10/19/08, Sermon/Dharma Talk

It’s a mixed bag. Which is to say, “It’s all one.” Which is to say, “We live on the boundary between yin and yang.” Which is to say, “We live with that which is true and with that which is also true.” Which is to say, “Harmony is chaos zoomed in or zoomed out.” Which is to say, “Chaos and harmony are the same thing seen differently.”

We have the idea that spirituality is the great end of chaos, the great dissipation of opposition, the great merging of opposites, the great blending of opposing positions, so that all flows together, oil and water, into one wonderfully, endless, OOMMMMMmmmmm…. And everything is squared up and falls into place, and everyone is so glad to be together at last, one heart, one mind, one single idea of how to stack the dishes and how to fold the towels. It is so time we rethink perfection.

Everything is one, not in agreement and identity and concord and concurrence. Everything is one in being, in existence, in relationship with and connection to everything else. Nothing exists apart, in and of itself alone. Everything appears to be separate, so it is easy to think in terms of one, and two, and three, and four, and not just One. But. Where does the fish stop and the ocean start? Clearly the fish is not the ocean, and the ocean is not the fish. And, just as clearly, fish and ocean are one.

Oneness is not sameness. Fish and ocean are not the same, and they are one. Separation is not separateness, and harmony is not accord or common consent. And spirituality is not the effortless path to the merger of mind and purpose.

Mind? Did someone say, “Mind”? One of the most interesting and intriguing, to my way of thinking, ideas to come along in some time is the Santiago Theory of Cognition. According to this theory, mind and cognition, knowing, are not  things separate and apart from each other and other things, but processes by which living things engage their environment. There is no actual separation between us, or any living thing, and our environment. Where do we stop and where does our environment start? We don’t exist external to the world, or the world external to us. We “bring forth the world” we live in by deciding what to notice and respond to and what to ignore. We choose what disturbs us, what requires our attention, what deserves our time. We decide what is valuable (and what is threatening). We live trapped in our own esthetic.

This is too weird! Did someone just say, “We live trapped in our own esthetic”? We are trapped in our own esthetic, in our own way of sensing beauty, in our own idea of what is beautiful. What is beautiful is what we say is beautiful. The work of photography (Which, wouldn’t you know it, right here in the middle of a discourse about the oneness of things, is also the work of being alive) is the work of expanding, extending, deepening, broadening, enlarging our esthetic—opening ourselves to the beauty beyond our idea of beauty. Waking up to the beauty that is everywhere. Waking up! The whole spiritual enterprise is about waking up and becoming aware of worlds beyond our world.

We live as servants of our own esthetic, our own way of sensing beauty, even as we open ourselves to “more than meets the eye,” that is, to more than the eye, our eye, can see because it doesn’t “catch our eye,” because it doesn’t rank on our eye’s scale of beauty. We have to consciously look beyond what seems to us to be beautiful in order to see what else is there, in order to see the beauty that is invisible to us because we haven’t learned to see it as beautiful—or learned to see it at all!

We cannot live well—we cannot be alive—and be dismissive. We cannot dismiss opera, or blue grass, or improvisational jazz because it doesn’t match our idea of beautiful music, because it doesn’t seem to us to be “real music.” We have to learn to listen for what other people are hearing—we have to learn to trust other tastes than our own when it comes to ascribing value, and worth, and beauty. Ours are not the only ears, the only eyes. We have to learn to hear and see with the ears and eyes of other people. As with the blind men and the elephant, we have to stand apart from our own experience and engage the experience of one another in order to broaden and deepen our ability to apprehend the truth of life, and be alive. Closed or open is the fundamental determinant of LIFE.

Here’s one of the interesting things about mind being a process by which we engage our environment. At a certain point in the development of consciousness, of awareness, we determine what constitutes our environment by deciding what to attend and what to ignore. Our environment can consist of nothing more than the experience of the experience inside of our own minds. We can close ourselves off from the world of normal, apparent (to everyone else) reality, and live “in our own world,” in the world of our own mind. Our mind can become so fascinated by itself, so locked into itself, so insulated against all possible disturbances, that it closes itself off from the intrusion of outside experience and encapsulates itself in a world of its own making, safe but crazy, “inside our own esthetic.”

And, we can form ourselves into groups that think exactly like we do. Or, is it that we think exactly like everyone else does? Where do we stop and they start? Where does the fish stop and the ocean start? Fish or ocean? Individual or group? You can take the person out of the Deep South, but you can’t take the Deep South out of the person.

And, we are back to last week’s discourse about “we don’t get to choose our choices.” We don’t get to pick our perspective, our point of view. We live trapped in our own esthetic. Our ideas of how things are and ought to be are our ideas of how things are and ought to be. We don’t go shopping for them in the ready to wear section of Belk’s or Macy’s. “Oh, this is pretty. ‘The Universe is on our side.’ I think I’ll try this on and see how it fits! It’s so sheik, and everybody is wearing it these days.”

Look. It’s like this: We aren’t going to stop doing what we are doing and start doing something else instead. We aren’t going to stop seeing how we see and start seeing some way else instead. We aren’t going to stop thinking the way we think and start thinking some way else instead.

Bring in George Bush and John McCain and Sara Palin. Give them the floor. Let them say everything they can think to say. We’ll leave thinking, and seeing, and doing the way we did before we came. Or, send us to George, and John, and Sara, and give us the floor and let us say everything we can think to say. When it’s over, nothing changes.

Nothing changes until our backs are against the wall, and nothing we do is working, and the foundations have crumbled, and we have to make our way in a new world. This is to say that nothing changes until something changes. The place of women in Islam isn’t going to change until something changes. The place of Gays in the Presbyterian Church (USA) isn’t going to change until something changes. But, what is going to change?

And, don’t think the problem is the church. What needs to be changed about us? How different do we need to be? In what ways are our lives not working? What do we need to do to be better aligned with our ideas of how things ought to be? How do our ideas of how things ought to be need to change to be better aligned with how things truly ought to be? We all could answer these questions more easily about one another than we can answer them about ourselves. I can easily see how you need to change. I think I’m just fine exactly as I am.

The things we would like to change about our lives are the external things, the conditions and circumstances, the context, within which we live. We would like for our lives to be different, but we don’t want to change. We want things and people to change in relation to us, but we like ourselves just as we are. However, being alive is about changing the way we live. It is about changing from being closed to being open.

What stands between us and life, between us and the joy of being alive? What interferes with our relishing the experience of Being? The wonder of existence? Whence the drudgery, the boredom, the gloom? We are not born depressed, dour, down, dejected, mournful, sad. When does the light go out of our eyes? When does fear and dread creep in? What can we do to maintain the light? To retain the joy? This is called waking up, and it is the hardest thing to do. It requires seeing things as they are and move beyond our own esthetic, to expand the ways in which we engage our environment.

When we wake up, we wake up in our lives just as they are, and work with what we have at our disposal to make them what they can be. And, a lot of that work is coming to terms with what they are and what they can be. A good bit of being satisfied with our lives is making our peace with how things are with us.

Eyes that see are just eyes that see what they see. Ears that hear are ears that hear what they hear. Hearts that understand are hearts that understand what they understand. To see what we see, hear what we hear, understand what we understand we have to see our seeing, hear our hearing, and understand our understanding. We have to take it all in, and know what we know in a way that includes the all-ness of our knowing.

We can’t think about our thinking and think the same things we have always thought, and live the same ways we have always lived. The more openly and creatively and critically we engage our thinking, the more differently we will think, and live. You threaten us to the core when you ask us to think openly, creatively, and critically about our thinking. We’ll have to have your hide for that. If you think about it, I’m sure you will understand. And, therein lies the key to being alive in the time left for living. Amen! Can I have an Amen here? Someone? Anyone?

10/12/08, Sermon/Dharma Talk

We live on the boundary between yin and yang, you know. We live between the hands: On the one hand this, and on the other hand that. We live in the tension between what is true and what is also true. Ambivalence, ambiguity, uncertainty, indecision meet us at every turn. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. We have a public persona and a shadow side, and wonder who we really are. We want to avoid the incessant conflict and just have someone tell us what to do, how to be. The bad news is that we have to live the contradictions and bear the pain.

One of the essential, fundamental, contradictions is this: We have to be responsible for our own lives, AND we cannot make it through the experience of being alive on our own. We need one another IN ORDER TO BE responsible for our own lives. But, we want to be independent and irresponsible.

We keep looking for someone to take the rap, for a fall guy, or gal. We want someone else to be responsible for us. It’s our parents’ fault, you know. Or our spouse’s. If we had only married someone else. Or had a different job. Or different friends. Or more money. That’s it! If we only had more money!

Look. It’s like this: This is our life. As it is. How are WE going to live it, with all the givens that impinge upon it? Look. It’s like this. Photographer’s don’t get to dial up their scenes. I walk into Peggy’s Cove and there is a hurricane on the way. I don’t get fog. I don’t get sunshine. I get ugly white skies and high winds. Other photographers, at different times, get fog. Other photographers, at different times, get sunshine. I don’t. I don’t get to choose my scene. I get to choose what I’m going to do with this scene exactly as it is. We don’t get to choose our choices. We don’t get to choose the choices we wish we had.

We don’t get to choose the context and circumstances of our lives. Think about your life. It is not what you dreamed it would be. It’s certainly not what you wish it were. You were in it all the way, doing what you thought was the best thing to do at the time, and here you are. Smack in the middle of what you would not  have wished for with a million wishes. We don’t get to dial up our scenes or our lives. Our lives, you might say, have a life of their own. Things don’t work out like we think they will. And we look for a fall guy, or gal. For someone to take the rap. For someone to relieve us of the responsibility of living this stinky old life just as it is. Won’t somebody help us? Someone? Anyone?

The help we get isn’t the help we have in mind. That’s a spiritual law if there ever was one! We want deliverance, escape, happy days. We get a day’s worth of manna, that is, what we need to meet the day and do what needs to be done there.

There is no escape from the matrix, the pattern, the karma of us, of who, and how, we are. We carry ourselves with us wherever we go. We have to come to terms with who we are and how it is with us, and let it be so, because it is. Things begin to change once we allow them to be what they are. They may not change enough to suit us. We can always imagine a better world than the world we live in. But living well always requires us to live as well as possible here and now in this world that we are in. We don’t get to choose our choices, and these choices are, this life, just as it is, is all we have to work with.

When we get married and step into the work of being married, something has to give. Something has to go. It will either be our marriage or our idea of marriage. Same thing goes with our lives. When we step into our lives and begin living the life that is our life to live, something has to go. It will either be our life or our idea of our life. We cannot have it the way we want it to be. The help we get isn’t the help we have in mind. We can always imagine a better life than the one we have. This gets us to the crux, as they say, of the matter.

The spiritual journey, task, path is growing up. That’s all there is to it. There is nothing beyond growing up. All of the metaphors, enlightenment, awakening, realization, the search for the Holy Grail, and any others that there may be are all about growing up. And growing up is about stepping into your life right now just as it is and doing all that can be done with it. What can you do with your life right now, just as it is, using only the tools that are at your disposal? Go do it. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Oh, and do it again tomorrow. And every day thereafter. For the rest of your life.

Spirituality is nothing more than how we live our lives. All of the parables of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, and any other teachings that he passed along all come down to how we live our lives. The essence of spirituality is not the contemplation of grand ideas that encapsulate us in blissful delight and wonder. It is how we live our lives. These lives, right now, just as they are. How do we live these lives? How do we treat one another? Here, now? It isn’t enough to know, for instance, that love is the answer. We have to live lovingly, even when we don’t feel like it and don’t want to.

We cannot do that well, we cannot live well, treat one another well, without coming to terms with the life that we are living, being responsible for our own lives, and receiving the help we need to do what needs to be done. That means growing up. The things that go into growing up are all the things that go into spirituality at its best.  The things that go into being grown up are all the things that go into being enlightened, and awakened, and aware. They are all of the things that go into being a true human being. They are all of the things that go into Buddha-hood and Christ-like-ness. We can’t be grown up without being whole, complete, centered, grounded, integrated, at one with ourselves and the universe, true to ourselves within the context and circumstances of our lives. Everything we are seeking in spirituality is found in growing up.

And, we can’t do it on our own. We can’t grow up alone. We need one another. For support and encouragement. We need an encouraging word, supportive presence. We need to be cared about. We need the sustaining concern of those who care about us in the right kind of way. It takes all of us to see everything. Our perspective is expanded, deepened, enlarged by the perspective of others. We grow one another up. Growing up is a communal undertaking. No one grows up alone.

But, as you all know, this growing up business is not all goodness and light. We don’t grow up by being coddled and cuddled and buffered from the outlandish realities of our lives. It takes the outlandish, you know, and the appalling, to wake us up. To call us beyond ourselves. To require us to take into account the world beyond the world we want to be. And, so we need the opposition and antagonism that our life provides in order to do the work that wakes us up, grows us up, and makes us whole.

Joseph Campbell reminds us that “It took the Cyclops to bring out the hero in Ulysses.” We don’t grow up without dealing heroically and well with the unwanted aspects of our lives. Who—what—is there to call us beyond ourselves? To ask more of us, expect more of us, than we think is there? Who—what—is there to wake us up? To suggest that we owe it to ourselves to find our what we are capable of? To urge us on? To send us off—as equipped as we are—to joust with giants and tilt at windmills? Without that influence we disappear into the middling muddle of existence and settle for what has passed for life for generations.

We are never far from the waking influence of the unwanted. And, that is as it must be because we are never fully awake. We are always waking up. And it takes conflict, confrontation, opposition to wake us up. We do not wake up willingly, gladly. We do not rush to wake up, as though waking up is all sweetness and life. It is life, of course, but it is life after death. We have to die first. We have to give up the way we have always seen in order to see. We always wake up against our will. It is always a shock to us to wake up. We resist it every time. Sometimes, we resist too much, and remain asleep.

What we are talking about is death and resurrection. Nobody lives without dying. Grows up without going through hell. Awakens without resisting all that it takes to awaken us. There are no shortcuts. No easy streets. No smooth seas. No quick, quiet rides to realization, enlightenment, awareness. It’s hell all the way.

And so, the mantra of the journey is: Bear the pain! The pain of life. The pain of not getting your way. The pain of taking no for an answer. The pain of being able to imagine a world you cannot live in, a life you cannot have. The pain of stepping aside, moving over, making way. The pain of accommodation, and acquiescence, and acceptance. The pain of letting come what’s coming and letting go what’s going. The pain of the way things are. The pain of working things out with your life, with one another. The pain of negotiation and compromise. The pain of doing what it takes to change what can be changed and living with what cannot be changed. Everything rides on how well we bear the pain, and allow life to be what it is, and allow others to be who they are.

There are compelling reasons to not like what we don’t like. How well can we allow others to be who we are not? To not be who we are? How well can we accommodate ourselves to different ways of seeing, being, and doing things? How often do we put ourselves aside for the sake of the other? To seamlessly merge into relationship with the different other?

Strained relationships strain at the point of differentness. They don’t do it our way and we cannot let that be. We do not do it their way and they cannot let that be. Divisiveness is always the result of a lack of grace. Growing up, being spiritual, hinge on the question of how gracious we can be. 

10/05/08, Sermon/Dharama Talk

How do we decide what’s worth our time? Is NASCAR worth your time? Pro football? College basketball? Is Duke worth your time? North Carolina? The ACC? How do you determine what you care about? What you love? What’s worth your time and what isn’t? How do you decide? How do you know?

Some of us fly to Nova Scotia to drive around taking photographs. How do we know that’s the thing to do? Some of us sit on the beach and read. Some of us listen to opera and watch ballet. How do we know we should do that instead of branding cattle or blowing glass or working on lawn mower engines? How do we know?

How do we decide who, okay, whom, to listen to? Put John McCain and Barak Obama before us. What sets them apart? What moves us toward one, away from the other? Who is right for the country, the world? Who is wrong? What makes us think so, how do we know?

My variety of Christianity is different from other versions. You are here and not somewhere else. What makes you think this is the place to be? What brings you to say “Yes” to what I say and “No” to what others have said, and are saying? How do you know?

Oh, you know. We just know what we know. We know what we like and don’t like, what strikes a cord, what rings true, what stirs something within, what vibrates within our frequency range, what speaks to us, what’s on the beam and what’s off it. We know “Yes!” and “No!” We know what’s right for us, and what’s wrong. We know what fits and what doesn’t. We know what we believe and what we don’t believe.  And yet, there is such a thing as mass hypnosis, and mob mentality, and Group Think, and cultural automatons. The question is, how do we know? And, how do we change our mind? How valid is what we think we know, and how do we evaluate its validity?

These questions open the door into Left Brain, Right Brain areas of exploration and the area of Personality Type. ESTJ’s know in a way that is fundamentally different from INFP’s. Just looking at us, you would never guess how different we are. But we process experience in radically different ways. There is no way the gospel, or anything, can be presented to all of us in a way that makes sense to each of us.

We have our own way of knowing, of experiencing, of perceiving and understanding the world. Our challenge is to find an atmosphere, an environment, that understands and respects these differences, and allows each of us the privilege of our own point of view without trying to wrestle any of us out of our way of seeing into someone else’s way of seeing. What we need is a place that helps us make sense of our lives and find our way to that which is valuable and worth our time—without taking from us the responsibility of doing the work ourselves.

How things are—in the sense of what things mean to us and what part they play in our lives—is always a function of how we understand things to be. The facts which govern our lives are themselves governed by our understanding of them, by our perception of them. The position of the sun, for instance, changes in the sky over the course of the seasons according to the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun, but the meaning of the sun’s shift in position has changed over time as our understanding of the principles governing that shift in position has changed. The meaning of any fact changes as our perception of the fact, our way of viewing/seeing the fact, changes.

How should we see? How should we understand things? How should we perceive things? How should our perceptions govern the facts which govern our lives? Who is to say? There is no one who knows how to know. We all have to figure it out together.

There is a photographic principle that applies here. It goes like this: It takes all of us to see all there is to see, but then we turn around, or come back tomorrow, and see something else. No one photographer, and no group of photographers, has the capacity to see it all. It takes us all to see it all, and even then we don’t see it all. This is the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant. It is the story of our lives.

We need one another to expand our perspective and deepen our understanding of life and what it means to be alive. We have to talk to one another about our view of things, about how things seem to be to us, about what seems to be important and what seems to be possible and what our response to the experience of life needs to be. We do not figure these matters out on our own. We do not know how things are and what we should do about it on our own. We have to talk it over—all of it—to have a chance at responding appropriately to what is being asked of us, offered to us, in the time of our living.

The fallacy of the guru, the illusion cast by the idea of the master, is that there is one who knows. The truth is that we all know together. All of us together know more, know better, see more clearly, than any one of us alone. This is the foundation of the Presbyterian approach to faith, and truth, and life. It takes us all. No one of us knows more than all of us together know. No one of us sees more, or sees better, than all of us together see. The weakness of the Presbyterian approach is the ease with which we substitute what they knew, what they saw, for what we know, what we see. This is to give them the position of guru, of master. But a group of people is no more of a guru than a single guru, no more of a master than a single master, and we cannot give them—whether they be the Reformers, or the Patriarchs, or the Westminster Divines, or the Saints, or the Pillars of the Church, or even the Prophets and the Apostles—the position of Authoritative Seer/Knower of All Truth, the Dispenser of True Wisdom.

This is not to say that there is no such thing as timeless validity and value. It is to say that the timeless validity and value of such things as grace, compassion, peace, kindness, justice, generosity and the like is to be uncovered, recognized, and affirmed in the living of our own lives, and not declared to be so because someone else said so. The value of love is known in loving and being loved, not in being told to believe that love is valuable. The experience of life—and critical reflection on that experience—opens us to the truth of that experience, which is often more than words can say.

What we know when we know is the value of those old qualities that have been esteemed through the ages, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-discipline, and all those other attributes that have been the foundation of life for all of us forever. The foundation of life is how we treat one another.  It is the spirit we engender in our life together. It is what we bring forth in our way of living with each other. We create what is worthy and good by the quality of our relationships with other people. Life is a corporate creation.

Life is not about buying, spending, amassing and consuming. It is not about career tracks and life time achievement awards. It is about how we treat one another. It is about who we are—who we show ourselves to be—in relationship with each other. We are all children who need the caring presence of the right kind of parent. And we are all people with the potential and recurring opportunity to be the right kind of parent.

We never out-live the need for comfort and consolation. We are always the child with the skinned knee needing to be nestled in the restorative wonder of gentle grace, kind words, soothing care. When we bring the loving manner of the right kind of parent to life in our relationships, we supply all that is necessary for life in the world.

The challenge, the call, is to receive one another well. Divisiveness is the result of a lack of grace. Our failure to be gracious is the cause of much suffering. If we win, we have to be gracious in victory. If we lose, we have to be gracious in defeat. To live well in relationship, we have to be gracious with one another, and kind. To live well, we must receive one another well and provide caring, supportive presence to one another in dealing with what comes our way.

The meaning of life is to live well in this sense. Our influence out-lives us. The impact of our living is the impact we have on one another for good or for ill. The meaning of life is to be a source of good in the moment of our living. The things that must be passed along from generation to generation are the wonderful old values that have always served as the true ground of civilization: grace, mercy and peace, love, joy, justice, goodness, kindness, gentleness and truth, etc. We live well when we bring these qualities to life in our lives and in the lives of one another.

And this gets us back to where we came in. We are different people with different perspectives and different views of what is right, and good, and needs to be done. So, we talk it out in an atmosphere that is conducive to hearing what the others are saying, that respects and honors what others say. We create life by the quality of our living together. Life is not about what we acquire, or achieve, or accomplish, or amass for ourselves. It is not about having, getting, or forcing our way, but about finding the way together. We do that by listening carefully and closely to what each other is saying, and allowing the sharing of perspectives to expand the way everyone sees and deepen the awareness—and, hence, the vitality, the life force—of all who are a part of the conversation.

The Structure of Spiritual Reality, Part I

1)       Our ideas about God are the work of life and consciousness remembering their origin, and represent, at any point in our lives, our effort to articulate that work and those ideas in light of our experience of—our understanding of—life and consciousness at that point.

2)       Prayer is the soul’s orientation to truth, to the truth of its own experience, to the articulation of its experience of truth, to saying what it is to be alive in this time and place, to the expression of its experience of life.

3)       Jesus is an ink blot and God is an optical illusion. So is the Tao—an ink blot and an optical illusion. What we see depends upon how we look. Now you see it, now you don’t. Now it’s like this, now it’s like that. Everything is a mirror, showing us ourselves. Projection, reflection, it’s all the same to eyes that see.

4)       Don’t think that you can say anything about the Tao, or Truth (not that they are separate things) that won’t be reversed by something else you say about the Tao, or Truth (not that they are separate things).

5)       Truth is true only so far as it goes. Nothing is so true that it never clashes with a contradictory truth (Not even this statement is that true). “Yes, but…” is always the response by those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that understands. And, if you are one of those people, you are saying “Yes, but” about now.

6)       When our heart is in what we are doing, we are one with the center. But, mind can change heart, and we see things with new eyes, and do things differently. There Is not one way to do things over time. Things do not stay the same forever. We do not think the way we have always thought, do what we have always done. Those who see things clearly, see things differently over time.

7)       To see what needs to be done and do it in the way it needs to be done at the time it needs to be done is to be “on the beam” and “in synch with the deepest source.”

8)       We interfere with this kind of seeing by having and imposing our plans and agendas on our lives. By willing what cannot be willed, by wanting what we have no business having. Ah, but. How are we to know?

9)       When we cannot be trusted to know what is right and do it in the situation as it arises, we can only do what was thought to be right in a similar situation in all situations that follow it no matter how different they are.

10)     When we enter into, or create, situations that have never existed before, we have nothing to guide us in knowing what to do and avoid the discomfort of not-knowing by making up rules and policies that don’t fit, and saying what nice rules and policies they are, and forcing everyone to abide by them.

11)     There is “in synch,” and there is “out of synch.” There is a trick, however: Out of synch is in synch with ultimate synch-ness. Harmony, oneness, is everywhere. It just takes a while for it to be apparent sometimes.

12)     If the sage does things as they should be done, then there are things which should not be done, and there are things to be preferred and chosen over other things, and impartiality is out of the question. The whole point of being privy to sagacity is to know what is to be preferred and chosen. Wisdom is to be preferred over folly, and partiality is the way of things.

13)     Don’t worry about it. Just live your life, the life that is yours to live, and let that be that. Let your detractors be your detractors, and your critics be your critics, and your supporters be your supporters, and your fans be your fans. Let those who are against you be those who are against you, and let those who are for you be those who are for you, and don’t be undone, or impressed, or distracted by any of it.

14)     We work with the givens in doing what needs to be done, which is sensed by those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that understands in each situation “as it arises.”

15)     It takes a lot of looking to be able to see, a lot of listening to be able to hear, a lot of asking, seeking and knocking to be able to understand. It takes a lot of living to be able to be awake and alive.

16)     Stepping aside and letting life have its way with us is a test of faith, of our capacity to trust ourselves to life unknowing, confident only that stepping aside is the right thing to do.

17)     Oneness is the fundamental presumption. As is emptiness. As is nothingness. Quick! Which is it?

18)     It is said “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” And, those who DON’T live by the sword will die by the sword, or by those who wield the sword. Existence is violent. “Life eats life.” How’s that for violence?

19)     What is this “No!” to violence from those who say “Everything moves in oneness,” and “Nothing is the world is separate, unworthy, or lost”? Violence, harmony, impartiality, indifference… What is to be embraced? What is to be rejected?

20)     The sage doesn’t worry about it. What does the sage care?

21)     What is the value of being undisturbed and peaceful in a world where “Everything moves in oneness” and “Nothing in the world is separate, unworthy, or lost,” and “The stone and the jewel are honored as equals”?

22)     Respond to your circumstances by doing what is called for “in the situation as it arises”!

23)     What do we want? What is it that we cannot get enough of? What is the need that goes unmet and sends us forever crashing into the limits of our lives? What are we after?

24)     Trying to have more than we can have, or have any business having, ravages countrysides.

25)     When do we have what we need? When can we be content, be satisfied, rest easily, not worry, trust ourselves to our lives, assured that we will always have what we need?

26)     The way is not the way to what we want.

27)     To have all that we want is to have more than we have.

28)     Harmony Is not the highest good. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. We live in the service of what needs to happen without preconceived notions of what that might be. It is ad lib all the way, and we are surprised to find ourselves doing what we do, having done what we have done.

29)     The sage doesn’t have to have things be different than they are, but has the eye to see what is possible, and assists in the movement-to-the-good that is a potential in every moment. We live toward the good “in the situation as it arises.”

30)     Some futures are better than others. Some things are to be preferred over others. All things are not equal. It matters how we live.

31)     Those who are alive are alive to the time and place of their living. They see what is possible and do what needs to be done in the service of a good that is greater than their own good. They do what is theirs to do without thinking about what they stand to gain or lose, or who is watching, or who is keeping score. Whose advantage is served in doing what is right, now?

32)     Some things have no business being. The child molester cannot be himself. The alcoholic, the psychopath, cannot be allowed to be “who they are.” Control and interference have their place, else why try to control the controlling power of those in control, or interfere with the interference of those who interfere?

09/21/08, Sermon/Dharama Talk

Everyone is looking to arrange things to their advantage. That’s what religion is for. Gives us an edge. Religion is about getting God on our side. Religion is our way of getting what we want from God. We give to God so that God will give to us. What does God want? That’s the question at the heart of all religion. And, we expect our religious leaders to tell us what to do to make God happy so that God will bless us and make us happy. We pour over the scriptures to find what will make God happy so that God will make us happy. It’s all about being blessed and happy. We will do anything—we will kill goats and cattle and virgins and witches—in order to be blessed and happy.  Things get out of hand, of course, when I have to make you make God happy so that God will make me happy.

It works like this. My religion won’t let me play cards or drink wine because God wouldn’t be happy if I did. And, it won’t let you either. If anybody is playing cards or drinking wine God is not happy. If God ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. My religion won’t let me think that evolution is the way we got here, and it won’t let you either. My religion won’t let me have an abortion, and it won’t let you either. My religion won’t let me be gay, and it won’t let you either. You see the problem. Or, I hope you do. If you don’t see the problem, that’s a real problem.

I don’t know how we are going to work this out.  Our view of what it takes to make God happy keeps anyone from having a chance at happiness—if you think of happiness as being self-determined, inter-directed, free-thinking and fully capable of living a life of our own choosing.  If you think of happiness as carefully toeing some line and being afraid of your stray thoughts and marching to someone else’s tune and never having a mind or a life of your own, well that’s a strange way of being happy, and, I suppose, that you would think my way of being happy is strange as well. How would we know whose way of being happy is REALLY strange? What we see depends upon how we look, and who gets to make the call regarding how we are supposed to look?

We are stuck with our ways of seeing, don’t you see? With our ways of determining happiness and strangeness? Our way of seeing impacts everything. Where are we going to draw the line? How are we going to teach our children to see, and to live, in ways that do not make enemies of other people’s children? How are we going to see differently and live together? How differently can we see and still live together? Hitler wanted to kill everyone who wasn’t like him. Genocide, they call it. If you aren’t like us, you are fair game, and have to die. You have to do it like we do it or too bad for you.

We can’t live like that. Yet, we are not far from living like that. Our idea of national security requires us to kill people we deem a threat to our national security. How secure do we have to be? If we are convinced that God has to be happy, and won’t be happy, until everyone believes like we believe and lives like we live how can anyone be safe around us? Yet, how can we hope to live together if we are not all safe around each other?

We have talked here before about the world as a life boat, and we are all in the boat together. I don’t know how we are going to manage life in the life boat for everyone. We have to figure ways of getting along. Of granting one another space. Of honoring one another’s ways. But no one can build a fire in the life boat to sacrifice animals to their gods. No one can eat anyone else. You get the idea. There have to be regulations keeping people from doing harm to other people. Physical, emotional, psychological harm. Who is to say where abusive behavior starts and “the way we do things” stops? How do men get to treat women? How do straight people get to treat gays? These things have to be worked out. We are all in the life boat, and some of us want to throw others of us overboard.

In the days of the old westerns, the Durango Kid could tell Blackie, “This town ain’t big enough for both of us, Blackie. You better be on the afternoon stage.” Well, there is no afternoon stage. There is no town. There is only the life boat. And we are all in it together. And, we can’t spend our time throwing each other over board. How do we keep bitterness, and resentment, and hatred in check? How do we create an environment in which everyone is safe? How do we get beyond thinking that in order for God to be happy everyone has to do it like we do it? How can we create a space for people to do it like they do it without thinking that everyone ought to do it like us? How do we live together in ways we all like? What do we do when minority rights run afoul of majority rule?

The rancor that characterizes the presidential election bespeaks of a general absence of gracious and generosity, compassion and kindness world-wide. We don’t like those who aren’t like us, and we are well beyond being nice and “just getting along.” Republicans have their way of seeing and Democrats have their way of seeing, and their way of seeing has dreadful implications for each other. How can Democrats live with the way Republicans see things? How can Republicans live with the way Democrats see things? How can we all agree about how we see things? It’s a mess with no solution.

How we see things impacts everything. We don’t live over here and see things over there. We live on the basis of the way we see things, ascribe value, determine meaning. Seeing things isn’t like a hobby, or a pass time, that we can either do or not do. It isn’t like playing golf or going to the movies. It is who we are and how we live, and it shapes—it determines—everything about us.

What do we think is important? What do we think needs to happen? What do we think life is “all about”? What do we think should, and should not, be? Our answers to these questions begin to define our perspective, our point of view, our way of seeing/thinking—our way of evaluating, of valuing, the context and circumstances of our lives. A perspective is a way of ascertaining, ascribing, assigning value and meaning  to what is—a way of declaring what should and should not be.

When we talk about “those people” and the way “they” do things, we are describing our perspective, our way of thinking how things should be done. It is not about “them” and “their evil (or stupid) ways,” but about us and our way of seeing. What is “evil” or “stupid” to us is sacred to “them.” We are talking about how things are seen, thought about, valued and done. And what makes us/them think that is the way to see, think, value, and do?

What makes us think that our way of thinking is the way to think? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Self-evident? Any thinking person would think the way we think! Death to those who don’t! How do we all get far enough away from our perspectives to talk about our perspectives? To evaluate our way of making evaluation? To see our seeing and think about our thinking? Well, that’s what we are trying to do here.

We are trying to create an environment in which everyone is free to meet her or his own needs and do the things that he or she likes to do without interfering with anyone else’s ability to meet her or his needs and do what he or she likes to do. What do you need and like to do? How does that interfere with what someone else needs and likes to do?

We are trying to create an environment in which everyone understands, in the words of Frasier Snowden, “The only true philosophical question is, ‘Where do you draw the line?’” How much for you? How much for me? When is it your turn? When is it my turn? When your good is my bad, or my good is your bad, what do we do? What do we do when our way of doing things, thinking about things, seeing things, clashes with their way of doing things, thinking about things, seeing things? We talk it out. We work it out.

There is no way of living that does not clash with someone else’s way of living. How do we work it out? How do we decide what to do and what to not do? How do we live together? We are working out for ourselves in relationship with each other what it means to be alive. What constitutes life for each of us? How can we live in the service of what is life for us without clashing with one another? Where do we limit ourselves? Where do we limit another? Where do we establish boundaries? How do we maintain them? Within the group and between the group and another group, other groups? We are working that out. We will always be working that out. We will never get it nailed down. To nail it down is to die. The “rules of engagement” are always being negotiated. Made up. Revised. There can be no policies put in place to save us from the agony of working out again what must be worked out for us to live well together.

The key to life together is not having to win. Being able to live together, and this gets us back to where we came in, without having to have the advantage, without having to have our way. “Love your enemies.” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” All the old moral guidelines have us living with everyone, even our enemies, with no more concern for our ways than for theirs.  But, no less either.

Here is the test: Can we have a way without having to have it? Can we step aside, give way, stand back? Without relinquishing our way, our perspective, our point of view? Can we lose the election, for instance, and be good sports about it and continue to work for the way of life that is important to us? Can we lose the election, for instance, without losing heart—without being defeated, or dejected, or despondent, or despairing? Can we win and be decent human beings? Can we make how we treat one another more important than winning or losing? Can we make honoring one another’s perspective more important than imposing our will on the world, yet not relinquish our will for the world? We have to work toward ends that are important to us without destroying the village in the effort to save it. That means having a way without having to have it. It means playing the game without having to win it, and not allowing losing it to cause us to quit working diligently in the service of our idea of the good, which has to include the good of those who don’t do it our way!

09/14/08, Sermon/Dharma Talk

I love sex. Don’t you? And I hate visiting the in-laws and changing diapers. Don’t you? And it’s one thing, don’t you see? And, if you think you can separate sex from marriage without some other implications that are equally bad or worse, well give it a spin. But, I’m here to tell you there are things about that that are worse than in-laws and diapers. But, don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourself.

I’m confident that what you will discover is that we cannot compartmentalize life. Good and Bad. Right and Wrong. The Axis of Evil and the Kingdom of Light. Don’t you see that all of our problems stem from trying to have no problems? Flow from striving incessantly to have all Good and no Bad? Sex without all that goes with sex?

Everything comes with something else attached. The encumbrances and inconveniences and the incompatibilities, aggravations and the unacceptability’s are all a part of the one wad we call life. It’s all one thing. The good and the bad, the loved and the unloved. The photography and the Presbytery meetings. One thing. Not two. It isn't this OR that. See? We live with this and we live with that. The in-laws are part of the marriage. Weight gain comes with eating ice cream. My shoulder hurts from carrying the tripod. See? Here's what I recommend: In the middle of what you don't like, think about what you do like, and treat yourself to a walk on the beach, or a romp with the dogs, or a sit in your rocker as soon as possible. Look forward to the next good thing. In the midst of the not-good. That's what I say.

But don’t think you can have the good without the not-good. They are one thing. Good and not-good. They flow into and out of each other. They belong to each other, like yin and yang. And, whether it’s good or bad depends on the time of day, and the day of the week, and the point in our life, and what mood we are in, and 10,000 other things. Good is never more than a slight perspective shift away from bad. Bad is never more than a slight perspective shift away from good. Good? Bad? It’s never more than our present way of seeing, thinking, perceiving, understanding, interpreting, evaluating our situation in life. Neither good nor bad exists out there, a thing apart. “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet , Act II, scene ii).

Ambivalence is at the very heart of things. When we look, with eyes that see, we see “both sides” to everything. “On the one hand this, on the other hand that.” We can make a case for it all, and have, saying that God allows evil so that good can come of it. We can’t bring ourselves to say that God DOES evil, only allows evil. Seeing as I do, I say if you can do something about evil, and don’t do it, that’s doing evil, but that sounds heretical to those who don’t see as I do. We justify evil, pain, and suffering by saying that God uses such things to bring about good. But, nothing is more at the heart of the way things are than good and evil flowing into and out of each other. We don’t need God for that.

It’s all a mix of good and evil. My good is your bad. Your good is my bad. It’s all a matter of perspective. Point of view. Way of seeing. If we stopped thinking, and lived like a flour sack (which is a metaphor that is completely wasted on those of you born, say, after 1948), we wouldn’t care if we were a flour sack or an apron or a dress or a quilt. All the same to us. But, we do think, and we are not flour sacks, and it matters to us what happens to us, even though what happens to us is a mix of both good and bad. The best of times and the worst of times are not so far apart. It’s only a matter of seeing that sees that it is so.

Seeing plays such an important role—the central role—in our attitude, outlook, and mood-of-the-moment, that you would think we would spend more time thinking about our thinking, looking at how we are looking, seeing our seeing, expanding our perspective to take our perspective into account. Then, instead of talking about gays, say, or Moslems, or anyone who isn’t like we are, or people who talk about gays, or Moslems, or anyone who isn’t like they are, we would talk about how we see gays, and Moslems, and anyone who isn’t like we are, and anyone who talks about anyone else. We would talk about how we see things, and what influences us to see things as we do, and what prevents us from seeing things differently. We would explore perception, and perspective, and ambivalence, and ambiguity, and we would understand that everything is an ink blot, on the one hand, and an optical illusion, on the other, and that how we see things says more about us than it says about the things or people we see—because things are really only mirrors, and all we ever see is ourselves.

We are our perspective. Our point of view. Our way of seeing and assessing what is important, what counts, matters, makes a difference. Our way of understanding how things ought to be done. There is nothing more to us than that. We are perceiving beings. We are how we see things. Our perspective forms us, shapes us, creates us, makes us who we are. We are who we are, how we are because of the way we see the world. Change the way we see and everything else changes as well. All there is is seeing and changing how we see. See? We talk about growth and growing. All growth and growing amount to is changing the way we see things. See? But, if that is all there is, then there is no one way to see, no one way we all ought to see, because the challenge is always changing how we see. See? Ah, but. Changing the way we see is quite the trick.

What keeps our perspective in place? What restricts how we see things? What are the blinders that limit our living? Marie Antoinette’s, “Let them eat cake,” and Nancy Regan’s, “Just say no,” expose the limits of these women’s perspective. They couldn’t see the problem they were addressing because of their limited perspective, because of their presumptions and inferences and their simple equivalency of worlds. They treated their world as the only world, as though the people in that other world—the world of poverty, hunger, despair and drugs—were like the people in their world, or should be.

This is the same error George Bush made when he launched the war and tried to give democracy to Iraq. He thought the Iraqis were just like us. We have to appreciate differences in points of view to have a chance. I don’t know how you get us to that point. I don’t know how you wake up Marie Antoinette, or Nancy Regan, or George Bush.  I don’t know how you wake up anyone before the time of their awakening. I don’t know how we wake ourselves up. I do know that we have to work on developing a perspective that takes itself into account. We do that by asking, seeking, and knocking. By looking, listening, inquiring. By never being quite satisfied with anything that passes for an answer. By never enshrining anything as The Answer, except, perhaps, the perpetual tendency to ask the next question and see where it leads.

But, we can only see the way we see. We can only think the way we think. There is no “one size fits all” way of seeing or thinking, and that’s just as well because we couldn’t see the way we are supposed to see, or think the way we are supposed to think, just because we are supposed to. But, because we think we are supposed to see and think in certain ways, we shut down the way we see and think, and opt for the preferred way of seeing and thinking, and lose our self, our soul, our perspective, our LIFE, in the process.

Nothing is more natural to us, more automatic—more “us”—than the way we think, see, and do. We are our perspective. What are we apart from our perspective? When we separate ourselves from the way we think, see, and do, what of “us” remains? The fear of Nothing keeps us locked in place and robs us of the freedom to wander among the perspectives of the world and invite those enslaved to them to lay down their burden and come out and play. To play with their perspectives, and with those of their neighbors. How do we play with our perspectives, and with the perspective of one another? By not taking them seriously! My happy view of heaven, you’ll remember, is a pub where we are all gathered about tables, laughing over our favorite brew, saying to one another, “Tell us again what you thought was important!” The things we think are important make us enemies and send us to war.

We are killed by the things we take seriously. How can we be sure that the things we treat seriously are serious things? The more seriously we take something, the more “at the heart” of our perspective it is, the less able we are to “see it as it is,” to separate ourselves from it, to play with it. “This isn’t how I see things, this is how things ARE!”

How we see things is who WE are. We change as our way of seeing things changes. We become different as our way of perceiving the world, our lives, reality becomes different. Our perspective is the avenue to life, the way of resurrection and birth. Or, unchanging, it is the burial grounds of the living dead. The hope for us all is the changing of our perspective. Our work is the work of transforming the way we see.

We enable shifts in perspective not so much by what we say as by how we listen to what is said. We listen one another into seeing. We don’t talk one another into seeing (He said, talking). This place is about the airing of perspective. We come here to see our seeing. And to see that the way we see is just the way we see, here and now, and has nothing to do with what we see, with what is seen, or with the way we will see tomorrow, or next year.

The most we can do for one another is honor each other’s perspective, treat kindly who we are and how we see things. We can offer one another the possibility of seeing things differently, but we cannot force the shift before its time. The best we can do is see differently while honoring the right of others to see as they do. That way, their seeing has as much chance to impact ours as our seeing has of impacting theirs. And, we can grow together by playing with our perspectives, and laughing at what we think is important.

09/07/08, Sermon/Dharma Talk

There is a photographic saying, “Light doesn’t wait.” You can’t fool around thinking the light is going to be there when you are ready for it. You have to always be ready for it. You have to get up early and go wait for the light. The light is not going to wait for you. Neither is life. Life is not going to wait for you. You can’t put living off until you are in the mood for it. You can’t wait until you are all ready, with everything in its place, and all the flat surfaces neat and tidy and the door sills dusted, before you begin living. If you are going to live, you have to live NOW, in the middle of the mess.

We think we have to get it right before we can begin to live, as though life exists as a realm apart, in a world where everything is as it should be, and if things are NOT as they should be, well, who can live with that? If we are in a prisoner of war camp, for instance, it is clear that we cannot LIVE there. Or if we are homeless, or if we have a terminal illness (Who could LIVE with a terminal illness?), or if we are laboring beneath the burdens of living, with this stink old job and this stinky old house, we cannot possibly live. Living happens when everything is just fine in our lives. We cannot be expected to live if everything is not just fine in our lives.

Living, as everyone knows, depends upon our dream for our life being worked out in our lives. Then, we can really live. With things going our way, nothing can stop us. Big deal. It’s easy for nothing to stop us when there is nothing to stop us. But let something come along. Let something derail us. Let the pianos and anvils begin to drop out of the sky. Let the Wall appear right out of nowhere in the middle of our path. Let reality plant a big wet one right on our kisser. Then, let’s see how we do. Let’s see how we do with nothing going our way.

This is the deal: Living cannot hinge on everything, or even anything, going our way. Life doesn’t wait for things to go our way. If we are going to live, we are going to have to live right in the middle of the mess. If we are going to live, we can’t let anything stop us. All the stuff that we don’t like about our lives, all the things that are in our way, keeping us from doing what we like to do, we can’t let it stop us. It is up to us to not let anything stop us. It is up to us to live in the midst of the mess, to live in the solid dead center of death itself, to live with all that is Not Life draping itself all over us and getting in our way.

Walk through the woods. Nothing there is what you would call real happy with anything else there. Everything there is in direct competition with everything else there, for water and sunlight and oxygen. The oak trees and the maples are not best friends. The pines and the dogwoods do not socialize or inquire about each other’s children. The different varieties of mosses are at war with each other, struggling for dominion over the same six foot square plot of ground. It's like this everywhere you look.

The world is not a friendly place. Do not think that the universe, or anything in the universe (except, perhaps, on their good days, the people who care deeply about you) has your best interest at heart. Do not think that if you are a good person and do what is right your life will line up for you, and ask you what it can do for you, and if you need anything, and if not it will be back to check on you again in a little while. Life does not depend on things going our way. And, I’m not talking about only physical, biological, 98.6 and breathing life. I’m talking about Real Life, Abundant Life, Life packed down and overflowing, being alive and loving it Life. LIFE does not depend on things going our way. We can live in the midst of nothing going our way. I know you do not believe it, but it is so.

LIFE is fully compatible with Not-Life, call it Death. LIFE is fully compatible with Death. You could look it up. LIFE and Death co-exist like oak trees and maples, pines and dogwoods, and all the moss varieties, and have from the very beginning. Life and Death come blended together as inseparable aspects of the way of things. We have to LIVE in the midst of Death, in the midst of all that drains us and depletes us and takes all the fun out of it for us. We can’t let IT stop us!

That’s why we come together here once a week. To remember and remind one another to not let IT stop us. To remember and remind one another to Live On, Anyway, Nevertheless, Even So! You’re mighty right it’s hard! Don’t let it stop you! Don’t let the fact that it is hard keep you from being alive, keep you from living in the time left for living, in the midst of all you have to live with. Live with it. In spite of it. Don’t let it stop you!

The challenge, the work, is always to be alive in the time left for living, in the midst of things that do not support life, that are Not Life, that are Death. We have to come alive, to be alive, in the midst of Death. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it always has been. The way it always will be.

Look. It’s like this: The Life-potential of a photo is only good as long as I'm taking, or enjoying, the photo. When I step away from the scene, or from enjoying the photo, IT gets me (“IT” being whatever takes the life out of me at any particular place in time). And the fight is on. The fight for balance and sanity and remembering "I can do this." We can do this. In a place we don't want to be. With people we don't want to be with. Dealing with things we don't want in our lives. We can do it.

 The essential determination, the primary focus and commitment is to not let it stop us. To not let it stop us from doing what we came to do. From enjoying what is to be enjoyed. From finding the life that is ours to live--in the midst of all that is not life for us. There isn't Life and Not Life as two separate entities. There is Life-And-Not-Life as one thing. We have to live in the tangle of stuff that kills us, or is trying to. No kidding. I knew you weren't going to like that. The mosses don't like it either, or wouldn't, if they knew what was going on. But they don't let not liking it stop them. There is a moral here, don't you see? Don't Let It Stop You!

Don’t let it stop you from Life, and Living, and Being Alive! If we are reasonably awake and aware, we know, each one of us knows, when life stopped for us, or could have. Something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen. Some trauma, some blow, some disappointment, and we were undone, and quit, or might have. Well, it’s places like that where we have to remember and remind one another, “Don’t let it stop you!”

Our work is to be alive in the midst of death. To live in the smack, dab, middle of that which mocks life, and laughs at life, and suggests in a thousand ways that it isn’t worth being alive. Our place is to take up the challenge, and to LIVE in the face of all that would say, “Why bother?” Ours is the work of being alive when it would be easy to surrender to the forces of death and die. Dying is easy. Living is hard. It takes effort to be alive. It doesn’t happen accidentally. We do not find life. We generate life. We create life.

We don’t wait for Life to be delivered, or for our lives to turn a corner one day and there is Life, waiting on us, handing out blessings and joys, and making us glad, finally, to be alive. Glad to be alive is not something that comes to our door and knocks and says, “I was just in the neighborhood and wanted to see if you would like to come out and play.” It doesn’t call us on the phone and say, “You have been selected to receive a lifetime membership in the Joy Club.” It doesn’t track us down, look us up, thrust itself upon us because we were patient, are deserving, kept the rules and did everything right in a “well done good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master” kind of way.

Life is an inside job. We take the raw materials and build a life worth living from them. We create Life by the way we live, by the spirit and attitude and outlook and perspective with which we walk into, and through, the day, every day, regardless of what we find there. We bring ourselves to life by investing ourselves in the moment at hand and working to bring to life there what needs to be brought to life there.

Being alive is being alive in the moment of our living, being alive in the now, being alive to the moment, to the now, to what is possible, here and now, to what is happening, to what is trying to happen, to what needs to happen, and assisting that, as we are able, brining forth life, the life that is possible here and now, in the moment of our living. Being alive is bringing life to life in the moment of our living. Birthing life. Being mid-wives, being mothers, of the moment. Making the moment more than it would ever be without us. Being alive is birthing moments. Birthing life in the moment of our living.

We do that simply by being alive to the moment of our living. Being awake and aware. Being present. Paying attention. What is happening? What is trying to happen? What needs to happen? What is being asked of us? Where are we being asked to come alive, to participate in the coming to be—in the birthing—of what is trying to be born?

Sometimes it is obvious. Sometimes it is not apparent at all. But, openness to the moment and what needs to happen there, what needs to happen here and now, is the orientation, the perspective, that serves life and is life. There is a lot about our lives that simply has to be endured, and always will be. If we can square up to that, accept it and let it be because it is, we have it made as much as we can have it made, and can open ourselves to the possibilities of life and create life by the way we choose to live in the time that is ours upon the earth.

Of Virgins and Dead Horses, 09/05/2008

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is updating the Heidelberg Catechism to make it more gay and woman friendly. This is called beating a dead horse. Or, ignoring the dead one on the dining room table. Either way, it is death we are not dealing with. What is dead is an idea of God that has outlived its relevance. And, when we try to make relevant what is not relevant, we cast ourselves into the role of throwing more virgins into the volcano while the drought continues in the land.

Revising the wording of the old creeds, catechisms, and confessions equates to finding better virgins to give to the gods. We need to revise our thinking about the gods. We need to realize we cannot think about the gods—or about God—the way we once did. We need to throw the gods—and God—into the volcano. We need to take ALL the creeds, and catechisms, and confessions, and doctrines off the table, and start over with an empty table, as it was in the beginning.

When I say ALL the doctrines, I mean every last one. All the Christian doctrines, and all the Jewish doctrines, and all the Moslem doctrines, and all the Hindu doctrines, and all the Buddhist doctrines, and all the Mormon doctrines, and all the Baha'i doctrines, and all the Krishna doctrines, and all the Astrology doctrines, and all the New Age doctrines, and all the rest of the doctrines. Take them all to the volcano. Push them in. Come back to the table, pull up a chair, identify with each other what is important, what has value, what counts, matters, makes a difference in our lives, in our relationships with each other, and in the world.

Of course, it will never happen. We—all of us, worldwide—will continue to beat the dead horse and ignore the stench coming from the dining room. We have too much invested in what we call truth to recognize what is true and live in response to it. We will shore up the structure as it teeters and topples, add more whitewash to the tomb, and send out search committees looking for the right kind of virgins, while the drought continues in the land.