Wanting

I know what your problem is. Your problem is that you aren’t getting what you want. If you were getting what you want, you wouldn’t have any problems. Isn’t that right? The only thing wrong with you is that you don’t have enough people in your life handing you what you want. The only thing standing between you and complete happiness, to the point of gleeful squeals and jigs of joy, is knowing the secret to having what you want. Well, you have come to the right place this morning! I am here to fix you up for the rest of your life: STOP WANTING! Wanting is ruining your life! If you didn’t want anything, you would be deliriously delighted with how things are right now.

We have painstakingly established the fact that if you didn’t have anything to want you would be serenely enraptured and blissful to the core. The quickest way to that happy land is to stop wanting. Instant bliss. There. That takes care of that. I would ask you if there is anything else I can do for you while I’m in the mood and we’re all here, but there couldn’t possibly be. Once you’ve stopped wanting, there is nothing else to ask for, nothing more to have. Life is good. And religion is now of no use to you whatsoever.

People have traditionally used religion as a tool to pry what they want from God. We are told that if we give ten percent of our annual income after taxes, deductions, exemptions, exclusions and expenses to God, in return, God will give us everything we ask for. It’s a very good deal. Where are you going to beat it? Give to Get. And to hear those who are selling it tell it, it works every time.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this little detail, but those selling the Give to Get deal are always those who handle our ten percent on its way to God. They are the middle persons, overseeing the transmission of our withdrawals to their deposit in the heavenly coffers. I’m not suggesting that that would be any reason for them to lie about how well the idea Giving to Get actually works, but it does sound a bit like bribery, inducement, enticement, or “priming the well” as they say in the deep south. I’m only pointing out that religion’s primary function is to position us to get what we want from God, and that if we didn’t want anything, where would preachers be?

Or advertising agencies? Or manufacturing conglomerates? Or, well, Wall Street? We’ve started something here, haven’t we. This is revolutionary. Radical stuff. There is no end to the implications. It could transform life as we know it. End life as we know it. If we didn’t want anything, there wouldn’t be anything. Where would that leave us? Desire-less living wouldn’t offer us anything to live for. The Buddha put forth desire as the origin of suffering, but the blessed state of desire-less-ness isn’t all that pain-free considering the mess things would be in if we stopped wanting.

We can't not-want! Wanting is the ground of existence. The economy is based on wanting, and everything is based on the economy. If we stopped swapping money around the table there would be very little eating, or anything else going on. So, never mind about the bliss of not-wanting. The Yogis can sit not-wanting, but somebody has to fill their rice bowls. Has to want to. Has to want to care for those who want-not. Religion is safe, and I have a job. Thanks for your part in filling my rice bowl.

But. Wanting does get in the way. What a tree wants doesn't matter. With the proper amount of light, water and nutrients, a tree is going to be a tree. What we want matters most. Why live if we can't have what we want? What's the point if it isn’t getting what we want? What a tree wants doesn't matter. What we want is the only thing that does matter. A tree will thrive with the right amount of water, light and nutrients. Not us. We have to have what we want or why live? A tree never asks, “Why live?” Trees live wherever they can for as long as they can, glad to be alive. Not us. We have to have what we want or else.

You’ve heard me say that the only thing standing between us and God is us. The only thing standing between us and the way that is The Way is us. And the thing about us that is in our way is our wanting, willful, way. So, what to do? We can’t want and we can’t not-want. It’s a pickle. The only way to move forward when you are in a pickle—when you are caught between two mutually exclusive options—is to do one thing with your eye on the other. You must not forget that you are in a pickle, and you must not let being in a pickle incapacitate you, immobilize you, and keep you from doing what needs to be done. When you are in a pickle, you must BE in a pickle, consciously, intentionally, deliberately—maintaining the tension of the opposite poles and bearing the pain of not being able to do either because of the other AND DO ONE with an eye on the other one.

We have to want wanting to not want.

Here’s how it works: There is wanting, and there is knowledge of wanting, knowing that we are wanting. Spend more time knowing you are wanting than wanting unknowingly. Don't just want, know that you are wanting. Be interested in the wanting. What does wanting keep you from facing, doing, thinking about? How does wanting insulate you from the life that is waiting to be lived? What role does wanting play? How does wanting keep you from living? How does wanting enable you to live?

The role of wanting in enabling life and preventing life is the heart of the matter. It revolves around the question, “Whose side are we on?” Wanting, when it is aligned with life and exercised in the service of life that is the heart and soul of life, what life is all about, is, as it has been phrased in the church of our experience, “obedience to the will of God.” Wanting that is opposed to life and contrary to the heart and soul of life, of what life is all about, is, as has been phrased in the church of our experience, “disobedience unto sin.” We can want what is right for us and we can want what is wrong for us. So, alongside of the question, “Whose side are we on?”, we place the question, “What do we want and how does that serve life or oppose life?”

In order to answer these questions, we have to answer the other question, “Of what does LIFE consist?” We don’t spend enough time with this one. It’s taken away from us by the ad agencies and cultural trends. LIFE consists of the lights and action of Gay Paree, or whatever the current equivalent is. But we can’t trust the commercials or the culture with this one. It’s the biggie. No one can tell us of what our life consists. That is ours to divine on our own.

The spiritual journey, quest, task is knowing and doing what is life for us. The church as it ought to be would be equipped to help you know what you are here for, to discern what is yours to do, to find the path with your name on it and live the life that is your life to live. We are talking that word you hate destiny here. We can’t escape it. And trying to puts us nose to nose with the essential question, “Whose side are we on?”

Here, we cannot avoid thinking about what we want. We have to think about what we want in order to want what is right for us, in order to live the life that is ours to live. We are not free to live any way we choose, to do whatever strikes our fancy. We cannot live any way we choose and be at home with ourselves, at peace with who we are. We can choose to live in ways that are at cross purposes with our destiny.

We know when things are right and when they are not right. We know when we are working with ourselves, when we are working against ourselves. We know when what we want is serving ends worthy of us, is aligned with the life that is our life to live, and when it is not. We know when we are kidding ourselves. IF we think about it. We avoid the pain of realization by living too fast to listen. Immersing ourselves in the lights and action of Gay Paree, we numb ourselves against the knowledge of having taken a wrong turn, again. We run from emptiness and seek to find a meaningful life in the catalogs, at the resorts and on the showroom floors, while destiny waits.

The good news/bad news is truth does not go away. Truth taps us on our shoulder with symptoms and a nagging sense that things are not right somehow. Emptiness, boredom, restlessness, anxiety all suggest that Paree isn’t it, and it is only a matter of time until we wake up or die with a withered soul. On the other hand, an indication of living in the service of our destiny is passion for life. Passion, enthusiasm, zest, zeal suggest destiny in the making. We cannot be connected with our destiny without being passionate about it, but passion is only an indicator, not evidence, of alignment with our destiny. Lethargy, emptiness, ennui, on the other hand, are evidence of life unlived, of destiny not served. We can be passionate about that which is not destiny. So, we have to think about what we are wanting, and keep an eye on ourselves at all times. Because shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best.

The Invisible World

If you are going to believe anything, believe there is more to you than meets the eye. If you are going to believe anything else, believe that there is more to everyone and everything than meets the eye. It all starts with the presumption of The More, The Invisible, The Unknown, The More. The fundamental spiritual assumption is that the visible world rests on the invisible world. If you aren’t willing to make that assumption, there is, for you, no such thing as spirituality. All that is real and true is material, physical, logical, rational, concrete, actual, tangible, measureable, weighable, countable, objective and verifiable. Spiritual is immaterial, “of the spirit,” beyond the physical senses, a world apart from the world of ordinary, apparent reality. So, if you think there is more to it all than meets the eye, you belong here. If you don’t, you’re welcome, of course, to stay, but why?

The work of the church as it ought to be is the work of connecting its members with the unknown, invisible, world, with The More than meets the eye. Faith is actually trust that the invisible world, The More, exists and can be approached, apprehended, intuited, experienced, expressed and incarnated within the visible world of ordinary, apparent, reality. This kind of trust, the willingness to trust ourselves to the truth of the invisible world, is the only kind of faith we need to have. Everything flows from there.

Spiritual reality has a physical dimension. Physical reality has a spiritual dimension. There is a point, on the boundary between yin and yang, between spiritual and physical, at which both are one. If you experience the purely physical at a sufficient depth of awareness and appreciation, a doorway opens, a threshold is crossed, and you are awash in the spiritual. And, on the other hand, if you meditate in the darkness to a sufficient depth of spiritual realization, you will have to give that sense of The More some manner of actual, tangible, concrete physical expression in your life. The one calls forth the other. Neither exists apart from the other. Both are functions of reality becoming real through our experience, through our conscious awareness. We see, say, sing the universe into being. Where would either world be without our awareness of both?

We are the bridge between worlds, connecting worlds, blessing worlds, and we, in turn, are graced and blessed by our association with each. Or, we have the potential of being so blessed. It’s realization depends upon our willing, conscious, participation in the process of bridging the worlds. This process requires us to represent the physical world to the spiritual, and the spiritual to the physical. We translate, interpret, and accommodate each world within and unto the other. For instance, we understand that each world comprehends time differently. In the physical world, time is linear and sequential in a way that can be scheduled and planned. In the spiritual world, time is pregnant with meaning and wonder but the when of birth is “in its own time,” and impossible to pinpoint beyond “in the fullness of time,” or, “when the time is right.”

We have to appreciate the differences between the world of spirit and the world of matter in order to bridge the worlds and represent one to the other. We can deepen our awareness of the differences between the worlds by looking at the research being done in the area of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. If we think of the right side of the brain as being the spiritual hemisphere, and the left side of the brain as being the physical hemisphere, we will have a metaphor for how the two worlds compare and relate to one another.

Critical to our relationship with each world, to our ability to bridge the worlds, is the realization that there is nothing in it for us. We, as a species, have the age-old idea that the spiritual world is ours to plunder and pillage to benefit our life in the physical world. We think that once we learn the secret of access, within the spiritual world lie the keys to the kingdom and that, by becoming spiritual, we will have the wisdom and insight necessary to manage our affairs in the physical world to our maximum advantage. Or, we have the other idea. We think that by subjecting ourselves to the power and control of the spiritual world, by being spiritual and pure, aloof, and unscathed by the sinful “world of the flesh,” we will be kept safe until the day of resurrection when we will rise with the saints in light and be accorded royal robes and high places in the kingdom of heaven, and enjoy eternal life there to our maximum advantage. Either way, it’s the same deal. We think the spiritual world exists for our enjoyment, benefit, and glory. The truth is that is not so.

We are the bridge between worlds, the boundary between yin and yang. As such, it is our place to collaborate and cooperate with each world for the good of both. We compensate for and counteract the deficiencies of the one with the strengths of the other and so make peace between the two. We live within both worlds for the sake of each and work for the reconciliation of one with the other. We do that by perceiving, engaging and incarnating spiritual reality within the world of physical reality. There is no advantage, no benefit, no immunity, no special treatment for those who take up the work of being citizens of both worlds. What we get for our trouble is an interesting and meaningful life.

Jesus was recognized by the centurion as the son of God. The disciples understood him to be the Anointed one of God. He was hailed as Messiah (Christ): The One Who Makes God Known. This is living as a citizen of both worlds, so that those who see us see the spiritual through the physical. Now, we only come close to this in our best moments on our best days, but we all have given the world a glimpse of grace, and mercy, and peace. We have shown what we are capable of. And, of course, we have shown what we are also capable of! We have been as petty as we have been gallant, as mean-spirited as we have been gracious, as snarly and rude as we have been kind and generous. We are, indeed, citizens of both worlds, exhibiting the qualities of each in a tangled mass that makes more for confusion than for fusion, more for chaos than for peace. Our work is cut out for us.

The work is that of becoming conscious of who we are and what is ours to do, and being intentional about doing it. That work involves us in learning all we can of the invisible world in order to be agents, envoys, of that world within the visible world of normal, apparent, reality. In this endeavor, research into the right hemisphere of the brain can help us access the spiritual world. Intuition, instinct, resonance, synchronicity, numinous awareness, dreams, symbols, Freudian slips, and the like are “thin places” where the invisible world can be apprehended if not studied. We become students of these things in order to know as much as we can know of the invisible and unknown.

Okay, whoa, time to stop. Time to say right out loud that no arena of human endeavor is more replete with charlatans, swindlers, imposters, liars, cheats, cranks, creeps and ne’er-do-wells than the invisible world. Here, we move into the area of metaphysics, cosmology, parapsychology, astrology, and la-la-everything. We’re swamped, stampeded, bowled-over and undone by the kooky hoards. We don’t have a chance. This is why Orthodoxy is so comforting. There, lines have been drawn between revealed truth and speculative thrill seeking. The church of our experience may not have been all that welcoming of new ideas, but at least there were standards in place and the people were all normal. We can’t get very far from that without reaching an edge we don’t want to step over. How can we talk about knowing the invisible and unknown world without risking the loss of all bearings and coming out, if we come out at all, wearing crystals and chewing peyote?

So, here’s the first rule: Don’t take anyone’s word for anything ever, including mine. I trust Carl Jung because of his training and his experience with the unconscious world of so many people over the course of his life. He put his theories forward as theories, not facts, and he doesn’t stand to gain anything personally from our allegiance or interest. But. He said no one knows what they don’t know. Bear that in mind. And don’t take anyone’s word for anything ever when they are talking about what cannot be seen, or known.

Here’s the second rule: Question everything (Also known as: “Let the buyer beware!”). This is an area of complete and total speculation. No one knows what is unknown! No one sees what is invisible! Do not believe anything you hear! Critique! Critique! Critique! But, here is where it gets interesting. The third rule is: Keep an open mind! Be interested, alert, awake! Wonder a lot! You will find yourself on paths you can’t begin to imagine, in places you could never predict, doing things you could not have foreseen. All because you know you can’t know what you don’t know, trust yourself to the unseen, unknown, invisible world, and allow yourself to be led without a map or a compass along the way. Amen! May it be so!

Rise to the Occasion!

The movement to shift money from the big banks to credit unions and community banks is a beautiful example of how we don’t have to depend upon the government to solve the problems of bad financial management with regulations and stimulus packages. The people are savvy, and there are lots of ways to wage revolution. We have to understand that we are engaged in revolution and get with the program! Any program! Just pick a place and get to work!

The Peace and Justice Network of the Triad is a clearinghouse for information of all the local groups working the peace and justice side of the street. You’ll find their web site at www.peace-justice.net, and it won’t be long before you have more avenues for engaging in revolution than you can take on in one lifetime. It will be like selecting orange juice, or ice cream, at Harris Teeter. Too many choices, but solid evidence of how much is wrong with the way things are in the country and world, of how much needs to be done, and what people are doing in response to it. The time is always ripe for revolution!

Revolution is the work of consciousness. And it is a spiritual practice. There is nothing more counter-cultural, more subversive, than waking up, seeing, hearing and understanding—than taking on the work of squaring ourselves up with how things are and what needs to be done about it. This is the spiritual journey, task, quest: Asking What is happening? What needs to happen that is not happening? What response do we make to the situation as it arises, unfolds?

The moment is always barging into our lives to disrupt and decimate and disintegrate our cozy little world. What response do we make? As we form our response, we shape ourselves. This realization is crucial to our spiritual development. Our being flows from our doing. We are who we show ourselves to be in the responses we make to the moment of our living. What is the moment asking of us? How do we respond? There we are.

We stand naked before the world in the response we make to each moment of our living. Who we are is expressed in how we respond, how we live in response, to the moment of our living. We cannot bring forth in the moment anything that is not already within us. By bringing it forth, we make it visible, but we do not make it up. We cannot produce something that is not there to begin with, that is not within us, available to us.

If the lights go out, I have to call an electrician because I do not have what it takes to do more than flip the light switch. But, there is more within me than I know is within me, and I make amazing discoveries by getting out of my own way and allowing myself to show me what I am capable of in responding to the impact of the moment of my living. I shape myself in rising to the occasion presented by the moment. So do you. And, in this way, we become who we are over the course of our lives. We do not think our way to being who we are, we live our way there. The more consciously and thoughtfully we live, however, the more fully we become who we are.

The spiritual law at work here is this: Rise to the occasion! Be what is needed! In so doing, we will be bringing forth qualities and characteristics and abilities we don’t know we have. We have latent powers for transforming the world that languish because we will not use them, because we will not rise to the occasion, because we think we cannot do what needs to be done. We owe it to ourselves to find out what we can do and not decide without trying what we can and cannot do

We have to throw ourselves into the situation and see what we are capable of. We all suffer from an inaccurate assessment of our abilities, and with most of us, that comes out in not trying to do anything that pushes, stretches or challenges us in the least. “Oh, no,” we say, “I couldn’t do that!” And we don’t do anything, ever. We don’t think we can do anything, and don’t. We don’t know what we are capable of, and will never know if we do not begin to trust ourselves to rise to the occasion and find out, thereby, what we are made of.

So the questions: What is happening? What needs to happen that is not happening? What is the occasion that is presented by the moment as it is unfolding before us? What response shall we make in rising to the occasion? These questions throw us into the work of spiritual development which is the work of becoming conscious, the work of seeing, hearing, understanding, the work of knowing what needs to be done and doing it, the work of discovering who we are through the process of living our lives.

In this work, we square ourselves up with they way things are and also are within and without. We recognize the incompatibilities, the incongruities, the contradictions and contraries, and come to terms with them. This is true and that is also true so what response shall we make to them? What is being asked of us by the moment as it unfolds? What shall we do? What is the occasion to which we must rise?

Oh wait, don’t tell me, it’s overwhelming, right? We don’t know where to begin, right? Easy. Begin with the Peace and Justice Network of the Triad. Or join the Sierra Club. When Alan Watts asked Joseph Campbell what form his yoga took, Campbell replied, “I underline passages.” Underlining passages can be your form of revolution if you underline revolutionary passages with a revolutionary spirit! If you are overwhelmed, put that on the table along with everything else and DECIDE WHAT RESPONSE YOU WILL MAKE! Distracting yourself with addictions and diversions is not acceptable!

Consciousness stirs to life with the experience of the not-right-ness of things. Once we recognize that things are not right somehow, we can never go back to sleep. From that point on, we take up the work to square ourselves with the way things are and put things right. And our only tool in that work is consciousness, awareness.

To be conscious is to see, hear, understand, know—exactly how things are within and without. We do not hide or look away. We see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel, taste what we taste, smell what we smell, sense what we sense, intuit what we intuit—we take in all that is to be taken in with every receptor we have and bear it all consciously, knowingly, in its entirety. We do not close ourselves off from or deny any aspect of our experience. This is the way things are. This is what is happening. This is what we wish were happening instead. And this is what needs to happen in response to all of these considerations.

Once we see, once we hear, once we understand, once we know, we do. Action flows naturally from knowing how things are and what needs to happen in response to how things are. Seeing is doing! Seeing and doing are being! We are as we do! Our doing, our action, shapes our being, forms who we are! We become who we are in the act of responding to what is happening in the moment of our living. Our living elicits our being, our becoming, who we are, who we are capable of being in response to what in happening in our lives. We are made, you might say, by the occasions to which we arise.

If we lived a life in which nothing happened, there would be not much to us, which is what was true of us as a species for thousands of years. There was not much to us because not much happened in our lives. Not much different anyway, not much that hadn’t always happened, that didn’t always happen. Who we are is a reflection of what is happening in our lives and how we respond to it. We are what we do, how we live. By changing the way we respond, we change who we are, we become who we are capable of being. We expand, deepen, enlarge ourselves by doing what needs to be done in response to what is happening in our lives. This is the work of consciousness, of being conscious, of seeing, hearing, understanding. This is our spiritual practice.

Our spiritual practice is revolution. Transforming ourselves and our situation in life by seeing what needs to be done and doing it. By rising to the occasion and showing ourselves who we are. There is much that is wrong with the way things are in the country and world. What are we are doing in response to it? Pick a place. Get to work. Do what needs to be done, as true revolutionaries.

God Is Always Dying!

When Jesus died everything the disciples believed about God died with him. For them, God was dead. Who the disciples had understood God to be was no more. A new understanding of God, a new God, had to come forth in their lives. With the resurrection appearances, the disciples began the work of forming a new understanding of God, of choosing a new God to serve. When the old God, the old understanding of God, dies, we must choose a new one to carry our lives forward, or we die with the old God. Enabling us to choose a new God in place of the old is the work of hermeneutics, the work of reinterpretation. Everything depends upon having the right spokespersons for God to help us find the way to the God that is God NOW.

History is weighed down with examples of tribes and civilizations that did not have such spokespersons, that did not survive the death of their god. When our understanding of God fails us, when the circumstances of our lives rule out the possibility of God as we have understood God to be, then that idea of God is dead and must be replaced with a new understanding of God for a new world. The Biblical image that applies here is Jesus’ teaching about new wine in old wineskins, and the idea expressed in the 21^st chapter of Revelation: “The old has passed away, behold, the new has come!”

When K Misenheimer says, “God doesn’t have any grandchildren,” he is saying that God only has children and that the children’s God is not the God of their parents. Thelma Foster said, “Each generation must find its own way to God.” And the God it finds its way to is not the God of the previous generation. Each generation may pay lip-service to the God of the previous generation. Each generation may sing the old hymns and recite the old creeds, but their lives are carried forward by new gods which reflect the deepest values of that generation in spite of what they may profess and declare.

Think of God as the deepest, the highest, value, or system of values, that we are capable of imagining, perceiving, serving at any particular point in our lives—the value which sets our course and directs our living, for which, and toward which, in light of which, we live. God is the personification of the highest value of a person, or a nation, or a culture. We invest ourselves in the service of our highest value, or values. In this way, we invest God with our lives. Our lives are intertwined with our values, ARE our values. Our life is the reflection, the expression, of what we value most. When you look at us, at the lives we are living, you see our God even though we may say we believe in a different God, in the God of previous generations. Or say that we have gotten rid of the God of previous generations, and do not believe in God at all.

The catch is that we must consciously CHOOSE our values! We cannot let them be handed to us, be given to us, by the church of our experience or by the culture in which we live! We cannot embrace someone else’s values as our own and serve them without examination and reflection. In that case, we become the cult of an unknown, unrecognized, God, and lose our way in the service of a God unworthy of us.

We must not think we have dumped God just because the God of our ancestors (and the church of our experience) no longer carries our highest value. Some God does. And if we do not consciously give ourselves to the God that is worthy of us—if we do not consciously serve the values that we believe are to be revered with the highest esteem—if we do not consciously choose and serve the God whose claim we recognize and to whom we declare allegiance, we will drift into the service, and will live at the mercy, of lesser gods.

This is not some new brand of theology. Paul, in Philippians (3:19) talks about those “whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.” All the rave these days, which is not unlike that of other days, is on wealth and prosperity and “creating the destiny of our dreams” (as if), and attracting the kind of life we find to be attractive. “What do you want?” is the operative question which directs our lives. Not, “What does God want?”, but “What do you want?” which elevates us to the position of God of our own lives, creating our own destiny and doing what we want. But we are not God. And the level of depression, and despair, and drug abuse, and addiction, and emptiness, and lost-ness, and meaninglessness running through our lives is testimony to the truth of our having chosen poorly “whom we will serve.” We pay a price for serving ourselves!

We cannot imagine a value beyond our desires and ambition. But, in living in light of what we want, we do not take into account the conflict of interests which torpedoes our lives. When what we want conflicts with what we also want, how do we determine what to do then? What do we want when our wants are mutually exclusive? Or when we get what we want and are not pleased? We flounder and cast about and do not know how to proceed. We sink into depression and cannot go on.

Our God has died again (as gods are wont to do when our lives do not go as we wish) and left us in the lurch. But, this god of our wants and wishes never had a chance. What we want turns out to be no god at all. Every god which is not worthy of our highest esteem always disappoints and disappears. And so, we must choose carefully the values, the God, we serve. For God is not mocked, we reap what we sew (Galatians 6:7), and bear the cost of the associations we keep.

And thus, I’m offering for your consideration, the God of the moment, the God of the here and now, because nothing is more important than the moment in which we live. When we do right by the moment, each moment, we create a foundation for the future that is built upon our service to what is right, one moment at a time. I am offering for your consideration the God of what needs to happen in the situation as it unfolds—beyond our desires and ambitions, beyond our advantage and interest, beyond our wants, wishes and happy fantasies. Here is the God that is worthy of the title, calling us to a destiny that has nothing to do with our dreams for ourselves, but was shaped for us before we were born by forces we cannot imagine, and which comes to life in the moment of our living, urging us to see and to do what needs to be done there and go where it leads, and see where it takes us.

The stakes are high here. Everything is on the line, riding on our understanding the importance of choosing values (like living aligned with our destiny) that engage us with Mystery and carry us into the hum-drum of the daily grind as though it is the stuff of myth and fable, because it is. Our task is the recovery of the sense of meaning and purpose of the moment and of our own life that lifts us above the emptiness of buying and selling, and provides us with confirmation of the special nature of our life and our place in the lives of others.

We have a calling, a vocation, a destiny! We are built, created, for a role in the salvation of the world! And, if that seems grandiose to you, what better antidote to the barrenness of the current wasteland of our souls? As it is, we have nothing but money to live for, nothing but safety and security to pin our hopes on. But ply us with luxury behind high walls and locked doors and it is not enough. We will drink ourselves to an early death or live a long miserable life around antidepressants and bridge games. We cannot give ourselves anything worthwhile to live for. All of our bright ideas come up short. Life, it turns out, is a gift from beyond!

We have a life to live that is waiting on us beyond all our ideas and dreams and wants and desires for life. We have a destiny to embrace and to serve. There is that which is right for us and for which we are right, and it may have nothing to do with what we want or with the life we have in mind for ourselves. If you are going to believe anything, believe you have a purpose beyond what you are capable of thinking up on your own!

In this, YOU are of value to God! YOU are God’s value! Your life is valuable beyond estimation when lived aligned with the destiny that is your calling, your vocation. And you cannot find your way there by yourself. But. We all know what is right for us, and what is wrong. And simply being open to what is right for us and being willing to do what is right for us puts us on the path to what is right for us.

What is right for us is what we are right for, what we are built for, cut out for. It may not be what we want for us. The difference between what is right for us and what we want for us is the fulcrum upon which our future rests. Turning away from what is right for us in favor of what we want for us puts us on a track to dissatisfaction, fragmentation, despair and death. What is right for us is often inconvenient, fearsome, difficult, and crazy. But it’s right for us. I'm not suggesting that you quit your day job and become a poet. I'm suggesting that you write poetry, if that's right for you. And I’m not suggesting that your destiny will reward you with wealth and splendor, but your life will be meaningful and interesting, and you can’t buy that with all the wealth in the world.

In taking up the path to our destiny, in doing what is right for us, we don't force anything but are open to everything. Openness finds a way. Being impatient with the process reflects a misunderstanding of the process. There is no hurry. There is no place to be by a certain time. Our destiny is more of a frame of mind, a perspective, a way of being, than it is a destination, an achievement, an accomplishment, a place. Our destiny is the path to who we are. It is who we are. There is no arrival point. We are always becoming who we are. Knowing and doing what is right for us is the way to integration, peace, wholeness, meaning, purpose, and life. And, believe it if you dare, it is the way to the salvation of the world.

Do You Believe In God?

“Do you believe in God?” she asked, with the innocence of the child she was, having heard that perhaps I didn’t. And, in the short space between her question and my answer, I thought, Which God would that be?

Would it be the God who commanded Moses, “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt,” and who declared to Isaiah “My house shall become a house of prayer for all peoples”?

Or would it be the God who came up with the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Who lived by the standards “Might Makes Right!” and “The End Justifies the Means!”? Who invented genocide and the scorched earth policy? Who commanded Joshua to destroy all who lived in the Land of Promise and to show no mercy to anyone under any circumstances for any reason ever?

Would it be the God who is a harsh taskmaster, reaping and harvesting without regard for those who did the sewing and the planting?

Or the God who welcomes the weak and heavy-laden, whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light?

Would it be the God who demanded the death of God’s only son Jesus Christ our Lord as the necessary payment—the wages, you might say—for the sins of us all?

Or the God who welcomed the Prodigal home, killed the fatted calf, and held a great feast honoring his return for nothing more costly than a well-rehearsed and self-serving “I’m sorry”?

Would it be the God who sent the Army of Heaven to destroy the Great Beast and its legions for their faithless disobedience, and punish them forever in everlasting fire?

Or the God who, in the guise of a faithless Samaritan, tended the beaten Jew in the ditch and paid for his recovery without inquiring about the quality of his life or the degree to which he deserved to be so treated?

Who is the God who is God? Would the real God please stand up, come forward, and be accorded the honor of my belief, allegiance and loyalty?

And, of course, they all stand up, come forward as One, gather around and wait for me to declare myself to be their servant everlasting, for they all are God to the core. Very God of Very God. “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end, Amen!”

Here, we are in the presence of the God beyond the catechisms and confessions of faith, beyond the creeds and the doctrines, beyond the eleven o’clock worship services and the Sunday school classes and the seminary lectures and the theologies ad nauseum.

If you are going to go to the trouble of believing in God, THIS is the God to believe in, not some tame, domesticated, house-broken god who comes in on cue and exits on schedule. Not some pale, polite, patsy god stepping in the black footprints and reading from a script with predictable lines and action. Not some computer-generated god spewing out formula speeches, creating weal and making woe by the book with the title, “How To Be God.”

If you are going to believe in God, believe in the God who IS God, by god! If you dare! If you can! If you can, believe in a God who can do it all! Who can do everything! Anything! At any time! And does!

God can do anything! We are always saying that, thinking of almighty, all powerful, omnipotent—not unrestrained and without inhibitions. It’s time we revised our thinking. God is wild. Wild beyond imagining. Wild beyond the commonly recognized limits of wildness. God is irreverent, immoral and unrepentant. Impertinent, imprudent, off the wall, over the edge, out of sight. Crazy.

Nothing is off-limits with God. You have to know that about God. No holds are barred. No punches are pulled. No norms are honored. Anything goes with God. Whatever it takes with God. God will do whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes to do what? What is God's plan? What is God’s angle? What is God trying to do? I’m glad you asked. God’s plan is to do whatever is required by the situation as it arises, unfolds! What God did in the last minute doesn’t apply to what God might do in the next minute. God’s plan is to do what is needed. God doesn't rule out any possibilities. God can do, and does do, absolutely whatever the situation calls for every time.

There is no long range, much less eternal, plan with God. It’s all day-to-day, moment-to-moment, here-and-now. Each situation calls for being creatively present for the good of that situation. God lives here, now, to make this situation as good as it can be.

As you know, the situation does not cooperate with its own best interest. The situation is the result of forces and impulses, trends and preferences, that have nothing to do with God or goodness, or even good sense. Something is always coming along to destroy, decimate, devastate, demolish and disperse, and God is always reconfiguring, reshaping, reforming what God has done in order to do what needs to be done here and now in THIS mess to restore harmony and make peace and bring forth the good.

And if the good of this moment clashes with the good of the next moment, God is there to join in the work of making that moment as good as it can be. In every moment, the good is created anew, on the spot, in light of what is needed then, there. A cup of cold water. A kind word. A nap.

God turns flips, does handstands, and rejoices at length over creative responses to the need of the moment. God delights in doing whatever is required in the service of the good here and now. And if good here produces bad there, it can’t be helped, that's the way it is. God joins in the work there to produce good in the bad, loving it, loving the work.

And if one person's good in this moment clashes with another person's good in this moment, well, we have to work it out. To God’s great joy, the work is never done! In this work, God has complete freedom to do whatever it takes—whatever it takes—in the service of the good of the moment. The good of the moment is the only good, and that good has nothing to do with preconceived notions of good but with what needs to happen then, there. It all comes into being in each moment to serve that moment.

And Jesus? A chip off the old block! Jesus raised the dead and left the dead to bury the dead! He forgave a guilty woman and cursed an innocent fig tree. Jesus did whatever the situation required as it unfolded—healing on the Sabbath one day, and refusing to give an "evil and adulterous generation" a sign the next day. You never know what Jesus will do when.

You never know with Jesus, or with God, or with YOU! YOU are completely free to do what needs to be done in the situation as it arises, and must, if you would join God in being as God is! This is the work of God: Doing what needs to be done in the situation as it arises, unfolds, no matter what!

Not even God can do more than that! God on God's best day cannot do more than what needs to be done in the situation as it arises, unfolds. You'll never hear a truth that is truer than this truth. But hold on, it gets better.

When I/you/we all do what needs to be done in the situation as it arises, unfolds, in the time and place of our living, we are as God-like as God can be, which is what Jesus was in being the Christ, a term that means “The Anointed One.” Anointed for what? For making God known, present, real! When we pull off being what the moment is dying for, we are the Christ as only we can be the Christ, and God becomes known, present, real in our lives and in the world in that moment.

In order to do what needs to be done and make God known, present, real in the situation as it unfolds in the moment of our living, we have to get ourselves out of the way. The only thing standing between us and God, us and the Christ, is us. We are our own worst enemy. And so, the question, Whose side are you on? is always the question. And the right answer is always: Thy will not mine be done!

What, then, is God’s will here, now? To see the good and do it! To know what is being asked of us, what is striving to come forth here, now and DO the thing! To be done with convention, with shrewd, crafty, wily ways, with covering our bases and counting the cost! What needs to be done in the situation as it arises, unfolds? DO IT! Here! Now!

In this way, every moment is the first moment of creation! Every situation offers the possibility of a fresh, “Let there be!” So, let it be! Let it be!

When we live to serve the good of the moment, of the situation as it arises, unfolds, we are not serving OUR good in the moment, or guided by our wishes, desires, ambition, fears. Freedom is being not bound to our wants, interests, tastes, preferences, anxieties, goals, plans, intentions... The freedom to do what needs to be done in the situation as it arises is complete freedom. It doesn’t get freer than that! And if God is anything, God is free—to be and to do whatever is needed in the situation as it arises, unfolds!

So, of course, I said, “Of course I believe in God! Who wouldn’t believe in a God as wild and alive as God? May we all be so wild and alive forever!” Indeed! May we be so!

A Community of Individuals

The community serves the individual so that the individual might serve the community by being an individual within the community! The purpose of the community is to produce individuals! The community draws the individual forth, individualizing, you might say, the individuals who belong to the community. The community is careful to NOT erase the distinctions among the individuals within the community—is careful to NOT reduce everyone to some communal standard of thought, belief, and practice, so that everyone is a mirror image of everyone else and “we’re all just one big happy family,” believing the same beliefs, thinking the same thoughts, stepping in the black footprints and living our lives the way life is supposed to be lived, the way life is being lived by everyone around us (in a “Let’s just get along,” “Let’s be nice,” “Let’s go along to get along,” kind of way).

Never, not once, in the history of humanity, has there ever been a single case of civilization advancing by way of a communal decision to think and do things differently. Every single advance (you could look this up) has been made by individuals standing apart from the community, asserting themselves over against the community, risking the ire of the community, in order to think and do things differently. Culture is carried forward by individuals. The individual is the incubator, developer, guardian and guide of society. Healthy communities produce healthy individuals who produce healthy communities. Who WE are as Presbyterian Church of the Covenant depends entirely upon who YOU and YOU and YOU and YOU are. YOU and YOU and YOU and YOU can never think of laying YOU aside in order to fit in, belong, and be as WE are! And WE have to see to it that YOU and YOU and YOU and YOU become YOU so that WE might become a healthy, viable, living and alive WE!

All the talk about becoming a community comes down to how well we care for and about one another and honor the sanctity of each individual psyche, soul, self. WE bring each other forth. WE are guardians and protectors of the vulnerable, fragile, self we each are. The baby in the manger depends upon the right social environment in order to become the Christ he is capable of becoming. We are all the baby in the manger, looking for the right social environment to come forth as the Christ in the world. It is our place as the community, the WE, to provide the right atmosphere for the coming forth of the Christ, the True Human Being, that we are all capable of being. Yet, we are not all to become the SAME Christ! My Christ is not your Christ, and your Christ is not Jesus’ Christ! Christians are not Jesus impersonators. They are their own version of the Christ—the Christ as only they can be the Christ. The world is transformed, is saved, is restored to harmony with itself, not by our becoming who Jesus was, but by our becoming who we are! And, it takes the right kind of community to bring us forth into the individual self, soul, psyche that each of us is.

How do we do it? We do it through conversation. We do it by listening. Loving. Accepting. Questioning. Inquiring. Asking. Seeking. Knocking. Exploring. Imagining. Playing... We do it by practicing the fundamentals of life together. Grace, mercy, peace, you know. We do it by remembering it isn’t about jumping through anybody’s hoops, or preening ourselves to look like somebody else, or molding and shaping and forming ourselves into the community’s idea of who we ought to be. We do it by knowing it is about living life that is meaningful to us, and that no one knows what is meaningful to us but US. LIFE requires us to do what is meaningful to us. We have to live in service to what we experience as meaningful—not in service to someone else’s idea of what should be meaningful.

A true community is composed of individuals who are living lives that are meaningful to them—which is enabled by the atmosphere they create in the community they form together. It is a circle, but the heart of the circle is the individuality of the members of the community. We do not sacrifice that which is essential to the individual self for the sake of the community. When the “I’s” give themselves up so that the WE might be happy, the WE dissolves into a pseudo community which does much damage. It is NOT better that even one person die than that the whole nation perish!

And yet, and yet… If you ain’t dying, you ain’t living! LIFE is grounded on our dying to our idea of what it means to “really live.” Adam and Eve in Eden. Jesus in Gethsemane. Adam and Eve died by refusing to die. Jesus lived by handing himself over to death. We can’t live if we will not die—again and again—to all that stands between us and life, and we are the ones who stand in the way! The question we must answer—again and again—is “Whose side are we on?” The right kind of community reminds us to ask and helps us answer that question. The question can ONLY be asked and answered from the standpoint of our participation in the right kind of community!

If we ain't dying, we ain't living. LIFE—being fully alive—asks hard things of us. Risky things. We can't be safe, secure and comfortable and be alive. We cannot do what we want and be alive. What we want isn’t the point. Being alive is the point. Being alive often requires us to do what we don't want. The deadest people you know are doing what they want. We are not here to hang out in the mall, or in the book store, or in the bars, or at the concerts and the movies until we die.

In “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Gandalf says, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” What are you doing with the time that has been given to you? Of what does life consist? What do you do that means the most to you? As we answer these questions we come alive. Notice, they have nothing to do with what we want. Life does not consist of what we wish to be “of life” for us. We don't do what is meaningful because we want to but because we have to. Wanting has nothing to do with it. LIFE is not about getting, having, doing what we want!

However, this isn’t the way we live. We live in service to our desires and ambitions. What we want requires us to live in ways that rule out what means the most to us. Adam and Eve in Eden, not doing what it takes to live, living themselves to death. How does what we want to do keep us from doing what means the most to us? Whose side are we on?

We have to trust ourselves to the service of what is meaningful to us. This is the beam that Joseph Campbell talks about when he says, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.” We know when we are doing what is meaningful to us, even though that may not be what we WANT to be meaningful.

We have to know what is meaningful to us—and do it! If we are not going to do what is meaningful to us in the time left for living, when will we do it? To live without doing what is meaningful to us is to not live at all. In the grip of a meaningful vision—the sense of what must be done—we cast what we want aside to do the thing we have to do, even though it may make no sense and we will not be able to explain it to anyone, even ourselves.

In the grip of a meaningful vision comes to pass the saying, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” And we have no idea who the “Thy” is! It doesn't matter who the “Thy” is, or who we understand the “Thy” to be. We have to do the thing that must be done whether we want to or not! Get up in the cold and write! It's crazy. The most meaningful things are often crazy. We sit for hours waiting for the right light to take a photo no one will see. Crazy.

And the community understands this and encourages us to do the crazy thing, because that is the thing that brings us forth. We are connected at the level of the heart, soul, psyche, self with the thing that needs to be done—the thing that needs us to do it. That thing is our life. We live to do that thing. And don’t be literal-minded here, the thing that needs us may be more than one actual thing, it may be a lifetime of things strung together one after the other, or it may be a multi-tasking glob of things hurled throbbing, glowing, and spinning into our lives. The point is that we have to wake up to the fact that what most needs us to do it is what we most need to do. Even though it is crazy and makes no sense and we cannot do it and pay the bills. We’ll have to do something else to pay the bills.

God Without the Wardrobe

Wynn McGregor leads off with two stories, one about her grandson asking his father if “God sleeps naked,” and the other about a scene from Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” where the celebrant smashes the chalice and is stripped of his clerical vestments.

Think of Transcendent Reality as God Without The Wardrobe. Think of religion as clusters of clothiers. We bring God down to our fitting rooms and begin to measure and cut and sew, dressing God in our ideas of how God ought to look. Draping God with our best stab at godliness. “Oh yes! The Holy Trinity! Doesn’t that look just perfect, though? My, my. And Omniscient. Omnipotent. Omnipresent. Stunning! Almighty! All Knowing! All Powerful! Immortal, Invisible, God-Only-Wise! Oh, indeed! And THIS: There Is No God But The God WE Say Is God! By all means! Perfect! As perfect as God should be! Just right, Your Holiness!”, we say, bowing to our creation.

The deeper truth is spoken by the child, and by the composer/conductor (Leonard Bernstein): God sleeps naked and has no need of holy garb. Transcendent Reality has no wardrobe. Transcendent Reality is the Underlying Reality, the Grounding Reality, upholding our lives. The visible world rests on the invisible world. The Christ is where the invisible becomes visible. Incarnation, you know. Human being becoming God (without the wardrobe). Christmas.

Mary gave birth to Jesus. Jesus gave birth to the Christ. There is nothing automatic and natural about the Christ coming forth into the world, either then or now. You think a virgin birth is hard. Just try being who you are! This is the hardest thing, the greatest work, bringing forth the Christ by being who we are. And, it has nothing to do with getting the Out There In Here, as though we have to mold ourselves into some external model of right living. The Christ does not exist Out There, Up There, Over There, somewhere beyond us, external to us. The work involves getting the In Here Out There, bringing forth the Christ within and making the invisible visible. Christmas. Every day.

The problem is that we stand in our own way, block our own path. We are of two minds, or three, or four, or, how many of them are there really? WE are Legion, don’t you know? In league with ourselves against ourselves. We want what we have no business having. This is as succinct a definition of sin as you will ever stumble upon: Wanting what we have no business having. Wanting what we want and not what we ought to want. Just try to want what you don’t want, or to un-want what you want! We can pretend, but we cannot comply. We can fake it, but we cannot make it. Unfazed lives the want-er within.

And so, the war of the wills. We strain to be morally pure and pleasing to someone’s (perhaps our own) idea of God, and white-knuckle it past temptation only to be ambushed by symptoms and circumstances we cannot control and do not foresee. The Christ we produce is a plastic prototype with robotic movements and delayed reactions following a programmed script written to be in accord with some church council’s decree of how it ought to be done. The Out There is squeezed without regard for style or fit In Here. The Christ is prefabricated and slapped, perhaps literally, into place.

We are directed to put on the Christ as we might put on “the full armor of God,” to use a scriptural metaphor. Told to wrap ourselves in a wardrobe cut out in the fitting rooms of ancient religion, and required to project an image that has come to us from Those Who Know Best And Must Be Pleased. But Bernstein invites us to see through the posing and the posturing, the draping and the strutting about. Crash goes the chalice! Gone are the clothes! Now what?

We are as naked as God, and have nothing but ourselves in the work to be the Christ, here and now, in the lives that are our lives to live, today. On one hand, there is nothing to it. It is simply a matter of finding our way back to ourselves, to “the face that was ours before we were born.” On the other hand, it is the hardest thing, the greatest work, because we stand in our own way, wanting 10,000 things more than we want to be who we are.

Carl Jung says we spend our lives walking around ourselves, around the Self we are born to be, circling closer, perhaps, over the years, but never arriving at the one we are. Jung spent his life working to help us close the distance between the life we are living and the life we are called to live, between the self we are and the self we are born to be. His term for becoming who we are is “individuation.” The Zen and Taoist term is “True Human Being.” The Buddhist term is “Buddha” or “Buddha-mind.” The New Testament’s term for becoming who we are is “Christ.” The Christ is the Anointed One, anointed to bring Transcendent Reality forth into the world of space and time by simply being who we are in the moment of our living.

In the wilderness, Jesus is stripped of all of the trappings—the wardrobe—of family and culture and stands naked before that which has need of him. Think of the wilderness experience as the birthplace of the Christ. When Jesus steps back into society he is following the path with his name on it, and is obedient to a will that is, and is not, his own. He speaks to this when he says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and accomplish his work,” and, “The Father and I are one,” and, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” And he prays that his followers “may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us.” Paul reflects this when he says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

But, again, this is not an External, Out There, Model of Holiness that is being hawked. Jesus and Paul are simply exhibiting “the face that was theirs before they were born” in their lives, and, in so doing, bringing Transcendent Reality forth into the world. Here is the formula from a couple of weeks ago: The numinous (that which moves us, resonates with us, catches our eye) leads us straight, not counting all the detours and asides, twists, spins and round-a-bouts that compose the path—the beam—with our name on it, to the heart of Transcendent Reality and, interestingly enough, to the heart of our very own heart as well. Which is to say that the other side of you, the other side of me, is God. This means that the numinous which leads us to God leads us to us. So that oneness-of-being is our source and our goal.

In order to be the Christ, we have to be who we are, following the path with our name on it, which is not the same thing as the life we have in mind for ourselves. And we are back to standing in our own way, blocking the path to Transcendent Reality, to “the face that was ours before we were born.” Birthing the Christ within means getting ourselves out of the way and getting on the way that is our way.

This is not easy, but there is a guide within. We know when our lives are resonating with us and when they are not. We know when, and where, we are alive, and when, and where, we are mostly dead. We know, as Joseph Campbell says, “when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.” The path to God Without The Wardrobe, to Transcendent Reality, to birthing the Christ within is found in finding our way to that which is life for us, which brings us to life and enables us to be fully alive.

Yet, here is the tricky part. We cannot close ourselves off from the voice of opposition! Always the tension, the counterweight, the contrary! Life is not a quick sprint to glory along the path we love. As we got ourselves out of the way, so we have to get ourselves back in the way! Jung says “Life can flow forward only along the path of the gradient,” and, “In order to be balanced, there must be opposition.” Dialogue is as necessary for our spiritual life as air, light, food and water are for our physical life. And the necessary dialogue is both internal and external. In other words, we work it out with ourselves and one another!

We are always working it out! Within ourselves and among ourselves! What to do. How to do it. Who to be. What is needed. How to proceed. We figure it out anew in every moment! There is no formula, no recipe, no rule book, no black footprints, no wardrobe! Only the dialogue! Only the conversation! We find our way forward along the path of the gradient. We do not run up the mountain. We take our time, listening our way along. We circle the self over the course of our life, narrowing the distance (we hope) yet never settling into the center. And the community of sojourners helps us listen, helps us hear, engages us in dialogue, and keeps us in contact with all that has to be taken into account as we think through what is next, what needs to be done and how best to do it.

We are our own authority.

The meaning of life gets all the press, but I’m here to talk to you about living a meaningful life. Living meaningfully IS the meaning of life. And, who is to say what that is? YOU are, of course. The authority resides within. We act on our own authority. Who better than you knows what is meaningful to you?

You wouldn't trust me to sweeten your coffee for you. Why would you trust me to tell you what to do to live a meaningful life? You wouldn’t trust me in a matter of no consequence, why would you trust me, or anyone else, in a matter of ultimate consequence? Why would you trust anyone but yourself to know what to believe, think, do? It's your life. Live it!

Ah, but, I hear the objection welling up from each of you: “How do WE know what to believe, think, do?” How do you know when your coffee is sweet enough? When it’s time to eat, or go to bed? No one can tell you those things. We can be trusted to know what is right for us. We know when apple pie is called for and when it’s a glass of wine that is just the ticket. We know when it’s time for a walk around the block and when we have had enough of anything. The same thing applies to the deeper questions.

We know what we need, what needs to happen, what is needed in the situation as it arises. All it takes is paying attention, observation, awareness, seeing, hearing, understanding to know what is called for. We find our way to the answers that matter by way of resonance, instinct, intuition, the tug of heart, the movement of soul. Even external rules, orders, decrees, and demands have to ring true. Resonation is the key that turns the lock to knowing what to do.

Our path has to resonate with our heart, our heart has to resonate with our path. We have to sense what is right for us—all things considered—and do it. In every moment, the future is in our hands, and we do not have time to waste, so, we must listen carefully, imagine fully, observe completely in order to take everything into consideration and know what truly needs to be done, and do it. To live knowingly, with awareness and perceptivity, with vision and grace and compassion is as basic, and as spiritual, as it gets. Eyes that see, ears that hear, a heart that understands, and the courage “to get up and do what needs to be done” are all it ever takes. That is the spiritual path, and the way of a True Human Being.

The path of the heart is a seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing, being, doing path. It takes effort to live the way life needs to be lived. We have to concentrate, focus, pay attention. It's easier to follow the leader. Go where you're taken. Do what you're told. Maintain the routines. Honor the traditions. Step in the black footprints. Ask no questions. Make no waves. Happiness. Death. We are happiest, it seems, when we are dead. To be alive, we have to lay happiness aside and live as those who are open to the moment and what the moment is asking of us, even when it is asking hard things of us.

When we live open to the moment and what it is asking of us, there are no rules to keep, no formulas to apply, no recipes or black footprints to follow. “Eat when hungry, rest when tired,” is a Zen rule suggesting that we listen to our body and follow its lead. Yet, Zen masters often ignore their body’s signals, and sit zazen through hunger, drowsiness, and the ache of joints and muscles. Always the question: “How do we know when to do what? How do we know where to draw the line?”

The best answer is arbitrary and subjective, but, we want to justify our actions with precedents, probabilities and iron-clad rationale. Yet, there are no absolutes that cannot be over-ridden. “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” says the commandment, but the Jewish authorities kill Jesus, saying “It is better that one man should die instead of the whole nation.” By what authority do we over-ride absolutes? What is the seat of wisdom? What guide do we follow? When do we acquiesce? When do we overturn? Who is the decider that decides? Our own arbitrary and subjective self, that’s who! After we take everything into account, we have to choose when to acquiesce and when to overturn.

Sometimes we eat when hungry, rest when tired. Sometimes we push past hunger and weariness. Sometimes we indulge ourselves, sometimes we deny ourselves. By our own authority. We decide for ourselves how our lives are to be lived. We say where meaning is to be found, of what our joy consists, what is important, what needs to be done and left undone. We are who we have to please. We Have To Learn To Listen To Ourselves. That’s the task of life: Know Thyself. To thine own self be true. Or, as Jesus says (in Luke 12:57), “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” What other choice do we have? May we choose wisely, and hold ourselves accountable, and deal well with the outcome of our choosing!

In ascribing meaning, assigning value, and deciding what it takes to live a meaningful life, we bring the world we perceive into being through our perception of it. “In the beginning was the word.” Whose word? OUR word! Our word creates the world. Red does not reside in the apple. Red does not exist apart from the eyes that see, and say, “Red,” into existence. Beauty comes into being in the act of being perceived and declared to be beautiful. We paint the world with meaning, and bring it to life.

Our place is to witness the world into being, to produce the WOW that sets it apart from the dreariness of unnoticed marvels. Our gift to the world is amazement, appreciation and praise. We acknowledge the wonder of every sunrise and rainbow. We sing the world into being. Thanksgiving is what we do best. We are the thankful ones. May it certainly, and always, be so!

Maybe any living thing with half a mind gets out of itself from time to time and notices, knows that there is more to it than meets its eye in its own little world, knows that there is a bigger world, and loves it, relishes it, delights in the wonder and the joy of it. I hope so.

I know for sure that we are capable of that. And it is our shame that we don’t do it more often than we do. That we don’t do a tail dance, like dolphins, on ocean waves, and wheel through the air, like red tail hawks, for the pure pleasure of it. That we don’t rejoice, and aren’t glad, more often. The numinous calls for that, requires it. Our place is to respond—to see, to know, to be moved, to give chase, and see where it leads.

The Church as it Should Be, Part II

The 9:20 Experience began on November 16, 2003. We have moved into our 7^th year as a progressive alternative to the Church of our Experience. Over the course of the past six years, the nature of our work to become the Church As It Ought To Be has been to take everything off the table that has ever been on the table, and begin to put back on the table the things that we think should be there, including things that have never been there. But we kept the table as the primary, central metaphor of the Church As It Ought To Be, reflecting the importance of the whole in the lives of the parts, and of the parts for the life of the whole.

The Presbyterian Church USA, as a specific denomination, provides an historical, traditional, foundation for this work of becoming The Church As It Ought To Be. “Reformed, always reforming,” is the motto of the PCUSA. It means we are always becoming The Church As It Ought To Be. The essential dialectic, or dialogue, for this process of becoming The Church As It Ought To Be is underscored in the two poles of the PCUSA.

On one hand, there is the officially recognized sanctity of the individual conscience. This is worth quoting the original sources for verification: From the Constitution of the PCUSA (Part II, The Book of Order): “God alone is Lord of the conscience...therefore, we consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal and unalienable...The Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and (practice) (and) no Church governing body ought to pretend to make laws to bind the conscience (by) virtue of their own authority.”

A counterweight to the right of individual conscience is the fundamental assumption of Presbyterianism: All of us are wiser than any one of us. We make decisions as a representative democracy, and one of the promises of the old Presbyterian Church in the United States (the “southern Presbyterian Church”) made at the ordination of ministers and members of church governing boards (Elders, serving on a church board called the Session) was “subjection to my brothers and sisters in the Lord.”

The work of integrity, of wholeness, is between the part (the individuals) and the whole. This work requires a fluid, dynamic, flow, a dance together, much like the relationship between the stream and its channel as it finds its way to the sea. Nothing is static, or frozen, or rigid about The Church As It Ought To Be. It is vibrant, alive, breathing, always becoming what it should be. “Reformed always reforming.” Re-forming itself again and again to take into account changing circumstances, perceptions, and the growth of both individuals and the whole.

Here we are, then, beginning our seventh year of existence, continuing the work of becoming the Church As It Ought To Be. This work begins with the encounter with the Numinous. Those of you who were on hand Wednesday night two weeks ago heard me describe the seven weeks away on the combination sabbatical leave and vacation as an engagement with the “Numinous Landscape.” And, you know that I am putting a DVD together with that title and the subtitle: “Doorway to Transcendence.” Who knows when it will be ready, but it’s coming, much like we are becoming the Church As It Ought To Be.

I said then, and I will say now, “numinous” is a word that comes from a word that means “to nod” (According to James Hollis, and why would he lie?). The numinous nods at us, winks at us, beckons to us, whispers our name, and waits, momentarily, to see if we notice, hoping that we will, so that the chase might be on. The numinous evidently loves a good chase. I’d love to know where that comes from, but, as with everything else about the numinous, we will probably never get to the bottom of it.

So. The numinous nods at us and is gone, like a white rabbit, around a corner, over a hill, down a hole, leaving us wondering if we saw anything, and wondering, itself, if we will give chase, if we will come after, if we will stop what we are doing and do what it wants us to do, which is, to look closer, see where it leads. The numinous pauses, hoping that we will take up the trail of the numinous, which is also the path with our name on it, and laying caution and timidity aside, follow after.

Ah, but, where DOES it lead? I’m so glad you asked. There is no reason to hold anything back. Most of you are old enough to take it, so here goes: The numinous leads us straight, not counting all the detours and asides, twists, spins and round-a-bouts that compose the path—the beam—with our name on it, to the heart of Transcendent Reality and, interestingly enough, to the heart of our very own heart as well. Which is to say that the other side of you, the other side of me, is God. This means that the numinous which leads us to God leads us to us. So that oneness-of-being is our source and our goal.

But this may be too much for one sitting. While I’m sure you will find what I’m laying out to be the case, it may be prudent to begin softly and go slowly so as not to give you too much of the unheard of to hear. We tend to shut down when we hear things that are too much unlike the things we have already heard. So, I will start over and say the numinous is that which stirs our soul, which touches us, which moves us. What happens then is the critical part. We must move toward that which moves us. The movement of soul within us, the stirring of heart, the resonating vibration of something responding to something, must be translated into the physical act of bodily moving toward that which nods to us, winks at us, calls our name. Everything hangs on it, on our moving toward that which moves us.

We recognize when something outside of us resonates with something inside of us. We don’t take anyone’s word for anything without resonation. When we experience the resonating movement, what is resonating? What is moving? What knows what? Yet, it is not to be ignored. When something catches our eye, we have to look closer, chase after, or else. We must move! This means we have to leave home, or what has become home! We step boldly into the wilderness and find our way back, well, home!

The hero’s task, the spiritual journey is waking up, moving toward what moves us, following the white rabbit, doing what needs to be done. One white rabbit leads to another. Grace is never linier, direct, predictable. We do not know where we are going or how we will get there. We think it’s about one thing but it’s about another, and when we think it’s about that, it’s about something else. Everything is a doorway, nothing is a destination. Even Transcendent Reality opens to us. The whole and the parts in eternal dialogue, becoming the Church as it Ought to Be.

We are all responsible for nourishing, for nurturing, our sense of the numinous, the ineffable, “the underlying reality.” We find the way forward by doing what we think, what we feel, what we intuit, what we instinctively sense, needs to be done and seeing what happens, seeing where that takes us, seeing what that leads to. We must not miss the treasure on the way to the treasure. We must not ignore what is opening before us, beckoning to us. We must be able to abandon our previous plan in favor of what is obviously calling our name, though it might be nothing like what we had in mind. We start out in the attic and find ourselves in our neighbor’s basement. This is called allowing the path to open up before us.

It can be a while between white rabbits. The process requires patience and being present to the moment with curiosity and compassion. The question is always “Now what?” We wait, watch, for something to wink at us, to nudge us, to catch our eye, call our name. It’s our practice, waiting, watching but not sitting on our hands, or wringing them.

When you don’t know where to go to take a photograph, for example, or what to do, go somewhere, do something. The act of going somewhere, of doing something, will give you some momentum, and will increase your chances of seeing where you need to be, of what needs to be done. So, go somewhere. Take a photograph of something. See where it leads you. Nothing is worse than standing still, wringing your hands, burning daylight.

When you aren’t in the mood to take a photograph, go take a photograph anyway. That may get you in the mood. Besides, you don’t have to be in the mood. We must develop the discipline of going in the direction of what moves us, resonates with us, is important to us, regardless of what we want, or are in the mood for. We cannot just follow the white rabbit as long as it takes us where we want to go, but it better go straight there with no fooling around. What we get out of following the white rabbit is a meaningful life. Something not found in the display cases or on the show room floors. In the grip of a compelling vision (the white rabbit) we put all we thought we wanted aside and serve the vision. Or else.

A Stack of Stones

All it takes is taking it. All we have to do is take it, and go on taking it, for as long as it takes. Do we have what it takes to take it, is the question. Where do we find what we need to take it, is the other question. What helps us take it, is the other question. Here's what I think. It gets us back to the Inukshuk and to the Inunnguaq.

An Inukshuk is a stack of stones, or carin, placed by the peoples of the Artic for those who came after them. An Inunnguaq is an Inukshuk in the form of a human being. Here's one I created from stones taken from the Robson River in British Columbia:

An Inukshuk or Inunnguaq was placed in the Tundra as a landmark and a reminder. The placement of the stones could point the way to food, shelter, or water, and provided comfort along a frozen and forbidding way. The stack of stones was a connection with those who had gone before. It stood as a reminder, and as a metaphor, as a representative of the fact that we were not as alone as we thought we were. Someone had been here before, had been where we are before, and left this as a representative of them to us, as a way of saying, "Come on. Don't give up. This way. I'm with you."

The stack of stones connected us with an actual, tangible, real human being who put the stones together, but, more than that, with whatever it is within each of us that finds what it takes to do what it takes, even in frozen, hostile, forbidding places, where there seems to be nothing in the way of resources and comfort to keep us going. The stone stack connects us with ourselves, with whatever is deep and resourceful and courageous about us.

And, more than that, the stone stack connects us with whatever is beyond us that is here with us in every time and place to resource us, encourage us, and keep us going. This is what I call "Transcendent Reality," it is the Underlying Reality, which forms the ground of our being/doing/living. In the Tundra, we are not alone. In the Tundra, there is That Which Is With Us to comfort, console, encourage, and point the way to those who know how to listen, how to wait, how to open themselves to the presence of that which is present with them. Who know how to trust themselves to that which the stones represent, to the Truth that is more than words can say. I call this attitude of openness to that which is with us "a prayerful countenance."

When Paul said, "I can do all things in him who strengthens me," he's talking about doing all things in "that which" strengthens us all. We do the "him" or the "that which" a disservice when we reduce it to the God of Christian theology. The experience of the "that which" is for all people, belongs to all people, is truly “of the people,” beyond doctrine, or belief, or theology or ideology. It is the foundational principle of existence. In the Tundra, we know we are not alone, and it has nothing to do with doctrine or theology. "Transcendent Reality" is the Underlying Reality, the Tao, that undergirds all things. We don't have to understand it to trust ourselves to it.

We cannot map it, predict it, say what it is, reduce it to a formula, or a plan. We can only trust it, trust ourselves to it. The stack of stones is all we have to go on. Someone was here before us. Someone made it through this place with nothing more than we have. Something helped someone. Something will help us. We have to trust that it is so.

The ultimate test of faith is not whether we believe in God but whether we will trust ourselves to life and risk being alive. Will we step boldly into our fear every day and refuse to die before we are dead? Will we trust that we will have what it takes and find what we need to "get up and do what needs to be done" the way it ought to be done—and go one doing it, no matter what, every day for the rest of our lives?

Faith is trusting ourselves to life, to the experience of life in its rawness, in its realness, in its full fury and its unrelenting drip, drip, drip. Faith is trusting ourselves to life knowing that we will have what it takes to deal appropriately with whatever comes our way. But, we are afraid we won’t have what it takes, and our fear keeps us from being alive.

Carl Jung says, “Only boldness can deliver us from fear.” We cannot reason our way out of fear, into the goodness of being alive. If reason could do it, I would say something like this to you: “Look,” I would say, “we are here, now. We cannot deny that we have made it this far, to this day, this hour. Nor can we deny that we came through hell more than a time or two in getting here. We have faced more than we ever imagined we could face, and dealt with what would have surely kept us forever in the womb had we known it was waiting on us, laughing. And, we came through it all, wounded and limping, perhaps, but recognizable and more or less in one piece and here we are, as living testimonies of what we are capable of—of what we can do—because we have done it.”

That’s what I would say, but you could as easily say as way of rejoinder, “Yes, but. We are afraid the worst is yet to come. We are afraid we will not have what it takes to survive the next round, or the one after that. We are afraid we cannot keep on coming up with what it takes to face what still waits on us, laughing.”

So, you see, I cannot reason you out of fear into courage. I cannot talk you into living bravely. You have to make up your own mind in the matter, and gather your resolve, and step boldly into your fear every day for the rest of your life. But I will say to you, in order to remind you of the essential nature of that work, our only protection is found in knowing/trusting that we will have what we need to deal with what comes our way and do with it what needs to be done. And it is important that we know this and live as though it is so, because it is so, but we have to believe it and act on it, for it to become a hard and fast reality in our lives. But this is the foundation: Living courageously and stepping boldly into our fear. Everything depends upon it, and flows from it. Even the fear of death pales and retreats before those who will not die before they are dead.

The stack of stones called Inukshuk and Inunnguaq calls us to trust ourselves to our lives and connects us with all the people who have experienced the full emptiness of the Tundra—with everyone who has dealt with idiots and narrow-minded-ness and injustice and smallness-of-heart-and-soul-and-being and the awful un-ending-ness of one damned thing after another. And they left these stones behind to encourage us, and remind us that we are not alone. They took it. We can take it. We can give our best to the work of our lives in spite of an apparent, or even obvious, lack of impact. And we can leave a stack of stones for those who come after us. It's all we need, really. A stack of stones. To remind us of all that is true out there in the Tundra, beyond words, beyond reason, beyond explanation and understanding.

And, there is one other thing. The stones are not glued together. There is no steel rod running through their centers to bind them tightly erect and keep them in place. The wind blows across the tundra. The ice forms, and melts, and forms again. The rocks shift. And fall. And other people come along. And other hands stack them again, differently.

As with them, so with us. We are always being torn apart by the forces of life, and being helped to gather ourselves back together by those who extend caring hands. We are capable of an infinite number of reconfigurations. The wind always blows on the tundra. The ice always forms, and melts, and forms. The rocks fall and are restacked. Our lives fall apart, and we are helped to get them back together, and live on, shaped by our circumstances without losing our original essence, reconfigured, yet still the same. Laughing back at what laughs at us, knowing we are not alone, and that no matter what, we will have what it takes to do what needs to be done in the tundra and all other places all our lives long. Amen! May it be so!