our lives collecting glass and plastic. What are we about? What do we mean, intend, with the lives we are living? How do the bills we pay serve that meaning, that intention? At what point do our bills begin to compromise that meaning, that intention? What do we want to do with the lives that are ours to live? What do we need to do with the lives that are ours to live? How does what we buy serve the life we need to live?

Hugh MacLeod, in his book Ignore Everybody, points out that there is a vast amount of difference between a tool and a prop. A tool helps us do what is ours to do. A prop serves to project an image. We have an image in mind of a successful life. We think we know what success looks like. To look successful we need the props. The image requires the props. A sailboat, say, and a house on the beach, and one in the mountains. We spend our lives collecting the props that sustain the image.

Do you see how empty that is? How sad it is? We buy success! We own the props, which project the image, which announce “Success Here!” We exhaust ourselves maintaining the props that sustain the image, that create the illusion that we are successful, have it all together, and are the envy of our peers. But, the props don’t enable us to do anything other than appear to be successful, and require us to maintain the props.

There are people, maybe you have known some of them, who have Steinway pianos in their home, which no one knows how to play, because they create the right effect. Other people own horses, which no one rides, for the same reason. How many of our bills pay for props, and how many pay for tools?

Before we make a purchase, we need to ask, “Is this a prop or a tool? What will it help me do what needs to be done?” We have to find ways to reduce our bills by incurring the right bills—by asking if, and how, our expenditures enable us to accomplish what is ours to do—by asking if, and how, they are enabling us to do what needs to be done.

Of course, to make that inquiry, we have to know what we are about. We have to know what constitutes our work. We have to know what we are doing here, and what we need in order to do what needs to be done. We cannot afford to pay for things that maintain an image, that create an impression without actually enabling us to do what we need to do in order to be who we are.

Communities of Innocence

We need help realizing, remembering, connecting with, and living out of the heart of what matters most.

Yet, that’s the first thing to go—our connection with the heart of what matters most.

We need a community to help us nourish, enable, sustain, and deepen our relationship with the heart of what matters most. We need a community to help us remember what is important, and to insert itself between us and the loss of our connection with heart/mind/soul. The type of community I have in mind is a community of innocence—a community with no agenda beyond enabling its members to see, hear and understand, know, do and be.

We need a community of innocence to help us know, and remember, who we are, and also are, and what we are about—to perceive, and live in light of, our particular gifts, our genius, daemon, shtick, virtues, etc., in offering what is needed in each situation as it arises for as long as we are alive. We need a community that believes in the power of individuals living in light of their own destiny, and out of the interests and abilities they have to realize and serve that destiny—which is nothing less than the power to transcend, transform, revitalize and redirect the world toward how things need to be and away from how things need-not to be.

And, who is to say? Who is to say what needs and needs-not to be? No one! No one says so! Everyone remains empty, still, and silent long enough to realize so, to know so, out of the depths of their own source, which is the same depths as everyone’s source. When we live connected to and directed by the source of our life and being, we move sincerely, spontaneously, toward how things need to be and away from how things need-not to be. And connecting us with the source is the work of all true communities of innocence.

When we lose the connection with the community of innocence, we lose heart/mind/soul, we lose our bearings, we lose our way, we forget who we are and what we are about, and we take a reckoning and conclude it’s hopeless, and we are overwhelmed with the pointlessness of it all, and wonder, at the bottom of the solid rock wall of reality, why pick ourselves up and run full bore into it again—asking ourselves the questions that kill our heart/mind/soul: “So what? Who cares? What’s the point? What’s the use? Why try? What difference will it make?” When that is the case with us, we need a place where we can gather to recover, to regroup, to restore our heart/mind/soul—a place of renewal, revival, resurrection—a place where we remember, and reconnect with, the core of what matters most. We cannot find our way heartfully, mindfully, soulfully, joyfully, through the world without a place like this in our lives. We cannot survive apart from a vital connection with a community of innocence.

Communities of innocence have nothing at stake in us beyond enabling us to be who we need to be in fulfilling our destiny, and bringing forth who we are within the context and circumstances of our lives. Communities of innocence are a means to the goal of individuation, self-realization, self-development, of their members and of the world. Communities of innocence do their work by listening us to the truth of who we are, and also are—by seeing us, hearing us, understanding us—thereby assisting us in the work of seeing, hearing, and understanding ourselves, and take up the work of balance and harmony, sincerity and integrity, spirit, energy and vitality. Communities of innocence bring to our awareness the full range of conflicts, contraries, dichotomies, discrepancies, and contradictions, that characterize our lives—and assist us in the work of reconciliation and integration. Communities of innocence connect us with what matters most, and help us bring that forth in our lives.

The rule is simple: Don’t allow the world to determine your response to the world! Our response to the world has to spring from our connection with our original nature and the innate virtues that are ours from birth, with our heart/mind/soul and with the center of what matters most. We have to live in the world as we would live if the world were what it ought to be. We take a step toward the ought-to-be when we live in light of it. We nudge the world toward transformation when we live in the world as expressions of how the world should be. We are to live in ways that bring hope, and wholeness, and joy to life. To live in ways that bring life to life. And we have to form communities of innocence which enable us to do this, to be who we are within the circumstances of each situation as it arises, all our life long.

We seek out, and help create, communities of innocence to assist us in remembering who we are and what we are about. These gatherings help us maintain our focus on what is important, and remind us to live in ways that bring hope, wholeness, joy, and life to life in our lives, and in the life of the world. And so, the search for those who will gather with us, and help us remember what matters most, and to live as though it does.

Did you think these things depend upon something else, something other than us? Did you think we are all waiting for deliverance from the outside? From the Great Beyond? That one day there will be a Great Getting’ Up Morning, dawning with a trumpet blast, and a mighty army of angels come to set things right? Did you think it’s all dismay and gloom until the magic hour when “the god of the machine” comes whizzing in on the greased cable to whack the bad guys a good one and set the world back on course? There will be no apocalyptic reversal. The tools that will do the turning are the communities of innocence that restore our heart/mind/soul, and the heart/mind/soul of the world.

It comes down to what we take seriously. Paul Watzlawick wrote a book in the eighties entitled, The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious. It would be good for us to remember the phrase. We are forever giving up hope in situations that are not serious. We are defined by what we take seriously. How do we know that the seriousness with which we regard things is justified? What makes us think it’s hopeless and serious? That hopelessness is serious?  What are the truly serious things?

I hope laughter is on your list. I hope you are serious about laughing. And playing. And working something you love into every day. And having a good time. And being good company. I hope you take being good company seriously, and practice it with all your determination and resolve. And, being around good company. I hope you take seriously the importance of seeking out good company, and spending time there. And living with good faith. I hope you take good faith seriously.

We come together to remember the essential things, and to remind one another to act them out in the world: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, Generosity, Self-Control, along with Compassion, Hospitality, Grace, Humility, Awareness, Trust, Hope, Faith. . . The list goes on.

These are the things that matter most, the things we gather to remember. If we come together and are re-oriented in the direction of these things; if we leave better able to laugh, and be good company, and seek good company, and do what we love, and serve the wonderful old values, we will have all that we need to extend the power of our communities of innocence, and carry that power over into all our lives. Then we will be able to plant such communities of innocence throughout our days, and that will be quite enough to save the world by waking it up to who it is to be, and what it is to be about, who it needs to be and what it needs to be about.

Doing Justice

If we are going to take spiritual growth seriously, we are going to have to take doing justice seriously. We’re going to have to get to work reforming society. It takes a revolution to bring justice to life. Justice doesn’t come about because everyone agrees that it ought to, or because everyone thinks it would be nice if it did. Agreeing that it ought to be done, and being willing to pay higher taxes, or go on a hunger strike, or be arrested and ignore the terms of probation and be arrested again—in order to do justice—are different things.

Carl Jung says “We are what we do—not what we talk about doing, or say we will do.” Doing is the foundation of being. When we do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, we become who we need to be. The path of spiritual growth is the path of action in the sphere of the hard and fast realities of the world of physical existence. The status quo loves a good book study, and is quite pleased when we gather to talk of spiritual truth. It is when we translate talk into action—and when action opens our eyes to what truly needs to be said—that the status quo takes notice, and responds.

There is an inequitable distribution of wealth in this country, and in the world. Do you think that is going to even itself out just because it ought to? Do we think it ought to? What is the mechanism by which that can happen? How about higher tax rates with fewer loopholes (so that you can’t charge housekeeping services or the cars you drive off to the business, for example) for those who have higher incomes? Think that will ever happen just because it ought to? How about a livable minimum wage? Think that will ever happen just because it ought to? The people keeping that from happening are the people who profit handsomely from it not happening. Think they are going to volunteer to serve the working poor? Maybe in a soup kitchen once a year, but that’s as far as their service is likely to go.

The status remains quo because it is too complicated to alter the status—and it works to the benefit of the status to keep it complicated, so that it takes too much effort over too long a period of time to change anything. We spend our time talking about what ought to happen, and practically none of it organizing and carrying out the revolution to make it happen. Besides, we have a fairly comfortable life, and we aren’t going to hand it over for the sake of improving some poor, homeless person’s standard of living. A living wage, affordable housing and health care are things we can agree ought to happen, but they aren’t going to happen without a revolution.

Ah, but. That asks hard things of us. We can’t just make a monetary donation and pull off a revolution. The Civil Rights Movement was a revolution. People died and suffered hardship in the service of their idea of how things ought to be. Do you know of anyone who is willing to die in the service of a living wage? Gun control, racism, homosexual and transsexual rights are all movements in waiting—waiting for revolutionaries fed-up enough with the way things are to force change into being.

And with the rise of the radical right (And how far away is the radical right from suicide vests and acts of terrorism?), comes the reality that the revolution they have in mind is the death of all not like them. Fascism hates everyone but fascists, and lives to destroy people of color, poor people, old people, homosexual people, transsexual people, liberals and left-leaning women. Which means that everyone who is not fascist has to take a stand firmly against fascism.

The easiest way to mount this kind of opposition to fascism is to vote it into place. Every person who is qualified to vote has to vote every time there is an election, from city council to the Office of President. The status quo fascists depend upon people not voting. It rails enough against those who are calling for change, and creates enough fear in the hearts of it’s faithful (fascist) base to turn them out in numbers large enough to win close elections—and those numbers don’t have to be very large.

Less than 45% of registered voters turn out to vote in most elections. 50% of 45% is only 25% of the voters registered to vote. If you cannot scare 25% of the registered voters into voting for you, you should be ashamed. The money spent by the status quo in campaigns in local and national elections has been spent to scare its faithful (fascist) base into turning out en masse to vote. It only needs 25% of registered voters to vote in most elections. The lethargic 75% give elections away time and again.

Rousing ourselves to vote is nothing. And it is the one thing that will make an immediate and lasting impact upon the way things are done. The more people who vote, the more likely the base of the status quo will be out-voted. This will certainly be true if those who vote, vote for the candidates most likely to do things differently than the NRA, the Tea Party and the Religious Right want things to be done. At this point in our nation this means voting for the Democrat in all elections.

We have become a society, and a culture, of personal virtue. We work on personal growth. We follow our bliss. We talk of finding the path. We seek enlightenment. We read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and nothing changes in the way the world works. I have spent more time here recommending that you be “true to yourself within the context and circumstances of your life,” than recommending that you spend your time involved with community organization for social change, or working with voter registration and getting people to the polls. Well, you can only be true to yourself for so long before you simply can’t stand yourself one more minute if you don’t participate in some form of organization for social change. But that kind of organization doesn’t get enough emphasis. Who knows where to go to join the movement and start the revolution?

Self-improvement has been the focus of a generation (or two). AA would have us believe that “acceptance is the solution to all of my problems today.” In some circles, understanding is held to be the path to peace. Well. Personal virtue does not transform social vice. The title of Reinhold Niebuhr’s book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, speaks directly to our plight. We don’t make the world a better place to be just by working to improve ourselves.

In the south in the sixties, it was said, “You can’t legislate morality,” and “Change people’s hearts and society will change.” These are the positions that keep everything comfortably the same forever. The contrary truth/fact is that if you change a person’s behavior, her/his thinking (or that of his/her children) will change. You change a person’s mind/heart by changing what that person does, by changing how that person lives. You don’t wait to get her/his permission. You don’t wait until everybody is on board. You don’t wait to achieve consensus. You say, “Jim Crow laws are wrong!” You say, “Racism—racial hatred—white supremacy—fascism is wrong!” You say, “Separate But Equal is wrong!” You say, “There is going to be a new way of doing things starting tomorrow, and nobody has to like it, but everybody has to do it!” And you make it stick. A generation later everyone wonders why things were done the way things were done a generation earlier.

Personal virtue leaves society unchanged. We have to seek social virtue with the same degree of fervor and commitment that we seek self-improvement and personal growth. We have to be organized. We have to be connected. We have to be smart. We have to be determined. And we have to be willing to take what comes. It takes a revolution to make things different than they are. If you make the revolutionaries comfortable enough, things will stay the same forever.

It’s too bad about this country’s non-existent energy policy (cutting more trees and drilling more oil wells isn’t an energy policy). But, who is going to lead the revolution? In Hitler Germany, it was too bad about the Jews, but who was going to lead the revolution? We all have an idea of what needs to be changed on a cultural/social level. We don’t have a clue about how to go about effecting the changes, and we don’t have the wherewithal to do it if we did. When you’re up against Big Money, it’s a problem.

Once, in the deep south, I wrote a view point column for the local weekly paper. One week I wrote about a large timber company buying up tracts of land, clearing the hardwood and planting pine trees. The very next week the paper ran a story about the timber company donating $10,000 to the town to develop a parks and recreation program. That’s what I call a public relations program. Money can tweak public opinion to the extent that wrong looks like right and the revolution never gains momentum, or stands a chance. The forces of change and transformation (read: revolution) are up against it from the start.

The Move Your Money Movement not too long ago was a beautiful response to the corruption exposed by the housing collapse but it never gathered the support it should have had. It is very difficult to keep people focused and moving in the direction of change. We have very short little attention spans. We lack the persistence and determination, commitment and resolution required to make things different at the level upon which things need to be different. And the status quo, which owns the media, keeps new issues slamming into us from every side so that we cannot begin to gather enough resolve to organize a revolution that stays focused on one issue over the length of time it would take to change things.

It is not difficult to find something that needs changing. Finding the people who are willing to do the work over time, that’s the problem. We’re too comfortable to be revolutionaries. We have too much to lose, too little to gain. We have to realize that being true to ourselves, and doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, means, at least, rousing ourselves enough to vote in every election, great and small—and voting for the Democrat. If we do that much, things will change radically for the better for the majority of United States citizens, over two or three election cycles.

Arrogance and the Profit Motive

I don’t know of anything that works better than arrogance for creating an intolerable situation for ourselves and others. That is probably why the biblical writers place so much emphasis on humility as the oil that enables relationship and life. It is too bad all their hard work is so wasted on us. The United States is as arrogant as any nation that has ever been labeled “the most powerful on earth.” Power does that to you. I think it must be a law: You can’t be even a little powerful without being a lot arrogant.

The Fourth of July is the annual date for the celebration of our birthday as a country. There is nothing about our attitude toward power, and, hence, toward those who are less powerful than we are—and that includes everyone other than us in the world—that is worthy of celebration. We should be ashamed, but we don’t have enough awareness, or humility, to be ashamed.

Arrogance does that to you. It robs you of awareness. It keeps you from being able to see yourself, particularly as others see you. It allows you to do anything it takes to get what you want, regardless of whether or not it is good for you. Which gets us to the profit motive as the other side of arrogance.

Having to profit from every effort is arrogance in action, and it flows smoothly into the mantra of capitalism: Profit At Any Price! Capitalism is the end of democracy. Liberty! Justice! Equality! Truth! Are all on the auction block for sale to the highest bidder. Arrogance. Profit. Profit At Any Price. Are all one thing. One evil thing. And we think it is the greatest thing on earth. It is the end of the earth—with the fossil fuel industry leading the parade into the Void that swallows us all.

We have the military and economic might to muscle our way through all resistance and objection to goals that we deem to be in the national interest—though our national interest long ago devolved into the interest of the wealthiest few. Our power—and consequently our arrogance—is unmatched in the history of the world. We are not creating a legacy that anyone who lives with awareness, compassion, and sensitivity to the plight of others would be proud of.

The Fourth of July should be an occasion, not of national celebration, but of national contrition, heartache and shame. We have frittered away our position among the nations; we have squandered our place of leadership; we have let slip through our fingers the opportunity to envision, and effect a future that would be beneficial to the entire world; we have been self-indulgent, and unconcerned about the impact our living has on life in other nations, or life everywhere on the planet. The biblical injunction about “to whom much is given, much is expected” applies to us as it has applied to no one before us, and we all would be right to be appalled and ashamed of our failure to do right by those who share the world with us.

The only sins are the sin of arrogance and the profit motive. They amount to the sin of taking what really belongs to someone else—to the entire community, which, in our case, is the entire world—and using it for our own personal advantage and pleasure. The boon is meant for everyone. We are to be a blessing to the nations! The words of God to Abraham about being blessed in order to be a blessing are certainly to be applied to us as a nation. Yet, we have taken the “favored nation” status as an opportunity to indulge our appetites, and exploit our advantage, declaring “manifest destiny” as the justification to strip lands from Native Americans and consume the west—and on to the rest of the world, with the cosmos being next if we don’t destroy ourselves before we get there.

It is not for our own good that we have been given these two hundred plus years, yet, you would not know that by the way we act, by the way we swagger about, and use our influence on a global scale. The American Way of Life is the only way of life that we care anything about. If we use up a staggeringly high percentage of the world’s resources, what of it? We deserve it! We have ourselves to make happy! If it doesn’t serve us, it is impeding us, and we will destroy whatever stands between us and what we want. We think that we have the absolute right of kings to do as we will in the world and beyond, without any sense of regret, remorse, or mortification.

If you think this is a bit strong. If you think this is not the way it is. If you think I am overstating the case about our arrogance and insensitivity, here’s one for you: Ask your friends to tell you who they think are the five most evil US presidents. I’d bet you $20, if I still did that kind of thing, that you will not get a list from any of them. You may get shock that you could even think of such a thing, but you aren’t going to find anyone who can reel off the names of five presidents they think of as evil (Unless they think “Woke” is a synonym of “Evil’). Those people over there, across the ocean, are evil. Our enemies are evil. We are good to the core! That’s an easy example of arrogance at work in our lives.

I don’t know what to do about it. I have no cures or remedies to recommend. I think there is no solution. Growing up is the only solution, and no one can make anyone grow up. This gets us to the biblical idea of wailing and lamentation. We don’t do enough of those things. We medicate ourselves, or have another glass of wine, or say something on the order of, “Let’s go bowling, Dude.” We hide from our anguish, deny our pain, and develop symptoms we can’t begin to manage. We would have fewer symptoms and addictions if we did more wailing and lamentation. I wish I could be more helpful. Awareness, wailing and lamentation are all I can offer.

The ultimate solution is awareness, awareness, awareness. Seeing ourselves in the act of living arrogantly reduces the amount of arrogance in our lives, but I don’t have a solution for instituting the solution. Too bad the mirrors we stand before to adjust our hair and makeup don’t show us who we really are, how it actually is with us, the way it is with our hearts, in our souls. We need a seer at the cabinet level, like the slave riding in the back of the emperor’s chariot, whispering, “You, too, will die.” That didn’t work too well for the emperors, evidently. They still behaved arrogantly, and facilitated the death of their nation in so doing. We can be lulled to sleep by the very words that are meant to wake us up. Awareness cannot come to us from the outside. It all depends upon what we bring to the table. Which means, in the case of US policy, at home and abroad, wailing and lamentation are all that is left.

What we need is an antidote for arrogance. All we have is the Wailing Wall. Which is enough to drive you to the Doctrine of Original Sin—and to the idea of Principalities and Powers, and to Paul’s anguished wail (!) about “Wretched man that I am!” We are unable to do anything about any of the things that really need to be done. All of the real fixes for the human condition are out of our reach. The more aware we are, the more hopeless it all becomes, and anything we can imagine doing seems like “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

At this point, we have to remember that we have to trust in something. This is the heart of faith. We have to trust in something, because the solution is beyond us. We cannot fix the things that are wrong with us. Our propensity for arrogance, and our contempt for the dangers of pride, and our delight in domination in all forms cannot be cured. In light of that, the only appropriate response is wailing, lamentation, and trust in something, faith in something.

Trust in what, is the question. Trust in that which is beyond us, is the answer. Trust in that which is beyond our power to effect and arrange—or imagine! In that which is for evening things out to the core, and is calling us as it has called people through the eons to open ourselves to its presence, and participate in the wonder of its realization upon the earth—the whole earth.

Here we get to the Source of Life and Being—and our destiny, our work, to bring forth the Source in our life. This is yeast in the dough, salt in the soup, light in the darkness. This work is hope beyond hope. We are called to enlist ourselves in the work to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, and trust that will be enough. We offer what is missing to balance the whole in places that are void waste lands where there is no hope, and no reason for going on. Here is the rock-solid, wonderful truth that is at the heart of who we are in relationship with the Source of Life and Being: We have no control over any of the things that matter, but we exercise considerable, one might say infinite, influence over everything that is.

The metaphor for how this works at the heart of things, for the way things are at the level of the heart, of the soul, is Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was, as we all know, born in a manger, and died on a cross. How’s that for control? How’s that for power? How’s that for hopelessness, helplessness, impotence and vulnerability? Yet, who has been more influential in the history of the planet than Jesus of Nazareth?

The manger and the cross remind us that it is not “like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”! No matter how pointless and hopeless it seems, our potential for influence extends beyond us in all directions. And so, we work away, against all odds, in the service of the best we can imagine.

Arrogance abounds and we can be constant sources of compassion, mercy, kindness, awareness, sensitivity and humility upon the earth. We can make it clear that the way of the government of capitalism is not our way. We can buy fair trade products, support the slow food effort in our area of the country, and contribute to causes that serve the self-development of people worldwide. We can wake up, pay attention, and say “No!” to the things that should be opposed, and “Yes!” to the things that should be encouraged.

Our role is that of seeing and saying what must be done, and not done, and doing what needs to be done in the service of the best that can be imagined. The role of the awakening ones has been the role of prophets in every age: to call politicians away from self-service to service that takes the well-being of all, even “the least of these” into account. Our national interest is whatever is in the best interest of every living being, worldwide. It is our role to call ourselves to task, to the task of being what is needed worldwide in the moment of our living. It is a role that is easily abandoned, but one that we must consciously embrace, and deliberately live out if we are to be who we are called to be in doing the work we are called to do. We must stop living as though nothing we do matters, and begin living as though everything we do has ultimate impact, makes a significant difference. We must believe in ourselves and in our ability to influence outcomes far beyond, but certainly including, our immediate environment.

There has never been a time in the entire history of time when peace and justice issues were more pressing, or when the opportunity to participate in them was more available. We have access to a wide variety of organizations and agencies that are working to reduce oppression and increase freedom around the world. We have no excuse for believing more in impotence and hopelessness than in efficaciousness and transformation.

The world is waiting for us to participate in life as though we believe the power of Holy Presence is working in us and through us for the good of the environment and humankind. This country came into existence right out of the air over two hundred years ago, against all odds, and contrary to all expectations. There is no reason that we should be celebrating our continued existence as a nation except that our ancestors believed more in what they could do than in what could not be done. Theirs is a legacy we would do well to continue.

The process is simple: Believe in something, and live in its service until something better to believe in comes along, and then live in its service until something better to believe in comes along… Believe in something and do the work that needs to be done. Live toward the good—toward as much of the good as you can imagine—no matter what. The world will be different for your having lived. Life will be transformed because of your life. We all will be better off because of you.

Here’s To The Day!

“Here’s to the day! May it be all I need it to be—and may I be all it needs me to be!”

That’s good enough, I think, for a morning prayer. It reminds us that we need things from the day, and the day needs things from us. That’s the fundamental deal. We have to be clear about what we need, and about what the day needs, and understand that we are primarily in the business of seeing that needs are met.

Doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises remains the purpose and goal of every living thing. Sequoias and Monarch Butterflies hold up their end of the bargain. Human beings, not so much. “I want” has become an artificial, counterfeit, life goal for the entire population of homo sapiens. We live to serve “I want.” We are the toadies of “I want.” Without “I Want,” where would we be? What would we do? What would guide our boat on its path through the sea?

What needs us to do it is always there…

The day needs us to be who we are—to be true to ourselves within the relationships, context, and circumstances of our lives—in a spirit of genuine good will and compassion. The day needs us to bring our gifts of soul, self, and heart to life in the day, gracing the day with our presence and perspective. The day needs us to incarnate, express, and exhibit that which is deepest, truest, and best about us. The day needs us to bring clarity of perception to bear upon the day—to see, and hear, and understand what is before us in each moment, and what is being asked of us by the moment—that we might offer what is called for out of what is ours to give to what is in our path throughout the day. The day needs us to live with awareness, attentiveness, and mindfulness, so that we see what is to be seen, hear what is to be heard, know what is to be known, and respond in ways that redeem what can be redeemed, soften what can be softened, and make where we are a good place to be.

We need the day to provide us with oases of soul and spirit, resting places, breathing places, where we can regroup, recover, recharge, and reflect. We have to pause from time to time throughout the day to remember who we are, and what we are about. Life is not meant to be lived too fast to see. We have not evolved with the skills required to live with ten thousand things crowding in from all sides at the same time. We step into the fast-paced demands of modern life from a long line of ancestors who spent most of their time doing nothing. We need time to process our experience, adjust to it, and ponder our response to it. We do not live well on the run. We need places to pause in the day, to consider the day, and how we are responding to it, and how well that reflects who we are, and what we are about.

We have to see the day, what is happening there, and our place in it. We cannot do that if we are too close to the day. If “the world is too much with us.” If the day is too much in our face, with its demands and requirements, and its long list of things to do, we will not do well. We need working room. We need optimal distance between ourselves and the day in order to remember, and coalesce around, that which is deepest, truest, and best about us, so that we might bring that to bear upon the day’s deliveries.

Our problem with life—and it may well be our only problem—is that we are fragmented, scattered, and disconnected within—and unconscious of being that way. We live at cross-purposes. We want mutually exclusive things. Our desires are at odds with our ideals, and with our desires. We suffer from mutual conflicts of interest at the very core. We want what we cannot have, and live to possess what we have no business having. We are a squirming mass of contradictions and division. The opposing sides of ourselves are constantly vying for command and control, and working to sabotage and frustrate whatever side is currently exercising command and control—and so, we shoot ourselves in the foot again and again, acting out in self-defeating, self-destructive ways.

We are as disjointed and dysfunctional, and as far from unity, wholeness, solidarity, and accord, on an internal level, as the nations and religions of the world are on an external level. We are not at-one with ourselves. We are not complete, whole, integrated, centered and focused. We live as well as we do by limiting our options, and forcing ourselves into a life of tight moral and legal restrictions, because we cannot trust ourselves to live without external restraints on our impulses and inclinations. We desperately need, in each day, places to remember and realign ourselves with, that which is deepest, truest, and best about us, in order to express and live toward it when we step back into the day.

We have to come to terms with—make our peace with—who we are, and who we also are. We must live transparent to, and respectful of, ourselves—of all our selves. We have to know who we are, and who we also are, and be okay with that, be reconciled with that, at peace with that—and with our conflicts and contradictions.

Wholeness is not being one way only all of the time, but being aware of who the situation needs us to be, and being okay with contradictions. We can be this way in certain situations, and that way in certain other situations—but we cannot live in any situation as though that is the way we are through all situations, and we are never any other way in any other situation ever. We have to be conscious of all the roles we play, and of how our parts compliment one another, and make us who we are.

A life of solitude reduces the roles we play, and we can pretty much be who we are consistently over time, but one-dimensional and shallow. A rich life requires the integration of opposites. We are not built to be one way only, but a host of ways appropriate for each occasion that may arise.

We have to work with all of the roles our life is asking us to be, in order to integrate, harmonize, and reconcile them with one another—and we have to recognize those roles we are not capable of playing without violating our essential sense of self. There are things we cannot do and be who we are, or we can do them, but not often. I could not do a weekly cocktail party or football game.

Retirement is where I can get by with doing mostly the things I like to do. The list of things I can get by with not doing is getting longer. I don’t have to play roles that I am not equipped to play, and have fewer occasions forced on me that I have to “rise to.” The gap between the roles I have to integrate is narrowing, which makes it easier to be who I am with mindful awareness and compassion. But, I still have an identity I am seeking to form and to serve. I am still bringing myself forth into the light—still looking in my mirrors.

Our identity is the organizing core of all of the roles we are capable of playing in situations as they arise. I am not a mechanic or a carpenter. I am certainly not a surgeon, or a dentist, or a farrier. I am not a cellist or an opera singer. The list is long. But, there is another list. My identity encompasses a wide range of possible roles and aptitudes. We all live out of a repertoire of possibilities. We cannot be integrated and whole without being conscious of them.

Look in all of your mirrors. Every aspect of your life is a mirror, reflecting you to you. See who looks back at you from each one.  Start with the bed you wake up in.  What does the bed, and the bedroom, and the bathroom, and the house, say about you? What do they reveal of you?  Proceed from there, throughout your day. 

What do you wear?  How do you greet the first person you meet? The fifth?  Who do you show yourself to be in each scene of your day?  Who is the you that shines through in each of the roles you play?  Are there some you’s you don’t allow to shine through in some roles? 

How many you’s do you keep in seclusion, unavailable to public viewing?  It is crucial that you are aware of all the you’s there are, and that you work with them all, consciously, mindfully, compassionately, over time—to integrate, reconcile, harmonize, and choreograph into a whole that is completely transparent to you, so that all of you knows, and is comfortable with, all of you.

Don’t hide anything about yourself from yourself.  And no pretending to not be pretending!  Nothing happens for the good in your life until you integrate the whole, and step as one into your day.  Each day.

If we are going to find what we need from the day, in the day, we are going to have to offer that to each other, every day. The day is not going to magically make a place for us to do the work of reflection, recollection; to do the work of distancing; to do the work of re-affirming what is truly important, and re-directing ourselves toward it. What we need from the day is not going to flow easily to us from the day. If it comes to us at all, it will be because we—willfully, deliberately, intentionally—make it available to each other each day.

We have to be oases of soul and spirit for each other. We have to be places where others regroup, recover, recharge, and reflect. We have to ask one another, with routine dependability and complete seriousness, “Who are you? Who are you also? What are you about? How are you living in ways that reflect that? How are you living in ways that dispute that and deny, conceal and oppose, that?”

We—all of us together, collectively, communally—are what we—individually, and personally—need from the day in order to bring to the day what the day needs from us. We do not live well alone. We cannot do it alone. Without access to the right kind of community, we are a collective of conflict-driven individuals, unclear about what is deepest, truest, and best about us, at constant odds with ourselves, with no organizing principle, or aim, or intention to draw us toward wholeness and direct us toward the good.

We need one another to provide us with that compassionate, attentive space without answers in which to do the work of remembering, and rededicating ourselves to, who we are and what we are about—so that we might step back into the day, and provide what it needs out of our hearts and souls, and selves—which are as capable of redemption and restoration as any heart, soul, and self that has ever lived.

The Path to Numinous Reality

At times, our experience of life can sit us down and stun us into silence with the depth, and breadth, and marvel of creation. The fact that we are alive and a part of the all-ness of things can be overwhelming in an awe-inspiring kind of way. We can be amazed at being amazed.

To think of ourselves tucked in with all that is, is to risk losing our hold on the egocentric structure which holds the world together for us—the smugness which places us at the front and center of things, and makes us the hub around which life revolves. Seen in conjunction with quarks, black holes, and white dwarfs, we slip a few places in the order of importance, and take on the aura of “very lucky to be here.”

The insignificance of the “I” in relation to the rest of the universe, or just to the ocean, or the Grand Canyon, or one Giant Sequoia, or one seed of a Giant Sequoia, is, well, “I-opening.” In touch with the grandeur of it All, we lose touch with the world of normal, apparent, reality, and can no longer think that it is all about us, or continue to think that our plans, goals, dreams, interest, ambition and convenience are the things that matter. We cannot sit very long with the view from this perspective without running the risk of going crazy–or becoming religious.

The foundation of both insanity and religion is the loss of identity, bearings, orientation. The old, familiar world of normal, apparent reality is shattered by an experience that calls into question all that we had valued, thought, or held to be true. We see things in a way that invalidates the way we have always seen things, and leaves us wondering what’s what and how it can be. The fundamental, foundational, primary religious experience is the experience of being fragmented, splintered, displaced. It is the experience of being lost, and alone in the cosmos, wondering, “Does anyone see what I see???”

We do not live well without some organizing principle. We have to have some way of keeping things manageable, of thinking about ourselves in relation with everything else. We have to ground ourselves in something, orient ourselves toward something, coalesce around something. We have to be able, somehow, to hold the I in place in relation to the All. We have to fit into the time and place of our living. We have to belong. We have to find our place in the universe. Religion gives us a place. Religion helps us shape our response to the experience of being lost, and alone in the cosmos.

Religion at its best provides us with a framework for being amazed without disintegrating. Religion at its best surrounds us with the protection of the community of those who have been there before us, who are there with us, who know what it is like to be astounded, and who can comfort us with their confidence and compassion, as they teach us to sing from the heart of joy and wonder in responding to the marvel of the I in relation to the All.

From the standpoint of religion, our response to the wonder of being is the initiating experience into the community of those gathered as children of, as disciples of, as servants of, beauty, goodness, justice, equality, liberty, truth, grace, mercy, love and peace. This is to say that the foundation of worship is “Wow!” The heart of religion is awe and wonder.

If we have never felt stunned, shaken, overwhelmed at the very idea of existence, we cannot feel religious. If we are not overtaken by the magnificence of a starry, starry night, or of the Rocky Mountains, or of an infant in our arms, religion will never be anything more than a collection of dead rituals, and stale doctrines. If we are to be religious, we have to be alive, and to be alive, we have to be alert to, and impressed by, the time and place of our living. It has to mean something to us that we are here/now. Religion cannot mean anything to us if life itself does not mean anything to us. In order to be religious in the deepest, best, truest sense of the word, we have to be “wow-ed” by the fact that we are alive, by the fact that we are right here, right now.

The religious problem of the 21st century is how to get the “wow” back. Traditionally, historically, there have been three ways of initiating and maintaining the “wow response”: The encounter with beauty and truth in art, music and nature. Religious education in the 21st century is going to have to connect us, at the level of the heart, with beauty and truth in art, music and nature. Religious education in the 21st century has to be about seeing, hearing, perceiving, intuiting, imagining, creating, exploring, and, most of all, experiencing the wonder of life.

We don’t do this with words. We don’t do this with Sunday school books. Or with theology and doctrine. Or with even contemporary catechisms. We don’t even talk about art, music and nature. We give ourselves and our children the experience of art, music and nature. We throw ourselves into art, music and nature. The religious task in the 21st century is waking ourselves up by becoming alive to the life that we are living, to the life that is waiting to be lived by those who see, hear, understand, and know how it is with them, and about them. We wake ourselves up with art, music and nature.

So, your homework assignment is to immerse yourself, beginning today, or with what is left of it, in art, music and nature. If you are going to be spiritual, you have to be sensual, you have to be physical, you have to see, touch, taste, hear, sense and smell. You have to wake yourselves up to life, and to the wonder of living. You have to be alive and know you are alive. You have to be shocked awake by experiencing the experience of being alive. You have to put yourself in the position of being shocked awake by exposing yourselves, again and again, to the wonder of life through art, music and nature.

You have to put yourself there repeatedly, and wait for the magic to happen. Wait for your eyes to open, for your ears to hear. For your heart to understand. One of the stories about the Buddha has him lifting a lotus flower before those gathered to hear him speak. The lotus flower was his sermon. Only one person in the audience of disciples, Mahakashyapa, “got it,” smiled, and was enlightened. If the Buddha had done the same thing the next day, maybe two people would have gotten it. Maybe six the next, a few this time, a few more the next time, until all were enlightened–awake to the wonder of being alive.

The magic of art, music and nature works just this way. We cannot hurry the moment of seeing, of hearing, of understanding. We can only put ourselves in the position of perceiving the moment when it comes. We can only prepare the way for the power of numinous reality to Wow us awake; we cannot force the Numen to come our way, on our schedules, at a time and place when, and where, it is convenient for us. We give ourselves to the experience of art, music and nature, and wait, expectantly, in order to lose our place in the universe and to find it at last.

The Mythic Vision

There is that into which we cannot go. Call it the Mythic Realm—or anything you want to call it. Just know that it’s there, and we aren’t going to figure it out any more than we can figure out True Love. We don’t know what the deal is, or how, or why it works the way it works.

Abraham Maslow tried to explain it to us with his “hierarchy of needs/values.” You’ll remember, I’m sure, how he started out with survival, and worked his way through three other values (needs) to self-actualization. Beware of any structure that explains us to ourselves as neatly as this. Any time someone draws a triangle for you, or a pyramid, and says, “Look, life is like this,” get up and leave the room. Life is not like a triangle. It’s more like a really, really big canvass upon which someone poured paint with all the colors produced by Sherwin Williams and rode a motorcycle through as it dried.

Joseph Campbell walked around Maslow’s Pyramid of Values and said, “This is the first thing to go when you’re in the grip of a Mythic Vision (That is, a vision of Mythic Proportions).” Your family goes, your job goes, your concerns for self-esteem goes, your desire to “self-actualize” goes. You forget all about yourself and everything you ever held dear. To paraphrase Jesus, “Those who lose themselves in the service of the Mythic Vision will find themselves.”

Jesus actually said, “Those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel’s will find it.” It’s the same thing. We have to lose our life in order to embrace, and live, our Life. Jesus could have been talking about keeping your chin up in the face of martyrdom—about keeping your eye on heaven, and the eternal rewards and blessings. I hope not. The idea of heaven ruins a really good story. When you make getting to heaven the whole point of your life, you’re back at Maslow’s Pyramid, now with heaven at the top. Heaven becomes self-actualization taken to the next level. It’s all so rational, systematic, ordered and calculated. It’s the calculation I have the least patience with.

“What are you thinking about? What are you doing?” is answered simply with, “I’m getting to heaven when I die.” I so much prefer, “I’m in the grip of a Mythic Vision and don’t know what I’m doing. You’ll have to excuse me.”

When we are in the grip of a Mythic Vision, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and we don’t have a clue about what is going on. We know what we have to do, but we don’t know why, or how, and we won’t let even a cross stand in our way. And, we aren’t doing it to get to heaven, or avoid hell. We are doing it because we have no choice, because we have been seized, much like the apostles were seized when Jesus said, “Follow me.” They didn’t ask, “Why should we? What’s in it for us?” and he didn’t say, “Well, because there will be heaven at the end, and you really don’t want to miss that, now do you? Because if you do, there will be hell to pay, and you certainly don’t want that, now do you? So, are you coming, or not?” You can tell it isn’t a Mythic Vision that stands before you if you can weigh your options, and decide where you are better off.

There is no “better off,” with a Mythic Vision. There is just having to do the thing in a “California Or Bust” kind of way. We don’t know why, or how, or what’s what, or who’s on first. It’s a Divine Imperative. A Glorious Compulsion. A Magnificent Obsession. And, it can’t be distinguished from a schizophrenic crack-up. It’s as crazy as it gets. Explain to your mom why you are going off to die on a cross. You’ll have to invent heaven to make it sound plausible.

The Mythic Vision is the Artist’s Curse. Artists are out there right now, painting, drawing, chipping marble, welding metal, carving wood, writing poetry, making music, and they have to invent something like heaven to make it sound plausible. So, they come up with the Big Time. “Why are you wasting your time with that?” say their moms. “I’m going to hit the Big Time, Mom,” they say. The Big Time doesn’t have anything to do with it. They have to paint, and draw, and write, and all the rest, but they can’t explain that, so they invent the Big Time.

The sad thing about the Artist’s Curse is that artists tell the Big Time lie so often they come to believe it themselves, and they think it really is about the Big Time, and they get dejected, and depressed, and into addiction because their Real Addiction isn’t paying off, isn’t delivering the Big Time, and they can’t stand not knowing what they are doing, doing the thing they have to do with no pay-off, and they hate themselves for wasting their lives, for not having anything to show their moms, and make them proud, so they drink themselves to death.

But, what are you going to do? Ignore the Mythic Vision? That won’t work either. Nothing is sadder than living safe little prophylactic lives, and having it made. Nothing is sadder than refusing to get on board when the Mythic Vision is leaving the dock. Nothing is sadder than letting Jesus walk on without you because you have to finish the nets, and then patch the sail, and then, what was it, well there is the list, you know, and you can’t let go of what’s important to serve what is essential.

So, there is hell to pay, either way. We are “damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.” What’s it going to be? We don’t have to worry if we never look up. It isn’t a problem if we stay too busy to notice when the Mythic Vision stands before us, waving its arms, jumping up and down, shouting, “HEY! Over here! Over here!” We never know what we are missing if we don’t think about it. We don’t have to say no if we never open the invitation, or answer the doorbell, or the phone.

To complicate matters, the Mythic Vision doesn’t come to everyone in the same way. Jesus doesn’t say to everyone, “Come, follow me.” He tells some people very specifically, “Don’t come with me. Stay where you are. You are holding the world together, making the beds, and putting food on the table.” The artists’ moms have their place. Without the moms, where would the artists be? Life can very certainly consist of mending the nets and the sails. That, too, has to be done. And one might say, “Thank God!” there are those who have to do it!

There are those who are gripped by the passion for the regular, life-giving, life-sustaining, day-in-and-day-out, mundane, ordinary routines of living. They can walk around Maslow’s Pyramid and say, “I don’t’ know about that self-actualization stuff, but I know I have to get tomatoes for dinner!” If you think dinner is somehow not important, miss four or five in a row. The Mythic Vision can very surely be the call to stay where you are, and put in a day! Which rather nicely leaves us wondering whether it’s the Mythic Vision we are serving, or if we are copping out.

How do we know? We don’t know. What do we do? We don’t know what to do. Do we leave, or stay? Do we have nothing to do with Mythic Visions that do not propel us into the hinterlands, but keep us at home, mowing the lawn? Do we politely refuse the inclination to leave our parent’s house, on the grounds that Mythic Visions can be about staying where we are? Are we failing ourselves by not leaving home? Are we simply running away from home, and the hard things that are being asked of us there in pursuit of an escapist fantasy beyond the far horizon, and excusing our exit on the basis of the need to serve the Mythic Vision that we have heard about, and think it may be over the far horizon because it certainly isn’t in this house with these people?

We can second-guess ourselves far into the night, every night. The artists’ moms sacrifice the glory of the Mythic Vision of their artist daughters and sons in doing what they, the moms, have to do around the house. The moms are as Mythic in their way as their artist sons and daughters are Mythic in their way. Doing what we came to do can be smoking a turkey as easily as writing a poem about the way our mom smoked turkeys. And, smoking turkeys and writing poems can be ways of avoiding the truth of who we are and what we are about. Maybe yes, maybe no. Time will tell.

We can be seized by the vision of home, hearth, and family, or by the vision of the hinterlands with their dragons and crosses. And, we can’t be evaluating the worth of our vision in light of the shape of someone else’s vision. Some of us are knees, and some of us are elbows, and all of us are crucial to the working of the body that is the world. The point is that there is a Mythic Vision with our name on it that we don’t order up just because it looks exciting—a Mythic Vision that comes to us from beyond us to draw us into who we are. The entire process is irrational. It is not intellectual. It is Mystery! There is that, into which we cannot go, but because of which we go because we can’t help it. And, we HAVE to do it! And, that’s where we came in.

It’s a Shifting Perspective…

We are all fundamentalist fanatics at heart. We are all literalists at heart. We hate ambivalence and ambiguity, and want things to be nailed down, spelled out, clearly defined. We want things to be black or white, right or wrong, cut and dried, one way or the other—and to stay that way!

We want to know what’s what. We are sure there are rules, and we want to know what they are. There is a certain way that things are, and are to be, and they cannot some other way as well, and it is important that everything be what it is!

We can buy the Buddhist idea of the illusory nature of reality up to a point, but we believe that behind the illusion, there is A Reality that is unchanging and rock-solid, actual, tangible, literal, absolute, and unalterably real. We believe there is A Way that things are; A Way that things are meant to be. A Way individuals are, and they cannot deviate from that and still be true to themselves. Even scientists look for the organizing principle of existence—for the unalterable laws of nature which undergird the framework of reality.

I’m here to tell you that it’s a matter of perspective and chance all the way down.

Life is an optical illusion. You look, and things appear to be one way. You look again, and everything appears to be another way. Which way are they really? All they ways they are capable of being is how they are!

There is no infinite, eternal, unchanging, immutable, inscrutable will or some ultimate reality that is the source and ground of everything, willing everything to toe the line, walk the straight and narrow and be what it is supposed to be!

The heart of the Gospel that Jesus came proclaiming is: Sometimes it’s like this, and sometimes it’s like that. Sometimes you do it this way, and sometimes you do it that way. Sometimes, Jesus raised the dead, and sometimes, Jesus left the dead to bury the dead. Sometimes, Jesus would forgive a guilty person, and sometimes, Jesus would curse an innocent fig tree. Sometimes, Jesus would say, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and sometimes, Jesus would say, “You can’t have any of our oil for your lamps—go into town and buy your own!” And, “You have to work things out for yourself! Who made me your caretaker?” And, “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?”

Each situation is unique unto itself. While there may be strong similarities with other situations, the time and place of this situation, and the individual natures of these participants, and the specific contingencies impinging upon this particular moment, create nuances and subtleties that require mindful, compassionate, awareness regarding what is happening, and what needs to happen in response, and how our gifts, imagination and genius might best be used in the service of the good, here and now. And, even then, it is a matter of luck and timing and the way the cards fall. Chance and perspective are at the bottom of it all.

Upon what does perspective depend? Why do we see things as we do? Why do people think the way they think? We can’t answer that, but we think we can get to the bottom of why things are the way they are. Who are we kidding? How good is the good we call good? How bad is the bad we call bad? And how will time change the way we evaluate good and bad?

We have to consider the apparent well-being of the apparently real. We might not know what The True Good of the situation might be, but we can focus on making the apparently real as apparently good as it can be, because appearances are all we have to work with in any situation.

We are here to make things better than they would be without us. Better in terms of what? Better in terms of the best we can imagine at the time regarding what is good—and noble, kind, compassionate, charitable, generous, commendable, worthy… Better in terms of our sense of how things ought to be—our understanding of justice, fairness, equality, grace, mercy peace—in each particular moment of our living, knowing it may all change in the next moment, or in some far off future moment, of someone’s living.

And here I will wax as eloquently as I know how on “how things ought to be.” Says whom? Says each of us in each situation as it arises. Morality is what we bring to the table. “The Good” is our idea. The Good is where we come in! Lions and tigers and humpback whales leave things exactly as they find them. Human beings say, “We can do better than that!” And we swing into action. Our gift to the world is Ethics! Morality! The Good, the True, and the Beautiful! And we work to make things like we think they ought to be, for the true good of all concerned.

“Every mountain and hill shall be made low, all the swamps and marshes shall be raised up!” This is our idea! And we are here to work in the service of the best we can imagine, and striving to make the best of things as we find them. It is our contribution to the way of things.

We don’t have the last word on much of anything. There are no absolutes. There is only the apparently real, and our way of seeing has to take that into account. We never see all there is to see about anything, but we must act as though we see enough to guide our actions. Which may not be so.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” You can’t beat that for the “Ground of Being.” Even when it means sending them back to town to buy their own oil, which is exactly what you would have them do for you, if the situation were reversed.

We are perfectly capable of determining what the good is on our own. We don’t have to sit, hoping someone who knows more than we do will come along, and reveal it to us. We are not too stupid to figure it out by ourselves. Water for the thirsty, food for the hungry, rest for the weary—these things are good. They aren’t the only things that are good, and we have the capacity to figure the rest of them out, and enlist ourselves in their service. And, we can be fooled even by that. We can do 10,000 things thinking we are doing the right thing, and be wrong about each one.

We know immediately when we are being treated well. We know the good when we see it, when we experience it. Ah but, you knew there would be a catch. What’s good for one is not necessarily good for another. What’s good for me may not be good for you. Everything does not work out for the best of all concerned. Who’s best is the question. Within what time frame is the other question. And how can we be sure we won’t regret today’s good tomorrow?

We may whiz around in our scoot-a-bouts thinking how good it was of the dinosaurs, and all the flora and fauna of their time, to die out so that we might have fossil fuel to burn (even at $4.00 or more a gallon), but the dinosaurs (and the flora and fauna) would have a different take on the matter. And the impact of our scooting around on global warming transforms completely our glee at the deaths of the dinosaurs (etc.), which were the precursor to our own demise, and that of the planet. Things that work out for the best of one, often work out for the worst of another, or even for the one, but we have no problem seeing which is which. We are well equipped to determine what is good, and what is not. Even though it is all time-limited. With enough time, everything goes over into its opposite, and then where are we?

Right where we have always been! Working in the service of balance and harmony! Working to even things out and match things up, and bring good to light and to life in the world! This is always our work to do and it is never done. “The harvest is bountiful but the laborers are few!”

Whose good is going to be served by when, is the question. How much for me, how much for you is the question. Where do we draw the line is the question. Who is going to sacrifice what for the benefit of whom is the question. When my good is your bad, and vice-versa, what are we going to do then is the question. And there is not some absolute, external authority to take the weight of decision making away from us. We decide. We choose. We say. And live with the consequences of our actions.

What guides our choices? In light of what do we live? How do we know what to do when? The burden is too much for us. And, we all turn into fundamentalist fanatics frantically seeking The Rules! We need guidelines! We need principles! We need a policy! We need someone to tell us what to do! We need an authoritative, definitive, set of rules to go by! We need something to make it easy. Someone to hide behind! Mamma! Help!

The Buddhists say, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” How’s that for the prescribed way for dealing with external authority? They could have said as easily, “If you meet your mother on the road, kill her!” We don’t need to have anyone taking our place, assuming our responsibility for deciding for ourselves how to live our life. We need to do our own living, and our own deciding. We need to grow up, and be what the situation is asking us to be. Which is exactly the Buddha’s realization under the Bo Tree. “I am the one!” We live by our own authority, and let the outcome be the outcome, for better and for worse.

We are the ones who say so. We say what’s what. We say how things ought to be.  It is never more difficult than being our own authority in all matters of faith and practice. It is never more difficult than deciding for ourselves what is good, and what we will do about it. We are the ones who have to decide what choice we will make every time we need to make a choice. There is no one here but us. It all comes down to us. We are as ultimate as reality gets.

When our daughters entered adolescence, they questioned every parental decision we made. “Why this? Why not that?” With each one, we would say, “Listen, it is like this. We are the parents, and we are responsible for making these decisions. And we don’t know what we are doing. We have never been the parents of adolescent daughters, and are learning how to do it as we go along. So, here’s the deal: We will make what appears to us to be the best decision in the moment a decision is required, and then we all—parents and daughters—will evaluate it over time, and the next time something like this comes along, we may well decide differently. But for now, this is how it is.”

When we get it wrong, and we often will, we will know it in time. Then, we have to stop, and start over again in a new direction. This is where all the rest of us come in. We cannot just listen to ourselves. We cannot just listen to those who agree with us, who tell us what we want to hear. We have to pay close attention to the opposition. We have to be guided by the collective experience of the species—and even then, we hope for the best.

We are back to the William Blake statement: “Without contraries is no progression.” It is perspective (and chance) all the way down, and one person’s perspective is enlarged, deepened, expanded by the perspectives of those who see things differently. Humor, for instance, puts a different spin on things. We think we are seeing one thing, and it turns out, with the punch line, that we are looking at something else entirely. The perspective shift is the source of humor and life, understanding, enlightenment, revelation, peace, wholeness, satori, growing up and becoming who we are—and also are. Perspective shifts cannot happen when we come together and repeat the same things we have always said, and think the same things we have always thought, and do everything we can to get everyone to talk and think like we do.

We are not fundamentalist fanatics at heart, and we are not here to take things literally and absolutely. We are here to embrace ambivalence and ambiguity, dance with contradictions, befriend conflict, and work diligently and intently—consciously and mindfully—with it all.

Ann Cornell has said that wisdom is not found in what is well known, and often quoted, but in the emergence of what is coming to be known. She advises us to learn to appreciate, even cherish, the slow movement of that which is coming to be.

We have to stand apart from what we have always assumed to be so if we are to grow in our awareness of how things are, and how they are coming to be. The source of creativity, or one of them, is what we might call “cross pollination,” where the perspective of one discipline influences/impacts the perspectives of other disciplines. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said that creative people are always listening “across the fence,” to what their colleagues in other disciplines are doing, as a way of getting a new take on their own field.

It comes down to conversation, to dialog! We have to speak with one another from the heart about things that matter—not arguing for our point of view, but struggling to articulate, with clarity and precision, what our point of view is, while enabling others to do the same with their point of view. In the context of shared points of view, miracle happens. A new reality emerges. We all see more than we saw before we started talking. We shape together a new way of seeing, and we are all changed—enlarged, deepened, expanded—by the process of speaking honestly, and listening intently, honoring and respecting the perspectives that are being expressed.

And we can take this approach and apply it to our inner dialogues with ourselves. Sit still, be quiet, and wait in the silence watching for what emerges, appears, arises, occurs to us of its own accord—appearing out of nowhere, unbidden, un-thought, unconsidered until it pops right into our consciousness, from where we do not know. It comes from Psyche, from Soul, from our unconscious (So called because we are not conscious of it).

We have to develop our ability to dialogue with the unconscious side of ourselves. With “The Other” whom Carl Jung said, “lives within, whom we do not know.” We have to come to know The Other, and create a relationship that is a source of comfort and guidance along the way.

But back to sitting in the silence. We sit and wait, watching for what emerges unbidden, and pay particular attention to what catches our eye, and look closer at that, allowing it to lead us where we have no idea of what is going on, but trusting our Inner Guide to know more than we know, and see where it goes.

In all of this, we shape, we form, we create, modify, adjust, reevaluate, transform (And perhaps scrap it all, and start all over) our idea of what ought to be, in conversation with one another and in dialogue with ourselves. We decide for ourselves what is right, and revise that in light of our experience—of our expanding understanding, our deepening perspective, over time. We grow in our comprehension of the good, and in our ability to serve it.

We realize, for instance, that after a point, making more money, and having more stuff, don’t equate with more happiness, contentment, and enjoyment of life, and we stop paying the price to make more money—and begin to use what money we have in the service of what does make for happiness, including advancing the happiness of others. We become greater sources of good in the world over time when we are engaged in conversation that enlarges our perspective, and our heart, and changes our view of what’s important. And that changes everything.

It’s shifting perspective and chance all the way down—and changing our mind about what is important is one of the requirements of the process of maturation, and of the spiritual journey. All of which go on forever.

Learning to be Individuals

As a species, we are moving out of the tribal orientation of group think

—where no one had an idea of her, of his, own,

and everyone lived the way life had always been lived before them

—where everyone knew how it was supposed to be done, because nothing new was ever done

—where the rules were strictly imposed, and deviation was severely penalized.

We are moving away from that orientation, and moving toward a community, or communal, orientation

—where the group exists to support and sustain the birthing, the coming to be, of the individuals within the group.

We are moving from a telling, doing, obeying orientation to more of a listening, experimenting, being and being-with orientation.

Jesus broke the mold and set the tone with his “You have heard it said, but I say unto you,” approach. Before Jesus, the religious teachers of the day had no mind of their own. They were simply receptacles of the teaching that had been passed along to them, and they passed it, unaltered, along to their disciples.

This is in the tradition of the Yogi masters who are, in the words of Joseph Campbell, “a clear pane of glass” through whom pass the wisdom and the instruction of the ages, without alteration or improvement, and without the personal imprint of the individual guru. The work of the disciple in this tradition, is to disappear, to cease to exist, to become a mindless carrier of the tradition, in the manner suggested by the writers of the Bible, “neither adding, nor taking away.”

Jesus comes adding and taking away. “You can’t pour new wine into old wineskins,” he says, and, “Every scribe fit for the kingdom brings out of his treasure something old and something new.” “Who do you say that I am?” he asks. And, “Why don’t you decide for yourselves what is right?”

With Jesus, comes the idea of new ideas that cannot be contained in old constructs. His disciples didn’t get it, and quickly acted to close off the possibility of anyone thinking something the disciples didn’t tell them to think, but “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” is heard, even in the wilderness, and once heard, there is no forgetting what has been said.

Jesus calls those who follow him to respond to this moment right now in light of the possibilities and needs of the moment—perhaps by doing things that have never been done, and may never be repeated. Jesus does not simply stand aside, and allow the traditions of the past free and easy access to the moment of his living. Jesus stands between what always has been done, and what needs to be done, and says, “Love your enemy,” and, “Whoever is without guilt can cast the first stone.” With Jesus comes responsibility for one’s own living, for one’s own acting, for one’s own choosing and deciding in the moment that calls for action. With Jesus, “the old has passed away and, behold, the new has come.”

But, it doesn’t come all at once and that’s that. It comes in fits and starts over long stretches of time. It comes, but then it depends on us to pick it up, and carry it forward. It is much too easy to allow the tradition to do our thinking for us. We need the right kind of community on our side, because we don’t have what it takes to do the work of independence independently from those who are also doing that work. We need one another in order to think for ourselves.

This is the primary work of the right kind of community—enabling individuals within the community to find their own voice, sing their own song, tell their own story, and live the life that is theirs to live. The work of the right kind of community is to enable individuals within the community to be who they are—to be true to themselves—to live authentic, genuine, straight-from-the-heart lives. It is the work of the right kind of community to enable disciples to become like the Master in following no master. The community exists to bring to life the life that is waiting to come to life within each of us. It does this by not-knowing what that life is, or who we are supposed to be, and by listening with ears that hear, seeing with eyes that see, and comprehending with hearts that understand who we are that stand before it, wondering who we are and what we are to do.

The right kind of community doesn’t have a clue about what should be. We all enter each moment, not knowing what will be asked of us by the moment, or what will be called for in the moment, or how we will respond to the moment. Maybe we will fulfill the moment’s needs, and, maybe we will fail the moment. How to be true to ourselves within the context of the moment here/now is the perennial problem of the community, and of the individuals making up the community. There is no formula for solving the problem of knowing what to do, when, where, and how, apart from sitting still, being empty/quiet, listening intently to the silence, self and moment, and waiting for what arises, emerges, appears, occurs to us, calls from the silence to light the way and elicit/evoke our response.

Ideally, the right kind of community would stand before each of us, not-knowing who we should be, or what we should do, or how we should live our life, but listening to each of us—lovingly, mindfully, attentively—trusting the power of compassionate awareness to provide what is needed for us to be who we are. The minute the community presumes to know what we should do, who we should be, how we should live, the community ceases to be the right kind of community. The right kind of community imposes nothing, but provides what is needed: Caring space in which we might hear what we are saying and see what we are looking at.

While the community doesn’t know what should be done in the moment of our living, the community does know how to know. The community possesses the vision of the How of Being. The community knows about process. It knows, for instance, that we are to live with compassionate, mindful, non-judgmental, non-willful, non-opinionated awareness—to listen with loving, attentive presence, to the silence of our life, and see where it goes. No expectations. No agendas. No plans. No opinions.

We have to become comfortable with not-knowing. We must practice relishing playful experimentation. We practice refraining from taking things personally, and practice taking very few things seriously.

We are not to be burdened with having to be pleasing. We are not to be undone by our mistakes and failures—or by those of others. We are not to focus on what we can’t have, on what we can’t do, on what can’t happen, but on what we can have, on what we can do, on what can happen.

We are to laugh a lot, and spend time doing the things we love to do. We are to drink deeply of life, to live as fully as we are capable of living within the time and place of our living, so that, when it is over, we will not die wishing we had had the courage to do what needed to be done.

The community, when it is being the right kind of community, is with us to enable the life that we are capable of living, to bring out the new thing that is “us,” and to set us about the business of being alive, rejoicing and delighting in the wonder of being—in the wonder of “us”—throughout the years of our living.