Disabled in the Morning

I can walk. Normally, I manage an hour of limping around--enough to dress, water plants, feed the dog, and eat breakfast. While eating, I put my feet on ice to keep them from turning nasty. The rest of the day, I slump in a lift chair, legs elevated, feet touching nothing.

This morning, my feet got loud after only 30 minutes. That was it. No more walking. My hope for a quick trip to the farm market was gone.

Grief hit me hard, and I cried like a three-year-old who's pet just died.

I know grief is normal. After all, it's only been two years since I first tried on the label "disabled."

That was so-o-o-o liberating.

I'd been losing function for thirty years, but since I always found a way to get what I wanted--especially hiking alone in wilderness areas--the losses never registered as such. But the last three years of struggling to work had been h*ll. Giving up that struggle was a relief. A disability identity was comforting.

I can handle the pain--though, yes, I hate inspiration porn. The isolation is harder (among complaints, I have erythromelalgia which makes wearing shoes and socks excruciating--so no outside excursions in winter--while heat exacerbated pain keeps me inside in summer).


Walking has always been my main deal. Regular in-wild-ness time feels as necessary as food--in all seasons. (I can spend hours lying comfortably in a snow drift.)

Now, I usually can't sit on the deck.

Grief has it's own rhythm. It can become less suffocating while never going entirely away. But then when it hits, it can still hit hard.

If We Are An Organ In Earth's Body

According to the Gaia theory, the earth is becoming a coherent individual, so I can't help wondering about humanity's function in earth's body.

Discover what we do best and you will discover which earth organ we are.

So what do we do best?

Collect together and talk.
                                     Connect.
                                                Send.
                                                     Receive.

We create community and we communicate.

That suggests that humans are the connecting, communicative organ in earth's body--earth's neural net.

According to a Morgan Stanley survey 91% of mobile phone users keep their phones nearby at all times. We use them everywhere: alone or in a crowd, in bed or on the toilet. In fact, 75% of American mobile users used their phones in the bathroom.

Connectivity is addictive. 

Once we get it, few of us can let it go, even for a few hours.

Why?

Most of us have an unsatisfied hunger at the center of our being. Unsatisfied longing hurts. Connectivity combines two of the best ways to distract ourselves from pain: keep busy and consume.

But is there more to our love of connection?

We humans have only just filled our environment. What if this is the required tipping point in earth maturing into a coherent homeostatic individual? If so, we have only just crossed that line.

Then our NEED for connectivity is not just a desperate wall social isolates erect against loneliness, or a way business profiteers build global markets, or how all of us keep ourselves from feeling. Our connectivity addiction would be an inherent response to our nascent biologic role in homeostatic earth.

Then connectivity would be vital to every human, plugged-in or not.

Vital to all life, human and non-human.

            Vital to the earth.

*  *  *  *  *  *

When Compassion and Biology Collide

With a flash of annoyance, I drove up behind a car stopped in the middle of a suburban street. Then I noticed that facing me was another car in the opposite lane. Between the two cars a mom duck was crossing followed by her string of ducklings. A lot of ducklings, maybe a dozen.

They all crossed. As the cars started up, the mom duck jumped the curb. Her ducklings followed one by one.

The second smallest duckling jumped at the curb--and missed. The smallest also failed to make the jump. The two ducklings flapped their nascent wings, jumping at the curb again and again.

No luck.

They stumbled along the gutter, jumping and flapping, while the mom duck hunkered down on the sidewalk surrounded by the rest of her brood. A crow flew down to stand in the grass over the struggling ducklings. The ducklings would make a nice feast once they'd exhausted themselves.

Unaware of the ducklings that I was still watching, another suburbanite drove up behind me and honked. I had to go. I put my car in gear.

It’s just biology, I thought as I drove slowly away. What duck fledges a dozen ducklings? There is nothing to do except let nature take its course. After all, crows deserve to eat, too.

I drove a couple of blocks, then stopped. I couldn’t just leave. I had to try and help.

By the time I returned, the stranded ducklings had gotten pretty far from where the mom duck still crouched--the crow keeping pace over them.

I parked and got out.

Now I’ve lived with mammalogists and ornithologists. I know how to grasp a small wild thing: firmly, wrapping my hand around its body just behind the head. Hold it firmly, and it won’t hurt itself or you.

I know what to do. That doesn’t mean I can do it. My socialized fear of hurting interferes.

I scooped up the second smallest duckling. Although I held it too loosely, so it flailed in my hand, I managed to set it down near the mom duck. It ran to safety, tucking itself into the mass of ducklings. I felt the rush of warmth that philanthropy brings.

Then I went after the smallest duckling. It was way down the street, having run in total panic from my hand descending on its sibling. I was able to scoop it up, but couldn’t bring myself to grasp it firmly enough. It wriggled hard. I held it against my breast. It wriggled harder, falling from my fingers to the sidewalk. I didn’t hear it land, but imagined a sickening thumb.

Still, a moment later it ran to its mother. I smiled benevolently at it.

Only, something was wrong. This smallest duckling didn’t wiggle into the brood, but huddled into a small ball, separate from the others. Like it wasn’t sure of its welcome. Like it knew that that was as close as it could come and not be pecked.

No question: the smallest duckling was crow food. And although it was saved for now, how long did the second smallest have? It’d be an extraordinary year when a duck could fledge a dozen ducklings.

I went back to my car and my errands. I didn’t want to see the painful end to the smallest duckling’s story. I didn’t want to see biology at work.

Laying eggs is relatively cheap, and predators go for the weakest first. Perhaps the sole purpose of smaller siblings is to be a dangling bribe, insurance for those with a better chance of reaching adulthood.

If so, what price an act of compassion? Did I actually save one duck and give another a chance? Or did I just make myself feel good, while leaving those small ducklings to go through the same suffering all over again, later?

I don’t know.

But life is complicated and mysterious. If the value of helping is only measured by results, it means nothing when we don’t save the way we intended. But what if there is meaning in simply extending a hand, in trying?

If the purpose of the smallest ducklings is to protect the others by dying, then perhaps I did ok, even if my interference was naive. The thing is, my heart would not let me drive away. Of that I am sure.

Let nature go on clipping the string of ducklings, life by tiny life. I still had to put my hand in, all justifications aside.

That is also biology.

Ordinary Light

After my monastic experience, you'd think I'd be suspicious of any self-proclaimed purveyors of Truth. You'd think I'd look first for the man behind the curtain. Still, I thought Amma was different - what with her free-hug darshan and "all money for charities" cant. Besides, many of my friends were Amma followers

True, her idea of karma was kindergarten simplistic & opposed to my own perceptions (people as completely separate and individually responsible for all positive or negative acts - which are totted up like a bank account). And of course, I never thought her some perfect, ego-less, goddess-on-earth or expected her organizations to be of pristine spiritual quality. Still I thought her a worthy guru, someone who channeled the divine energy more clearly than most

I was so desperate for help cutting through the fog so I could resonate with the divine light within. The way I had done in the monastery. The way I so thirsted for, but could not find in the world. Amma's darshan was thick with that energy. It rose from the crowd to fill the hall. I felt I could happily swim in it forever.

Amma's darshans were equally thick with buyers and sellers. The first time I saw Amma, my desire not to own stuff prevailed. I spent little and the marketplace atmosphere slid by unremarked. The second time...

That it was for charity bolstered my prickling desire for acquisition. The demon avarice overwhelmed me. Oh, not just to buy objects. I spent much on various forms of pure donation. Still... By American standards, I am a poor person. Yet, I spent all my pitiful savings. ALL.

This hit after I came home. To help myself feel okay, I decided to listen to people helped by Amma's charities, people much poorer than me, a homeless person who'd gotten a home, someone who couldn't afford school fees who'd been given an education. I searched the internet for the blogs, posts, notes, letters of real people whose real lives had been changed. I found...

Nada. Ziltch. Zip. Nothing but the glittering ads of the Amma organization, itself.

Huh? Given the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people her charities had served, surely some should have an independent web presence. Nope. Instead, I found disillusioned ex-devotees eager to tell the other side of the story. They gave massive evidence that Amma was but one more victim of the Guru Effect.

sigh.

Maybe people who truly have a larger opening to the universal, spiritual energy generally start out well. Yet more often than not, they get caught in the snare of pride. Followers are desperate for a divine savior. They want to worship the person, hang on her every word, etc. Glitz, hype & the need to appear as more than she is soon become irresistible. Pride opens the door. Soon all the little demons - desire for ownership, for relationships and for consumption (aka avarice, lust and gluttony) - are holding a rave in her house.

The 4th century, desert Amma, Syncletica, advised against teaching or leading others, saying, "As wax melts when it is near fire, the soul disintegrates in the face of praise."

She went on, "Pride attacks subtly and secretly a soul that considers itself zealous and diligent in discipline... The soul imagines that it has grasped matters incomprehensible to the majority, that it is superior. It forgets all its sins and mistakes. The soul is deluded with positions of command - with teaching posts and displays of healing. Thus deceived, the soul perishes and is destroyed."

In other words: the Guru Effect - when the clay that every guru has for feet rises to consume her or his whole being.

Does that mean there is no divine light, that there are no legit teachers or practices that can help us find that light in ourselves? No.

I've literally seen that light: in myself and in others. I know it is there. Waiting. Loving. Gentle. Eternal. Non-judgmental. Self, yet no-self. Reality. Ordinary.

Yet, there are no magic leaders who can take us there miraculously, cleaning out all our gunk without effort.

The Dalai Lama is another exalted spiritual leader with his own clay feet. He repeatedly says, "I am an ordinary man." It is important to get the message:

We are all equally ordinary. We are also all equally divine. Some folks are born more aware of their spiritual being - with a larger open channel to the universal energy. Some are diligent in practices that open their hearts to that energy through humility and compassion. Yet clay remains part of each and every one of us.

Clay and spirit. The balance goes one way. The balance goes another way. And there we are, doing and being life as a body and a spirit, as ordinary and as light.

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Pain Gain?

Pain itself is not the point. (Although in the largest, universal picture, who knows what creative good it might serve?) Pain motivates me to do work I would not otherwise attempt - the work of going deep, of being present to all my parts - even the most mangled or corrosive, of embracing all of myself with loving tenderness - with no demand to change or fix.

For most of us, the first response to pain is to close up, hunker down and grow an impenetrable shell. Only that never works. The pain persists and grows under our defenses. Sooner or later, it breaks out in new ways, often through physical disease.

Was I just lucky that my defenses were never all that impenetrable? That the pain broke through with such persistence that each strategy to cope by not feeling soon failed? Maybe my pain was just bad enough that I had no choice but to keep seeking. I don't know, but I feel lucky.

The practice of opening to and accepting all of yourself takes a lot of courage. Desperation for physical, emotional and relational relief has been the fuel my courage required.

I sought help and I found it - so many teachers, companions and guides. I have also been the teacher, companion or guide for others.

Because this work develops what Buddhists call a vulnerable heart - what the old, Christian monastics called humility. Once you have practiced loving acceptance of all of yourself - the fine, shiny bits and the jagged, gunky bits - it is not so hard to be open and present to others. That kind of nonjudgmental listening to others provides great healing that is badly needed in the world.

So the seemingly selfish pursuit of relief ends up serving everyone.

And that is the point - a point well worth any number of pain-filled, sleepless nights. I know. I have 40 odd years of 'em to my credit.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The Fast Track Outta Here

Over brunch, my friend mentioned the study showing that multiple childhood traumas could knock 20 years off your life.

I grinned. "You mean I have a good chance of going home at 70? Wow" (Taking a wild guess at the longevity of various relations.)

Some years back, I saw a bodyworker who heard the voices of numerous disembodied beings. Once as we discussed the pains du jour, one of those beings said, "Of course you're in pain. You're doing such great work."

Ha.

People with a trauma history tend to have a slew of physical ailments. Because we signed up for the fast track. Because we are doing great work. We get such masses done so very fast, we are in the early release program. We get out while others have to keep at it for decades more.

'Course, I don't have enough of the studied traumas to get the demonstrated 20-year early release, but surely - given that I haven't slept well for over 40 years and am in constant pain - surely, I've managed to shave off at least 10 years.


*  *  *  *  *  *

More on Fear & Gratitude

There are lots of external reasons I might be having trouble finding a job - not least, Wisconsin's continued employment hemorrhage under Scott Walker that keeps us mired in the worst of the recession while other states begin recovery. And the one thing a writer must do to be published (or produced) is write & submit & write & submit & write & submit - letting the rejections wisp away like so much morning mist under the rising summer sun. So to greet job-seeking failure and play-submission failure with gratitude, as I talked about in my last post, does not mean I should stop applying for jobs or stop writing & submitting.

It is primarily a directive to release fear, be open to what is as it comes, and not to internalize social "failure" as a comment on the nature of the universe or my place in it.

Hard enough even without all the good reasons to fear. Such as being on the edge of not covering my bills. Or aging painfully in a country where, despite oodles of wealth, the only workers allowed access to good health care are fully employed professionals, politicians, and soldiers.

Still, fear is of no use. My conditions won't change if I greet them with fear. Worse, fear eats my creative energy while insisting I should quit.

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" is one of the more useful Jesus sayings. Great teachers from other traditions similarly say to let go of fear. Forget insurance. Forget living your life in order to amass enough fortune to protect you through old age.

There is no guarantee, here, that bad things won't happen to you if you do not fear. It is not a magic prayer bullet that can bring you money & cars & a hunky guy or curvacious gal. Your health may crash. Your home may burn. Your loved one may die. You may be exhausted day after day by the struggle to get just enough to go on. However it happens, you will experience loss and will need to morn. But moving through loss and grief without fear is one way to get on the road to the greatest good - directly perceiving the delicious, brilliant, flowing energy in which we swim and of which we are all made.

Whatever my pains and difficulties, on that road the only things that make any sense are joy and gratitude.

* * * * * * * *

No Need to Fear Being Dead

I don't relish the pain of dying, but I don't fear being dead. Because I remember being dead. Well, only that first, exhilarating, upward rush of release - that feels like all the graduations, birthdays, and weddings rolled into a single microsecond burst of joy. After that, I get nothing - as if an impenetrable lead curtain lies between me and further knowledge.

It is enough.

The deaths I remember (and yes, there are several) were mostly violent, only I don't remember the trauma as traumatic, or any pain.

Each death carried important insight about life and the leaving of it.

Once I was burnt to death as I slept. A big bed, hangings, furniture, my body: all went up in a great whoosh of flame, smoke, and all-consuming joy.

What I learned? Wow, death feels good.

Another life ended with beheading by guillotine. Forget the French Revolution. This was the normal round of executions of petty criminals in some smallish town. I was a poor, nondescript woman. Stole a loaf of bread or something.

Not the first in line for the guillotine, I stood on a platform looking over the heads of spectators and the roofs of houses to the deep, deep sky. I breathed in the sense of life, becoming lighter and happier. Then it was my turn. I knelt, feeling the curved wood under my neck and looking into a basket placed to catch the heads. The basket was wet. Each flat, woven reed glistened. I heard a bit of drum roll as the blade was lifted and counted, breathing in life until I was as alive as it was possible to be. I realized I could live longer, but I could not live more. If I didn't die then, I would soon slip back into a physical and emotional roil that blanked out any sense of aliveness. So I would gain more days, but not more life. Better to live fully for a few seconds and welcome the death that followed. I felt so calm, so alive, so happy. On ten, a strange shlick! Then black.

I don't have any memory of that after-death.

What I learned? More time does not bring more life. Living fully is possible, but has nothing to do with resisting the passing of a particular body. In fact, just the opposite. The more a person is caught up in resisting and bemoaning death, the less alive she becomes.

I don't generally share these memories, but hey, with economic meltdown in the U.S.'s immediate future, how else live than by risk?

* * * * * * *

Reflections on the Wisconsin Uprising

One of these days the people in the U.S. will rise up and toss down our presently growing corporate tyranny. It has happened before & will happen again. Just won't be so easy as a few rounds of voting. For one thing, the prevalence and ease of manipulating electronic voting machines (including visual scanners) makes it unlikely that votes for a sane state are counted
Yet, even if the vote doesn't bring real change, the organizing energy is precious. Rejection of our rising capitalist dictatorship can only come when enough of us are willing to loose everything, and even be shot at. That kind of desperate courage arises out of economic & social suffering - the kind some in the U.S. are already experiencing. The suffering will spread due to the economic collapse being ushered in by extremist Republicans & appeasing Republicrates (like Obama & Reid). As we discover that we do not suffer alone, more and more of us will join together to choose life over survival.

It will take time. The tools used to jolly populations along have always been so very effective at dividing & conquering: fascism built on fear & hate of trumped up social enemies, & keeping folks silent out of fear of homelessness, starvation, and reprisal - while they must work more & more for less & less.

BUT capitalist dictatorship, like any dictatorship, like monoculture, is inherently unstable. IT CAN NOT LAST. The structure of any controlled system IS the very source of its destruction. Nature abhors perfect forms. Inherent in biology is pressure for diversity and new growth in small, overlooked spaces.

We had a vote in Wisconsin. Two entrenched Republicans were turned out of historically Republican districts. That's amazing. But it is also a bare beginning.

So the question is: how do we keep our spirits up so we can engage and live and have full, compassionate hearts for the duration?

* * * * * *

The Necessity of Hunger

"The number one reason to fast is that food tastes better when you are hungry." Augustine said that (more or less - I paraphrase 'cause I can't seem to locate the source). Augustine's not a guy I quote often given that he invented the doctrine of original sin, and blamed male lust on the women men lusted after. But I like this.

And I find it comforting. Especially as a strange coterie of Republican extremists and center-right Republicrates (Obama, Harry Reid & like-minded congressional "Democrats") eagerly pass legislation guaranteed to take the present, U.S. economic recession-bordering-on-depression into a full-fledged, undeniable depression. (We can't have a "double-dip" recession if the recession that started under Bush never ended - CEO salaries, global corporation profits and stock prices notwithstanding.)

But what if, in the larger spiritual picture, the role of these insulated, corporate politicians actually is to explode the U.S. economy? Could that be a spiritual good in the largest, universal picture? A creative passage of fire, a dark road that many people of this nation need to walk? Yes, huge, visible suffering will be visited on masses of folks - I expect to be one of the suffering. But out of that ash land, what might we grow?

So many of us, myself included, have lived with such a surfeit of guaranteed comfort for so long that we have no idea what food tastes like, a dry bed feels like, or how water quenches thirst. We need to rediscover hunger. For our spirits' sake.

For ten years, I walked the terrible dark road of despair and grief and self-hate. Many don't make it to the end of that road. I came out the other side with help from those I met on the way. I wouldn't wish the same journey on anyone. Yet I am also immensely grateful I was forced to go there. The perspective, compassion, presence, and humility I learned were worth the price and the danger.

I've yet to meet anyone who choose such a path. We have to be driven. Our coping strategies and comfort blankets have to be forcibly stripped off.

If the impending economic depression is just such a forced stripping away, maybe our national journey into the dark could bear equally valuable fruit.

* * * * * * *

No Need to Beat Myself

Sparkling October, repeatedly drowning (and coming to shore again) after the triggering of old traumatic wounds, and two gospel quotes keep me company:

1) "No one is good* but God alone." How comforting. We are not here to strive after perfection, because perfection is simply not available to us clay folk as long as we remain earth and spirit intertwined. (*The word translated as "good" in English, may be better translated from the Aramaic as "ripe" - aka "mature.")

2) In the parable where weed seeds are strewn in a wheat field, Jesus says not to pull out the plants we think are weeds. Until all have grown, we are too immature to distinguish weeds from good plants. Along with "do not judge," this is more or less a restatement of what Julian of Norwich received when she was tormented that "the great foreseeing wisdom of God" allowed us to cause each other such suffer. Jesus spoke with “complete tenderness, showing no manner of blame,” saying, “It is behoovely that there should be sin, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

Namaste

* * * * * * * *

Psalms for Addicts - Psalm 139

O God, You search me and You know me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up.
You attend my thoughts from afar.

Your breath fans my road and my resting place.
My whole journey is known to You.
Before a word is on my tongue
You know it through and through.

From all sides You surround and fill me.
You lay Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful -
Too great for me to understand.

Oh, where can I go from Your spirit?
Where can I flee from Your face?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there.
If I make my bed in death, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn
And fly past the sea’s farthest end,
Even there Your hand guides me,
Your right hand holds me fast.

If I say, "Darkness has wounded me
And all the light is night,"
Even darkness hides nothing from You.
The night shines as the day,
For in You, light and dark are one.

Your breath was woven into me
In my mother's womb.
You are my inmost being.
I always dwell in You.

I praise You for the wonder of my life.
For my soul understands:
As are all Your works, I am awesome.
Every part of me lives in You.

Even as I was created in secret,
My body drawn from the clay of the earth,
You saw my new-formed self, my mortality.
And inscribed all my days with Your words.

How precious are Your thoughts.
How vast beyond belief.
Counted, they are more numerous
Than the grains of sand.

Let me wake up so I know myself one with You.

Slay the voices of my addictions!
Cleanse me of their self-negating hostility!
Or overwhelmed by fear and pain
I will forget what You are.

The oblivious speak of You, yet deceive.
In delusion, they abuse Your Awesome Name.
Do I not despise what is hardened against You
And abhor what turns away from You?
With loathing I face my addictions -
The enemies of my heart.

Search me, O God, and know me.
Examine my innermost thoughts.
Cleanse me of what leads away from You,
Awaken me and set my feet on Your path.

An interpretation based on the NIV, the ICEL and the JPS 1917 translation

* * * * *

Psalms for Addicts - Psalm 41

Happy is one who is compassionate toward those who lack.
God will heal her in the day of her suffering.
She will be upheld and brought to life.
She will live happily on earth.

Do not let us be consumed by the greed of addiction.
Support us in our sickness.
Catalyze our lethargy; turn us around.

As for me, I cry, “Show Your care.
Heal me for I have wandered away from You.”
Fear speaks malice inside me, saying,
“When shall she die, and her name perish?”
The voices of addiction come into me, speaking deceit.
They slander me and fill me with lies.
Then I go out and broadcast their fraud.

These voices hate me.
Their whispers are against me.
Imagining the worst of me, they devise my harm, saying,
“Evil clings to her. She is dying and can never recover.”

Addiction was my best friend, the one I trusted,
The one who shared my food.
My friend has turned against me
And now wishes my downfall.

O God, care for me.
Restore my health that I may renounce my true enemy.
And get myself back.

I will know Your delight in me
For my addictions cannot triumph.
If You uphold me, I will enter my heart’s integrity
And live in You forever.

Blessed is the wholeness of those who struggle.
From everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen

An interpretation based on the NIV, the ICEL and the JPS 1917 translation

* * * * *

Outer War, Inner Peace

"It is like a war zone in here," said a friend who is struggling to live authentically, centered in her sense of direct connection to God.

"Yes. And that is why it is a war zone out there," I instantly responded. Then I had to stop and think what I meant.

To live authentically from one's center means being present to every pain that arises without trying to fix, suppress or anesthetize the hurt. And that requires the practice of opening old wounds and being to the pain as it processes through. Watching what comes up and letting what comes come. Acknowledging that what is, is.

And maybe ('though I'm pretty sure of this) all the wars - from the dysfunctional family, tiptoeing warily around each other until the next insignificant event triggers an explosion, to international fights that burn and crush millions - maybe all are the outer, physical expression of unresolved, inner battles. Physical, worldly conflicts arise, creating huge suffering, because so many people refuse to do their own, inner work. Because so many choose instead to push pain away with various means of numbing, distracting and justifying.

So we fight wars... just to avoid being with our own pain.

As so many spiritual teachers say, "If you want world peace and an end to suffering, do your inner work."

And maybe this is true because the physical universe, along with all of us humans, is a single energy field. If we are ALL inseparable parts of one whole, it is a contradiction to say you want peace while concentrating on outward displays of anger at those you believe caused the conflict - much less physically fighting them. That is like standing in a stormy sea throwing rocks at the waves while shouting "CALM DOWN."

It only riles things up more.

Yet if just one molecule of the water became calm for even a moment, the overall calm of the whole would go up.

Because the universe is a single field, if and when, for a moment or a day, any one of us breaks through our shit to rest in inner peace, the peacefulness quotient of the whole universe goes up.

Dogen Zenji said,

"To study the Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.
To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barrier between one's self and others."

When what was perceived as "other" becomes perceived as "self," lashing out in anger makes no more sense then dropping napalm on your toe as punishment for it hurting you after it stubbed itself.

* * * * * * *

Do I Love God?

“I’ve been play it safe, hiding behind words, but the truth is I love God,” a woman of my acquaintance recently declared.

Another friend looked thoughtful then said, “Since God is in you, you can only love God as much as you love yourself.”

Hmmmm.

I struggle to love my “self” – this little, challenged, earthy, personality called “Elena” - yet still experience an all-encompassing sense of love with… or through… or in “God.” But do I love God?

When I use the laughably inadequate, short hand expression “God,” I refer to an indescribably delicious, joy-bright-dancing-light glory-shout-alleluia core-still-certainty of being. This energy has the taste/feel/color/sensation of unlimited, unconditional “love.” And this love energy flows between, around and through all beings.

The whole energy field, “God,” is love, and that fills and surrounds each of us (and all other things). In fact despite appearances, all existence is a continuous field of that. Yet that - “God” - extends far beyond material existence.

From one view, that is an undifferentiated unity so the appearance of separate selves must be an illusion. Not nothing, yet without “things” - because in unity, there can be no selves. Because in unity there is just one - no “not-one.”

But from another view there are selves, or loci of identity, in the field. These selves, these loci, have identity because of their relationships to each other. To have an “I” means having a “not-I,” a “you.” Only relationship with you creates the “not-I” that confers my identity because only in relationship with you have I one characteristic and not another.

Without “you,” “I” truly can’t exist. Without you I also can’t love because “to love” I need a "you" from which and to which love energy flows. In relationship we can love, while our relationship creates our selves.

The thing is, I’m not sure I “love” God.

God is love. When I touch that (in me or outside me), I dwell in love. In fact, I am punch-drunk, exuberantly, assuredly, full-to-overflowing with love. I feel love flow in, through and all around me. This feeling of love escalates and clarifies in the presence of other selves that radiate love energy more unreservedly than I do.

One of those selves is Jesus. Embarrassing, but true. I love Jesus. And Jesus is God just as I am God and you are God and this chair is God - except he’s a lot less blurry. In that sense, I love God.

Still, do I love God, the field, itself?

Hmmmmmm.

* * * * * *

Vine, Branch, Fruit & Resurrection

Last night, a group of UUs exploring Christianity got onto resurrection. One said she liked the idea (common in liberal Christian circles) that the resurrection is all of us. When we live as Jesus lived, when we work for social justice, when we try to respond with love to everyone, even our enemies, then we are the resurrected presence of Jesus on earth.

Which reminded me of the Gospel verse, John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”

Think about it.

The branches bear the fruit. So without branches, a vine is barren – nothing but an empty trunk. If a vine is to fulfill any kind of purpose, it must rely on the branches to bring that purpose about. Not only that, the vine gives support and supplies water and nutrients, yes. But the branches produce the leaves where chlorophyll is concentrated and sunlight is turned into food. So the branches feed the vine.

This is an indivisible whole. The vine supports and waters the branches. The branches feed the vine and bear the fruit.

A vine needs branches just as much as branches need a vine.

Note: Despite some lovely sayings, I’m none too fond of John’s Gospel - what with the way it has been foundational to Trinitarian, damnation versions of Christianity, as well promoting rabid anti-Semitism. But it was a favorite of some Gnostic Christians, so obviously there are other ways to read it than “Jesus≡God + Jesus worship and only Jesus worship prevents damnation + Jesus worship is the one and only point.”

Another note: “I AM" does create a loaded statement. It exploits a God name in the Hebrew Bible (God answered "I AM" when Moses asked the burning bush for a name). This could mean “God is the vine...” or “Jesus≡God is the vine...” But it could NOT have been written to mean a simple statement like “Jesus is the vine” in the way that “I (Elena) am nutsy for bible quotes” = “Elena is nutsy for bible quotes.”

I learned Hebrew as a teenager on a kibbutz. We were told there was no present tense of the verb “to be.” So thirty years later when I met the “I AM” name for God as I stumbled into Christianity, I was skeptical. Except not surprisingly, the actual words in Hebrew are convoluted, controversial and explosive – leaving much room for meditative illumination (i.e., interpretation). See analysis of “I AM at wikipedea or THE NAME OF GOD AS REVEALED IN EXODUS 3:14

Hmmmm… God’s own name for God-self - given in the story of the God-meeting of one who was to reinvigorate the God-relationship of a nation - is so strange and obscure that it is entirely open to interpretation. Maybe that does reflect some reality, after all.

* * * * * * *

A Fire Marching Out in Front: Prairie Burning & Psalm 97

Psalm 97 has the line: “Fire marches out in front and burns up all resistance.” Another sister said this was like spiritual conversion. God’s fire burned our resistance. It felt awful, but opened us so God could move in.

Each of the monastery’s prairies had a burn cycle, from every year to every five years. By some fluke, they were all burned when I was in the novitiate. That line from psalm 97 ran in my head as I watched each prairie burn and grow green again.

One Tuesday afternoon in April, I accidentally happened on the first in mid-flame. I had just planned to take a quick break from my desk in the basement with a walk around the building. The oldest of the monastery’s prairies sloped below the front parking lot. A small plot bordered by mown path, it was primarily a mix of grasses. I never got past it.

As I rounded a corner, acrid smoke blew into my face. Near me, pale threads of smoke drifted up from black-charred ground. Beyond that, unburned grass waved in the wind as if nothing were going on – except that licks of fire flickered here and there in its midst. The little prairie was burning.

I hurried closer, not sure if this was supposed to be happening or not, but soon saw clumps of people in heavy, orange jumpsuits standing around holding brooms. Presumably there to beat out stray flames, they were mostly chatting amongst themselves. In fact, the atmosphere was decidedly relaxed - except for one man.

That man strolled through the grass, his attention focused on the boundary with the burned area. Every so often he made a slow, throwing motion, and a tongue of fire leapt from his hand. It raced gleefully away like a little beast, only to die moments later when it hit burned ground. It took awhile to see that the fire came from a spouted can the man held. In his absorption, the man looked like a painter studying his canvas, carefully laying color on one exact spot, then standing back to study it again.

Painting with fire. I was fascinated.

The head groundskeeper strolled over to me.

“Why doesn’t the man start the fire over there?” I asked pointing into the wind at the far end of the unburned prairie. “It would burn faster, all at once.”

“First we make a backburn to contain the blaze. The fire marshal will start a forward burn over there when it’s safe, “ the groundskeeper explained, “You should watch that. It’s worth seeing.”

“How long will it be?” I asked.

“Ohhh…” The groundskeeper’s attention left me. The gossiping beaters had missed a flame that was now burning into a bordering path. He hurried over to put it out.

I watched as the backburn inched forward. In my head, I whispered encouragement to each new flame. I wanted them to live, to bust out and take over, despite rational needs for safety. It was as frustrating as it was fascinating to watch the slow, cautious progress of the burn.

I was never any good at meticulous arts - like lithography or etching - that required layer after carefully constructed layer, with the effect only apparent at the end. I needed media that pushed back, demanded dialog, that I could to sink my hands into.

Luckily for me, the burn was almost done when I’d first arrived.

The groundskeeper came back to my side. “You should move to the end,” he said, “He’s about to start the forward burn.”

I trotted in the groundskeeper’s wake as he headed to the unburned end of the prairie.

The fire marshal took some time placing the beaters along the prairie edges. Then he walked around it, looking thoughtfully at the ground. Several times, he started another small fire, adding to the backburn. Finally he came close to where I was standing.

His back to the wind, the fire marshal gazed over the prairie for a few moments. Suddenly, he released the fire. It roared to life, racing through the grass with a whooshing bellow. He walked a few yards and let loose a second burst of flame.

Within seconds, the fires met and erupted in a brilliant, orange-yellow-gold tower higher than the ancient maple by the parking lot. Black smoke streamed like battle flags from the top as it raced along. And then it was over, except for a few wisps of smoke and tiny, red, burning bits that glimmered like jewels in a field of death. As the beaters patrolled the prairie making sure everything was put out, I went back to my desk.

The smell of smoke lingered to the next day. I walked into the burn, little spurts of ash puffing up under each footstep. I was surprised that many grass stems were only half burned. They lay bunched together, filling mini washes and gullies, as if they’d been bowled over in a flood. How odd that a blazing gale of fire had acted like flowing water on those stems.

Less than a week later, green shoots dotted the charred earth.

So: the metaphor?

In life, as in art, as in watching a burn, I’m impatient for the big whoosh of exhilarating conflagration. If there has to be fire, let it be overwhelming in power and beauty, even if that hurts more. But without a backburn, a prairie fire consumes everything indiscriminately – even more so in the wake of us European-Americans who refuse to let the land burn naturally. Of course, the fire will out, and the blaze when it comes is then more devastating.

Like those deep wounds that close us down instead of opening us up.

I know I need that pillar of fire, although I can (and often do) suppress the burning. Yet when I put it off, the awakening is likely to be shattering rather than a little shake-up.

So maybe the point is to embrace painful burning when it comes, yet prepare beforehand. (However annoying that may be for lackadaisical sorts like myself.) Practice little, daily habits. Consider conflict as it relates to your own, spiritual development instead of first pointing to other people’s sin. Hold with compassion your own human frailty as well as that of others.

Those are the backburn.

Then, contained and focused, your soul’s fire can burn off old, stuck patterns, while leaving good, strong roots from which new growth will soon spring.

* * * * *

Losing Winter's Order

Winter is my favorite season, but as I chipped at the ice of the last freezing rain/ice storm/blizzard of February, even I thought, “Enough is enough.” So for once I sympathized with those burdened by snow and cold. Recently, I heard such a person say she really disliked the loss of familiar markers and paths.

It had never before crossed my mind that this might be painful, because I’m delighted each year when square city lines disappear under amorphous snow piles.

In winter the choices of ordinary folks, and earth processes, swamp the plans of civic engineers. Sidewalks become sinuous channels narrowing and widening erratically. Getting to them means crossing diminutive mountain passes on twisty, one-foot-wide tracks – between parking meters buried up to their necks. Trails meander idiosyncratically over any large, flat space - a park, an unplowed walkway. The first to cross walked as they wanted and everyone else followed – previous footsteps offering some protection against sinking in deep.

My way home from high school crossed recent landfill. Wandering a snaking path across the snow, I imagined several miles thickness of ice below my feet, and that my destination was a handful of huddled yurts lost in a wintry waste as vast as space.

But I was raised by a woman who more than fulfilled her teenage goal of traveling the world. Holding back in fear of the unknown was not allowed to her children, and she never indulged our desire for familiar toys, clothes, food, homes, schools, friends or household routine. Not only did I follow my mother by traveling, even my scientific work explored trackless wilderness.

It takes a certain comfort with pathlessness to shuck the security of worldly success – job, house and social connections – for a monastery, especially when your family culture contains no such concept. Certainly, among those Catholic sisters I often felt as if I were in a country more foreign than any I’d lived in as a child. It was my mother's training that made it possible.

Of course, despite near-record snow piles, this winter has really been nothing compared to pre-global warming decades. We barely dipped below 0º F. In those years, we had several weeks of minus 40º. Then, our last blizzard was in mid-April - invariably canceling my youngest brother’s April 9th birthday party.

We may yet have another blizzard, but winter has lost its grip. During a handful of 40º days, rushing water filled the gutters as the snow mountains beat a retreat, baring strips of muddy grass buried months ago. On mornings moist with spring, mist hovered over the snow fields - thawed and refrozen into course granules. Like little glaciers, the melting snow gave up all it once carried in suspension: pebbles, branches, trash, city grit. Concentrated on a diminishing surface, debris turns the old piles a rough, dull black, and where their mountainous edges once pushed back the street, only minute moraines of rubbish are left.

All the winter-haters are lifting their heads to sniff the air, and planning gardens. Total strangers grin and greet each other with glad cries, excitedly chattering over winter’s end.

I try hard to smile back, but already I sorely miss the sharp clarity of ice cold.

And I hate to see the return of square-edged, human-made order. As the markers with which we claim the earth shake free of snow, we can once again imagine we own this place. But we don’t. Each winter we are offered a chance to see how a little nature undoes all we build, yet leaves us perfectly capable of surviving – if we bend our needs to the weather’s necessity.

The Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí said, “Straight lines belong to men, but curves belong to God.” We expend huge amounts of energy to maintain our little, spider web of straight-line roads across the globe, but all the while messy, exuberant, creative earth, and God, are the real bosses.

* * * *

A Practical Theology of Nonresistance

In “Prophetic nonviolence: Toward a Unitarian Universalist theology of war and peace," Paul Rasor notes that belief in nonviolence is theologically grounded. Proponents are convinced intuitively in the heart, not through rational argument.

This world view often results from direct, spiritual experience. I had just such a religious conversion. That's why I know I must learn to replace violence with radical nonresistance in all my dealings.

But even if arising intuitively from spiritual understanding, there are practical arguments to be made for radical nonresistance. For example, a cursory glance at history suggests that when violence is used to right social wrongs, it generally results in the exact kind of suffering it was meant to alleviate. The names of the characters change (e.g., who is oppressed and who has power), but the plot remains the same.

If violence is not an efficacious means of social progress, why not try something different - like nonresistance? It can’t work any worse.

There is also a “natural law” that observes: as energy meets resistance, it grows stronger. So, if you resist evil, you are strengthening evil (even if you alleviate some effects in the near-term). If you want evil to melt away, you stand up in the face of it, yes. You name it, yes. But you stand without resistance, and name without rancor - in complete, open, compassionate vulnerability.

hmmmm….

Do I act with that kind of radical nonresistance? Especially where it really counts, i.e., in daily responses to family members when my buttons have been pushed? Well…

No.

But I intend to & I practice, and that is a start. I’ve noticed that when I do manage to meet upset with compassion, not only am I less agitated, but so are others.

I imagine myself like a drop of water tossed in the middle of a crashing, storming sea, and desperate for calm. Which would bring more overall peace: whacking at the waves while screaming, “Calm down, dammit, just calm down!” or calming myself? If even one drop calms down, the whole sea is more peaceful.

HOWEVER: Although radical nonresistance is my personal belief, I wouldn’t want UUs to officially adopt any such policy (or Just War, for that matter).

For one thing, as Rasor points out, we do not have the religious basis - or the history of living out of this world view - that Quakers and Mennonites have. But more importantly, our great, UU strength is the original tenant that we can gather without the constraint of shared creeds. All war, Just War, conditional pacifism, radical nonresistance: we can be UU together – ‘though the arguments might get just a teensy bit heated at times.

Anything else is just another form of violence.


Footnote: What does “radical nonresistance” means to me? For an idea, here are some paraphrases of the not-your-status-quo-spirituality in the canonical Gospels:

"Don’t judge others. Don’t condemn others. The measure you give is the measure you receive. Don't resist evil. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Praise those who curse you. Whatever you do to the least of these you do to God. God's love is like the sun that shines equally on good and bad, just and unjust - to be whole as God is whole, love all without distinction. The kingdom (actually "Queendom" since the word is feminine in both Aramaic and Hebrew) is already here, inside and among you. Focus on the log in your own eye; it is that which makes the Queendom invisible to you. Whoever would be great must be a servant. The low shall be high and the high shall be low. However you wish other people to act, act that way towards them first. The students will become like the teacher. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Die to your self that your self may live. Leave everything and follow. Renounce all that you have. Surrender all possessions – goods, social status, family roles and security. Sell what you have and give it to the poor. For those who have riches and are full (as in “not hungry”) will leave empty handed. Go out and heal.

Which of you by being anxious can add to your life? If God dresses the wild flowers, why worry about what you will wear? Don't worry about what you will eat or drink. Take nothing. Stay where you are & eat what you are given. If you are not welcomed simply move on. Take care for what comes out of your mouth, only that can hurt you. Pray in secret, not to be seen. Only those who do God’s will enter the Queendom, not those who cry, "Lord, Lord" (for God's will see above). By their works you will know them.”

* * *

From Radical Spirituality to State Religion: Justifying War

My attention was caught by a line near the beginning of Paul Rasor’s interesting article, “Prophetic nonviolence: Toward a Unitarian Universalist theology of war and peace” (UUWorld Spring Issue).

“The just war tradition… originated in the Catholic Church during the fourth century CE.”

“Ah ha!” I thought, demonic, amateur-historian’s gleam in my eye. “What major, MAJOR event happened in fourth century Christianity that might have necessitated creation of a “Just War” theology? Why that’s when a conquering emperor adopted as his state religion a multifarious, once-Jewish sect grounded in egalitarian community, extreme social justice and absolute, radical abandonment of violence for nonresistance.”

In other words, that’s when Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, thus originating Christian orthodoxy. This included requiring all his soldiers to join the church. His… soldiers? Join a religion committed to nonviolence?

Huh?

Although his mom was Christian, Constantine himself didn’t seem to have been much of a believer. (For instance, he refused to be baptized until he was about to die.) It’s possible that, like a good pagan, he simply respected all possible gods. Once the Christian god helped him win the battle that made him emperor, he merely elevated that god’s worship. He didn’t seem to care about the details of the theology. He only demanded that there be one, unified set of beliefs, an “orthodoxy,” to be enforced by imperial law.

Except… As emperor of a huge, imperialist empire, he needed police, criminal prosecution, jails, capitol punishment, autocratic governors, laws that kept the rich rich and the poor poor - with ordered trade amongst them, and – most importantly – war. But these were aspects of social organization that Christians had traditionally stood against… (Although many offshoots had already moved from their radical roots into typical, patriarchal church organization - as witnessed by the spreading suppression of women within a century of Jesus’ death.)

Ergo the need to justify war.

Ahhhhh…..

As the teachings of Jesus were abandoned, a Christian “Just War theology” was born.


Footnote: There was then no “Catholic Church” (as in “Roman Catholic Church”) such as exists today. In the fourth century, members of the newly established, state church fought long and hard over exactly which of a multitude of beliefs would be called orthodox and which condemned as heresy. The center of church authority was also soon to reside, with the center of imperial power, in Constantinople. Although full of factions, orthodox Christianity had not yet split between Eastern Orthodox and Western Orthodox. …And there were lots of Popes.

* * *