11/25/07, Sermon

We have our intentions for our lives, our purposes, our goals, wishes, wants, desires. And then, we have our possibilities. There are the conditions within which we live, under which our intentions and desires, etc. are worked out. It is exactly here, in this clash between what we want and what we can have, that all of the important questions are answered: How contentious and combative will we be? How gracious and receptive? How hard and demanding? How soft and accommodating? How manipulative and controlling? How open and accepting? How war-like? How pliable? How masculine? How feminine?

The more adversarial and oppositional we are in relation to the things that meet us in life, the more hard and sour, bitter and brittle, we are apt to be. How do we deal with not having what we want? How do we know what to want? Every religion that I know of, every spiritual system for living in relation to the world in which we live, recognizes, in one way or another, that we can want what we cannot have, and we can want what we have no business having, and that “There is a time to be born, and a time to die…” And advises it’s adherents something to this effect: “If it don’t fit, don’t force it, just relax and let it go—just ‘cause you want it, doesn’t mean it will be so.”

Softness overcomes hardness, and force creates resistance. Jesus recommends the way of being a seed in the earth, yeast in the dough, light in the darkness, and tells his followers to “turn and become like children,” not warriors, or combatants, or even “Christian solders.” We live in relation to our lives much like a river lives in relation to its channel. The river takes the way that is open to it. The river cuts the channel and the channel shapes the river. Which is in charge, in control, in command, at the helm? It is the wrong question. And it is wrong to think that our lives are ours to do with as we will, or that we can make anything happen, or keep anything from happening, if we just try hard enough.

We belong to our lives as much as our lives belong to us. We are limited by the time and place of our living, bound to the possibilities and opportunities of the way things are. Our choices are our choices, and the consequences are the consequences. Our degree of “success” with life is as much about who we become through the process of living our lives as about what we make happen. How well we live is as much about who we show ourselves to be as about what we achieve, accomplish, do. The work of the Spirit is evident in things like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, goodness, faithfulness and self-discipline”—which are possible for all of us within every circumstance and any condition of life.

What we do is colored by how we do it. The how is more important than the what. The who is our work which impacts the world. Our work is the work of being “at one” with the heart of creation. “Thou will be done!” It is the work of godliness, the work of being true human beings, the work of artful living—and allowing our lives to take shape around that. “Do your work, and step back,” says Lao Tzu, “the true path to peace.” How we say “No!” is as important as that we say “No!” How we say “Yes!” is as crucial as what we say “Yes! to.

We are stuck on the what, and think our lives are about arranging things “out there,” in the environment, to suit ourselves. We think we are here to fix things up, coordinate colors, eradicate poverty, and homelessness, and war, and institute something on the order of a grand society, where everyone can have happy little lives in the suburbs, or in the wilderness, or wherever their little hearts desire. And, of course, as we work hard at wishing the grand life in the suburbs and wilderness into being, we treat one another in the worst kind of way.

We are cold, and sniping, and harsh, and snarly. We talk about one another unmercifully, and insist that everyone do it our way or else. The How is the one thing we can do something about, but we throw it aside, and focus on the What. But, the What is not the glorious wonder we give it credit for being. The question is who will we show ourselves to be through the process of living our lives?

We can live as decent human beings no matter what our circumstances are. We can treat one another with acceptance, and respect, and goodwill, and loving-kindness regardless of our place in life or our living conditions. This doesn’t mean we will be best friends with everyone, or even like everyone. It means we can draw our lines with compassion and separate ourselves from those who are not good places to be with generosity and consideration. We can take up the practice of being decent human beings. We can be loving without being victimized and used.

Too often, love is just another weapon, or a carrot, we use to get people to do what we want. “If you want me to love you,” we say in a thousand ways, “you have to do it the way I want it done.” And, we say it sweetly, so we think it isn’t the same as saying, “If you are going to eat here with your feet under this table, you are going to cut your hair and get that ring out of your nose.”

Of course, we justify our actions by saying there must be rules, and standards of behavior, and limits, and boundaries. We have to establish what goes and what doesn’t go. And, that is true. We will not tolerate certain language, for instance, certain jokes, racial slurs, lying, stealing, physical or emotional abuse, etc. There are lines within which relationship can exist and beyond which it cannot exist. And, here we engage the What and the How in a different way.

Everything rides on What we take seriously and How we express that in our lives. What are the appropriate lines? How will we establish and enforce them? We can set limits in ways that are decently humane, and we can set limits in ways that are dehumanizing and brutal. To live well, we have to be aware of both the What and the How, and step with mindfulness into the service of each. That is, I think, the way of Jesus.

A case can be made for the life of Jesus being simply about What to take seriously and How to express that in our lives—about the limits and the way they were set in his world. Jesus lived to call into question both the What and the How. And, died in the service of his idea of what and how things ought to be.

Jesus’ words were directed to the Jews, not to the Romans. Jesus’ work was to reform the way the Jewish leaders were governing life among the Jewish people. He honed in on the central problem affecting the lives of the people—the temple tax. If you wanted to secure the blessings of God for yourself and your family you had to make the proper sacrifices and worship in the proper way in the temple. In order to be admitted to the temple, you had to be current with your temple tax. That’s a good deal for the temple and those who administer the affairs of the temple. That’s a bad deal if you are destitute, or living on the edge of destitution, or just have a hard time making ends meet.

If you couldn’t pay the temple tax, you were considered to be a sinner and cursed by God. It was a nice, tight little circle of reasoning. God blessed those who found favor with God, and cursed those who were sinful. If you could pay the temple tax, it was obvious that God looked favorably upon you. If you could not, it was obvious that God knew you were a sinner, which made you fair game for the righteous people of God.

We get a beautiful snapshot of this with the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, where the Pharisee thanks God that he is not like that publican over there. And, Jesus said it was the publican that God favored and not the Pharisee. You can imagine the impact that had on the Jewish social order. That was the thrust of everything Jesus did.

Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes and the radically poor “people of the land.” Jesus forgave sins, and said that, in so doing, he was acting in the spirit and name of God. And, to top it off, Jesus healed people as if to give weight to his words, as if to validate his claim to be speaking and living in behalf of God. How could God heal sinners if they were out of favor with God? Not only that, but Jesus healed people on the Sabbath! How could God favor someone who deliberately broke the laws of God?

It was too much for the Jewish authorities to assimilate. They had to kill Jesus in order to restore their own equilibrium, and that of Jewish society. Jesus was executed for calling into question the What and the How. Radical stuff. Revolutionary stuff. It doesn’t get more subversive and iconoclastic than this. When we examine what we are doing and how we are doing it—when we question What is to be taken seriously and How it is to be expressed in our lives—when we scrutinize what we think ought to be done and how we think it ought to be done—we open ourselves to the possibilities. And, when we become aware of the possibilities, anything can happen, everything is on the table, and nothing is off limits. Which makes that the scariest place of them all to be, and the most fertile and alive. And that, of course, is exactly the place we need to be, for our sake and the sake of the world.

11/18/07, Sermon

It can be very difficult for the church to be the church. The church, you might say by definition, stands over against society and culture and the political structures of existence, by doing it the way it ought to be done. In the Bible, you have a clear view of how the church sees itself. There, you have “church” and you have “world,” with “world” being the catch-phrase for the way it ought NOT to be done.

The church has the inside track to the way things ought to be, and is to live in the midst of the way things ought NOT be in ways that call that way into question and exhibit the “ought to be” in all its relationships and transactions. Nothing is more solidly Biblical than the idea of a people called to a way of life that demonstrates explicitly the way life ought to be lived within the swirl of the way life ought not be lived. This is the calling and the mission of the church.

If you are going to send out missionaries, don’t send them out talking, talking, talking. Send them out living, living, living. The Mission is the same for us all: To demonstrate the way life ought to be lived by living that way, from the heart, in all of our relationships and transactions. Just go live among the people in ways that are right. That’s all there is to it. And the church has never done it very often, very long, very well.

The church has made a mockery of its mission. The church has lost the way, left the path, said “to the seers, ‘Do not see’; and to the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.’” (Isaiah 30:10-11)

The people called to be the church have always wanted to do it the way it was being done in the culture and society within which the church is called to be the church. The people called to be the church wanted a king because the other nations had kings. The people called to be the church worshiped the Baal’s and the idols of their neighbors. The people called to be the church did it the way their neighbors were doing it. And, even when they did not, they didn’t do what ought to be done the way it ought to be done. Their hearts and souls weren’t in it. So, Isaiah could say, “These people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13).

Jeremiah continues the theme with this pronouncement: “From the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 8:10c-11). Amos chimes in with these familiar words, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21-24).

Jesus makes exactly the same condemnation of the people called to be the church in his day. Jesus’ mission was the same as the mission of the prophets before him, the same as our mission, the same as the mission of the people called to be the church since people have been called to be the church, namely TO BE THE CHURCH! To do it the way it ought to be done in the midst of those doing it the way it ought not be done.

Jesus ate with prostitutes and tax collectors. He associated with those thought to be “sinners.” He forgave sins and told those burdened by the idea of their sinfulness that they were accepted and loved by God and by him. He healed on the Sabbath and broke the Law in ways that kept the spirit of the Law intact (Not a not an iota, not a dot, of that spirit did Jesus alter or ignore [cf. Matt. 5:18]). And, he called those charged with the oversight and administration of the church to repent and begin doing it the way it ought to be done. He said they were “white-washed tombs,” going through the motions of purity and obedience without their heart being in what they were doing.

And, they killed him for it, as they had killed all those before him who came doing what he did. So, he could say, at the end of his career, of his work, of his mission to BE the church: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem—the city that kills prophets and stones those sent to it…” (Matthew 23:37). And, it wasn’t long after that that the church failed, again, to be the church, failed, again, to do it the way it ought to be done, for the sake of what the church perceived to be its own self-interest, its own future in the world.

Here’s the thing: To have a future, the church must give up its future, just as Jesus did. The church has to live its life being the church, not so that it will have a future, but so that it will be the church. The future of the church depends upon the church living as though it has no future, as though it only has this moment right now in which to do what needs to be done, in which to live the way life ought to be lived.

The church has sold its soul for the sake of its future. Once its future is solid and secure, THEN it will be the church. Until then, it must be careful, guard its interests, cover its bases, watch its step, and hold its cards close to its vest. Does that sound like Jesus to you? Is that the way Jesus did it? Jesus never allowed the future to rob him of his present. He lived in the moment the way the moment ought to be lived, and let the future be the future. He took care of the present, and let the future take care of itself. "Do not worry about tomorrow," he counseled. "But let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day."

That's much too radical and risky for us. And, once we shy away from radical and risky, we shy away from being the church. To be the church is to be radical and risky, and controversial. It is to be who Jesus was. It is to call a fox a fox and a white-washed tomb a white-washed tomb. It is to acknowledge what is real, and say what needs to be said, and do what needs to be done. It is to step into the political and social arenas. It is to address injustice, and unconsciousness, and abject wrong-headed-ness. It is to do more than tut-tut about racism. It is to sponsor dismantling racism worships. It is to see who is being left out of the process and invite them in. It is to say, "No! No! No!" to death in all its glorious guises, and "Yes! Yes! Yes!" to life in all its harshness and pain.

Just try that and pay the bills! The church cannot be the church and pay the bills. Jesus never got ahead, and probably couldn't make ends meet. The inheritance he left was the cloak on his back.

No Mega-Church is politically and socially corrective. Every Mega-Church knows which side its bread is buttered on, and plays to the preferences of its constituency. Every Mega-Church focuses on personal piety, individual salvation, and how to be a better person, which comes down to how to keep things as they are only make them better. Keeping things as they are, only with more prosperity, for instance, is very important. No Mega-Church upsets apple carts, rocks boats, makes waves, or calls the status quo into question. That kind of behavior wakes people up, forces them to confront their comforting illusions, disturbs and disorients them, and they will not have it. People will not pay you to tell them what they do not want to hear.

People do not want to wake up. They do not want to think about their thinking, believing, and doing. They do not want to question their assumptions. Change their minds. They want to settle into comfortable routines. They want to be lulled to sleep with gentle reassurance and constant repetition. They want to be told the same old, same old, with the same old hypnotic rhythm and cadence and inflection, so they can disengage, shift into neutral, and drift off into dreamland.
The church can't be the church without waking people up, challenging the status quo, calling attention to the gap between how things are and how things ought to be, saying what needs to be said and doing what needs to be done. But, who is going to pay you to do that? You see the problem.

If the church is going to be the church, it has to reduce its bills and swing for the fences. It can't be expanding its programs, and launching building campaigns, and buying busses. It has to be refining its vision, engaging reality, waking itself up. Which, of course, it cannot do. No one wants to wake up. Dreamland is the place to be.

So. The work of the church begins with working to be the church ourselves, working to wake ourselves up, working to bring the church to life in our own personal lives. And that means facing the truth of how it is with us, the truth of how things are in our own lives, the truth of how things really ought to be and the truth of how we feel about that, and what we wish were true instead, and confronting the difference between how we wish things were and how things truly need to be.

We do not often or easily go from the way we wish things were, the way we want things to be, to the way things truly need to be. The easy thing is to assume that things need to be the way we want them to be. But, that’s dreamland. That’s the place from which we are having to wake up. And this is exactly the work to be the church, confronting the difference between the way we wish things were and the way things truly need to be. It is the work of maturation. The work of being a true human being. The work of doing what ought to be done the way it ought to be done whether we want to or not, for the sake of how things ought to be.

11/11/07, Sermon

How should things be? Who is to say? There you have it: The Religious Problem. We all have different ideas about how things should be. We all have different ideas about who is to say. Who will referee the debate? We have different ideas about that, as well.

We can’t agree about what constitutes a successful life. Ideas abound. We go to war over differences of opinion about the way life should be lived. It comes down to being alive. What are the conditions required to be alive? What does it take to be alive? What keeps us from being alive? What limits our living?How do we think life should be lived? Our answers to these questions puts us in a certain position relative to the answers of everyone else to these questions. The happy truth is that we will not agree. How do we find common ground with those who disagree with us, and each other, about how life should be lived? How do we create a space that is big enough for everybody?

I don’t know how we find common ground. There has to be common ground. You can't put George Bush in a room with Osama ben Laden and expect anything but war. How do we reach accord with those who are diametrically opposed to all we think, believe, and stand for? Irreconcilable differences. We can be too far apart to have anything to say to each other. We could talk, for instance, about gay rights and privileges until we are dead with those who disagree with us and nothing will change. We have to recognize our incompatibilities and let them stand. How different can we be and still get along? We have to figure ways around the stand-offs. Blowing each other, or shunning each other, up is stupid.

Here is what it comes down to: There is the way things are, and there is the way we feel about the way things are, and there is the way we think things should be. Now, we create a lot of trouble for ourselves between the way things are and the way we feel about the way things are and the way we think things should be. Life happens in that space. We should be aware of it. As it is, we are not aware of it.

Life consists of the struggle in the space between the way things are and the way we feel about the way things are and the way we think things should be. We struggle with the way things are, trying to make them into what we want them to be, so that we can feel better about them. This struggle is the whole scope of life as we know it. It constitutes the essence of bad religion, the heart of which is feeling better about the way things are and arranging things to suit ourselves. We have made a religion out of feeling better and getting what we want, but it is nothing more than happy advice giving about how to feel better and get what we want.

All the happy advice-givers hand out suggestions for feeling better about our lives. We can manifest our destiny or let be what is. Either way, the outcome is that we feel better about our lives. We can’t manifest our destiny or let be what is and still be miserable. The whole point is to feel good about whatever is going on.

If we feel good, we don’t have a problem. If we don’t have a problem, we have no reason to seek out and listen to the advice-givers. Why would we care what they think if things are going well, we feel good, and have no problems? What could they give us that we don’t already have? Who needs advisors, then? In order to have a place in our lives, advisors have to find a problem with our lives, point it out to us in ways that make us feel bad, and then tell us what to do about it in order to live better lives and feel better about the lives we are living, so they can feel better about their own lives.

What would become of all of the advisors with no one to advise? All those who would save us have to have someone to save. We are too stupid to figure it out for ourselves. They have to tell us what to do. Where would we be without them? They need us to buy their books, listen to their lectures, ask them questions so they can write their advice columns in the papers. Where would they be without us?

It has become quite the industry, advice-giving. The self-help section of bookstores is twice the size of the religious section, unless, of course, it is a religious bookstore. But, even in religious sections and bookstores, most of the books, including the Bible studies, have a get-fixed-up-and-feel-better-about-your-life theme. It’s big business, fixing people up and helping them feel better about their lives.

It’s always been that way. It is the religious problem. We have given people religion to help them feel better about their lives. And, if we came upon a people who were feeling pretty good about their lives, we gave them religion to help them feel bad about their lives (Hell and Satan and Eternal Damnation, you know) so that we could give them more religion to help them feel good about their lives (Forgiveness and Deliverance and Redemption and Salvation and Everlasting Joy and Happiness, you know).

It would appear that we are witnessing the demise of religion, but it is really the proliferation of religion, bad religion. You can’t say religion has demised. Religion has mushroomed. Religion has morphed and mutated and multiplied. Religion is everywhere, it’s all over the place, you can’t get away from it. It’s taken over. Bad religion, that is. Official, Orthodox, Doctrinal Christianity has demised, but the heart of bad religion, the core, is as vibrant and healthy and present as ever. That heart is this: “Something is wrong with you. You need to be fixed. Just do what I say and you will feel better about your life. And, to keep the sound advice coming, be sure to buy my books, and my tapes, and make regular, hefty, donations to Feel Good Ministries. Amen. Can I have an Amen? Amen!”

We cannot feel good about our lives and be awake. Bad religion puts us to sleep. It’s a mess out there. You cannot possibly live with awareness and compassion in the midst of absurdity and feel good about it. If you do, you are sick, and should feel really bad about feeling good. How good you feel about your life is a marker indicating just how deeply into denial you are. If you are going to feel good about anything, feel good about how bad you feel.” We have to realize that how things are is the result of our trying to feel better about how things are by making them more like we think they should be. To make things better, we have to stop trying to improve them. We don’t feel better by making things different. We feel better by, well, feeling what we are feeling.

It’s like this: One of the great truths of our existence is that feelings change. We can make them linger, sometimes for the entire length of our lives, by nursing them, and nurturing them, and getting stuck in them, but, if we don’t do that, they change. We get stuck in what we feel when we become so enamored with it that we can’t let it go. Feeling miserable, for example, becomes a way of life. And we rehash without end the Awful Event that marked us forever and made us this way. Feeling cheery also can become a way of life, and we all have known the Polly Annals with their rose colored glasses and their propensity to look on the bright side of things and find the silver lining and encase themselves in denial behind their happy face. So, feelings don’t have to change, but they will if we let them.

We let them change by treating them like kindergarten kids. Nothing changes with the speed of the moods of a room full of kindergarteners. You can’t manage any of it. You just keep them from hurting each other and watch how fast their feelings change. That’s the trick in dealing with your own moods. Don’t do anything stupid in the grip of a mood, and watch it change. When you are in the grip of a mood, go sit down with it and a cup of coffee and let it rant—TO you, not THROUGH you. Big difference. You are just sitting with the mood, being with the mood, listening to the mood. You are there to get to know it in depth, and hear it out. Just like you might with a kindergartener who can’t go swimming because it’s raining.

You have to be with the mood for as long as it takes for the mood to begin to shift. This will probably be longer than you want it to be, but it will never be as long as you are afraid it might be. You cannot hurry a mood along just because it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable and you are ready for it to go. If you are miserable, for example, you have to be miserable for as long as it takes for your misery to subside, and to shift over into the next mood in line. When you are miserable, be miserable. When you are sad, be sad. When you are afraid, be afraid. When you are lonely, be lonely. When you are happy, be happy. When you are exuberant, be exuberant. When you are peaceful, serene, at ease, be peaceful, serene, at ease. Do you see the pattern here?

This is absolutely all there is to it. When you understand this, there is nothing left to understand. When you are hungry, be hungry. When you are tired, be tired. See? And, you thought it was hard. We make it hard by trying to NOT BE what we are, or by trying to ALWAYS BE what we are. We are always trying to push away or clutch something tightly to us. The key is to JUST BE with whatever is with us, to JUST BE what we are. And, to allow it to change as it changes. To let come what’s coming and to let go what’s going.

Where would the world be without the pathos of time’s passing? I think that is our primary gift to the world, certainly to the experience of life, noticing the coming and the going, opening ourselves to it, allowing it to come and go with awareness and understanding, patience and grace.

This is basic to the experience of life, essential to life. It is the essence of being alive as human beings. Noticing. Noting. Knowing. The going-ness of things. Even the coming is a going. Can we bear it? Can we bear the realization, the knowing, and the sadness, the pathos it engenders? Can we receive the moment in full recognition of what it is, gently, lovingly, as one might receive a new-born child, honoring the wonder of this that will not last? Can we be alive like that? Being alive like that is the common ground that makes life possible for us all.

If you have been paying attention, you know that I’m all into self-determination, and self-realization, and self-expression, and self-direction, and self-discovery, and self-orientation, and self-correction—but not entirely, not at the expense of other people. That’s where it gets tricky. We have to be true to ourselves within the circumstances and context of our lives. Finding the way means finding the way of being a self in loving relationship, in right relationship, with other selves. If you think that’s easy, give it a spin!

How much for me? How much for you? You don’t get the answers to those questions in the back of the book! There is no book! There is just working it out in the present moment of our lives. Working it out is painful. Something is always unfair to someone. Someone is always having to pay more of a price than someone else. Someone is always giving up, giving in, giving way, stepping aside for the sake of the relationship, for the sake of someone else, for the sake of paying the bills. We can’t live like two-year-olds and find the way. We have to be a lot older than that to have a chance.

The Toddler’s Creed, you’ll remember, goes something like this: “If I have it, it’s mine. If you have it and I want it, it’s mine. If I put it down, leave it alone, it’s mine. If you put it down, and I pick it up, it’s mine. If I gave it to you and you’re having more fun with it than I was, it’s mine. If it breaks, it’s yours.” That’s the orientation we have to grow out of if we are going to be a self in right relationship with other selves.

We live our lives in relationship with one another, not in a vacuum, not in a cave, not in the woods or on a mountain top. We have to decide what our life is asking of us and then figure out how we can do that within the context and circumstances—within the relationships—that constitute life for us. Where do others stop and we start? And, who says so, who draws the line? We do. How do we know if we are right? We don’t.

We step into the moment and do what can be done there, and do it again in the next moment. We trust our lives to unfold in their own time according to their own direction, and try to not mess things up by interfering too much with the drift and direction things are taking. But that’s a problem, because there are duties and obligations and responsibilities to consider, not to mention local, state and federal laws and IRS regulations. And so it is said, “Straight is the way, and narrow is the gate, that leads to life.” It’s a fine little line that we walk on a slippery surface, trying to determine when, and where, and how to do what.

We find the way with eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands. The all-weather secret to seeing, hearing and understanding is being able to set self-interest aside. If we are too much invested in having our way, in getting what we want, in doing what we like, we will never be able to find the way to the good of those concerned amid the tangle of relationships that make up our lives.

An equal danger, of course, is the complete abdication of ourselves. It is easier, much less of a struggle, if we just disappear, if we have no interest at all, if we just “go with the flow,” and are carried along by the will and ways of others. Which is, in a way, having our way by not having a way. We avoid conflict and maintain peace and harmony, but only apparently so. The price if such harmony is the complete loss of self, the loss of soul. To live like this is to not live at all. It is to die the wrong kind of death, and to walk through our lives hollow-eyed and lifeless, awaiting further instruction and the arrival of the undertaker to make our death official.

Much more difficult is the way of life. That is the way of seeing, hearing, and understanding, the way of living open to the reality of each moment, aware of what needs to be done there to serve the good of those concerned. Here’s how that works: The most reliable tool for behavior modification ever invented is not a gun or a whip, but a mirror. When we see ourselves, we change. Awareness is alteration. Even when awareness is affirmation it is alteration, because it enables us to embrace who we are. Affirmed, we relax. Something shifts. And, we can step into the fray, confident, centered, steady, ready, at peace.

Seeing things changes things. Want to change something? Just see it, exactly as it is. Nothing remains what it was when it is seen for what it is. Seeing a thing changes our relationship with the thing, if not the thing, and that changes the thing to the extent that it no longer holds the place it once held in our lives. Things are different with the thing. Things can happen now that couldn’t happen before. Things have changed.

If things are static, unchanging, we have to wonder what we are not seeing, or, what we are seeing that isn’t so. When we fail to see our assumptions, presumptions, and inferences, we fail to see the thing itself. We have to stand aside from what we think we see in order to see. Nothing is quite as freeing and transformative as a perspective that takes itself into account. Seeing our seeing changes what is seen. Changing the way we see changes what we see, changes who is seeing. Seeing clearly is one of the central gifts of finding the heart of life in silence and stillness.

Finding the heart of life is a meditative practice in which we can settle into the heart of what is truly important, ground ourselves at the center, find "the still point of the turning world," and maintain a calm sense of equilibrium regardless of what might be happening in our lives. At the center, we see into the heart of things, understand how things are, know what is needed, and make the necessary response without being undone and overwhelmed by the chaotic turmoil of existence. With practice, we can live with “meditative presence,” apart from any kind of official time and place for meditation, doing what needs to be done with grace and compassion, and creating an oasis of sorts in a parched and lifeless land. Seeing things changes things, but it takes being at the center to see in ways that make transformation possible.

Seeing from the center sees into the center of all things, and knows them for what they are, as they are. If we would see, we have to seek the center. Finding the center is a function of stillness and silence. Living from the center is meditative presence in the midst of life in its ordinariness. The whiz of life around us is like the whiz of thoughts inside our heads. “Monkey mind” and “monkey life” is the same experience, and is treated in the same way, “Now this, now this.” “ just this, just this.” It is nothing to get lost in, captivated by, fascinated with. It is “just life,” “just this.” And, it will soon be followed by something else.

Practicing meditative presence is about being attentively, mindfully aware of and present in the moment of our living. We can practice being fully present anywhere, any time, any how. We can survive the complete loss of everything simply by being simply present in the moment of our living, in the now that is at hand. Of course, there is a catch or two. The practice of being fully present is, in part, the practice of adjusting ourselves to how things are and what can be done about it. We never have complete freedom of movement. We are always constrained by something. We can always imagine a better world than the world we live in. And, we are always having to come to terms with “This is the way things are, and this is what can be done about it, and that’s that.”

It doesn’t matter what we want, or wish, or desire. We have to step aside and deal with the possibilities and limitations of the moment in which we live. There will always be restrictions to take into account. We cannot live without considering the impact and consequences of our living. What does the “now” mean for the “yet to be”? What implications does the “here and now” have for the “then and there”? We have to be aware of the future we are creating by our response to the present, by our actions in the present. There is more with us in each moment, more to be considered and taken into account, than meets the eye.

Thus, the importance of seeing from the center into the depths. It is quite the art, this quietly seeking to see. It is the end of impulsive, reactionary living. Now, we bring stillness with us into the moment, and listen, look, waiting to hear, see. This is the essence of meditative presence, this waiting in stillness to see beneath the surface. Being fully present in the moment of our living means being fully awake and aware there, seeing, hearing and understanding, open to what is open to us. And, it means bearing the pain of realization.

We cannot see without being open to, and bearing, the pain of realization. We cannot be fully alive and be immune to the impact of life. There is no living without bearing the pain of being alive. And, yet, there is the realization of that which is also true. We are corks on the water, leaves in the wind, AND we are anchored to and grounded in the immovable center. We grieve our losses, mourn our desolation, are crushed, yet untouched at the same time.

In living at the center, we observe the destruction, experience the raw power of the waves and wind, watch ourselves come apart, with an understanding that accepts it all, that says yes to everything, even our coming apart. Of course, we come apart. Who wouldn’t? Who can bear the complete loss of everything without losing it? We wouldn’t be human if that were the case! At the center, watching ourselves lose it with compassion, understanding and acceptance for ourselves losing it, we act also to hold things together. We are in the storm, but not of it. Observing the pain diminishes it. When we are conscious of our pain, we carry it differently. Simply saying, “Well, of course,” to our pain, causes it to shift a bit, and we bear it a little better.

Practicing meditative presence in each moment and living from the center in all that we do, does not decrease the number of difficulties we encounter, or change the facts which face us. It enables us to see those difficulties, those facts, as they are, and allows us to do what we can in response to them. That includes crying, grieving and mourning. We do not live as unfeeling, uncaring, ascetics. Nor, do we live as depleted spirits in a fetal position. We deal with what comes our way as true human beings, seeing, hearing, understanding, and bringing the best we have to offer to life in each moment of our living. Amen! May it be so!

10/21/07, Sermon

We don’t get there by following commandments and believing doctrines. This isn’t to dismiss commandments or to suggest that we can get along without doctrines. The Ten Commandments, for example, or the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhism, are perfectly wonderful descriptions of a life of right-relationship. Throw in “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and “Do not remove your neighbor’s land mark,” and you have a beautiful picture of what the right kind of community would look like. But, you don’t produce that community by keeping the commandments.

The commandments are descriptive, not prescriptive. They describe what is happening when things are right between, among, us. They do not prescribe what must happen in order for things to be right between, among us. They are not the path to rightness. Robotic, hypnotic, adherence to the law does not produce eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand. Commandments are good for stiffness and rigidity and fear of stepping off the straight-and-narrow, but they are not conducive to life, and living, and being alive.

The same can be said for doctrines. Buddhism has the Doctrine of the Four Noble Truths, plus a wide assortment of additional doctrines (Like the Accumulation of Merit). Christianity has amassed a sizeable number itself. In the few years that we have been together, we have developed quite a collection of our own doctrines. There is the Doctrine of Being Alive, and the Doctrine of Bearing the Pain (which we will talk more about in a bit). The Doctrine of Stumbling Around. The Doctrine of Reversing Our Way Forward (Also stated: “Without backing up, we would never get anywhere”). The doctrines are everywhere, but they are all organic. Their truth, like all truth (Which is another doctrine), is recognized in the living, not in the teaching, of it. Life is the teacher, being alive is the lesson.

We cannot teach anyone to be alive any more than we can teach her, or him, to be spontaneous, or to be intuitive, or to be funny, or to be awake. But, we can be alive ourselves, and we can give everyone permission to be alive (spontaneous, intuitive, funny, awake). We can help everyone discover the barriers to being alive (etc.). We can remind everyone that life is the teacher and being alive is the lesson, but, beyond that we can only sit around, tell stories, and laugh and cry together, then get up and do what is ours to do.

Here’s the path that everyone is looking for, the way to authenticity and realness, the directions to the Holy Grail, the instructions for becoming a true human being: Love what is to be loved. Mourn what is to be mourned. Grieve what is to be grieved. Enjoy what is to be enjoyed. Do what is to be done. Question what is to be questioned. Reject what is to be rejected. Encourage what is to be encouraged. Affirm what is to be affirmed… Get the idea? LIVE YOUR LIFE! Be awake, aware, and alive. That’s all there is to it. The point of life is to live. The meaning of life is to be alive. This is not a difficult concept. But, I think we must be afraid of it, so few of us actually embrace it and apply it. Most of us walk away, shaking our heads, saying, “There must be more to it than that!”

Well. You can believe that if you want to, but there isn’t any more to it than that. Yet, believing it has threatening implications for the culture, if not civilization as a whole. The economic structure of the empire crumbles once we understand there is nothing more to it than that! Nothing is more subversive, or a greater threat to the status quo, than eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands, than knowing that life is the teacher and being alive is the lesson.

Who is going to buy all those Hummers if we are sitting around telling stories, laughing with those who laugh, weeping with those who weep and doing what is ours to do? If we begin to fill the void within with life, living, and being alive, what becomes of all the vendors hawking tinsel and fine plastic? This whole being alive idea is as incendiary, as revolutionary, as turning over the tables of the money changers in the Temple. And that was the act that got Jesus executed. Beware of being alive, it will require you to die.

But, we can’t let the dying thing stop us, or, the fear of dying! The right kind of death leads to resurrection and new life and being alive, and that is exactly what the world is dying for—the life that is the result of the right kind of death. This gets us back to the Doctrine of Bearing the Pain. Kate Sullivan says pain is part of life, but suffering is not. In this, Kate stands apart from the Buddha, who said that life is suffering. Kate would say to the Buddha, “No. Life is painful, sometimes, but suffering is our choice. We can choose to add suffering to the pain, or not. We can make what’s bad worse by how we deal with it, relate to it. See?” And, the Buddha would have to do the palm to forehead “I could have had a V-8” gesture, and invite Kate in for dinner to hear what else she had to say. The Buddha and the Buddette.

Like the Buddha, we confuse pain with suffering. We run from pain when we should simply decline suffering. We must bear the pain, but refuse to carry the suffering. Pain, yes. Suffering, no. It’s the path to life, and light, and peace everlasting.

Pain and aggravation are regular encounters on our way through this world. Grief, loss and sorrow are real and regular aspects of the journey. Suffering is when we refuse to live after a loss. “Look what life has done to me!”, we say. “How can I live after this?” And we wrap our suffering around us and dwell on the unfairness of lot, and live to exhibit our mournfulness and bear the evidence of our burden for all to see. “Woe, woe, poor me! Poor me!”

The pain of some losses can indeed live with us like a cold stone in our stomach forever, but that doesn’t have to keep us from being alive. We can bear the pain without suffering. We can acknowledge the awfulness of our loss, every day. Some pain remains as real as the moment we got the news. Our grief is as fresh as the knock on the door, the ringing of the phone. The flashbacks still stagger us in the aisles of Harris Teeter, and driving to work, and walking along the beach. We cannot get away from the burden of the pain we carry, and life will never be normal again because we will never be free of our loss. We can bear our pain mindfully and mindfully choose to live anyway, nevertheless, even so!

We can wrap our arms around life and live boldly, joyfully, in memory of all we have lost. We can live defiantly, courageously, determinedly, deliberately! We can live a life those we have lost would be proud of us for living! We can carry them consciously with us into life, and live as much for them as for ourselves, living harder for two (or three, or however many) than we ever would dare to live for one. Our lives can be a living testimony to the goodness of life in spite of our loss, even though our pain remains present and real. We can live with pain, without suffering. It’s a perfect conundrum, or koan, or paradox, or contradiction. And, it takes us to the heart of spiritual truth, which is the heart of reality, which is the heart of life itself.

Living fully, completely, unreservedly in this world of pain, anguish, and agony is a bold statement about the essential nature of that which is at the heart of reality. Living is governed by life, not death, and we will not die before we are dead. Thus, we say, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

We suffer when we expand our pain, deepen it, enlarge and enhance it through the things we think and say about it. We nurse our pain into suffering. We allow our pain to keep us from living, from being alive. “But, how can we live, having lost as much as we have lost—having seen all that we have seen? How can we do anything but go through the motions of life? How can we ever live again with our heart in what we are doing when our heart has been broken, crushed, taken out and thrown away?”

We have to know that heart is the easiest thing to lose, and that painful encounters are challenges to our ability to live with heart, anyway, nevertheless, even so! Being alive is not easy. Living will take the life right out of you. There is much that will take heart away from us if we allow it. And so the need for a certain set to the jaw, a certain glint in the eye, a certain disposition of soul that says, “I am not going to die until I’m dead.”

We can bear the pain of life without being overcome by it, without succumbing to it. We can live defiantly in the face of the worse life can do. We can live with heart without losing heart. We can extend grace, nurture compassion, manifest peace, show mercy, create hope, and provide a healing space by the quality of our presence in the world. We can soften the blows of life by our response to those blows, and bring others to life by the way we live with them.

“The influence of a vital person vitalizes,” says Joseph Campbell. Life is contagious. Pass it on. We pass it on by refusing to be undone by the difficulty of picking ourselves up and doing our best with the time that is left for living. It is not easy. There are no answers, or strategies, or solutions, or fixes. It’s a mess. It’s always been a mess. Do what you can. Do what can be done. And, let that be that. We can’t begin to straighten the mess out. We cannot make things like they ought to be, because we cannot make people who they ought to be. We will not get the cooperation we need to make all things good. Do what you can to make something good. Do what can be done to make things as good as they can be. Don’t look at the big picture or think in terms of “making progress.” Just do what you can. Just do what can be done to bring life to life in the moment of your living. And, you will have done enough.

10/14/07, Sermon

I don’t buy the Principle of Non-Interference. Lao Tsu can let things go their natural course if he wants to, but the Crab Grass and the Johnson Grass are going to take over the cotton, and the Cut Worms are going to destroy the tomato patch, and if you don’t build a reservoir or two (or three, or four), you’re going to be in trouble when it stops raining. The natural course would involve not shaving, not bathing, not cutting your hair or brushing your teeth and never taking the dog to the vet or the kids to the doctor. You wouldn’t ice down a sprain, or heat water for tea. You wouldn’t off-set astigmatism with reading glasses, or have laser surgery to remove cataracts. You and Lao Tsu can let things take their natural course, but I’m against it, and am going to do what I can to make things as good as they can be for as long as possible.

The trouble with that, though, is this: We don’t know where to stop with the improvements. We can make the best better. Paradise wasn’t good enough for Adam and Eve. “Here, sweetie, a bite of this will make it even better!” We’ve been rearranging the world to suit ourselves ever since.
We’re never satisfied for long. It’s what we are proudest of about us. “Progress,” we call it. We moved from the caves to the high rises in only a hand full of years, geologically speaking. “Look what we’ve done!”, we say, as though we’ve done something.

The Aborigines who wander through the outback with their families, with nothing to show for their journeying, appear to be happier with their lives and better adjusted to their world than we are. Not that they know what they have and remain immune to the allure of the lights and the thrill of fine plastic. Our culture is deceptively attractive. You can’t keep them on the farm once they’ve seen gay Paree.

But gay Paree is a lie. An illusion. There is a hole in the soul of all of us in the land of lights and plastic. A hole that cannot be filled with development, alteration, improvement, transformation of the world in which we live. Because we only know what it takes to live in that world. We do not know what it takes to be, you know what’s coming, alive.

Easier living does not equate to being alive. What is better does not have any correlation with what is good. Lights and plastic serve the eyes, but what serves the heart? What does it take to be alive, to live well, to be at-one with heart and soul? These are the questions the church exists to answer.

The church is the mid-wife of the soul. The church is the only reliable guide to the heart of life. The church knows the secret. The church knows what it takes. The church understands. The church is our hedge against the complete loss of soul in the world of lights and plastic. The church’s place in our lives is to align our living with what brings us to life and makes us alive. The church connects us with heart and soul, awakens our spirit, nurtures and nourishes us into the wonder and joy of being fully alive.

It does that by asking us questions that deepen our awareness and enlarge our perspective. Questions like, “When you buy something, is it a prop or a tool? How does it help you do what you came to do? To do what you do best? To do what you enjoy doing most?”

“Where do you spend your time? Where do you spend your money? Where do you wish you could spend your time and money? What’s keeping you from doing that?”

“What percentage of your bills goes for the cost of living and what percentage goes for the cost of being alive? Do you understand the difference between living and being alive? How much time and money do you devote exclusively to being alive in a day, week, month?”

“What are you living for? What exactly does it take to do what you are living for? How much more do you have than you need? What do you need that you don’t have? What is forcing you to have what you don’t need and keeping you from having what you do need? What is standing between you and being alive?”

The things standing between us and being alive may be external things, or internal things, or a combination of both. We become aware of them by taking a reading of our “vital signs.” We are familiar with vital signs on a strictly physical level, blood pressure, pulse rate, temperature, respiration rate, mobility, consciousness. But, they exist on a spiritual/emotional level as well: Enthusiasm, passion, zest, sense of humor, laughter, alertness, “presence,” capacity for investment in—and engagement with—the moment of living, joy of life. Vital signs are absolutely 100% trustworthy predictors of the depth and quality of heart and soul.

If our vital signs are non-existent, if we are listless, depressed, unmotivated, detached, remote, unavailable, disinterested, uncaring and unresponsive, we have to begin the search for what is standing between us and being alive, for what is preventing us from doing the things that bring us to life, and are life.

The church is the path to life in the world. It exists to serve life, enable life, nurture and nourish life. The church is an oasis in the desert, a light in the darkness of lights and plastic, a way-station in the wilderness, a “well-spring of living water,” a table offering the bread of life and the cup of renewal, the source of resurrection and new life.

Or not. We know it isn’t so. We are here because of the failure of the church to be the church in our lives and in the world. We know that the church has opted out of its calling, that it has become an extension of the society, of the culture, of the civilization—a conduit and expression of the very things it is here to challenge and transform. We know that the church is as “lite” and as plastic as it gets (“Too shallow to splash,” as they say in the deep south). Which makes it our task to save the church and the world. We do that by waking both the church and the world up to the importance of being alive, here and now, in the time left for living. We do that by being awake and alive ourselves.

The terms are interchangeable. We can’t be awake without being alive, or alive without being awake. And, we can’t be awake and alive without bearing the pain of existence. It hurts to see, and hear, and understand! Eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands will break your heart! It is an agony to look into the heart of things and know how empty things are! We live in a wasteland of lights and plastic, and distract ourselves from the truth of our own emptiness with newer models and brighter colors of nothing.

But, it is better to be mesmerized by the sweet promise of happiness being only one more major purchase away—it is better to be hypnotized by the kaleidoscopic combination of lights and plastic—than to face the reality of nothing at the center and know the truth of emptiness at the core. The bad news is that’s where life begins. In the wilderness is the way of life.

This is foundational to the Christian take on how things work: The right kind of death leads to resurrection and new life. In dying the right kind of death, we are born again into abundant life. In opening ourselves to the emptiness of our lives and bearing the pain, the cross, of piercing the illusion of what life is all about, we take up the way of life and know the true joy of being alive. It is paradoxical, and contradicts all that we presume to be good and true, and is very much in-keeping with Lao Tsu’s advice to let nature take its course.

Letting nature take its course is to embrace the lovely lie, crash into the wall of reality, wake up to the emptiness of all we thought was life, die to the illusion of being able to save ourselves from the pain of existence with our attachments and possessions, bear the pain all the way to the heart of the matter, and discover, at the core, the wonder of who we are and what is ours to do.

The natural course is to wake up to the emptiness of all that promises fulfillment and ecstasy. The natural course is to know that being with our lives as they are, doing what is ours to do while not neglecting what needs to be done, is essential goodness, incapable of being improved by the addition of lights and plastic.

10/07/07, Sermon

We don’t have to know where we are going, or what we are doing. We only have to know how we are going to go, how we are going to do. It’s all about the HOW, not the WHAT, or the WHERE. We are creating a way of life recognizable by such qualities as compassion, and respect, and honor. The means IS the end. HOW we do it determines WHAT is done. This is the reverse of how we generally think. We generally think that we have a goal and figure out the steps required to achieve the goal. We generally think that the end governs, if not justifies, the means. Wrong! “The means always determines the end” (Aldous Huxley). We cannot treat one another poorly and have a community worth belonging to. We treat one another well, and trust that the community will emerge over time.

So, what we are doing here is trying to treat one another well. We aren’t trying to get one another to agree with us. We aren’t trying to get one another to believe, or behave, according to our ideas of how everyone ought to believe or behave. We aren’t trying to choreograph the dance, or orchestrate the sections, or direct everyone’s reading from the same script, making sure that all the players come in on cue and exit on schedule. We’re just trying to treat one another well.

Don’t think that’s easy. We irritate one another. We get on one another’s nerves. We make one another crazy. And we believe the dumbest things. It would be so much easier to treat you well if you were all like me. Which is what each of us could say about the rest of us. We have to understand that treating one another well is not contingent upon anyone being like we are. We are not after agreement on any level. We don’t have to agree about anything other than the importance of treating each other well. That’s the only agreement. Beyond that, everyone is free to embrace her, to embrace his, own perspective on everything.

This is critical. In the church of our experience we all embraced the creeds and the catechisms and the doctrines, and said we believed what everybody else believed. Here, we are saying that honoring one another, respecting one another, and treating one another with courtesy, kindness and compassion is the core agreement, the foundational belief (“We believe that it is crucial to treat one another well”), and that we can believe anything we want to in addition to that, but that’s the only thing we all have to believe (That it’s important to treat one another well).

This means we are free to embrace Taoism, Zen, Astrology, Evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and any one, or combination, of the ten thousand other ways of structuring the spiritual and physical worlds as long as we treat one another well. What we are after is not converting others to our way of thinking, or establishing the validity of one worldview over that of all the other worldviews. We are after an atmosphere in which people are honored and respected, and treated with courtesy, kindness and compassion. We can believe anything we want to as long as we treat one another well.

But, there is a catch: we have to help other people treat us well. The burden is shared. Other people agree to treat us well, and we agree to help them do that. We have a part to play in our own decent treatment. We can’t be a jerk or a twit and say, “You have to treat me well because Mommy said so!” We all have to be working to be decent human beings on both the treating and the being treated side of the equation. We start here and now in the work to be decent human beings.

I know you are waiting for me to say this so, “Here’s the deal:” If we have never been loved enough in the right kind of way, we will never be loved enough in the right kind of way! If we have never had enough of the right kind of attention, we will never have enough of the right kind of attention! If we have never been cared for in the right kind of way, we will never have enough of the right kind of caring. If we missed out on the right kind of parenting, we just missed out on the right kind of parenting, and there are no surrogate parents to make up for what our actual parents failed to supply. Here’s the rest of the deal: There is no consolation! There is no compensation! There is no off-setting the deficits and squaring accounts and making all things as they should be!

We will never have enough of what we didn’t get when we needed it. Our deficiencies are our deficiencies. Our losses are our losses. Our life up to this point is our life up to this point. If it is to be better from this point forward, and there is every reason to think that it can be, it will not be magically better by virtue of our finding the fountain of emotional wellbeing where we can drink all we need of all that we are lacking and be fulfilled forever.

There are three things we can do to make our life better from this point forward, and to help other people treat us well. The first is name the pain. What did we miss? What are we lacking? What is the deficit? The deficiency? The loss? Name it. Spell it out. Say exactly what it is. Know precisely what the hole is inside that cannot be filled.

The second thing is bear the pain. Don’t run from it. Don’t hide. Don’t numb yourself to it with any of the addictions of the day (alcohol, food, shopping, TV, cocaine, prescription pain killers, the list is really endless). Name the pain. Face the pain. Feel the pain. Bear the pain. You lost whatever it was that you lost, and that’s the way it is. It’s lost and gone forever just like my darlin’ Clementine. But, here’s the secret, ask the pain for the gift. The pain bears a gift. Claim the gift. I’m not saying that’s compensation, or consolation, or that the pain exists in order that you might gain the gift. No. We would be better off if our life had been what our life should have been. But, it wasn’t. And, there is a gift. Ask for the gift. Claim the gift. Make the gift yours as part of the work of bearing the pain.

Another part of the work of bearing the pain is addressing the pain. Write a letter, or several letters, to the pain. Allow the pain to write you back, using your own hand and pen. Talk to the pain—imagine the pain is in an empty chair. Speak to the pain. Then, sit in that chair and allow the pain to speak through you in addressing the things you have said.

Another part of the work of bearing the pain is feeling the pain. How does your body carry the pain. What is the feeling associated with the pain—what does it feel like to have the physical pain of the emotional pain? Talk to that place in your body that feels the physical pain which is associated with the emotional pain. Say, “Hello,” and see what the pain says in reply. Carry out the conversation. See where it goes.

While you are doing all this naming and bearing, you also have to be aware of the second secret for dealing with the pain of what we lost, of what we missed. Not only do we ask the pain for the gift, but we also understand that when dealing with insatiable need (like for the right kind of love and the right kind of attention), it is not a matter of having our needs met, which will never happen, but of being what we need! That’s what I said. If you need to be loved in the right way, be loving in the right way. If you need the right kind of attention, offer the right kind of attention. Be what you need!

You can’t believe how difficult that is until you take it for a spin around the block. You probably won’t be able to get it out of the driveway. We are so deficient and so focused on our needs that we can’t see anyone else, much less hear them. You can make a quick assessment of the neediness of any group by talking about a problem you have. Make one up. Talk about having your leg amputated when it seems to everyone that you have two perfectly normal legs. It won’t matter. In the space of about two seconds someone will take your problem away from you and start talking about their problem. “Oh, that’s nothing,” they will say, “When I had the flu and had to go get the paper and check the mail, I didn’t think I would make it back to the house.” And they will go on about their difficulties and leave you and yours high and dry. That’s what you have been doing to other people, up until now.

Now, you are teaching yourself to focus on them and their needs—the most unnatural thing you will likely ever attempt. But the rule is inviolable. Be what you need! When we care about others the way we need to be cared for, we move ourselves out of the center of our own concern, and become concerned about the needs of someone else. When that happens, everything is transformed, and we discover that we have actually helped others treat us well by not being so desperate for their love and attention that we scare them away.

It’s like this, you’ll have a better chance of having a Grandchild climb into your lap if you don’t try to get the Grandchild to climb into your lap. By being what you need, you stop thinking about what you need, and you look up and there is a Grandchild in your lap. But, you really have to stop thinking about what you need. You really have to not need it in order for it to work. By then, you don’t care if it works or not. That’s the key. We can only really care when we don’t care if we get anything out of caring. Isn’t that how it is, though?

09/30/07, Sermon

My life goals are simple. And, I think I speak for the species when I say that I want to spend more time doing what I like to do and less time doing what I don’t like to do. I want more assisting me, and less getting in my way. I want what I want when I want it, the way I want it, for as long as I want it, and then want something else instead. I merely want what any two-year-old would love to have. Interesting, isn’t it, how infantile we remain no matter how old we get? Growing older is the easy part. Growing up is another matter entirely.

Why would anybody ever want to grow up? Set themselves aside? Do what needs to be done, even though they don’t want to do it, enjoy nothing about it, and derive no benefit for having done it? Living requires us to do what needs to be done, and being alive requires us to do what we enjoy doing, and therein lies the rub. We cannot embrace one at the expense of the other. We have to do what it takes to live, AND do what it takes to be alive. And, we have to do that consciously, deliberately, mindfully, attentively. If we live well on the earth, we do it intentionally, not accidentally.

Here we get to the heart of the matter. Psyche and Soma. What it takes to live on the level of Soma and what it takes to be alive on the level of Psyche. What Psyche needs and what Soma needs are not the same needs. It is not enough to live. We live to be alive, fully, deeply, consciously. On the border between Psyche and Soma there is life becoming aware of itself. It is the place of consciousness to bring Psyche to life, while doing what it takes to live, by being aware of being alive in the time that is ours for living.

Part of the process of living and being alive intentionally, willfully, is listening to our lives and knowing what is being asked of us. How do we work ourselves into our own lives? How do we decide when it is our turn? It takes understanding how things are and how things work to know.
It has always been the task of the Wisdom Literature of the Ages to explore the questions of how things are and what can be done about it. Whether we are talking about the writings of Confucius or Lao Tsu or the I Ching or Proverbs or Ecclesiastes or The Sermon on the Mount, the questions addressed are the same: How do things work? How can we work within the givens of life in ways that allow us to be alive? What does Life and Being Alive require? What does living require? Of what does being alive consist? And, where is the balance point between the two? The balance point is in constant motion. We cannot move beyond the question, “What does living and being alive require, here, now?” The changing answer encompasses the work of being human.

The answer changes because life itself is not static. Death is the only steady state, and the more steady your state, the more dead you are. What living requires is not the same thing that being alive requires, and what each requires varies with the time and place of our living. We have to pay attention, live with mindfulness and awareness, and decide between the requirements of living and the requirements of being alive. Ah, but. That decision is hell itself. Consciousness is an agonizing burden. It is better to be asleep, to just want what we want, when we want it, for as long as we want it, and then want something else instead.

We want to live exactly as we want to live without anything unwanted happening to us. We want recklessness without consequences. We detest consequences, and try to arrange our lives so as to be consequence free, and the people who deny that they do, take medication to off-set their life style. “Bring on the Zantac, I’m eating onions and bacon!”

What of alignment, living in synch with the way of things? What of granting concessions, stepping aside? Let’s say you’re walking on a path and meet an elephant coming toward you. The prudent thing to do is step aside, give way, make room. When you meet an elephant on the path, step aside. Growing up is setting ourselves aside—something a two-year-old is incapable of doing. Growing up is standing aside, giving way, letting the elephant have the path.

Growing older is a path replete with elephants. Our sleeping patterns change, our digestive ability changes, our endurance and stamina changes on both physical and emotional levels. The list is long. We can hang onto youth. We can willfully impose the ways of the past onto our future. We can grow older, or grow up. We can deny the changes and refuse to step aside. But, these things are elephants on the path. What are we thinking?

The level of symptoms for which we are being treated nation-wide, both physical and emotional, would be reduced by 75, maybe 90, per-cent if we stopped trying to will what cannot be willed. We make ourselves sick by not stepping aside, by refusing to let come what’s coming and to let go what’s going, by failing to make adjustments and accommodate ourselves to our lives.
Ah, but. We don’t want to go too easily into that good night! We are here to “rail, rail, against the dying of the light”! We are certainly here to live as fully as possible as long as possible. What’s the difference between stepping aside and complete capitulation, between acceptance of the way things are and unconditional surrender? Awareness is the difference. Awareness, awareness, awareness.

By paying attention to how things are, we can make the distinctions required to do what can be done without willing what cannot be willed. We can find the difference between forcing something and finding a way. We can listen to our lives and discover what they will allow. In any situation, circumstance or context, we can do more than we are afraid we will be able to. Stepping aside for the elephants is not leaving the path for good.

The world is filled with people who are accommodating themselves to their losses and living beautiful lives. They have stepped off the path without losing their way. They have adapted themselves to their circumstances while maintaining their sense of identity and their connection with what is truly important. They have lived with disappointment and heartache without becoming bitter or brittle. In spite of all they have suffered, they have not been consumed by cynicism and despair. They remain gracious and kind, and are a joy to be around. They incubate life, cradle life, nurture and nourish life. They carry life forward into ten thousand futures. They are who we must become.

And so, on the trains to Dachau and Auschwitz and Buchenwald , we make a pledge to one another, we take a solemn oath: To Life! To Living! To Being Alive! We swear to one another that those of us who survive will live—as fully as possible for as long as possible—in honor of, in memory of, those who do not survive. Life is the gift. We cannot surrender it to fear and intimidation and the threat of the complete loss of everything. We cannot die before our time for dying. And so, we swear to one another that we will live, we will nurture life, nourish life, cradle life, incubate life in the face of the worst that life can do. And, in order to do that, we have to understand what life requires.

In Costa Rica, they have a saying, “Aqui estados!” “Here we are.” It might be better, it might be worse, but “here we are.” The cornerstone for life, the fundamental building block, is the understanding, “Here we are.” This is the foundational realization. The Wisdom Literature of the ages is geared to bringing us to the point of understanding “Here we are.” “Here we are.” What are we going to do about it? What now? What next?

Everything flows from this point forward. Everything depends upon our response to this here, this now. Since we are here, we may as well make the best of it. We may as well make ourselves available to one another, and offer each other as much of the right kind of help in the right kind of way as we are able to do.

We may as well offer as much kindness as we can muster, as much humor as we can spare, as much grace and warmth as we can manage, as much gentleness and generosity as we can summons. The truth is “here we are.” The question is, “What are we going to do about it, with it?” The question is, “How are we going to live here, now, in ways that bring as much of the good to life as can be brought to life?” The question is, “How are we going to incubate life, cradle life, nurture life, nourish life, here, now?”

09/16/07, Sermon

We don’t realize how much is being synchronized so that we might function normally in the world. There are some intricate balances that are being maintained at all times. Who is in charge? Who is orchestrating, directing, the action? It’s mostly unconscious, out of our awareness. “We” are just along for the ride! This was brought home to me last week when I had a bout with a bad sandwich, which I didn’t know was bad, but something knew. And, after my body got rid of the culprit, I not only did not want to repeat that particular sandwich experience ever again, but, food in its entirety was repulsive. It is as though my body was saying, “No more! If I can’t trust you any better than that, I’m not having any of it ever again!”

Well. Just try to function in the world without proper nutrition! You don’t think straight without proper nutrition. I couldn’t connect any dots. I would go to bed without taking my cholesterol medication, making coffee, or brushing my teeth. What does my body think it’s doing? It has to eat! Who is in charge here? What is he, or she, thinking? Kick my body back in, will you? Give me an appetite! How long do you expect me to wait around, subsisting on a diet of yogurt and dry toast, until you come to your senses?

Our bodies can turn against us. Disease, or a bad sandwich, can wreck the internal balancing mechanism. Our digestive system can shut down. Our auto-immune system can attack good cells and ignore the bad ones. We can hallucinate ourselves into a world no one can enter but us. Schizophrenics, and bi-polar victims, and psychotics have slipped out of balance. Their Synchronizer took an extended leave of absence, leaving no one at the controls.

I see that as more evidence of the reality of the Psyche. When the flow of life, when the internal harmony, is disrupted by a significant trauma, or maybe just a bump in the road (like a bad sandwich), things can be a long time falling back into place. And, they may never return to “normal.” Maybe “abnormal” becomes the “new normal,” and everyone in our lives has to adjust to a “balance” that is more “extreme” than “smoothly running.”

What can we do about it? What can we do when we are not in charge of the operation of what constitutes “us” in the world? What can we do when no one who might be in charge asks our opinion, or consults us in any way, or considers our ideas and suggestions? How can we bring consciousness to bear upon the unconscious processes? I can force myself to eat, but I can’t keep from throwing up. Now, there’s a pickle for you! What can be done to restore harmonious interaction of “the self” and get ourselves to a reasonably acceptable level of functioning in the world? Honor the Psyche! Bear the pain! Wait it out! Accept what comes! I know my body doesn’t want to eat, and I know my body has to eat. I honor the Psyche by attending my body and giving it what it will eat. If that is yogurt and dry toast, then, that’s that. How long can I live on yogurt and dry toast? I don’t know. How long will it take before my body moves on to something more substantial? I don’t know. But, I know I can’t force-feed myself without it coming back at me. My body has the lead here. I’m just along for the ride.

Learning, and accepting, my place in the world of the Psyche is the fundamental lesson. How might consciousness serve unconsciousness? What does unconsciousness “have in mind”? How might consciousness assist the unconscious processes? Who is in charge here? Who is in control? Toward what end are “we” living? How might “we” be better coordinated in the work to realize that end? How does consciousness commune with unconsciousness for the good of the whole? How do we wake up to the reality of the Psyche? Metaphor. Images. Stories. Ink blots. Art. Music. Dreams. Play. Nature. Silence. Meditation. Retreats. Reflection. Walk-a-bouts. Wool-gathering. Day-dreaming. Writing. Conversation. Slips-of-the-tongue. The list is long.

The human predicament is that we know what we want, but we don’t know what to want, and we don’t want what we should want. We want what we have no business having. Which, of course, is the essence of sin. Wanting what we should want is the essence of right-living and peace. It is our life’s work to align ourselves with the right things, to align ourselves with what might be called “the way of the Psyche.”

The Psyche’s agenda, so to speak, seems to be on the order of things like: wholeness, integrity, completion, fulfillment, harmony, concord, and peace. The Psyche is not concerned about our personal advantage. Jesus can die, for instance, in the service of his alignment with the Psyche, in the service of a greater good than his own, personal good. What is good for us may not be good at all, and thus, the factor determining action is not what’s in it for us, or what we stand to gain or lose, or what the advantage or benefit to us might be, but what integrity requires, what wholeness and peace demand.

I am well-integrated in the mountains or desert with a camera, yet, I would be radically disintegrated on a tour bus with forty other photographers, or at a week-long photography convention. Some experiences reconnect us and help us get it together, and some experiences fragment us and tear us apart. Neither the Army nor an ashram would be good for me. I do not live well on someone else’s terms, on someone else’s schedule. In some places we are splintered, in some places we are whole. It helps to know where we belong, and where we have no business being.

Our work is wholeness, authenticity, realness. But, being authentic, genuine, and real does not mean telling people what we think or saying what’s on our minds. That’s nothing more than bad manners. The work of authenticity is the work of bringing ourselves to life in the world. It is the work of waking up and becoming a true human being.

Yet, it is never enough to be awake, personally and individually. Enlightenment is not for our edification. It is for the transformation of the world. As Tom Jackson reminded us last week, waking up implicates us in the process of waking others up—to the extent that they can be awakened—by identifying, and supporting, and participating in institutions and traditions that offer alternative ways of seeing and living in the popular culture of our day. Alternative, enlightened and enlightening, movements are everywhere. It is just a matter of realizing that and linking up with them in the work of redefining the legitimate goals and purposes of life, and transforming—waking up—the world.

This social side of what we might call salvation, of what is awakening and enlightenment, has often been neglected in favor of a religion of personal piety and individual realization. Whether it is accepting Jesus, or achieving satori, the work is private and the impact on culture and society is more symbolic than substantive. We might outlaw alcohol, for example, but leave the darker, deeper matters of racism, wealth-and-poverty, and inequality, unaddressed and undisturbed.

The culture is always happy for people to get religion or become enlightened because that occupies the people’s attention while the culture is busy reducing their freedom and limiting their lives, and binding them to the service of the culture. Whom does the culture serve? Who benefits from the way life is lived? Who is harmed by it? In the west, do we exist for the economy, or does the economy exist for us? Do we serve the economy, or does the economy serve us? Who benefits from the economy? Who is harmed by it?

When Clinton said, “It’s about the economy, stupid,” he meant we will do anything to be wealthy. We will do anything to feel wealthy. We will do anything to be apparently wealthy. The economy owns us, and we will not do anything to hurt our economic chances, no matter how saved or enlightened we may be. The culture doesn’t care about our religion because it knows our real religion is our economic self-interest, and we will not allow ourselves to be any more awake than we can afford to be.

Jesus said, “No one can be my disciple unless you give up everything you have and follow me.” Jesus was dead-on, but now he’s just dead. And all the talk about his resurrection and his getting us to heaven when we die keeps him dead, and keeps us from having to deal with the deep truth of his counter-cultural challenge to the powers and principalities that force apparent life down one path and keep real life from branching off onto others.

The writer of John’s gospel had Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me.” John wasn’t putting Jesus forth as the only alternative to all the other religions in the world. John was putting Jesus forth as the only alternative to the predominant culture of the world. John is having Jesus talk to Caesar here. John is having Jesus say, “Rome doesn’t know beans about what is important. If you do it Caesar’s way, you will be lost and gone forever. I am the way, the truth, and the life. Stop serving the culture—stop serving the idea of your own personal wealth—and serve God.” Ah, but, we want all this and heaven, too, so, we bow to God and marry Caesar. And, the call is the same one that rolls through the ages: “Wake up! Realize what you are doing!”

Our work is that of waking up, waking ourselves up, waking each other up, catching ourselves in the act of sleeping on the job. Tools for the work are fresh eyes, “beginner’s eyes.” Ah, now that’s the trick! Looking at what we have always seen and seeing it differently! Who can do that on cue, on schedule? What’s the formula for seeing something else, something more? Where DOES seeing come from? How DOES seeing happen? It occurs, more often than not, don’t you know, just by fooling around. We stumble our way into enlightenment, and wake ourselves up by tripping over the cat, or going for a walk with the dog, or taking a shower. Which makes it an inexact science, and puts the outcome quite beyond our control. Nothing is more important or less manageable than waking up. And, that’s what’s waiting on us—to wake ourselves up and everyone else as well.

09/09/07, Sermon

Wake up! Realize what you’re doing! That should be the mantra of our lives. That is the foundational awareness, and is basic to the identity of, the definition of, the self, us, who we are. We know who we are by knowing what we are doing—and by doing mostly, if not only, those things that “ring true” to, that “square up” with, the drift of our heart and soul, and reflect, express, who we are for all to see.

We are here to wake up, realize what we are doing, and reclaim our life—the life that is ours to live! No more mindlessly following the black foot prints! No more doing what we are told just because we are told to do it! No more doing what is done because it has always been done that way and that’s what’s supposed to be done and that’s the way we are supposed to do it!

Ah, but. There is a reason things are the way they are, you know. The reason is that it’s easier that way. Things would be different if it weren’t so difficult. Living our own lives is the hardest thing in the whole book of things. Knowing what we are doing and being responsible for making clear choices, recognizing and solving our own problems every day for the rest of our lives, and dealing successfully with the opposition and resistance that comes our way in response to the way we are in the world, well, that is more of a burden that most people care to carry. It’s easier to just fall in line, read from the script, and make no waves. It’s easier to be dead than alive.

Waking up and realizing what we are doing comes with a price tag attached. It is the price of being alive. It is the cross Jesus is talking about when he says, “Those of you who would be my disciple, pick up your cross daily and follow me.” Now, you have to understand the deal about discipleship. You have to understand what is at stake in following Jesus. This is the real cross: “The disciples become like the master in following no master.” When you follow Jesus, you reclaim your life. You take your life back, and become, not who Jesus was, but who you are. When you follow Jesus, who was exactly who Jesus was, you have to become exactly who you are. There are no black footprints! So, you follow Jesus by following no one, don’t you see? By finding your own way, making your own path!

But, there is a cross. It is the price of being alive. It is the agony of living our own lives, of being true to ourselves, of waking up and realizing what we are doing, and doing mostly, if not only, those things that “ring true” to the drift of our heart and soul, and reflect, express who we are for all to see. The price is what it costs us to stand apart from the culturally imposed ideal in order to “be true to ourselves” and live the life that is authentically ours to live. The culture thinks we were born to support the economy, take our place in the cultural organization, be a “good company woman, or man,” a “good team player,” and go shopping a lot. The culture dangles trinkets before our eyes, and robs us of our soul.

Our life task is to determine, decide, discover, discern who we are and what we are going to do about it. How does what we are doing express, exhibit, relate to who we are? In what ways does what we are doing bury, conceal, hide, deny who we are? The glitter and sheen of the culture’s beads and mirrors can distract us from the essential matters, and lead us away from the service of heart and soul. Diversions abound. What is the legitimate core, focus, center of our life? What is the “organizing principle” around which “we” coalesce? The central identity by which we recognize ourselves? The spiritual quest, the spiritual journey, the search for the Holy Grail is the adventure of seeking our own heart, our own soul, living the life that is ours to live.

There should be a course on the order of “Life 101” taught in every Jr. High School and church in the land. We have to learn to live. Life does not come naturally. When John had Jesus say, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly,” we understood that to mean eternal life in heaven with God and the saints and the angels after our biological death. That’s wrong. Abundant life has to do with a simple shift in perspective, seeing through what the world offers as life to the solid core of life, to what actually constitutes life, true life, “abundant life.”

John also has Jesus say, “Not as the world gives, do I give unto you,” and “My kingdom is not of this world.” Again, we think Jesus is talking about the heavenly regions. But, Jesus is talking about life, about being alive, and saying that the basis of life, the solid ground of life, is not what the culture, the world, sets us up to believe that it is.

The question Jesus lived to answer was not, “How can I get these people to heaven when they die?”, but, “What does it mean to be alive in this life, right here, right now?” Think a yellow Hummer will do it? How about another yellow Hummer? Maybe a red one for the weekend? What does the culture, the world, say it takes to “really live”? What is the culture’s idea of “abundant life”? Jesus stood apart from all of it.

Jesus’ idea was that life was a function of integrity, of being grounded in what is deepest, truest, and best about us, of being true to ourselves—loving ourselves—in relationship with one another and with God. We lose our lives, in Jesus’ view, when we try to save our lives, when we store up things for ourselves, when we live with our advantage, our gain, our boon as our primary concern. But, when we live in the service of our gift, our genius, our talent, our calling, using what we have at hand in doing what needs to be done (which is not necessarily what we want to do or what we think we ought to do), there is life, abundant life, spilling out, over-flowing, blessing all.

We do not find the Grail by thinking our way to it, in the comfort of our recliner, with something to sip on at our side. We do not find ourselves by thinking about ourselves. We find ourselves the way we find God—by living our way there. And, when we find ourselves, we find God. When we find God, we find ourselves. We live our way to the discovery of ourselves, of God. The trick is to do it—to live—with our eyes open.

The process of waking up is exactly the story of the species and of our individual lives. It consists of living and being aware of our living, talking about our living, examining our living, opening ourselves to the experience of being alive. Crucial to the process of waking up is being alert to the inconsistencies, and incongruities, and contradictions, and discrepancies at work in our lives. We say one thing but do another. What’s going on there? When we do what we think we want to do and our bodies develop symptoms, what’s going on there? When we do what we think we are supposed to do and keep meeting resistance and opposition, what’s going on there? Where do we go to explore these questions? With whom do we process our lives?

The failure of the Bush administration is the failure to process its experience, the failure to wake up and realize what it’s doing. Global warming is what it is today because Bush refused to wake up and realize what was happening. Every pickle you have ever found yourself in would have been less severe if you had realized sooner what you were doing and what was going on. We will not wake up. It’s too hard to wake up. It asks too much of us to wake up. It’s so much easier to drive with the accelerator to the floorboard, asleep at the wheel.

How long before we learn the lessons of life: Easy is hard. Short is long. Fast is slow. Immediate gratification accrues compound interest by the minute to be paid out over long our lifetime and that of our children’s children. But. We don’t want to hear it. Don’t wake us up with the facts! Let us dream our way sleepwalking to oblivion! Anything more than that requires too much of us! So. What about the dream world? What’s it like there?

Security, right? And, comfort. Peace of mind. Denial. Diversion. Distraction. In the Dream World, we are the center of the universe. Everything exists for our pleasure, serves our ends, works to our advantage. We can do whatever strikes our fancy without impact or repercussion. In the Dream World, we can eat whatever we want, exercise as little as we want, weigh as much as we want because diabetes and heart disease and strokes happen to someone else. In the Dream World, we can smoke, and drink too much, and drive too fast, and have sex with whomever we can talk into having sex with us because there are no consequences, and medical science is working feverishly to produce a pill to fix everything. In the Dream World, we can live lavishly, excessively, charge everything to some credit card, and when it maxes out get a new credit card, because there is no day of reckoning, no comeuppance, no end to the dream, and no one and no thing to take into account.

What are we thinking? Oh, that’s right! We are NOT thinking! We are DREAMING! And we are angry at Bush for dreaming with us. He’s the one who is supposed to be thinking, curing global warming, fixing the economy, finding more fossil fuel, so that we can go on with our endless fantasy of life like we like it in the Dream World.

And, the solution would be what, exactly? How do you cure those who don’t want to be cured? How do you fix those who don’t want anyone tampering with their controls? How do you wake people up who are perfectly happy dreaming of endless ease, perpetual comfort, and complete security, with the accelerator to the floorboard, asleep at the wheel?

If we are to Wake up! Realize what we are doing! We are going to have to pay attention. We are going to have to become increasingly aware of who we are and what we are about and how that is expressed in the way we live. We are going to have to develop eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands. Then, it is only a matter of living with essential integrity by doing things that are integral with, aligned with, in synch with, what is deepest, truest and best about us. "You 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." (T.S. Elliot in Little Gidding V, from 'Four Quartets' 1942).

08/26/07, Sermon

Here is your life’s task, the meaning of life, the whole point, what it’s all about: Be who you are, without denying who you also are, while assisting, enhancing, everyone else’s ability to be who they are. That’s about it as far as I can see. What else could there be? Self-realization, self-determination, self-expression, while helping others to achieve the same ends. That’s it as I see it. Being who we are, within the context and circumstances of our lives. Being true to ourselves while enabling others to be true to themselves. How’re you going to beat that?

The problem is, of course, that we try to be true to ourselves at the expense of other people. We can define ourselves, most days, fairly well. But defining ourselves while “staying in touch” with one another is tricky, and doing it while “staying in touch” with those who are opposite from us in every way is out of the question. What do we have in common with them? In relationship with those who aren’t like us, it is “every person for herself, for himself.” Self-interest above all interests is our motto. It’s gotten us where we are today. But, it all begins to change with self-awareness. Awareness is the solution to all of our problems today. And tomorrow. And all the way down the road.

Awareness. Awareness. Awareness. It’s the avenue to all that is worth our time. Eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands are predicated upon, and flow from, awareness. There is nothing beyond being awake, aware, and alive to have, or do, or achieve, or be. All we have to do is wake up. How hard could that be?

How much can you see, before you have to stop looking? There is no pain quite like the pain of awareness. What keeps us going, once we know what we are up against and what our chances are? When we can no longer fool ourselves, or kid ourselves, or pretend that things are different than they are—what do we do then?

Then, everything hangs on our belief in the innate value of self-realization, self-determination, and self-expression within the context and circumstances of our lives. We may never have what we need. There may be no paper in the home of the poet. No paints and brushes in the life of the artist. No piano for the young Mozart, the old Beethoven. Then what? Then, we have to deal with what is ours to deal with, and find a way. Awareness. Awareness. Awareness.

We are always up against something. We always have to find a way. We always have to be who we are with the resources available to us in the time and place of our living. We cannot abandon the work of self-realization, self-determination, self-expression just because we have the gifts of Michael Jordan and basketball hasn’t been invented.

We have to be who we are, within the context and circumstances of our lives. That is the divine imperative. We have to bring to life the gift that is ours. We have to serve the genius within. It may not look like much to those who are watching, but it is our gift to give and we have to bestow it upon the world to the best of our ability.

In Batesville, Mississippi I discovered my gift of raking earth smooth and level. We bought a house there with nearly an acre of land attached, which had drainage problems and holes and depressions which made it impossible to mow. Over our six years there, I spread eight dump truck loads of top soil with a shovel, a wheelbarrow and a rake. I found God in the dirt.

When you discover your gift, there is God. Don’t know where your gift lies? Here are some questions to point you in the general direction: Where is the harmony? The peace? The pleasure? The satisfaction? What brings you joy? Where do you come alive? What do you love? Don’t discount or dismiss what is there in favor of what you think ought to be there, or of what you wish were there, or hope will be there. We are always looking past our gift, thinking it has to be something on the order of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to count. We think if we can’t compose a Sonata in E-flat, it doesn’t count for a gift. If we aren’t being paid 8 million dollars a year to hit home runs, we are shamefully un-gifted and should not be seen in public.

Let me explain something to you fine people: Raking Dirt! My gift is Raking Dirt! So, don’t disparage your gift! How could your gift be less significant than raking dirt? So, recognize and embrace your gift. That’s the first rule. Your gift is your gift! If your gift is hitting home runs, hit home runs. If it is raking dirt, rake dirt. It is all about you and your gift. Self-realization, self-determination, self-expression. You can’t find God without finding your gift. You can’t serve God without serving your gift. If you think you are too good for your gift, you are too good for God. But, here’s the second rule: Don’t think your gift is your actual gift. It’s all metaphorical. Don’t forget that.

What do you think the Promised Land is all about? Latitude and longitude? Political boundaries? Standing armies, and sewage treatment, and garbage pickup? I guess you think the Holy Grail is about the actual vessel Jesus used to hold the wine when he served the Last Supper! You’re wearing me out. What am I to do with you people?

Take a deep breath and think of all you know about the Bible and let me ask you this one: When, throughout all the Bible, was God present and known in the lives of the people? Let me just cut to the chase. It was only when the people were wrestling themselves into alignment with, and living out the expression of, their gift, their genius, their calling. God is never known to, or by, anyone for the simple joy of paling around with God. We lost this bit of insight with the invention of doctrine, which became a substitute for God. Once thinking about God became confused with knowing God, we just sat around talking about God, thinking we were doing something. If you want to know God, you have to walk away from the sermons and the Sunday school discussions, and the Bible studies, and take up your life. The realness of God is simultaneous with, and contingent upon, self-realization, self-determination, and self-expression. God, gentle people, is in the dirt!

But—and here it gets tricky—the literal is always disappearing into the metaphorical. The Promised Land, the Holy Grail, Dirt were all literal, actual, tangible, concrete, physical realities at one point, but their literal and physical truth is nothing compared to their metaphorical and spiritual truth. There is more to your gift, your genius, your calling—there is more to you—than meets the eye. Much more. The depth of you, you might say, is the boundless joy of God. The physical expression of your gift, of you, is just the doorway to the depth and breadth of you. Heraclitus said, “You would not find the boundaries of the soul, even by traveling along every path, so deep a measure does it have.” He is talking about you and me. Our depth is as boundless and God’s.

We wake up to ourselves in the dirt, but it isn’t about the dirt, or the rake, or the wheelbarrow, or the shovel. Those babies are just the mechanism by which you discover you, through which you stumble into your gift, your genius, your calling, you. And, remember that your gift is not yours, but the gift you are to the world. And, don’t think your gift is actually working with dirt, smoothing dirt, raking dirt! Not any more than your gift is the actual, physical, geographical and political boundaries of the Promised Land!

Think about the Bible once more, and take yourselves back to the early days of the realization of the Land of Promise, and the failure of the people to understand that it really wasn’t about the land. The prophet knew, but was unable to convince the people, that their gift, their genius, their calling had nothing to do with having a king. Ah, but, the people were on a literal track, and could not be dissuaded. And the king (that would be David) knew that the truth of God had nothing to do with the construction of a temple. Ah, but, all the other lands had capital cities and capital temples, central places of commerce and worship. That must be how it is done. And so, the concretizing began.

The literalization of religion is the death of religion. God is in the dirt, but God is not the dirt. The dirt has nothing to do with God. How’s that for double talk? Well. Here’s the deal. The straightest talk is crooked. Bent. Gnarled and knotted. Nonsense. I wouldn’t lie to you about this. Here’s the deal: You have to dive into the darkness and hope you pop out on the other side. You can’t figure it out first. You have to live your way to the answers which just open the way to more questions. There are no answers in the sense of an explanation that ties everything off and wraps everything up and leaves nothing more to be known. So, when you pop out on the other side, you pop out in mystery and wonder, awe and laughter, and giggle a lot for no apparent reason. In the darkness, however, there is a lot of groping around in frustration, fear, anxiety and anger. It takes a while to understand that answers don’t save us, and information is useless. By the time you understand what the information means, you don’t need it. So, there is no point in my saying anything more, or in you listening to it. You either know it already, or you can’t use it. One of the 10,000 spiritual laws is “You have to know what I mean before you can understand what I’m saying.” That’s one of the things you’ll giggle about when you pop up on the other side.

Here’s some more of the deal (he said, still talking, to those who are still listening, in spite of what he just said and they heard): We wake up to God in the dirt, but we move on, we move on. When we arrive at the Promised Land, we may put down roots and set up shop, but we keep moving. We don’t need kings, and temples, and standing armies and nuclear warheads, because what we have cannot be kept safe, or taken from us.

What we have is who we are. What do we need to be who we are? Upon what does our who-we-are-ness depend? I smooth dirt! YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!!! No one can. I cannot lose it, or keep it safe. It is who I am. It is what I do. I can do it anywhere, any time. I can do it without rakes, and wheelbarrows, and shovels. I can do it, get this, pay attention now, this is crucial, it is the heart of the whole entire thing, I can do it WITHOUT DIRT!