God, Finding God, and the Search for God

The first thing that has to go is God. This is to say our idea of God, but with us there is no separation. To our way of thinking, our idea of God IS God, so God has to go. God is not a fact. God is the supreme value, the value before which all other values pale and recede. God is the Prime Necessity at the heart of being, and this Prime Necessity which we call God is indistinguishable from who we are called to be.

Joseph Campbell has said, “This whole idea is basic to Tantra: to worship a god, you must become that god. No matter what you call the god or think it is, the god you worship is the one you are capable of becoming.” Before you leap to call this heresy, consider:

Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.” “Yes, well,” you say, “Jesus was the Son of God.” To which I would say, “Jesus never called himself the “Son of God.” He always referred to himself as the “Son of Man,” a phrase that easily lends itself to the translation: “a human being.” Stay with me here. In John, Jesus prays, “That they (that is, his followers) might be one even as we are one, thou in me and I in thee.” And the command, which somehow didn’t make the top ten, that God gives the people in the Old Testament is “You must be holy as I am Holy!” And, again, "You must be perfect as I am perfect." In other words, "You must be as I am!" In the New Testament, Paul declares, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Clearly, the position that we must become the God we worship is not foreign to Biblical theology.

The call of God, then, is the call to become who we are, to be ourselves—our Self—the Self we are capable of being. The spiritual journey is the hero’s journey, the spiritual quest is the search for the Promised Land and for the Holy Grail. It is described by T.S. Eliot: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

The face of God is a mirror reflecting those who behold the face of God. Thou Art That. Amen! Ain't it so!

Sermon at South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church

Luke 9:23-25 – Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose or forfeit themselves?”

Homer, in The Odyssey, has Odysseus say: "I will stay with it and endure through suffering hardship / and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces, then I will swim."

A sermon should help you with your life and help you with your relationship with God. These are not two things. These are one thing. Jacob Bronowski said, “If you want to know the truth, you have to live in certain ways.” He meant you have to live truthfully. You can’t know the truth if you are kidding yourself about wanting to know the truth, if you aren’t willing to look the truth straight in the eye. If, in the words of Col. Nathan P. Jessup in the movie A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth,” you’ll never know the truth.

We cannot say we are seeking the truth when we are seeking only to confirm our convictions, whether those convictions pertain to the superiority of the Arian race or to the superiority of orthodox Christian dogma. If we live in the service of truth, we have to be open to what our explorations uncover, to what our experience shows us to be true, no matter what our preferences might be. We have to stand apart from our assumptions and prejudices—our prejudgments—in order to know the truth. We have to take the blinders off and live in ways that are truthful—in ways that do not deny or hide from any aspect of truth—if we want to know the truth.

The Bronowski principle applies to knowing God. If we want to know God, we have to live in certain ways. If we want to know God, we have to live a godly life, but. This does not mean what you think it means.

You think a godly life is morally pure. Not so. Jesus was called a glutton and a wine bibber, and a son of Satan. Jesus was accused of blasphemy, heresy and sedition. Jesus was out of accord with every Book of Order of his day. Jesus was as far from the traditional understanding of moral purity as a person could be. The scribes and Pharisees, on the other hand, were morally pure to the core—as to keeping the Law they were perfect—and they knew nothing of God.

A godly life has nothing to do with moral purity. A godly life has everything to do with living so aligned with the life that is truly our life to live, with the life that needs us to live it because only we can live it—so intent on doing what truly needs to be done in the situation as it arises—that God couldn’t live it any better than we are living it, couldn’t do it any better than we are doing it. When we live like that—living the life that is our life to live and doing what truly needs to be done in the situation as it arises—we say along with Jesus, “The Father and I are one.” We are one with the Father when we are one with the life that is our life to live.

When a sermon helps you live the life that is your life to live, it helps you with your relationship with God. When it helps you with your relationship with God, it helps you with the life that is your life to live. Our life flows from our relationship with God, our relationship with God flows from our life. The two things are one. But, there is a problem.

The problem is that the life that is our life to live is not the life we have in mind for ourselves. This was Adam’s and Eve’s problem, and it is our problem. We suffer from a conflict of interest at the core. There is the life we are built for—the life that needs us to live it—and there is the life we want to live, the life we dream of living, the life we wish were our life to live. Which life will it be? Whose side are we on?

This is a tough one, this whose side are we on question, but if we get it right, it’s smooth sailing all the way. It’s a hard one to get right because we think we know what we are doing. We think we know best. We think we have our true interest at heart. All of this in complete denial of the evidence to the contrary, which establishes without the slightest doubt that fooling ourselves is what we do best, no, telling ourselves what we want to hear is what we do best, no, letting ourselves off the hook is what we do best, no, shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best... If anything is clear about us it is that we do not have our own best interest at heart but we are sure that we do. It is hard for us to give that up, to hand that over, to say, along with Jesus, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” This is the hardest thing. We need help with it. And that’s exactly what we get, the help we need, if we have what it takes to take what is offered.

Carl Jung says, “In every one of us there is another whom we do not know.” I call this other within our “Invisible Twin.” Our Invisible Twin knows who we are and who we are to be, what the life is that is our life to live, and what kind of help we need to live it—and is there to offer it, but. We want nothing to do with this invisible other. We want what we want and not what we ought to want. This is my definition of sin, by the way, wanting what we want and not what we ought to want. I have another definition of sin that means the same thing: Sin is being wrong about what’s important. We think the wrong things are important. It takes a lot of living to get all of this straight. We are stubborn to a fault, and are sure that what we want IS important, so it takes a while.

And all the while, our Invisible Twin knows what’s what—what we ought to want, what’s truly important, what we ought to be doing with our lives. But, we’ll have none of it. We know what we want and we will have it or else. This makes the transition from the life that we want to live to the life that is truly ours to live like dying. It is a terrible thing to get to the point of saying along with Jesus, “Thy will, not mine be done.” We have to be at the end of our rope to say that, to hit bottom. We have to die to say that—not literally, but metaphorically. It is a handing over of ourselves, of all that we have thought was important. It is a surrender, a recognition that we aren’t all that smart after all and need help with our lives. It is at this point that our Invisible Twin provides us with exactly the help we need.

Who is this Invisible Twin? You could call him Jesus, the Son of God, the Christ within. Or you could call her Mary, the Mother of God. Or you could call this Twin the Holy Spirit that blows where it will. Or you could call our Twin, as Jesus did, “the Father.” Our Twin is as close to God as we can get, and is as much of God as we may be able to know. Our Invisible Twin stands ready to help us with all that we need to live the life that is our life to live, to do what needs to be done in serving what is truly important in each situation as it arises, all our life long. “In each of us there is another, whom we do not know.” And it is our responsibility to know her, to know him, to know what she knows, to know what he knows, and with her help, with his help, to find the life that is truly our life to live and live it.

Now, the life that is our life to live may have nothing to do with what we do to pay the bills. We may pay the bills with one life and live the life that is truly our life to live with another life. We pay the bills with our day job and do the work that is truly ours to do on the side, after hours, as we are able. We have to work it out, when to do what. Working it out involves integrating the opposites, reconciling the contradictions, managing our responsibilities, coming to terms with how things are and how they also are... This is not easy. This is the Hero’s Journey, the Spiritual Quest—not a soft stroll through the flowers of spring.

All of the epic hero stories are about this very thing. They are about us, the life that is our life to live, and the life we wish were ours to live. We stand between two lives, which do we choose? Whose side are we on? The struggle here is with ourselves. This is Jesus in the wilderness struggling with which life he is going to live, and again in Gethsemane, same struggle. Which life is it going to be? Joseph Campbell said, “It took the Cyclops to bring out the hero in Ulysses.” The Cyclops has many manifestations. Deciding which life we are going to live in the moment of our living is one manifestation of the Cyclops in our life. Struggling to live the life that is our life to live within the terms and conditions of our life is another manifestation of the Cyclops. We have no reason to expect it to be easy. Luke Skywalker against the Dark Side, Harry Potter against Voldemort, Frodo against Sauron, and you against all that is not easy about your life. This is how things are. Do not let it get you down.

You have all you need to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises. You have an Invisible Twin who is quite able to help you in the work that is yours to do. You can rely upon her, upon him, entirely. Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.” And he said, “I will not abandon you or leave you desolate.” Jesus came to connect us with the life that is our life to live by living out before us the life that was his life to live, trusting us to get the idea. True life, abundant life, is found in living the life that needs us to live it, the life that we are built to live, born to live—the life that only we can live. Our work, the Hero’s Journey and the Spiritual Quest—all these are the same thing—is to find our life and live it. No other life will do.

Jesus does not offer us abundant life so that we can go our merry way doing the things that are important to us. Those who would be his disciples must pick up their cross daily and follow him—and their cross is the burden of living the life that is their life to live, not some other, better, brighter, shinier life. Our cross is bringing forth the life that needs us to live it within the terms and conditions of life as it is. The cross is a metaphor for how difficult it is to integrate the opposites and reconcile the contradictions and work it all out. The help that we get from the invisible world does not make things easy—it enables us to do what is hard.

Your parents divorce, or your job is outsourced to India, or the lab report confirms a malignancy. Makes you want to quit. Makes you want to take off your glove and slam it into the dust and say, “If you don’t stop hitting me these hard ground balls, I’m done with this game!” Look, this is heroic stuff that we are doing. Frodo felt the same way we feel. So did Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker and Jesus. But, when we put on the uniform, and pick up the glove, and step onto the field, we have to expect hard ground balls, and be ready for one right after another. When we get out of bed each morning and step into our lives, we have to expect it to not be easy. This is hero’s work we are doing. Of course, it will not be easy!

James Hollis says that his experience playing tackle on his high school football team taught him that no matter how badly he got run over by the opposing lineman on the last play, he had to get up and get ready for the next play. This is how our life is. This is the way things are. It isn’t fair and it isn’t fun much of the time, but this is it—we have to live the life that needs us to live it within this context and these circumstances. And do it every day for the rest of our lives. The good news is that we have all we need to do it IF we will believe that we do, and trust it to be so, and act like it is.

Joseph Campbell says, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.” That’s all we need to know. When we are living the life that needs us to live it, we are on the beam. When we are doing what truly needs us to do it in each situation as it arises, we are on the beam. When we are on the beam we find what we need to live the life that only we can live. We may not find more than we need, but we will find what we need. This is the lesson of the manna in the wilderness, and of Jesus’ promise, “I will not leave you desolate.” It does not apply to us when we live any old way we want, only when we step on the beam and say from the heart, “Thy will, not mine, be done,” and live to align ourselves with what our Invisible Twin knows is the path with our name on it.

If you are going to believe in anything, believe in the beam, in the life that needs you to live it, in the path with your name on it, and in the “invisible means of support” that is always with us to assist us along the way. Trust that you will have all you need as you work to find your life and live it—to stay on the beam. Your life may not be easy, but the world will be transformed by your work, and your life will be interesting and meaningful all the way—which would never have been the case if you had lolled poolside the whole time, ordering fruit smoothies.

Ground Rules for A

Community of Innocence

Communities of Innocence are innocent in the sense that they have no interest, investment, or stake in their members—they do not seek to exploit us in any way. The community simply receives us well, listens to us attentively, asks us questions that enable us to say what we have to say, and tells us what it has learned through its experience that may be helpful in our situation. That's it. What we do with all of this is up to us. Progress along the path cannot be hurried. We proceed at our own pace, in our own time, waking up as we are able. The community of innocence does not try to hurry us along, but accompanies us kindly, with compassion, having nothing to gain and nothing to lose. We speak to hear what we have to say, not to tell others what they need to hear. We find the way together by listening one another to the truth of our lives.

Parker Palmer says, “There are ‘two key Quaker convictions’ upon which this approach is based: Our guidance comes not from external authority but from our Inner Teacher; and we need community to help us clarify and amplify the Inner Teacher’s voice. And Rumi says, “If you are not here with us in good faith, you are doing terrible damage.”

The Confidentiality Rule:

Everything Said Here Stays Here. Everything said here one week stays here that week. We won’t ask anyone to update us on something she, or he, has talked about in the past. If anyone wants to say more about something she, or he, said in a previous conversation, she, or he, can be trusted to do that without inquiry from others. And no one will take the reserve of the group as an indication of a lack of interest or concern.

The Don’t Fix-it Rule:

No Fixing

No Saving

No Advising

No Setting Anyone Straight

No Confronting

No Correcting

No Converting

No Condemning

No Excommunicating

No Telling Another What We Think He, or She, Needs To Hear

The Pass On Anything

At Any Time Rule:

No one has to say anything ever. You can pass on anything at any time. “I think I’ll pass on that,” is always an appropriate response.

The Comfort Rule:

The comfort rule always applies. Live to be appropriately comfortable at all times.

Good Advice 0001

Be aware of what you throw away. Notice every time you dismiss something that catches your eye, or reject something that appears to be useless or repulsive. Every variety of light is the perfect light for some subject. The work of photography is finding the subject that is suited for the light we have to work with. Everything has a hidden side. Your task is to find the blessing.

Photography is about going back to the good places, looking again at what you have seen a hundred times already. Don't think you have seen anything worth seeing just because you've looked it over once or twice. Anything worth seeing once is worth looking at again. Go look. See what happens. It's your arrogance that lets you get by with thinking you know what you will see and it won't be much. Allow yourself to be fooled. Again and again.

What we see is a function of how we look, of what we look at, of what we look for, of the filters we place between ourselves and what's there, before us, waiting to be seen. We have to be receptive to receive what is being offered to us.

Life Comes Around

by Jim Dollar

Life is always coming along, coming around, winking at us, flirting with us, asking us if we want to hang out with it for a while.

Is this thing really life or just another pretty face? It's hard to know up front. We have to hang out with it for a while.

Or we can turn it down and go back to reading our book. If it's life, it will come back around in time.

The trouble with putting life off is that we get out of the practice of being alive and settle into being mostly dead. It’s easier to stay dead that way.

Once we get used to being dead, we don't notice life when it walks right up and plants a big, juicy, wet one right on our kisser.

We don't want to get used to being dead. We always want to be looking for life, waiting for life, ready for life, wondering what's taking so long.

While we wait for life to come around, we have to practice being alive, doing the things that are life for us, that have a charge to them.

We have to keep some charged things lying about so we can take them up and practice being alive. Cameras are charged for me. I take photos.

Ideas are charged for me. I write things down. Cooking is charged. I stir something up. Outside is charged. I take a walk. I practice being alive, waiting for life.

I want to stay sharp, keep my edge, ready to tag along with life when it comes around, winking, blowing kisses, saying, "How 'bout me, honey?”

Another Sermon at Milton Presbyterian Church

We want the Water of Life so that we might do what we want to do: live the life we have in mind. The gift of water is connected with the gift of life. Water for the life we are to live comes forth from that life as we live it. This is the message of the water from the rock. We will find what we need when we live in the service of what has need of us, but we may never have more than we need. This is the message of the manna in the wilderness. Within this life, there is that life. Within that one, this one. We pull that one into this one, live this one on the basis of that one—find what we need to live this one in our association with that one, like water from the rock.

To drink the water Jesus offers we have to become who Jesus was. Jesus does not quench our thirst so that we can go our merry way about the things that are important to us. Those who would be his disciples must pick up their cross daily and follow him—and their cross is the burden of bringing forth their, our, Gift, our Genius, our destiny. Our cross is the price we pay to serve the Gift, the Genius, that is ours to serve—the price we pay to live the life that is ours to live within the here and now of our lives.

All of the epic hero stories are about us, the Gift, and our life. We struggle to bring forth our Gift, our Genius, within the context and circumstances of our life the way Ulysses struggled with the Cyclops. But, we avoid the struggle by putting our service to the Gift on hold until our ducks are in a row, money is in the bank, the kids are out of college, the world is receptive. The truth is that we have no intention of serving the Gift. We have bigger fish to fry. We have our wishes, wants, desires, ambitions, interests, inclinations, etc. to serve.

I talk about serving the Gift with no profit in mind and someone else talks about the Law of Attraction with nothing but profit in mind. Who has the audience? Whoever promises profit profits. Profit at any price is the rule of life. If a profit can be made, a profit will be made. The Gift has to be profitable for us to be interested, it has to benefit us in some immediate, substantial way. There is a problem here.

The problem is that the Gift is NOT profitable! But. We cannot buy with all our profits what the Gift will give you: Meaning. Life. We cannot purchase meaning, life with all of the money we dream of having. The wealth we long for is meaningless. The woman at the well longed for the water of life. The water of life is the service of the Gift, bringing forth the Genius that is ours to give to the world.

The hero goes off on his/her journey, experiences all the trials of heroship, returns with the boon, the Gift, and cannot give it away. Nobody wants it. Jesus stands weeping over Jerusalem: “How often I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not.” This is the real trial, serving the Gift when no one is interested in what you have to offer. Nobody buys your books, listens, cares. It's just another trial. Another test. You, we, are here to serve the Gift, to bring it forth, to trust ourselves to it no matter what. In the stories of the hero, the boon, the treasure, must always be retrieved from the lair of dragons. To give the Gift we must face the dragons named, So What? Who Cares? Why Try? All of the trials the hero faces test the hero's faith in the Gift and strengthen her/his resolve to serve the Gift no matter what.

Four synonymous terms for "Gift" are "Genius," "Work," "Life," and "Destiny." Our Gift is our Genius is our Work is our Life is our Destiny. The world around us has no conception of Gift, Genius, Work, Life, Destiny. Wealth, Prosperity, Profit, Money are the things it understands.We are not here to convert the world, to wake the world up. We are here to be awake, to be alive, to do our work. The rest is distraction.

Making disciples of all nations is clearly NOT what Jesus was about. The disciples always subvert the work of the master. True disciples BECOME the master, live out of their own authority, don't say, "The Master said..." but say what they have to say. We say what we have to say, do what we have to do, and let it stand or fall. We aren't here to establish our work, but to do it and let it go. But if it doesn't last it doesn't mean anything, right? Wrong. The doing is meaningful. We do what is meaningful to us, what is life for us.

The Gift we bring forth is our Self. The boon we offer to the world is us. Joseph Campbell said, “The influence of a vital person vitalizes.” Our living brings the world to life. The Gift we give to the world is not something they can put on a shelf and bow to daily. It is the realization of their own Gift to bring out.

All we can be is awake, aware, alive. There is nothing beyond that to know, or do, or have, or be. Being awake wakes others up of they can be awakened. That's it. To think we have to be recognized, worshiped, adored fails the test. It's another trial. We only have to be awake, aware, alive, here and now. Our work may be a service to humankind, but we are not here to serve humankind. We are here to wake up, to be aware and alive.

The work is realization, awareness, waking up, and it comes about through a specific, particular, focus, expression, endeavor. Something we do. We are here to wake ourselves up through something we do. The something we do is our work but the real work is waking up.

Our common task is this: Claim the Gift, open it, share it with the world, and don’t be upset or surprised when they don’t receive it. Your place is to live the Gift in the world, to share the Gift with the world, to bless the world with the Gift. And, if they don’t choose to be blessed, so be it. Your place is not to be recognized, rewarded, accorded places of honor and held in high esteem.

We have to protect the Gift, guard the Gift, defend the Gift, serve the Gift, do right by the Gift at all costs, in all times and places. We cannot take the Gift for granted, ignore it, treat it poorly. We must honor the Gift by serving the Gift in each moment of life.

Truth does not exist in the abstract but in the minute particulars of our lives. It is the truth of how things are and also are. The truth of how things need to be. The truth of what is important. The truth of what can be done. The truth of what needs to be done. The truth of who we are being asked to be by the nature and circumstances of our lives, by the here and now of existence, to make things more like they ought to be, need to be, than they are.

We will always have what we need to do what needs to be done, but. We will not always want to do it. Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane is our prayer in every place: “Thy will, not mine be done.” We grow up against our will. Amen! May it be so!

Preached to the Milton Presbyterian Church, Milton, NC

There are themes that run through all I say. One theme is this: I’m here to connect you with God and with your lives. These are not two things. This is one thing. As I connect you with God, I connect you with your life. As I connect you with your life, I connect you with God. God and your life are one thing. You can’t have one without the other. Your life is an expression of God. As you live the life that is your life to live, God becomes visible, is made known.

One of the problems with the church of our experience is that it has disconnected God from our lives. It has told us, taught us, to believe in God apart from our lives. Our lives are “down here,” with us, all own doing, and God is “up there,” “the man upstairs,” you know. Well. There is no man. There are no stairs. God is in our lives, in the life that is our life to live. God comes wrapped up in the life that is truly our life to live. If we want to know God, we have to live in certain ways. We cannot live any way we please. We cannot live any old old life we settle for. We must live the life that is ours, the life that we are called to live. When we embrace that life, our life, we embrace God. This is one theme.

Another theme is that I’m here to tell you to Wake UP! Grow UP! Square Yourself Up With Your Life As It Is And As It Must Be! This is the deep work that is ours to do. We must do it because there is no one but us to do it. The work is difficult—it is so difficult it is called the Hero’s Journey—because we don’t want to do it. We do not want our life as it is or as it must be. We want a different better life. We have ideas, aspirations, dreams, goals, ambitions, and neither life as it is nor life as it must be compliments what we have in mind. Which is why I’m here to tell you to Wake UP! Grow UP! Square Yourself Up With Your Life As It Is And As It Must Be!

Your life as it is is the context and circumstances within which you live. You live in Milton, North Carolina. You do not live in Charlotte or New York or London or Paris. Your life here is different than it would be if you lived somewhere else. You have different choices. Different options. Different opportunities. You were born when and where you were born. Your parents were your parents. All the facts that have governed your life are your facts to square yourself up with. They are different from each others’ facts, from my facts, but we all have the same work to do of squaring ourselves up with the facts that we have had to work with, deal with, all our lives long. We never complete that work. It is always to be done.

These facts of our lives, the time and place of our living, our choices and opportunities, etc. are our fate. They are the things we were born into. The things we cannot help, like the color of our hair or the size of our footprint, or how fast we can run the hundred yard, or now the hundred meter, dash. And we have to square ourselves up with them because they are what they are, and together they form the context and circumstances of our lives.

Now, within that context and those circumstances—within the fate that is ours—we are called to live out our life as it must be. This is our destiny. Our destiny is who we are called to become. Our destiny is what we are capable of doing with our fate, with the facts that determine so much of our life. They don’t determine all of our life, unless we let them, unless we cave into the facts and give into our fate and surrender hopelessly to the context and circumstances of our living in a “Who cares? Why try? What difference does it make?” kind of way.

I am here to remind you that God is with us within the context and circumstances of our lives, within the fate that defines our living, the facts that limit our lives, to enable and assist us in embracing and serving our destiny and becoming who we are capable of being within the limits and boundaries of our lives. And here we are back to the first theme, connecting with God and connecting with our lives and becoming who we are asked to be within the context and circumstances of our life. This is our work. And we are not alone in that work. God is with us in that work to do the work.

This is the thing. God is with us to do the work. God is not with us so that we might live any way we choose, so that we can fritter away our time in trivial pursuits, in entertaining pastimes—so that we can hang out at the mall or take trips and cruses until we die. God is with us for the specific purpose of doing the work of becoming who we are, bringing forth the gifts and the genius that are ours to bring forth in blessing the world. Which is exactly what Abraham’s journey to the Land of Promise is all about.

This is the hero’s journey, the hero’s task. Abraham leaves home in search of home. He leaves his physical home in search of the home of his spirit, his soul. He is in search of where he belongs, in search of what he belongs to. Where we belong—what we belong to—is the Promised Land, which is also the Kingdom of God, which is The New Jerusalem, which is where we and God are as one. This does not exist in some far off future, but is right here and right now when we take up the search for the gift we have been given, for the life we are called to live, for the work that is ours to do, for where we belong, for what we belong to. To take up this search is to, in Jesus’ words, “have life and have it abundantly.” It is to live the life we are called to live, bringing ourselves—the self we are created to be—and God forth into the world of normal, apparent reality.