Something That Happened

This story was based on my recovered memories of childhood rape. Written in a child's voice, it was originally published in 1991 in Calyx, Art and Literature by Women (13:72-74).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Two years ago when I was five, my family went camping in the fall. It was really sunny out. Everything smelled like fall and leaves were coming down. I had to go to the toilet. The toilets were kind of far away from our campsite, but I didn't mind. I like to be by myself so I can think about things.

I walked right through every pile of leaves on the path to the toilets.

I thought, “Maybe when leaves turn colors it is because fires come from the sun and light them up. At first the trees don't want to burn and try to stay green, but the fire spreads and soon they're all burning. After a while, there's so much sun-fire in the trees they can't hold it and it falls to the ground. Then everything burns with sun-fire.”

I think maybe fall is my favorite time.

Then I went into the toilets. It was dark inside and it smelled damp and, you know, like toilets smell. Not very good.

I didn't know it, but there was a man in there. He came up behind me and he knocked me down. He was wearing a red, plaid shirt and he was big. Big head, big hands, big everything. Much bigger than me. I think I could have walked between his legs without ducking. I was so scared I didn't make a sound, not a squeak.

He got down on top of me and he held me on the ground.

He said, “Don't make noise or I'll kill you.”

The cement floor was hard behind my head and my back and under my hands. It felt gritty dirty. And cold. And damp. The white toilet bowl hung over my head: hard and cold, with nothing to hold onto, like someone who doesn't care what happens.

The man had black hair and a fat face, and black hairs standing up on the backs of his hands. Thick, black hairs like pins standing up all along the back of his hands, even on his fingers. He was pulling on my clothes and he pulled down my underpants. Then he put his hand down there. His big fingers like dry sandpaper with pins on it were pushing in. It hurt. It really hurt bad and his breath smelled.

Then, I didn't want to see anymore. I didn't want to know anymore. I didn't want to feel anymore.

So I just left.

I floated away. Up, up, up, up, up. I thought, “I will just float all the way away.” But I got stuck at the ceiling. So I had to hang up there by the ceiling and watch.

All I could see was his back. He was heaving around on top of something. I couldn't see what it was because he was so big and it was so small. Small and flat. Small and flat and dead. Just a flat, dead rag-thing that he was pushing at and tearing at.

Only suddenly I was back down there and he said, “I'll choke you if you bite me.”

He put his hands around my neck and he started to choke me. Just to show he meant it, I guess. Then he put his thing in my mouth. I wouldn't have bitten him anyway because only live things can bite. Dead, torn rag-things can't bite. And dead, torn rag-things don't need to scream because they can't feel anything.

When he was all finished, he left. I guess he thought he killed me, but I was just pretending to be dead.

My mom was standing by the picnic table and she was cooking. We have this green, camping stove. She was standing in front of it and when she saw me she said, “Would you like to help me set the table, Honey?”

You know how it is sometimes when everything seems so far away you couldn't touch it even if you stretched and stretched, but at the same time everything is rushing by so close and fast it is like trains booming past your ears? I felt like that.

I thought, “Why is she talking about setting the table when everything is broken all to pieces?” But I guess she didn't know. I didn't say anything about it either.

I was like that doll my sister got in Chinatown. The doll had a box on her tummy. When you pressed it, she would go “Maa, Maa.” Then the box broke and no matter how you pressed, she couldn't make a sound, not even a little squeak.

My mom kept on talking to me. I felt like I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I helped her set the table.

Then I thought, “Maybe I am really dead. Maybe everything is dead.” I decided if I'm really dead than that man was just a dream. It didn't happen for real.

When we got home I found out that there is a giant clam that lives in the toilet. If you don't wash your hands before the toilet finishes flushing, it will come out and grab you and drag you down there. Also, if you don't get dried off before the water is out of the bathtub.

Sometimes I barely make it. I yell, “Time! Time! Time!” and I run out into the living room where I feel safe. Of course, I don't yell it out loud, just in my head, because if anybody knew they'd say, “stop acting like a baby.” Then my chest is all tight and my throat closes up like it is just a tiny thread I can't get any air through, so I lean across the back of the couch and pretend to watch TV.

I hate toilets. Even though I'm way too old to pee in my pants, sometimes I'd rather do that then go into a strange toilet. And sometimes I see this knife or this scissors that is cutting off my fingers. I try and try, but I can't get it to stop. I recite “Mary had a little lamb” and “Peter piper,” but it won't stop. It just won't stop.

I don't want to think about this any more. It makes me want to scream and scream. Only, I can't scream. I can't even talk. No noise can come out, not even a little squeak.

Anyway, I know that I'm not alive for real. I'm not sure about other people. Maybe they aren't alive either. I do o.k., though sometimes it seems silly to go on pretending to be alive. But I'll tell you one thing, I don't like boys. If I was alive, I would want all the boys to be dead.


© R. Elena Tabachnick 1991

Martha, Mary and Peter: The Rest of the Story

from a lectio on Luke 10: 39 - 42

Martha was overloaded preparing a feast for Jesus and his followers at her home. It was galling when Mary, her sister, sat lazily at the feet of the Rabbi rather than helping as she should. So Martha went out and complained, asking Jesus to send Mary to the kitchen.

Jesus answered, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things but one thing is needful. Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Yet Jesus felt compassion for Martha. He understood the burden of feeding all of them, and her resentment. He looked into her eyes and smiled. Suddenly, Martha realized the Rabbi loved her house-holding self as much as Mary’s student self, and all her resentments evaporated. For Martha, this was enough. As she truly preferred to work, she gladly left Mary to be the student. But Jesus didn't want Martha to bear her burden alone. His followers had pledged to share one another's burdens without regard for caste, gender, or other worldly status-markers. So he asked two of his male disciples, Levi and Peter, to go help Martha.

In the minds of some of the men, trouble had been brewing. With this event, the trouble overwhelmed them.

Levi was a humble man of gentle heart. He delighted in any chance to serve and felt no slight at being sent to the kitchen. He went joyfully. Peter, however, was a man of pride. Among the disciples, he felt he was owed first place, and the respect of a leader. He deeply begrudged the rebuke, as he supposed, in the Rabbi telling him to do women’s work.

He thought, “It is not my place to be in the kitchen. Even if there were no women here, one of the lesser disciples should have been asked. To be made to work with one woman while another sits carelessly at the Rabbi’s very feet! It’s blasphemous and an insult; it makes me unclean.”

But he would not speak against his teacher’s direction. So putting on a calm countenance, Peter did the work gracefully, grumbling only in his heart.

Yet there a seed was planted against all women - both those who worked meekly under the limits set on them by Torah law, and those who presumed to study and grow in wisdom. He turned his bitterness especially against Mary the Magdalene. He already distrusted her because of the way she'd given her wealth to the Rabbi and his disciples - gathering of her own influence almost the entire material support for them.

How dare Mary spend such long hours alone with the Rabbi, even if it was at the Rabbi's bidding? It was impossible that a woman might grow in spirit beyond him. Her influence must be a darkness and a distraction, perhaps a satan testing the Rabbi’s authority. Peter was sure Mary had somehow used her dark, womanly wiles to influence the Rabbi into punishing him with kitchen work.

So, deep and hidden, the seed of resentment was planted and grew. Like a small pebble in a free flowing stream that first catches a few twigs, then a large branch, then another branch, and soon a great dike has formed, with the clear water backed up behind. Only a twisted trickle, a tumultuous tumble of water escapes. It still seems clear and sweet, yet it is incomplete and therefore distorted. Peter had set his heart against all women, to combat them like the adversary. And in this he was successful. Many generations had to live and die and struggle until the dam he began started to loosen.

Yet inevitably, the resentment of pride, grown from over-love of one man for his flesh, will be seen for the small thing it is and washed away. And so, one day, will all pride of flesh be washed out of the dealings of the peoples of the world.

© R. Elena Tabachnick 2007

Running Under a New Myth

I used to think a myth was a story that was not true. Myths might be amusing or illuminating, but only children believed them. Three-degreed scientists, such as myself, did not “believe.” We relied on empirical data for our explanations. Yet I now realize all people on earth live by deeply held myths - because “myth” has an older meaning than “fictional story.”

Myths are those central concepts people use to organize perception – the sieves we see through. Many are part of a larger culture; others belong to individuals or families. Our personal myths are tweaked through life experience. And sometimes, they are radically changed. This happened to me; it is what brought me to believe in myths.

I was born, raised and lived most of my adult life in a university. My highly educated parents were open-minded agnostics. Our family motto was, "Other people go to church. We go camping." And did we ever go camping! Not just in Wisconsin, Arizona or Quebec, but in Kenya, Chad, and Malawi.

As a teen, I was fascinated by the mystery of existence. I lay in the grass watching the stars, pondering the simplest of questions, “Why IS all this?”

My family’s academic culture answered that the universe simply was – without explanation. In contrast, traditional religion said it was as it was because of a deity - just like a human, but bigger, immortal and in control. “Why not” or “Because” - neither answer was satisfying.

But upbringing tells. Without quite choosing, I lived by the agnostic, academic-culture myth. It had a lot going for it. Maybe I couldn’t know, "why” but with science, I could spend a fascinating lifetime exploring “what” and “how.” My eventual career choice of evolutionary biology took that exploration to the limits.

Herbert Spencer once said, “Those who have not studied science know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.” What poetry I found!

The diversity of life rose and sank like a bog-moss carpet under the steps of a primordial giant. Interbreeding species embraced the Arctic in waves of passing genes, and fungi ate a tree alive while residing in its flesh. The matter in the universe was squeezed into threads and blebs on bubbles of empty space, while dark fluid from earth’s gut was pressed into jagged, Alaskan cliffs. On which I could stand, a little fly in boots and down vest, tapping with a steel hammer.

Yet slowly it dawned that however horrible or thrilling, if this whole universe merely existed as the accidental side effect of endlessly recycling, mindless energy - then it was, finally, futile. Cold. Dead. And humans were also already cold and dead. Which is why at my core, I lived in terror.

Yet I had an un-agnostic secret that did not let me to accept death as the meaning of the universe.

My secret? I saw a continuous flow of living light that moved within and among all things. Leaves on a tree, a weathered-gray fence, cracks in the sidewalk with weeds poking through: all reverberated with inner light, burgeoning meaning, joy. I called this “seeing with the backs of my eyes.”

So I swam in an ocean of throbbing presence while outwardly believing the myth of a dead universe, even in the stories I told myself.

Well, eventually the conflict grew too great. Something had to give. What gave was my fundamental myth. Not all at once and definitely not by choice. I was enticed, cajoled and finally had to have my grasping fingers pried off, one by one. Which really hurt. But now I live in another universe, perceived through an entirely different myth.

This universe is awake, aware, organized, and meaningful. It is a Being - albeit one beyond human comprehension. Yet we can feel this Being, because we are part of it - parts of a part of a great Whole – like a protein molecule in a cell in your liver in you, while you are in an ecosystem that is in the earth. Each of us breathes with the All, moves with the All, lives with the All, as the All breaths, moves and lives with us. It IS. And we ARE: the living light molecules in a living light Being - that feels like limitless joy – that feels like endless love.

How different everything looks. The scruffy guy swearing loudly on the street glows with living light, as does the tired mother struggling her two-year-old onto the elevator, and the woman who just slammed the phone in my ear when I dialed a wrong number.

Now I can’t despair no matter how bad things become. I need only be present to the suffering in front of me, practice - just practice - feeling love towards those I’d far rather despise, and try to release fear, death and the need to hurt. There is no possibility of defeat. My body can die, even in terrible pain, but I can’t die. NONE of us can die. Because in this light, the myth of God is real, and death is ever only temporary.

© R. Elena Tabachnick 2007 (An earlier version of this story was on Mind's Eye Radio in August, 2003)

An Interfaith, Pantheist UU Is Called By Jesus: Part I

This story is excerpted from a forthcoming book on my monastic journey. As it is long, I’ve broken it into serial posts.

Meeting Jesus for the Very First Time

The girl was just ten, sitting on an overturned boat half buried in sand, kicking bare heels and sucking a stick of barley sugar. It was a worn, old boat with great gaps in its timbers. The girl called it her playhouse. It made a good perch to watch the men mend nets on the beach.

At ten the girl was old enough to help at home. And she did help, but then the salt sea wind would call and she couldn’t resist, slipping away between one task and the next. Part of a large family, she was easily overlooked as long as she stayed out from underfoot. So the wild girl and the tired, old boat were left to each other, forgotten by the women, invisible to the men.

The girl smiled at the sun and waves. Her toffee-brown legs swung free under a too-short dress that had once had bright stripes of red, blue and green, many wearers ago along the stair steps of older sisters. A breeze stirred the sea-thick air and tossed her dark, unkempt curls.

Something was happening. She squinted to watch a strange man talk to her brothers and cousins mending the nets. He left them and stood on the wet strand gazing out to sea. Little waves lapped his feet. Before she thought much about it, the girl hopped down and ran to him.

“What are you doing?” she asked, not considering the impertinence of a young girl speaking to a grown man.

The man didn’t consider it either. He turned, looked deep into her eyes, took her hand and smiled.

“Do you want to see my playhouse?” she asked, smiling back and swinging her new friend’s hand.

“No,” he said, “I want you to leave all that and be mine.”

Stopped still, her eyes grew big and round. She felt like she’d been poured full of something as thick and sweet as honey, yet as fiery as the mid-day sun. Then she frowned, looking back over her shoulder.

“What about my playhouse?” she asked.

Very simply and quietly he repeated, “Leave that and be mine.”

“Okay,” she replied.

They turned and walked hand in hand away from the water, blazing, honey-joy flowing between and all around them. The girl held her stick of candy out to him. Its pale, red-gold color glinted in the sun. He reached down and took it. Their eyes met and flashed with private laughter. She leaned against him and he put his arm around her. The fire-honey feeling flowed through her whole body: mouth, throat, fingers, stomach and between her legs.

* * * * *

I jerked back into myself. A man in a sexual exchange with a child? Whoa! That was no good. I peeked around the monastery room. Three of the sisters sat there. Eyes closed and breathing deeply, they were icons of serene meditation.

Bright, April sun slanted in through large, west-facing windows. The monastery's pond was just visible out the windows, beyond a field of native prairie. A delicious wind ruffled its surface into sparkling wavelets.

I shifted in the uncomfortable, monastery chair and shut my eyes again - with an admonishment to fix the sexual problem. To whom I spoke was not clear. It could have been my psyche, my soul or God.

Immediately, I was back on the beach, embraced by the man, Jesus. As radiant, sexual honey flowed between us, my little girl’s body flickered, shifted, then steadied into that of a young woman, age-mate to Jesus. We both had strong, young arms and legs, tight bellies, and clear, brown skin. We left the beach, walking with our arms about each other’s waists. I rested my head on his shoulder. We crossed a road drifted with sand and walked toward a crowd of people. He pulled away from me to call them. I felt peaceful but thought, “Oh. My time being his only is over. Now it’s their turn.”

At that Jesus’ head and shoulders filled my vision. Brilliant, laughing eyes gazed deep into mine as exclusive, intimate love flooded me. Yet all the time he loved each of the other people in the same intimate way. It was odd, like seeing double: two images filling one screen. He was in a monogamous relationship with me, yet also with a multitude of others. Visualizing it was like trying to see in more than three dimensions, many more than three dimensions. For a split second I could hold them all, but then they’d slip away.

Finally Jesus said, “Don’t you see? Through me, you are bonded to everyone else.” My struggle dissolved into expansive, encompassing joy.

* * * * *

The sister in charge of the meditation drew it to a close, recalling us back to our bodies and the room. Everyone looked centered and happy. I beamed at them, but at the back of my brain a small voice whispered, “Jesus. You just met Jesus. And. You. Were. Lovers.”

© 2007 R. Elena Tabachnick

An Interfaith, Pantheist UU Is Called By Jesus: Part II

This story is excerpted from a forthcoming book on my monastic journey. As it is long, I’ve broken it into serial posts.

In the Throes of Divine Indifference

This would never have happened if I hadn’t been “called” into a Benedictine monastery. Which in itself was odd. A call to religious life had never been high on my list of priorities.

It occurred on a cool, clear May evening, two years before the retreat where I met Jesus. I’d just become an oblate (a lay associate), standing up with twenty-two others and pledging myself to the Rule of Benedict, the oblate community and the monastery.

At a post-oblation party, people snapped pictures of themselves with the two oldest sisters.

“Hey take mine,” I said, standing between the two sisters.

Suddenly my heart split, filling with a joyous light. Like a cheesy musical, love struck and left me helpless. It felt like a thick cord of living light had grown out of my heart and sunk itself deep into the monastery’s land. A stiff elastic, it only let me go so far, and for so long, before drawing me back. Like the worst sort of head-over-heels lover, I constantly thought about the monastery and was only at peace when there. But it was ridiculous. They were Catholics and I was an eccentric pantheist. We were totally incompatible.

I wanted to obey - the draw was so intensely delicious. Yet I also wanted it to stop. For one thing, I don’t trust that kind of love. More often than not, the tide recedes and there you are, stuck in a painfully awkward alliance. Besides, I was a professional with a good job, a nice house, a busy social life and lots of cherished personal habits. Was I supposed to abandon all that? So I dithered for weeks thinking maybe the whole thing would fade like some summer crush.

I spoke about my call to one friend or family member after another. They all said if it was that strong, I ought to tell the sisters. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time I let a beckoning vision spin my life off on a previously unimagined track.

* * * * * *

In 1998, I was sitting in the office of another professor at DePaul University in Chicago rehashing college gossip. Stretched lazily in a chair, I was arrested in mid-grouse by a brilliant light that blossomed in my middle. It rose through my body with a tremendous sense of release that said, “let go.”

Searching for help understanding this experience, I spoke with a Catholic spiritual guide.

Now if you want intelligent religious argument go to a Jew or a Unitarian, but if you want to talk about mystical visions as if they were everyday occurrences, liberal Catholics can’t be beat. This woman acted as if having a vision was no more remarkable than eating toast.

I suspected that “letting go” meant leaving my secure but harried, academic career - even though I had no idea where that would bring me. She thought that made perfect sense. It was a customary Catholic spiritual behavior called “living by divine indifference.” This meant obeying God's call in your heart without consideration for long-term goals or potential disasters. You might be led into totally unexpected circumstances, but supposedly they would turn out to be more right than anything you could have planned. Trust in such divine promptings was the true meaning of “faith,” she insisted.

One cold, dreary day in late November I sat in a restaurant with large windows, waiting for some of my colleagues to arrive. Freezing rain poured down the glass. I thought, “The worst that could happen if I follow my vision would be to be stuck out there - cold, wet and hungry - with no way in.” The adventure seemed well worth that risk.

I had no idea “divine indifference” would bring me into a relationship with Jesus, instead.

* * * * * *

By the end of June the intensity of my call had not gone down. So I worked up the nerve to tell one of the sisters.

She was visibly taken aback. On recovering her composure, she turned to me with a schoolmarm frown. “But you’re not Christian, are you?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“We only take baptized Christian women,” she said with a tight smile.

A happy, little bubble rose in my thoughts and popped. Baptism sounded nice. “Well, I might get baptized,” I offered tentatively.

But part of me was inwardly screaming, “Are you nuts? You're not going to be Christian!”

© 2007 R. Elena Tabachnick

An Interfaith, Pantheist UU Is Called By Jesus: Part III

This story is excerpted from a forthcoming book on my monastic journey. As it is long, I’ve broken it into serial posts.

Stumbling On Into Christianity

Since childhood I’d often seen a tantalizing light that radiated from every ordinary thing: tree branches, trash on sidewalks, weathered fence posts, people’s faces. It wasn’t exactly visible, but was like a sheath of radiance that I “saw” with “the backs of my eyes.”

Once at the end of a long day of hiking in the Alaskan Chugach Mountains, I watched the sun set over Cook Inlet. I’d been hiking alone for several days. My ties to time, and the normal round of social meaning, had come undone - blown away by the rushing wind. I sat against a rock in a little hollow filled with heather, where there was some cover. The only sounds were the wind and the soft scrape of my down vest on the rock. I leaned back thinking of nothing at all.

Near the horizon, the sun passed behind a bank of clouds. Then it was free, setting the undersides of the clouds ablaze in streaks of pink, orange and liquid gold. Finally it dropped over the horizon, and soon a few stars were visible.

The wind’s sharp fingers sliced behind my eyes as my body shrank to a speck of blood warmth in a vast, rock cathedral - this earth - spinning into stars spinning into galaxies spinning through expanding depth. Magma rose to earth’s surface, crystallized, was crinkled into mountains, and then subducted to melt again. Mist gathered into rain that flowed from a stream through spruce and heather back into clouds.

Then I saw a glittering net of brilliant sparks hung against the dusk-darkening sky. Each spark was a living being. Energy flowed down the threads of the net as the tiny lights cycled and recycled one into another. The net reached through all space to all beings on all planets. It reached to the slope on which I lay as but one more, infinitesimal spark in a multitude of sparks, all part of a single, dazzling whole. Although more small than small, as one with all the others I became huge. Became the entire scintillating net of interconnected lights, breathing in. Breathing out.

Not long ago, I discovered that other people see this light. When I mentioned that glittering net to a Hindu friend he exclaimed, “That’s Indra’s necklace.”

* * * * * *

After I started hanging out with Christians, I began to say “God” when speaking of this illumination, but my God was an energy field, not a person.

Then during the year I prepared to become an oblate of the monastery, my spiritual experience shifted. By the time I was ‘called,’ what had been an undifferentiated, luminous energy - radiating equally from everything - began to feel like it contained a loving “other.” Although still a continuous energy field, it was no longer uniform. That “other” was separate from myself, and we could have a relationship. Around Christians, I began to call that loving other “Christ.”

But that didn’t make me Christian. For one thing, my sense of Christ was as a location or concentration in the energy - like a thick cloud. There was an identity, a Being, different from myself, but it was way more diffuse, and larger, than a human. And there was absolutely nothing male about it. If this was Christ, where was Jesus?

Maybe in Jesus’ day, people sensed an energy like that in him, but I couldn’t see it. Even the word ‘Jesus’ stuck in my throat: a sticky mix of simpering, Sunday school pictures, hate-filled, Evangelical harangues, and the long, Christian history of burning people like me.

* * * * * *

I joined a Unitarian church because I like interfaith worship, but I was born a Universalist. If each material being is an expression of an underlying, uniform energy, then separation is an illusion. Maybe I couldn’t stop acting and feeling as if I were separate: ridden by my anger, jealousy, fear or longing to be loved. But I knew this made no sense. After all, “I” am already “you” and “he” and “she,” so what is there to be angry, jealous or frightened about?

There could also be no such thing as “hell.” Every living being shone with radiant light, and every human was part of a single, divine whole. So “eternal punishment” was ridiculous. It would be like your head deciding to burn your toe forever in order to punish it for once having stubbed itself.

When I left DePaul I hoped it was a step to seeing things more clearly. Then belief in my little, separated self might dissolve. That hope was also at the back of my motivation when I first started going to the monastery. I hadn’t bargained on being stuck with a thick light-cord pulling me irresistibly into monastic community.

My call never wavered, so I kept asking the sisters to consider me, although they were hardly encouraging.

It was what divine indifference required, and it seemed the Benedictine thing to do. Benedict says a monastery should only consider an applicant who “keeps knocking at the door and at the end of four or five days has shown patience in bearing harsh treatment and difficulty of entry.” I imagined a fortress with the poor applicant huddled outside the wall in slushy snow while monks threw rocks and frozen manure down from above. That was pretty much how I felt.

Finally, the sister in charge of vetting new members agreed to meet with me, although she made it plain she doubted if I was really called.

Given the intensity of the pull, I was overjoyed at this breakthrough. Except for one problem. Now I would have to get baptized.

I made a cursory investigation of several traditional Christian denominations, but they just weren’t mine. It would have been lying to join one just to have the baptism the sisters required. Either the monastery would take me as the UU I really was, or my call was as misguided as the sister said.

But was there a way to be Christian while rejecting the traditional doctrines of sin, judgment, hell and salvation? And could I be baptized as a UU?

© 2007 R. Elena Tabachnick

An Interfaith, Pantheist UU Is Called By Jesus: Part IV

Excerpted from a forthcoming book on my monastic journey.

So That's Baptism

My UU minister had been raised as some kind of Christian, although she had long since left that identity. But she suggested books that might help me find a Universalist and Unitarian Christianity. The first was Stephen Mitchell’s The Gospel According to Jesus.

Like our Unitarian-leaning third president, Thomas Jefferson, Mitchell cut the vengeful, angry passages out of the canonical Gospels. Since these were inconsistent with Jesus’ inclusively loving message, he assumed they were interpolations of later writers. The authentic Jesus teaching lay in truly radical sayings like: "Love your enemies." "Help those who hate you." "Don't resist evil." "Don’t judge." "If someone takes your things, don't ask for them back." "God’s love is like the sun that shines on good and bad alike." "Do not fear.”

Wow! This was a Christianity I could believe in.

Mitchell also drew parallels between Jesus’ words and other religions, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. That helped a lot. I’ve never understood why people argue that theirs is the one true religion because their doctrines are unique - with counterparts in no other religion. Unique is weak. Singular events are anomalies. At best, unique doctrines might express some local, culturally limited experience of the divine. They can’t point to universal truths. The Gospels might actually have something to say about God if similar ideas existed in other faiths.

Soon I was eating up authors with diverse views of Jesus, or who lit up the dark corners of Christian history - like Elaine Pagels, Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, and The Gospel of Thomas. Some saw Jesus as a great teacher of social justice, but not divine. Others saw Jesus as a living expression of pure, divine love, but this was a divine love anyone could express.

I began to think I could be baptized as that kind of Christian. The only question was how and by whom? After six months, I got up the nerve to approach my minister.

She met me in an old, Episcopalian building on campus where the young adult UU fellowship rented space. The fellowship gathered in a gracious room with arched windows, dark wood paneling and plush furniture. I found her there setting up chairs. She led me down a long flight of stairs to a poky office in the basement. She had to take a stack of papers off a chair for me to sit.

I said I wanted to be baptized, but as a UU. Could she help me?

“UUs don’t use baptism,” she said. There was a silence. I waited while she looked at me out of brightly intelligent eyes. Then she went on, “Yet I’m impressed by your sincerity. This doesn’t seem to be just a whim.”

I smiled and nodded.

She smiled back. “I’m willing to work with you on it. But I want you to first explore what baptism means to you. I have to be sure this is a real calling of your heart.”

“If it was, could you do it?” I asked.

She laughed. “Actually, yes. I went to a Christian seminary and they had a class on full-immersion baptism. I meant to skip the class because there was no reason for a UU minister to know that. Only a friend of mine said I ought to go. ‘You never know. You might need it,’ he said. So yes, I can do a baptism. Although I can't do it as an official function," she added with a little frown, "only as something private.”

“So, um, what now?” I asked.

“Well, why don’t you write about what baptism means to you, what you plan to say and who would be present as witnesses.”

I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to imagine witnesses. I left her office feeling energized.

It was almost a year after the notion of baptism first popped into my head and I’d finally answered those questions to my, and my minister’s, satisfaction.

In May, I was puzzling over what vows to say. Then I was inspired by an Easter Mass at the monastery.

When I realized the priest was about to sprinkle us with holy water in an “affirmation of baptism,” I wanted to duck and hide. The monastery folks might be very liberal Catholics, yet they were still Catholic. I didn’t want to get caught “affirming” words I didn’t believe. But as the priest intoned the vows, I was elated. With a little interfaith Universalist tweaking they were just what I was looking for.

I was still embarrassed to say “Jesus” in public, but on a Friday morning in June, I went with the minister and ten friends to a state park on a lake. A grassy picnic area fronted a pebble beach. It was empty except for some ducks, a couple mothers with toddlers and, in the far distance, a park employee mowing grass. We set up an altar on the last picnic table. Behind us, the grass ended where a low, stone breakwater tumbled out into the water.

Toddler cries made a homey background noise as we sang and chanted. Then I said the vows and it was time. The minister led me into the water, skirting a few big clumps of floating weed. When the water was just over our waists, she stopped.

“Take your time,” she whispered in my ear, “When you’re ready, nod, and then just fall.” She placed her hands at my back.

I breathed in and out, trying to take in the moment: the miniature, slightly oily swells of the water - murky green and smelling of algae, the sky where it showed pale blue between thick clouds, the distant sounds of toddlers and lawn mower, and the feel of my wet dress wafting about my stomach.

I nodded and fell. The minister moved so smoothly that I felt nothing until cold water closed like two hands over my face. Shocked, I burst up, arms raised, in a shower of spray.

And that was pretty much it. We waded to shore and shivered through a closing prayer. Then packed up and went home.

Baptism didn’t actually change anything. Spiritual dilemmas, work anxieties and relationship muddles all continued just as before.

© 2007 R. Elena Tabachnick

An Interfaith, Pantheist UU Is Called By Jesus: Part V

Excerpted from a forthcoming book on my monastic journey.

Help! Those Psalms Are Yucky!

The sisters needed a second year of talk about my call before they agreed to the last step: a “discernment” retreat at the monastery. After that they’d have to make a decision to take me or say no. Of course, it was supposed to be a mutual exploration, but my heart had never wavered. Neither had my doubts. I’d faced a simple choice: follow my heart in faith and divine indifference, putting aside all doubts, or deny my heart in favor of fear.

The only healthy thing was to follow my heart – however inappropriate I might seem for Benedictine community, or Benedictine community seem for me. Realizing this the previous September, I’d told the sisters I was ready for the commitment.

They weren’t.

Nothing anyone said or did changed my heart, or my intension. But the extra year did have one, nice side effect. It gave me months after I was already sure to test the feeling of letting go.

* * * * * * *

My retreat was finally scheduled for April, the week after Easter.

That year was only my second experience of a Catholic Easter. I loved it. On Maundy Thursday the congregation washed each other’s feet at Mass, with dinner served by the sisters. On Good Friday, a solemn service included letting anyone who wished kneel for a private moment by a large wood cross lying on the ground. Saturday Vigil had processions that wound outside to bless new fire and water. And on Sunday, there was a celebratory Mass.

Before I hung out at the monastery, my ritual experience was limited to eccentric, solitary earth-ceremonies I performed for myself. Yet I ate up all those corporate rites. The liturgical year seemed to provide an incredibly useful way to process loss, despair and transformation, not to mention all those perfectly-good-for-a-pagan rituals of darkness, water and blessing new fire.

* * * * * * *

By April of that year, I was going to the monastery several evenings a week. I got along with everyone and they got along with me. So I entered the retreat lightly, expecting it to be relaxing and fun. My only concern was if the sisters would finally agree that the Spirit was behind my call. But it was not really my problem. If the Spirit was, they would.

I arrived at the monastery still pleasantly buzzed from the four days of Easter services. An echoing buzz of enthusiastically trilling birds filled the spring air. As I trundled my wheeled case to a room, the loud CLANG, clang, CLANG, clang of the ten-minute warning sounded for afternoon prayer. I dumped my suitcase and went. Most people hurried to prayer at 4:30, so the oratory was empty as I took a prayer book and entered, stopping to flick a quick bow at the cross.

The oratory was a small, plain room at one end of the monastery. It felt both ordinary, like old slippers, and set apart, a sacred space reverberating with decades of prayer. Two facing rows of plain, oak chairs formed an aisle down the middle of the room. A modern icon of Jesus hung on one wall. At the far end, an oak lectern and candleholder, as well as a metal cross, stood in front of several tall windows. Outside in the tiny lobby a baptismal font made a continuous, soft burble.

I closed my eyes and waited for the liturgy to start.

Breathing out I thought, “You,” and connected with that larger something-or-other, God, Christ, Whatever. Breathing in I thought, “I,” and my personal something-or-other blossomed inside. I, You, I, You. The stress of work and driving smoothed away as I fell into the rhythm of breath. Then one of the sisters came in, flicking on the light. More people entered. The bells rang once for the half hour and there was a general scuffle. I opened my eyes, standing with the rest.

The leader sang, “Oh God, come to our assistance”.

We all answered, “Oh God, make haste to help us.”

The first psalm was nice, but the second set my teeth on edge. An angry God crushed other nations in war for the sake of Israel. Yuck. The canticle wasn’t much better, crooning that everything on earth worshiped Jesus as God. By the time we stood for the second “Glory Be,” I’d lost all patience - even for that feminist monastery’s fairly innocuous version, with “Creator” substituted for “Father” and “Spirit of Life” for “Holy Spirit.” I grumbled under my breath about orthodox, Trinitarian arrogance.

How would I survive three daily doses of this stuff? In the few minutes of silence after the reading, I gazed glumly at the cross.

I closed my eyes. Inspired by who knows what I prayed, “Jesus, if you want me here, I have to feel you so close I can’t slither away on any excuse, not even the nastiest of scriptures.”

© 2007 R. Elena Tabachnick

An Interfaith, Pantheist UU Is Called By Jesus: Part VI

Excerpted from a forthcoming book on my monastic journey.

Surrender

At 3:00 on the afternoon of the retreat, I joined several sisters in a conference room for a guided meditation. Afternoon sun poured through large, west-facing windows. We all shifted to get comfortable and closed our eyes as the oldest sister told us to relax and take deep breaths. Then she asked us to imagine meeting Jesus.

At first I smelled sea air, heavy with salt and rotting organic matter. I saw a girl sitting on an old boat, overturned in the sand. Then I was the girl.

Distantly, I could feel my butt sunk into a chair in the monastery, but the vision was very real, and a lot more sensual than the usual guided meditation. I could taste salt in the air and feel my bare heels drum the side of the boat. Sand slipped under my feet as I ran to greet the man standing at the shore Later, as we walked to a road with our arms about each other’s waists, I heard the chatter among people gathered at a roadside market.

After the sister drew our meditation to a close, she asked us to say what had happened. I said I’d been a girl on a beach. Jesus had walked by and I ran to him. He said, “Leave all that and be mine,” and I said, “O.K.” I mentioned that it was interesting Jesus said “be mine,” not “follow me,” like in the Gospels.

I didn’t mention the sexual honey that had flowed between us or that I was still warmed by it.

* * * * * * * *

It was 4:00 by the time our meditation was done. The sisters scattered to their offices for a bit of work before prayer. I just went to the oratory and sat down. The intensity of my meeting with Jesus had left me wrapped in a blissful fog. When prayer started, I stood and sat, bowed and chanted, paying no attention whatsoever. Until a line from First Peter leapt out, “through Christ you came to trust in God,” and I was jerked back into myself.

Yuck! What exclusivist Christian jargon!

“No one needs Christ to trust God.” I grumbled to myself, “I sure didn’t." At that my mind took off on a familiar tirade. "Why do orthodox types always insist their religion is the one true way, yet their only arguments for this boil down to ‘because it is ours’? Don’t they realize every member of every other orthodox religion is saying the exact same thing?”

“You can’t have it both ways,” I continued, as my eyes drifted past the reader to fix on the cross, “If ‘Christ’ is some universal aspect of the Divine All, Christ must have appeared many times under many names on earth alone, not to mention all the other planets. If Christ only appeared in Jesus, then at best Christ is a very local, very limited facet of the divine. Those are the only choices: universal and all over with many names, or just once and local.”

At that, Jesus rushed into view, swamping my vision. His eyes danced over a mischievous grin, like a little boy who’d sprung a delicious, practical joke. Oh great! Jesus thought all my grumpy logic chopping was simply funny.

Then I realized: his look was familiar. I knew those eyes and that grin.

* * * * * * * *

Years before, around the time I’d had the vision that sent me from DePaul, I’d become aware of my own soul. It felt like a stream of light flowing into the top of my head and down through my whole body. At that time I did a chakra balancing exercise every morning. It felt as if my soul flowed from the energy anchor above my head. There the soul light blossomed out, while beyond that point the sense of “me” thinned and disappeared. A youth stood at the blossom point. He had a wide grin and a mischievous personality. I called him “Laughing Boy.”

For a while, I busted my mind wondering if “Laughing Boy” was a personification of my soul, an angel-like helper being, or simply a figment of my overactive imagination. I’d long since given up worrying about it.

Yet now this Jesus - with his wide, joking grins - looked and felt the just the same.

“Wait,” I said to him, “Are you saying that’s also you? You’re Laughing Boy?”

Jesus grinned even wider and then laughed aloud.

Sheesh. All these Christians talked longingly of the day everyone would be “one in Christ.” But this was way too much oneness for comfort. I was lost in a tangle of self-referential paradox.

* * * * * * * *

The canticle started and my focus shifted back to the oratory. The canticle text was also from First Peter: “Even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.”

In my mind, I began to laugh along with Jesus. I was fit to burst with inexpressible and glorious joy. “Luckily, I have seen you,” I told him, matching his grin with one of my own, “Because as you doubtless know, believing without seeing is not exactly my forte.”

As prayer drew to a close, Jesus vanished. Before turning to leave, I bowed deeply to the cross, suffused with gratitude to the one who had called me.

* * * * * * * *

That night was clear and soft. I felt restless so slipped from my room. Everyone else had already gone to bed.

The monastery sat at the foot of a large hill. On the other side, a scrubby field of old, dry grass was dotted with baby oak trees. I walked up and over the hill. A gentle wind carried the smell of moist soil and spring promise.

I lay on the ground in the baby oak field and looked at the stars.

What was with this desire to surrender to Jesus?

The call was a cord of light. The soul energy streaming into my head was a column of light. Both were indistinguishable from the light of Christ. All were infinitely enticing. For years I’d prayed to more fully shine that light. Could surrender to Jesus be the way?

My rational mind could make no sense of this. It ran back and forth like a panicked rodent in a cage. Yet I felt as calm as if I were on a very straight and right road. I thought of a line from Norman Fischer's zen version of Psalm 23: “You lead me down… The path that unwinds in the pattern of Your name.”

I lay in the field a long time imagining I could sleep there, but finally returned to my room and crawled into the hard monastery bed.

© 2007 R. Elena Tabachnick

An Interfaith, Pantheist UU Is Called By Jesus: Part VII, The End

Excerpted from a forthcoming book on my monastic journey.

Leaving All My Playhouses

I decided not to tell anyone that I’d seen Jesus, afraid of what talking would do. Cynical voices were already murmuring in the background of my mind, scornfully deriding my “vision” as “grandiose nonsense,” “self-centered delusion,” and “just imagination.” If I opened my mouth, they might take over.

But that Friday, I had a dinner date with an old friend. She belonged to a liberal Jewish synagogue, but was basically a spiritual skeptic. We always met at the same campus Chinese place. It was cheap, yet had surprisingly well-prepared food.

“So, what’s been happening with you?” my friend asked casually as the waitress set a pot of tea on the table.

There were a million decent responses to this question that left my vision alone, but did I use one? Nope.

“Just last Wednesday at the monastery, I had this thing with Jesus,” I chirped.

As soon as the word, ‘Jesus’ left my mouth I knew I was sunk. Shoot! Shoot and a half and three quarters! Why did I break my silence?

My friend regarded me with a lopsided, quizzical smile. She reached for the teapot and poured. “Oh? Really? With Jesus?” she asked.

Embarrassment rose like the steam from the pot, heating my face and turning my brain to mush. She was going to think I was some kind of bible quoting, personally saved, Jesus freak!

Lifting a cup to my lips with a knowing, academic chuckle, I rushed to cover my tracks. “Of course, there may not have been any actual, historical human being called Jesus. It hardly matters. He could have been some teaching myth created by post-exilic Pharisees to spread basic tenets of the emerging, book-and-synagogue-based Judaism. It’s the radical social teaching that counts, anyway… not that any of that is unique to Christianity, either. ”

As the words left my mouth, I cringed inside, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “In fact, there’s not much Jesus purportedly said that wasn’t taught by Hillel or other major Jews at the time Jesus was supposed to have lived. You know, ‘the essence of the bible is don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself, and all the rest is commentary'”

What pedantic, intellectual crap! I kicked myself. Hard. But it was too late.

By the time the waitress set a little tray with our bill and fortune cookies on the table, I’d cut my vision up into little pieces and scattered them to the winds. My mouth felt tacky and my mind was dust. All my intense, sensory experience had dulled into overblown, invented drivel.

I berated myself for a coward all the way home.


* * * * * * * *


I was still kicking myself the next morning as I stood on the front lawn surveying the flowerbeds, deciding where to plant a flat of pansies.

It was very dry.

“Looks like we’re headed for drought this summer,” I announced to the garden.

Wisps of cloud crossed bright, blue sky and a warm wind blew from the west. Great weather except that we’d had little snow that winter and little rain all spring.

I began digging the pansies into the soil.

Why had I belittled my vision to my friend when it had been so exhilarating and real?

I sighed as I patted soil around the last plant and sat back to see how they looked. The pansies were a rich, velvety purple, almost black. I touched one petal. It was soft and slightly moist.

My sense of Jesus had been as real as these petals. It couldn’t have been “just imagination.”

“Even if it was ‘imagination,’ is that so meaningless?” I muttered as I dragged out the hose and began to water the pansies. “What is 'imagination,' after all? Maybe it is simply the human organ for perception of the divine, just as eyes are our organs for perception of light.”

I sighed again.

The truth was I believed Jesus had been a real man who actually lived. I believed that man, Jesus, had embodied unconditional, all-embracing, divine love. Jesus had shone the divine love-energy clearly, without the ego confusion that obstructed most of us. Yet this was simply a brighter version of the same love-light-energy that was in me and in all things – the true, core substance of all life.

And I believed this great, divine Love-Being had invited me into personal relationship. So why, only days later, was I busy denying him by smothering my vision in long-winded, academic obfuscation?

I made my experience socially palatable by waffling on its reality. Did it matter if I’d met Jesus or Christ or my own soul? The problem was, it embarrassed me to have a personal relationship with Jesus. God-the-ineffable was easier. Christ as non-personified, universal energy was easier and much more familiar. But the one I’d met, that Jesus, had felt singular and personal, a once-human “he,” not an “it” or an “all.”

“No waffling. I’m going to have to simply accept that I met Jesus,” I told the pansies.

A morning dove flew down from a spruce in the middle of the lawn and looked at me. Maybe it hoped for bugs from the soil I’d turned over. It was young, like one that had watched from the roof of my car as I came out the day before. On the radio I’d just heard about a man dying of AIDS whose partner was already dead. The man said, “In the hole left by my partner Jesus has moved in.” The guy was radiant. He wouldn’t change a thing, even having AIDS. His disease had created the space that allowed Jesus in, and he wouldn’t trade that for anything. Being with Jesus, his suffering became peripheral.

“Perhaps embarrassment isn’t the problem,” I thought as I turned off the hose. “It could be that Jesus is offering more relationship than I’d bargained for.”

Because accepting Jesus meant leaving all my playhouses.

I was too small to know God-the-All. Jesus held open a door, showing me another way. My heart and joy said, “follow,” and they were the most reliable guides. Could I let go of my fear and walk the way Jesus offered?

Maybe. Maybe.

I picked up the empty flat and headed in. It was time for lunch.

© 2007 R. Elena Tabachnick

New Psalms 3: Feeding The Lion

Written in contrition after derailing a group conversation with an angry explosion.

Pride has consumed me.
A great lion tosses his royal mane.
I open my mouth
All that comes out is a roar.

Shy people cower.
Kind people shake their heads.
Other proud lions intensify the brawl.
Agreeing, we stand side by side.
Our declaration blasts the rafters
Scatters paper and dialogue to the floor.

Disagreeing, we stand face to face.
Glower
Blasting each other.
Hair streams out from our heads.
Veins pop in crimson faces.
Heat in shock waves fills the room.

We finish satisfied
But empty.

Others leave frustrated
And empty.

You wait
Calm
Loving
Patient.

You do not hear these lions.
You do not see these lions.
When my longing turns to You
I stop feeding the lion.
He sleeps and You speak:
Welcome home.

© 2006 R. Elena Tabachnick

New Psalm 4, Remember God

Coming out of a time of grief, on a Sunday, after meditating at 6 a.m. then walking in October sunshine with a friend.

How great is my longing for You:
A desert thirst
A consuming fire
A single raindrop trailing down the window.

I plead and nothing happens.
I rant and nothing happens.
I light candles, burn incense, sit still:
Nothing happens.
Discouraged, my heart contracts.

Mundane specks of earthly existence
Resplendent depth of distant mystery
Myself, small locus of wonder and confusion
You, encompassing wholeness of All
One force, one field
One.

How did I lose touch with You?

Enemies yammer in my head:
Where is your God
You fool of illusion?
Get your nose out of your navel.
Get real.
Get busy.
Get a new job, a new house, a new car
A new spouse
A new cause.
Do something useful!

Drained, I listen as they say:
Be angry about the war, the powerful
The suffering.
Be angry.

Seeing me helpless, they tear my clothes
Shriek, laugh, leap around
Point damning fingers and cry:
How futile is your God-talk.
Be practical.
Take care of business, family, the church.
Stop this selfish indulgence,
Stop this shameful idleness.
Stop sitting still
Tasting, smelling, hearing, seeing
God.

I remember how I used to go
Buoyed in joy
Gladly hurrying to prayer
Easily sitting in meditation.
I avoided distraction
Read good books
And sang
Pushing a grocery cart
At a committee meeting
In the shower
Because I knew.

Why are You cut off from me?
Day and night I breathe Your Breath
Day and night I move in Your Body
How long will You stay far from me?

You say:
“Be not discouraged.
Trust the memory of God within
Trust the experience of God without.

Trust
Crashing ocean breakers
Swaying willows
A little dog prancing
The smell of dirt
A sigh as your love turns in sleep.

Trust earth.
Its molten core of iron, nickel
Spins
With stars and
The dark matter between galaxies.
This earth shouts
I Am real.”

God embodied calls
God ineffable answers
In dream
In a space where something isn’t
In unanswerable questions:
Why stars are born and die.
Why we were born and will die.

You
Breathe out
Diversity is born.
You
Breathe in
We rush back to union.

I will lose myself in You
With a shout of joy.

© 2006 R. Elena Tabachnick

New Psalm 1: Passion Like Wild Animals

Written after nine months of daily psalm chanting had shattered biblical literalism while the novitiate undermined monastic conviction.

In pain I cry out to You.
Who else would listen to me?

Enemies surround me.
Beasts prowl my street.
They dig up my garden and
run through my house
as if they owned the whole place.

Pride, that ravening lion, eats my heart and
anger like wild dogs tears my flesh.
My stomach is cold with coiling hate.
Her cobra head strikes at my insides,
I can hardly taste my food.

Fear opens her vulture’s beak in the rafters,
stretching her naked, scaly neck.
Her screech sets my teeth on edge.
She snatched my newborn children
before they saw a single day -
all but two.

Those two live but hardly thrive.
All night long fear’s screech shakes them.
She thrusts her beak down their throats
seizing any food they swallow and
sucking the breath from their nostrils.
Pale and weak, they can not raise their heads but
lie in bed gasping

Yet they live.
They live:
my two beloved, my own.
I am not left entirely barren.

Oh, hear me.
Hasten to my cry.
Help me roust the beasts from my house.
Help me bring my offspring to full life.
Help me surrender into your love,
Giving all without condition.
So I, too, may fully live.
To sing a song of Your many wonders.
To give You thanks and praise.

© 2004 R. Elena Tabachnick