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.

Creating a Worthy Life

Brooks Vance advised his wife, “Don’t add up the liabilities, Louise. It will only depress you.” This is not denial. This is recognizing the futility of rehashing what has been done to us, of living with our backs to the future and our arms reaching out to that which cannot be. The spiritual task is to let go what’s going and to let come what’s coming. May it be so with us all!

Of course, we grieve what must be grieved, and mourn what must be mourned, but grieving and mourning are not to become our life. We do not live to wail. We wail and go on. To what? To the next thing. To the next thing that needs us. To what needs to be done in the situation as it arises. To the construction of as much good as we can create with what we have to work with, within the context and circumstances of our lives.

Our work is the creation of the good, not the remembrance of the long-gone-good, not the eternal mourning of the loss of the good, not resentment for the good that never was. Yes, we can be devastated, traumatized, overwhelmed, and undone by the impact of life. Yes, all that we have can be taken from us. But, if we sit lost in our losses, we also lose the moment of our living.

The task of life is always “What now?” “What next?” We have to find ways over, under, around, and through the barriers and blockades, the traumas and catastrophes, that come our way. We live as much “in spite of” as “because of.” We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of dreams of snuggling down with life as we like it, of sealing ourselves into a nice, cozy, little nest, where things are just right, and will be forever. We are in the business of creation, not preservation. It is the business of life to emerge, unfold, evolve. Flat, straight lines are death.

The loss of everything to hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, forest fires and floods in recent years point us toward what is needed: resources for the surviving victims, and help over time. We need to provide survivors with the wherewithal required for the next step, the next thing. We help them with food, clothing, shelter and the means of making their way in the world after the loss of their world. We supply them with the physical, psychological and emotional resources for life, with the expectation always being that they will live on, that they will wail, and go on, that they will recover, regroup and reorient themselves toward the best they can imagine in the wake of all they have lost.

One of the psychological/emotional tasks of survival is the deliberate act of moving beyond the numbing, all-consuming nature of traumatic events. We have to draw a line. We have to stop contemplating our losses. We have to go on with what remains of our lives. This is letting go of what is gone. This is the defiant refusal to submit endlessly to the impact of grief, loss, and sorrow. We will not allow our past to rob us of our future.

This does not mean we forget what we have lost. We may wail repeatedly over time, over the rest of time. We may mark anniversaries with tears, sadness and sorrow. We may hold ceremonies of grief and remorse in which we remember our losses, and mourn that which is no more. But, we do not cease to live because of what we have lost. We refuse to give into the constant ache of numbing sorrow, and bring our attention to bear on this moment now, and what needs us here, and what we can do to serve the good, with what we have, where we are.

We do not turn our backs to the idea of the good, in spite of the evil we have experienced. We do not withhold ourselves from the service of the good, even though evil is real and much too present a force in the world. We do not reject the good as a useless, pointless, futile waste of time—but live to bring good forth in our life, anyway, nevertheless, even so!

There is an inscription on a New England tombstone that reads, “It is a terrible thing to love what death can touch.” It is a worse thing to not love what death can touch. It is crucial that we refuse to allow the terribleness of love’s loss to keep us from loving. The spiritual task is to love, wholly, fully, completely, over and over, “what death can touch.” That is who we are. That is what we do. We are here to love what death can touch, as terrible as the impact of loss may be.

We cannot reject the path that is ours to walk. We cannot refuse to walk it with grace and compassion. We cannot forget that the rest of our life is in our hands. How do we want to spend the time that remains to be lived? How do we want it to play out? What do we intend with the life we have left to live? What do we mean by the way we live our life?

There is a sense in which we are no different from the displaced persons, the refugees, of every age. We have more personal resources at our disposal, and it is easy for us to think that we are not as they are. But all of us are putting a life together, whether we know it or not. All of us have to live for the rest of our time upon the earth. What form will our life take? What shape will it assume? What will people, looking at our life in the time that is left to us, think we are living for? What will they think we are trying to express, exhibit, bring to life?

Our life is our work. We owe it to ourselves to craft the best life we can imagine! We have what remains of it to complete our work, to shape our life, to produce the best we have to offer as a boon to the world. This what all hero’s returning from their journey offer to the people who welcome their arrival. Our work is who we show ourselves to be through the process of living our life. It has no necessary connection with what we do to earn a living. Our work is who we are. It is how we carry ourselves through the day. It is what remains of us in the minds of those who know us long after we are gone. In what ways will we be remembered? What will our legacy be? What about us will be missed? How are we living to keep our presence alive in the lives of those who out-live us?

Kindness and compassion were a part of the mix that was Jesus and the Buddha. As were identity, integrity, sincerity and authenticity. They said what was on their mind. They had an accurate sense of direction. They knew what was right and what was wrong—regardless of what the social code of their day said. They knew what was true and what was false. They knew what was important and what was only pretending to be of value. They saw into the heart of things. And they bore well the pain of being alive.

They lived out of their own take on things. They had their ideas about how life should be lived, and they were right-on with each of them. Time has borne them out. They did not come espousing a particular view of morality. They did not recommend asceticism. They did not advise a particular religious doctrine. They came exhibiting, expressing, disclosing their understanding of peace and justice as the foundation of right relationship. They made wherever they were a good place to be. Jesus and the Buddha knew that how we treat one another is more important than keeping the law, and so, did what they knew needed to be done, and let the outcome be the outcome.

Jesus and the Buddha lived to respect and honor all people. They treated everyone as a person of worth. The Buddha would have agreed with Jesus as he identified himself with the lowest of the low, saying, “In as much as you do it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do it to me.” No one was invisible to Jesus or the Buddha. They saw everyone as being of equal worth, and they treated everyone as though they were. Samaritans, women, and children had no place in Jewish society, they held no rank, they were ignored to the point of being “disappeared,” but Jesus saw them, received them, welcomed them, elevated them to positions of honor and said, “The first will be last and the last will be first.” The Buddha proclaimed, “Cease to do evil; learn to do good, cleanse your own heart; This is the teaching of the Buddhas.”

Whom do we treat well? Whom do we ignore? Who is safe with us, and who is unwelcome in our company? The straight way and narrow gate is to have a really, really big heart. That is what the church has missed with its emphasis upon morality, true belief, and right doctrine. Jesus, and the Buddha along with him, would say, “Believe anything you want to, but have a really, really big heart.”

The work is to develop a big heart. This is the spiritual task. It is not believing in Jesus so much as it is being Jesus—not believing in the Buddha, but being the Buddha (And so the Zen saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”). We live to be as big-hearted as Jesus and the Buddha were. One approach to that work is to become aware of how little our hearts actually are. Catching ourselves in the act of littleness, in the act of being little-hearted, is a step on the way to a big heart and a worthy life.

Walking Two Paths at the Same Time

Distractions abound. I am continually amazed at, and dumbfounded by, how little it takes to switch me from the main track into the trackless wasteland. We have to be mindful of the distractions swirling around us, avoid those that can be avoided, wake up to those that blindside us, and bring ourselves back to the task at hand: Being who we are, doing what needs to be done with the gifts/specialties/daemon/shtick/virtues/character/abilities/etc. that form our original nature in the time and place of our living.

We work with the day everyday. In each day, we have to remember what is important, what we are doing, and allow the day to bring us forth in meeting the day, while being who we are and remaining true to ourselves, within the circumstances of our time and place. The day brings us into focus. The day clarifies for us the things we need to be clear about: What are the gifts and characteristics—the qualities of heart and soul—that we are working to bring to life in our lives? The day enables us to see how we are doing, and where improvements and alterations need to be made, and elicits/evokes the right response to each moment of each situation as it arises.

The day provides a steady stream of encounters and information that we can use in making mid-course adjustments on the path to wholeness. The day shows us where we are in relation to where we have been, and where we need to be. It may start with oversleeping, or with the dog barking a warning to a dog on the other side of the window. We come into focus in the smallest details of living.

The Spiritual Life is lived on two levels at once. This is called “Walking two paths at the same time.” The Two Paths are seen everywhere we look. There is the “in the world but not of it” way of doing things. There is the “what to do level,” and the “how to do it when level.” The what to do level is about what is happening and what needs to be done about it. If we miss the bus, we may have to find a taxi. “What now, how?” brings the present moment into sharp focus, demanding that we assess the situation and come up with a plan of action for dealing successfully with it—using, relying on, the gifts, preferences, interests, enthusiasms, aptitudes, talents, etc., that come with us into the world. And through it all, the fundamental strategy for walking two paths at the same time is to always keep an eye on the other path while we navigate the sharp realities of this path, the one we are walking at any given time.

We are born as a bundle of latent knacks and abilities. As we grow up, the hope is that we will gravitate toward what we do best, and that our lives will be proving grounds where we experiment with who we are, and develop an increasingly clear notion of what is “us” and what is “not us.” We aren’t born knowing what that is, but there’s a homing device, of sorts, within us, and we know “when we are on the beam, and when we are off of it,” when we are on track with our lives and when we are off track, when we are where we belong, and where we belong-not.

Writing has always been “it” for me, and I have fought my way through a lot of internal resistance, and a pronounced lack of external encouragement, to write no matter what. I can say now, after all these years, that writing is “it” for me. I got here through trial and error, which is how we all get where we are going.

It has been a long and curious route that has brought me to the place of writing no matter what. The process could have been assisted, shortened, and improved with the right people in my life at the right time, but the process was going to unfurl somehow, some way, over time no matter what. Carl Jung said, “We are who we always have been, and who we will be.” Who we are born to be is always a part of who we are, and who we will be, and is always waiting to be more fully realized, recognized, received and loved into being. It takes a lot to block the process of our growing into the person we are to be in the world. That process is life itself. It’s the dandelion growing through the asphalt. Our lives are about being who we are no matter what. If we live long enough, we will get there. It only takes living to figure it out. We all learn to listen over time.

One of the paths we walk each day is the path of the What: What needs to be done today? What gifts, aptitudes, abilities do we possess that need to be brought into play? Now what? What now? We miss the bus. Now what? We are being asked “What are you going to do about this, here/now?” constantly throughout our day. We assess what is happening and what needs to happen in response, and what skills we possess to deal with the situation. Then comes the How? part of the equation.

What we do is one track of the spiritual journey. The other is how we do it. We work throughout our life to do what needs to be done the way it needs to be done, when it needs to be done. The How is as important as the What.

How we do it is about the spirit, the attitude, the demeanor, the manner, the shape and form, the style and tone, etc., that we exhibit in doing what we do. How we do it is about the qualities and characteristics of heart and soul, and the way in which we bring them to life in our life. Generosity and compassion; grace, mercy and peace; awareness, and mindfulness, and attention; love, joy, hospitality, kindness, gentleness, a propensity for living with good faith, and doing what’s right, to mention a few, are essential requirements of the Spiritual Life. Never was there a saint who wasn’t kind and compassionate. Never will be.

It may be easier for some of us to be kind and compassionate (etc.) than others of us, but it isn’t easy for any of us all of the time. Kindness and compassion (etc.) do not come naturally. Snatching and grabbing, whining and pouting, snarling and grouching, complaining and moaning, running and hiding—these are the things we can do without trying. Anybody can do them without practicing. It takes no effort to be all sour and crabby, withdrawn and sullen, hidden and afraid. For some of us it’s as easy as oversleeping.

The work is to go against the grain; to swim against the current; to do what’s hard; to be generous, when it would be easier to be a jerk. To be compassionate, when we want to tell them a thing or two takes practice to master.The spiritual journey is a walk toward who we are called to be. The Promised Land is a metaphor for what we are here to do and the spirit with which we are to do it. We live toward that every day of our lives. The days are filled with opportunities to assess how well we are doing, and provide convenient places to practice doing it, as we work to get it down.

What We Get Is Who We Are

Wholeness is the goal. Wholeness is a function of integrity, sincerity, congruity, at-one-ment with ourselves, and with each other. It is the hardest thing. To say “God is one,” is to say all we need to say about God. When God speaks to Moses, and Moses asks the name of God, so that he, Moses, might tell the people who told him to go to Egypt to rescue the people, God said, “Tell them I Am Who I Am sent you.” Integrity and sincerity are as close to God as we can get, and is God. Is divine. Is the ultimate in holiness. An experience of numinous, holy, reality. Just being who we are is holiness come to life. Amazing.  

Joseph Campbell talked about the importance of being transparent to ourselves (seeing/knowing who we are, what we are doing) and that being the key to doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, and how that is the simple stipulation for being “transparent to transcendence.” So that, along with Jesus, we exemplify the truth that “the father and I are one.” We are one with Transcendence when we are transparent to ourselves, at one with our original nature and the innate virtues that are ours to serve and to share in doing what needs to be done, moment to moment over the full course of our life.

“You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” says Jesus in Matthew 5:48. He means whole, seamless, fully integrated, complete, so that who we are on the inside is who we show ourselves to be on the outside. The Spiritual Journey is the work of integration, reconciliation. We live to be who we are—to know who we are—to be transparent to ourselves—and in so doing, we become “transparent to transcendence,” and exhibit godliness throughout our life.

God is at one with God, and we are to be at one with ourselves, and with each other. This doesn’t mean identical twinsies with everyone. It means recognizing that all of us together—with each of us being who we are individually and personally—are more God-like than one of us alone. It takes the integration of all those differences to produce a whole that is worth having. And the integration of our differences is the work of Yin/Yang through time, balancing our opposites, harmonizing our strengths and weaknesses in an “Every mountain shall be made low and every valley shall be lifted up” kind of way.

The idea of Jesus as my own personal best invisible friend, who died for me, who saves me, who pilots me, fails quite completely to take into account Jesus’ on words, “Wherever two or three are gathered, I will be there.” Another place the Bible is misquoted in this regard is the phrase “The kingdom of God is within you.” A better translation is “among you.” The kingdom is among us all, waiting for us to recognize it, and live together in ways that exhibit it. Or, as Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas, “Even now the kingdom is broadcast over the earth, and people do not see it.” “Seeing it” is participating in it, being it, being at one with it–knowing, doing, being at one with ourselves and one another and all others.

It is the community that is God in the world. If we are going to bring God to life, we have to bring community to life. The right kind of community. The right kind of community recognizes that the kingdom of God is found among the individual members of the community, and helps each person make the connection with that larger “kingdom” in which we live and move as fish in the sea. And, this is not something we try to do, or something we could do by trying. It is automatic, spontaneous, in those who live sincerely, spontaneously, with integrity and good faith in all that they do.

The right kind of community is a community of innocence, with no agenda in mind beyond asking us to be true to ourselves while remaining respectfully in touch with one another, particularly those who aren’t like us. This is not easy. We cannot be true to ourselves (Which requires congruence, integrity, living in ways that are integral to, and aligned with, that which is deepest, best and truest about us), and stay in touch with others without compromising some essential aspect of ourselves.

Being true to ourselves while staying in touch with one another is the fundamental requirement of the right kind of community, necessitating the right kind of intimacy, and the right kind of vulnerability—the right kind of awareness, and the right kind of boundaries. The Rumi observation applies: “If you are not here with us in good faith, you are doing terrible damage.” And his poem “The Guesthouse,” is the paradigm for participating in the “kingdom on earth.”

We have to know when community is possible, and when it is not, and refuse to waste our time trying to develop something that cannot be. Sometimes, we have to walk away, leaving the dead to bury the dead. It is very important to give toxic personalities a wide berth. Do not waste your time with those people who kill your soul. Get quickly away from deadly company. If you are ever going to listen to anything I say, listen to this. Get away from the company of those who are the walking dead, who suck the life right out of you. Get out of that town. And, shake the dust off your sandals as a sign against them, because they aren’t the kind of people with whom it is possible to establish community.

We are always thinking it’s our fault, our responsibility, our burden to make community happen. We can’t make relationship happen, much less community. We are always giving things up for the sake of relationship. We are always being asked to like things we don’t like, and not-like things we do like. Every bad relationship you have ever been in, at some point has said something along the lines of, “If you loved me, you would like sailing.” Or, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t like horses.” We think being in relationship with another person means being like the other person, becoming one with the other person as in becoming lost in the other person, so that no one, not even you and the other person, know where you stop and the other person starts. Oneness does not mean we lose our identity, our perspective, our particular—and peculiar—take on things. We do not stop being who we are. Right relationship enables us to become who we are. It gives us ourselves. It doesn’t take ourselves away from us.

At this point it in this essay, it all begins to flow together, and gets wonderfully messy. Language becomes a severe impediment because it is necessarily linear, and I can only say one thing at a time—but what is to be said is like a swirl of colors, or a wonderful blend of solids and liquids, like a margarita, say, with lime, lemon, tequila,  triple sec, salt and a frosted glass all coming together to delight and amaze. You lose the magnificence of it if you just listen to someone talk about a margarita, listing the ingredients, one at a time, and asking you to imagine what he, what she, is talking about. And, you make a joke of a margarita if you separate the ingredients, and ingest one at a time, linear fashion, like language.

This spirituality business is exactly like enjoying a margarita. There should be a rule, no talk, just drink. Bottoms up! And, if I were half the bartender I pretend to be, I’d take my camera in hand right now and walk to the Canadian Rockies, leaving you to your own devices. You are not stupid. You can figure it out. You are at this point in your life, after all. You’ve come this far on your own. You can do the rest of it. Besides, you are practically there already.

The magic of relationship does not make either person dependent upon the relationship. To make either person dependent is to make that person needy, is to make that person an invalid, is to make that person in-valid, is to rob that person of her, of his, self, interests, point of view, person-hood. This is not what relationship is about. Right relationship connects the other with, establishes the other on, grounds the other in, the goodness of her, of his, own person, of her, of his, own being, perspective, point of view. It takes two, or more, “I’s” to make a “We.” And it takes a “we” to bring each other, and what has always been called God, to life in the world.

Now, there is compromise, and sacrifice, and a giving up of self, a handing over of self, for the sake of that which is more than we could ever be alone. Marriage and parenthood will kill you, or ask you to die, again and again. The old theme of death and resurrection is very much a part of every right-relationship, of every community, and I am not suggesting that we can enter into relationship, into community, with one another without dying, and we will have to talk about the nature of that death—remembering the margarita metaphor!

The kind of death relationship calls us—requires us—to die, is a giving, not a taking. One person does not do all the dying, does not die for the sake of the other always and forever, but all die for the sake of relationship. Here’s the other part of the deal: The commitment is to the relationship, not the other person. And, one more part of the deal: At stake here is not the relationship, but our own becoming, our own selfhood. The relationship is the doorway, the threshold, to selfhood. The dying is really a birthing. The giving is really a receiving. And, here is the final part for now of the deal: It has to be completely voluntary because we all grow up against our will, willingly handing ourselves over to that which is greater than we are, again and again, from birth to the end of the line.

Voluntarily offering what is needed to the relationship is quite different from being compelled to hand it over. We cannot be hurled into relationship, or drafted into relationship, or forced, or required to be in relationship. But, the other side of it is that we really can’t help ourselves, either. We have to be “in relationship,” in the right kind of relationship, because something within us knows that’s where the life is, and we are lost without it. If we know what we are doing, we will pay any price, make any sacrifice, for the “pearl of great price,” which is our own self, our own soul, which is buried in the depths of relationship, waiting for us to have what it takes to claim the treasure (Which, as we know by now, “lies far back in the darkest corner of the cave we most don’t want to enter.”