Doing What Is Helpful

Spirituality, spiritual aliveness, has nothing to do with religion or dogma or belief or faith, but with bringing our soul/self to LIFE. When our doing flows not from our thinking about how things ought to be done, but from our being true to what is life to our soul, we're on track. We have to be able to tell death from life and have the courage to live toward life. The catch here of course is that life is always on the other side of death. There is death that leads to being dead and death that leads to being alive. We have to know the difference and die the right kind of death.

We like to invent structures and traditions to save us from dying by taking the burden of decision making away from us because we hate the agony of choosing when we don’t know what to do, or when we don’t want to do what we know needs to be done. But. Structures are death in disguise. Nothing is more deadly than being sure we know how things ought to be done.

The tendency is to not want to make mistakes when we are afraid of running out of money and time, but we have to make mistakes, learn from them and adjust our living accordingly. We have to know that we don’t know what we are doing, and do what seems to be the most helpful thing to do in the situation as it arises, whether it has ever been done that way or not.

The only kind of freedom that matters is the freedom to do what we think is truly helpful in the situation as it arises. Here is our mission: We are to find what we think would be helpful in each situation as it arises, and do it. That’s all there is to it. But, of course, there is a catch. The catch is that we have to do what we think would be helpful in good faith. It has to spring out of a sincere desire to be helpful to the situation—to offer to the situation what we truly think would be most helpful to the wholeness, the allness of the situation, to the good of the whole, regardless of its implications for us personally. This is a catch because the more we have at stake in the outcome of our actions, the more we stand to gain (or lose) by acting in a certain way, the less likely we are to exhibit good faith in our dealings with one another, or with the world as a whole.

Rumi said, “If you are not here with us in good faith, you are doing terrible damage.” This sentence captures the essence, the weight, and the shame of human history. We are most likely to live in good faith with one another when we have nothing to lose in the interchange. How many treaty’s did the US government make and break with Native American tribes? Need I say more? As soon as it becomes apparent that our agreements are not in what we perceive to be our best interest, our agreements go to the burning barrel. Burning barrels are 55-gallon steel drums in which people in the rural deep south burned their garbage during the 50’s and 60’s. It may still be going on, indicative of the absence of good faith, as is the practice of dumping appliances—freezers, stoves, kitchen sinks—in the woods, or leaving old cars, trucks, busses and tractors there to rust. The absence of good faith is evident everywhere you look if you look long enough, and often it doesn’t take very long.

The world had no choice but to trust that BP was doing its part. BP was not, and still is not, doing its part. BP did not act, and still is not acting, in good faith. We cannot make rules, regulations, laws or binding agreements so air-tight as to force anyone to act in good faith. How many loop-hole lawyers are there? That’s like asking how many tripod positions there are. There isn’t a big-enough number to say how many there are, that’s how many there are.

There are no loop-holes in good faith. There are no ways to get out of doing what would be truly helpful when we offer ourselves in good faith to one another. And there is nothing to make us offer ourselves in good faith to one another. It depends entirely upon our, you guessed it, good faith.

Our ability to act in good faith is really our ability to act unilaterally in good faith. And that is the condition that kills the likelihood of good faith having a long and happy life. The Native Americans acted in good faith. Think they would do it again, knowing what they know now? Remember the parable of the vineyard workers? The workers were hired at various times during the day and the ones who worked the longest were paid the same as those who worked the shortest. Think that vineyard owner could round up workers on the morning of the following day? Acting in good faith is the shortest-lived human endeavor in the history of human endeavors. “Fool me once, bad on you. Fool me twice, bad on me.” And yet, everything depends on our acting in good faith—acting unilaterally in good faith—in relationship with one another and all others. There are two chances of that happening, as they say, fat and slim. But. There is no hope of anything good ever coming of the whole human experiment if we do not, you and I, begin acting unilaterally in good faith with one another and all others, regardless of the outcome, and carrying that out through the rest of our lives.

Need I remind you of the cross hanging behind me on the sanctuary wall? That is the doorway into the world as it ought to be. Life is on the other side of death. We have to die to our ideas of how life ought to be lived if we are going to come to life and be alive. We don’t get there by waiting for BP, or the US government, or anybody else, to go first. We pick ourselves up and walk right through the doorway that is the cross (picking up each day, in each situation as it arises, the cross that is a threshold) by living with good faith in every situation, doing there what we think will be truly helpful in each moment as it unfolds.

We don’t have to know what will be helpful, we only have to offer what we think will be helpful. When we work at being helpful in good faith, the situation will reflect how helpful we are actually being, and we can adjust our efforts accordingly. We learn as we live, and what we learn is how to live in ways that are truly helpful in our relationships with one another and all others. This is the essential lesson, and it is what we are all here to learn. We learn it by living unilaterally in good faith, doing what we think will be helpful in each situation as it arises, every day, for the rest of our lives, no matter what. Who wants to go first?

Meaningful Living

I think it was the Buddha who said, “I can’t tell you people anything!” That’s what everyone who knows, knows. They know they can’t tell anyone anything. No one can tell us how to live our lives or where to find meaning. We have to make our own way to the Grail. All anyone can tell us is, " Look! Listen!" It takes a lot of looking to be able to see, a lot of listening to be able to hear. There are no shortcuts to be found in the morass of explanations, recipes, formulas and instructions. There are no shortcuts to a meaningful life.

Our life is an experiment with meaning. We have to live so as to experience meaning! We have to explore what that might be! We have to ask! Seek! Knock! Take up the Quest! To live meaningfully does not mean being in possession of meaning (As if!). We cannot put meaning in a pen in the back yard and go pet it when we are feeling down and out. We don’t own meaning. We can only live in the service of meaning, be on the Quest for meaning, throughout our lives.

Meaning is not a steady state of being. Our lives are more or less meaningful at any point, but the movement of our life is toward meaning. We live toward meaning by doing what is meaningful. The Quest is for meaning. What can we do that has the most meaning for us here and now? Where is meaning to be found here and now? The meaning in life comes with doing what is meaningful, in doing what matters, what is important, to us. How much of that is in each day?

If you are going to know anything, know what is meaningful to you, here and now. If you are going to do anything, do what is meaningful to you, here, now. We have to start somewhere. Start with what is meaningful to you and follow it throughout your life. As it changes, change with it. Don't get stuck in doing what was meaningful twenty years ago. What is meaningful here, now? Do it!

What should we do? Whatever is meaningful. Follow meaning. Live meaningfully. If the most meaningful thing you do is bowling, bowl. See where that leads you. The most meaningful thing I do is walking around with a camera looking for a photograph. It is not attending meetings. Not even meetings about photography. It’s the old two door challenge. If you stand before two doors, one labeled “Photography,” the other labeled “Lecture About Photography,” which do you choose? “Bird Watching” or “Lecture About Bird Watching”? “Heaven” or “Lecture About Heaven”? “Meaning” or “Lecture About Meaning”?

A meaningful life consists of a trail of meaningful associations. If you are awash in the complete absence of meaning, think of the most meaningful thing you can do and follow the path of meaningful associations out of there. See where it takes you. One meaningful thing leads to another, but we have to be alert to the movement or we'll become lost amid the glass beads and silver mirrors.

Nothing is more often imitated, fabricated, faked or forged than meaning. Everything pretends to be meaningful. Look! Listen! Be aware! Oh, a word of warning: Living meaningfully, doing what has meaning for us, comes with a high price-tag. We have to hand over our comfortable routines.

Do we want to be comfortable or live meaningfully? Meaning is incompatible with comfort. The more comfortable we are, the less meaning there is in our lives. We try to arrange for meaning without sacrificing comfort. That's where the glass beads and silver mirrors come in. Entertainment. Diversion.

We cannot buy meaning directly. We can only spend our money living meaningfully. It costs a buck or two to walk around looking for photos. But, buying cameras and computers and the latest equipment and gadgets won’t do it. We have to walk around looking for photos. We have to get up before dawn and stay out after dark, and carry a tripod.

This gets us to more bad news: Meaning is work. Meaningful work is the heart of LIFE. We can't just surround ourselves with the tools of the trade. We have to do the work. Apart from the work, the tools of the trade become props. Carrying a camera doesn’t make us a photographer any more than wearing a hat and boots makes us a cowboy. Looking like a photographer or a cowboy isn’t meaningful. We have to do the work. That’s the path that leads to the Grail, that IS the Grail. It’s waiting. On us.

Conscious Living

Here’s what I believe. Call it my credo. I worked it out wandering around in southern Utah, thinking about these things. Here’s point number one: I believe there is as much of God in you and in me as there was in Jesus. The difference is that Jesus was more conscious of that which was of God in him, and more dedicated to, and disciplined in, aligning himself with it. This gets us to point number two.

I have said this to you before, and will say it again. There are those of us who are on the beam, that is, on the right track, that is, aligned with our destiny, with who we are capable of being and becoming—built to be, you might say. We are living the lives that are our lives to live, that have our name on them. This is what orthodox Christianity would call “being centered in God’s will for our lives.” There are those of us who are there.

And, there are those of us who are off the beam, off track, trying to find something to stake our lives on, to believe in, something that holds meaning and purpose for us and a carries with it a sense that this is IT. So, there are those who are on the beam, and there are those who are off the beam. Those of us who are off the beam need to get on the beam, and those of us who are on the beam need to stay on the beam. That’s all there is to it but. It is very difficult to find the beam and it is even more difficult to stay on it. That was point number two.

Point number three is something I’ve also said before: The visible world is grounded in, founded upon, the invisible world. The invisible world is the world of the Unconscious, of Unconscious Reality. This is the source of meaning and purpose, and value, and it is our place to become conscious of it, we have to make the unconscious conscious, and live aligned with its sense of how life needs to be lived. This is the life that is right for us, the right life for us. And, this is what the incarnation is all about, God becoming flesh, unconscious becoming conscious, transcendence—because it transcends the world of normal apparent reality and is beyond all words and concepts— becoming imminent, reality becoming tangible, touchable, tasteable (“Taste and see that the Lord is good”), real! This is our work. We bring forth Unconscious Reality and make it actual, tangible, real, Physical Reality. That’s our place, our role.

We have to be aware of and attuned to the drift and tug of unconscious reality and give it tangible expression in the world of physical reality. In order to fulfill our role and live the life that is right for us, we have to learn to read the signs the Unconscious presents to us offering guidance and direction, hints and suggestions. More specifically, we have to develop our awareness of instinct and intuition, and learn to trust ourselves to our sense of what is being asked of us, of what needs to happen. It takes practice to enter into full partnership with Unconscious Reality, and the sooner we start, the more proficient we become.

Our role is that of managing the balance, the coordination, the integration of conscious and unconscious realities. We have to meet the requirements of life in both worlds, paying the bills, for instance, and making connections between flights, in the world of conscious, physical, reality, and living the life that is right for us, the life of heart and soul, the beam of unconscious, spiritual, reality.

The trick with beam walking is following the flow of energy, the trail of meaning, through the events and circumstances of our lives. While Yoda and Obi wan Kenobi waited on the young Jedi to come for instruction, they lived in ways that had meaning for them. The world doesn't necessarily want what we have to offer, so we wait, and while we wait, we do what is meaningful, interesting, to us. We don't try to package ourselves to be pleasing to the world: Do you like me now? Do you like me now? We live in ways that bring us to life and are interesting, enjoyable, meaningful and, yes, fun.

Motive, intention and attitude are everything. The two words that characterize “the right spirit,” or the right frame of mind, or the right orientation of consciousness to unconsciousness are humility and compassion. Consciousness is the partner of unconsciousness. The visible world is to be the concrete manifestation of how it is at the level of heart and soul but. We cannot create the kingdom of heaven the way we can land men on the moon. We don’t take the lead here. Five Year Plans do not apply here. It may take five years for the truth of that statement to sink in. We do not MAKE anything happen here. We wait, watch, ask, seek, knock. It's time we stopped directing and started listening. We do not run the show. It is not our show. It is not OUR life. We belong to our LIFE. We have to learn the language of unconsciousness and tend the invisible world like we would tend our lawn, or garden, or golf swing. This is called “prayerful living.” And everything hinges on humility and compassion.

And, if all of this is too complicated for you, here’s a simple prescription and the essence of my credo: There is always something that needs to be done that we need to do. Find it. Do it. Your life will take you where you need to be.

The False Kiva Story

We can be thankful for Joe Valdez and Eddie Andreas. Here’s why. The False Kiva is a Class II culturally significant site in Canyonlands National Park. A Class II designation means the Park Service can’t decide what to do about it. It isn’t listed on any of the Park Service publications. It isn’t marked on any map. As far as the Park Service is concerned it doesn’t exist but. If you ask a Park Ranger or a Visitor Center worker for directions, they are required to tell you how to find it. This limits the number of people who make the trek, but it doesn’t stop them. Should they be stopped? I think so, but. That didn’t stop me.

I parked my car in the pullout about two hundred yards away from the trailhead “so as not to call attention to it,” said the Ranger who told me how to find the trail, donned my walking gear and headed out at about 2 PM on Friday, May 14, 2010. Following the trail was tricky because the path winds across sandstone slickrock from time to time, and you depend upon cairns, or stacks of sandstone, to guide you there. Since the Park Service doesn’t maintain the trail, cairns only exist where someone before you thought they would be handy, which occasionally leaves you lacking. And, one cairn is rarely enough. Standing at one, you have to be able to see the next one. I was trying to find my way down from such a slickrock ledge with no apparent exit in sight when a couple coming up from the False Kiva on their return trip, pointed out the path.

From there it was a matter of hunting and picking to stay on the trail which became increasingly narrow as it wound down and over cliff-side rubble to an alcove with a slight foothold up a six-foot wall to a second alcove containing the False Kiva. A Kiva is circle cut into or dug out of sandstone which the ancestral tribes covered with log beams and brush or animal skins to live in around a fire during the cold winter months. The center pole of the Kiva may have been set in hole symbolic of the navel of the earth, the center of the world, and the Kivas may have been oriented toward the rising of the sun.

The False Kiva is above ground, on the floor of the alcove, and consists of a circle of stacked stones about two feet high and 12 or 15 feet in diameter. No one knows what purpose it served in the life of the ancestral peoples, or how old it might be. A Park Service sign there asks that no digging be done and no artifacts be removed, and an ammo-like can contains a loose-leaf notebook with a collection of ballpoint pens and an invitation for visitors to leave behind name, address, and comments. I took what photos I could imagine taking (they are posted on the Flickr site) in the solitude of a holy place, and began the journey back to the car between 3:30 and 4 PM.

One of the photos I took, looking from the False Kiva across Green River Canyon, was of a thunderstorm developing, maybe 5 miles away. Thunderheads were all about as I made my way up and over the loose soil and rocks of the cliff-side to the stable path at the top of the descent. There I met a couple on their way down, we chatted for a moment and continued on our respective ways. About thirty minutes later I lost the trail.

Now, in my defense, I’ll say that in the desert, as much as anywhere else, and more-so than most places, it is an easy matter to lose the trail. For one thing, there is nothing to making a trail there. If you wander off to look at a flower or find a bathroom you make a trail in the thin top crust of the desert landscape. And if you come back by the same way, you make an even better trail. Trails are everywhere. For another thing, slickrock is everywhere. A trail that ends at a slab of slickrock may not be the same trail you pick up coming off the slab. The trail I picked up meandered for a while and ended at a juniper tree, which I reckoned, someone used as a bathroom and went back to the slickrock to find the real trail, which is what I did, but couldn’t find anything coming off the rock that looked like a trail. So, I went back to where I stepped off initially and walked around looking for the trail, making trails in the process. You see, I’m sure, where this is going. In circles.

It’s at this point in the story that you need to remember the thunderstorm that was building in Green River Canyon. It has become rather impressive by now, and is making time, coming right at me. It’s after 5. The sun sets around 8:20 but. The heavy cloud bank between the horizon and the sun, which shines intermittently through broken clouds, advances the disappearance of the sun to some time after 6. It won’t be night, but it won’t be encouraging either. Speaking of encouragement, rain begins to fall. I have a water repellant parker with me and by crawling beneath an overhanging ledge, I can cover most of my exposed side with the parker until the rain moves on. I do that three times while scrambling around looking for the real trail.

During those excursions I come upon a rocky outcropping that serves as a vantage point to the road, which I take to be about a half-mile away. I can make out cars easily enough, and human figures when they stop at a viewpoint to remark, no doubt, on the nasty looking weather coming their way, which, of course, puts it right over me. But the sun continues to break through from time to time. I consider my options and don’t like what I see.

My favorite way to not die is wet and cold. It’s going to be in the low forty’s in Moab tonight, which probably means the high thirty’s where I am. And the real thunderstorm is coming. That’s wet and cold in my book. So I throw it all into getting rescued. There is the couple I passed. They are behind me, if they don’t choose to spend the night in the False Kiva, which is what I would do, they may be a hope. There are the cars on the roadway. My other hope. And a single engine airplane is off in the distance. My third hope. My assets, in addition to the water repellant parker are a walking stick (Never go without a stick into the wilds), some white plastic grocery bags (for covering my camera in case of rain), a glass filter which I take off my camera and wad up a grocery bag which I hold between my palm and the filter to make a nice little reflector. Not as good as a mirror but effective. I blinded myself testing it out. And a whistle. It isn’t much of a whistle, but it’s the best I could buy at the outdoor store in Moab and it’s a whistle (Never go without a whistle into the wilds).

So, I start blowing the whistle, climb upon the rocky outcropping, tie a grocery bag onto the end of my walking stick and start waving it in the air at the road and the airplane with my right hand while I wiggle the reflector with my left. I figure, using the photographer’s way of reckoning—your fist at arms length represents about how far the sun moves in thirty minutes, a handy way of guessing how long before sunset if you are waiting to take a picture, thinking about a glass of wine—I have less than an hour before the sun sinks behind the cloud bank. The plane flies directly overhead while I’m reflecting and waving and whistling and shows no sign of having seen me. Cars pass on the road without slowing down. A white pickup pulls into the viewpoint and a person gets out. I ditch the whistle and start yelling, waving, reflecting. The person walks around for a couple of minutes, gets back in the truck and drives away. Well. Where am I better off? Standing on the rock, waving and reflecting in what is left of the sunlight, or using what’s left to find my way out of there? The truck drove off, the plane flew on and I have no confidence in being spotted from road or sky, though it was, I tell myself, an outstanding plan. I climb down and start looking for any way out, forget finding the trail.

Walking straight to the road is out of the question because the way is littered with gulches and ravines and canyons. I have to get up, out of the ravine I’m in, to the level of the desert. The one way up is a piece of slickrock sloping at about 35 degrees to a drop-off of about 50 feet. It isn’t just slickrock, but layers of sandstone, like the shingles on a roof a quarter of an inch thick. I can get up on it at one place that is about fifteen feet from the edge of the drop-off and about six feet above where I’m standing. I don’t like anything about that choice. I can climb up there maybe, and then what? Or I can wander around and hope to find my way back to the real trail. I want better options, but, as always, we don’t get to choose our choices. I’m about to resume my search for the trail when a voice from above, where else would you want one to come from, says, “What’s up, man?”

I look up and see two guys looking back at me. “I’m as lost as I can ever remember being,” I say. “You can’t imagine how good it is to see you two.” Joe Valdez, as it turns out, stands by as I climb up onto the slickrock. Eddie Andreas, smiles as Joe and I make our way up the sloping rock to him. We walk together as the sun slips behind the clouds to the road and their pickup. I climb in the back and they drive me two miles to where my car is parked.

“We saw you waving the flag from the road,” says Joe. “We didn’t know if you were lost or just saying hi. We heard you shouting, but couldn’t make out what you were saying.” They had driven up to a place they thought they could walk back to where they had seen me, and got close enough to hear my whistle, which I had started blowing again when I gave up the signaling, hoping that the couple behind me would hear it.

Well, there you are. What would have happened if they hadn’t showed up? We don’t know. Maybe desperation would have gotten me up on the slickrock, taking a chance at walking up and out. It’s all subject to speculation and conjecture. At the very least, I was saved from grief and misery, and very possibly from something much worse. So we can be thankful for Joe Valdez and Eddie Andreas. And we can reflect on a couple of things. For one thing, we need one another. It takes all of us. It’s all too easy to lose the way, to wander away from the trail, we cannot find the path alone. The way that is the real way is like the stone the builders reject. It is not the likeliest of ways and we need encouragement to choose it.

For another thing, we have to help people help us. We save ourselves in this sense. I got lost and I got found. We wave our white grocery bag and blow our whistle. We do what we can imagine doing, what we can think of to do. Alcoholics save themselves by going to AA, by helping people help them. We can’t just crawl under a rock ledge and hope to be rescued. We have to recognize when we cannot make it on our own and ask for help. We have to help people help us. Or, in the words of the Park Service motto: Your safety is your responsibility.

This story ends with the comments I left behind in the can in the False Kiva: The experience of this place, the trek and the arrival, is beyond words, like the numinous reality of which it speaks. All the ancestors gather in places like this, hoping for the arrival of pilgrims who understand that the visible world is grounded upon, and sustained by, the invisible world which is beyond words, but readily available to, and accessible by, eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand. May we who belong to both worlds join together in the service of compassion in the work that needs to be done for the good of all. Amen. May it be so.

And, yes. It was worth getting lost to be there.

Integrity, Integrity, Integrity

Sometimes we have to lie there and catch our breath when whammed by life. Sometimes we have to get up and get ready for the next play. Sometimes we need to hear, "There, there, it'll be better in time," and sometimes, "Quit your bellyaching and get back in the game!"

Life keeps coming at us. We have to work recovery into bringing the best we have to offer to meet the next challenge. This is true multitasking, operating on different levels of living at the same time. We have to recover while meeting the demands of life. To do this, we have to know how we recover, what we need to assist recovery, and we have to be conscious of nurturing ourselves in sustaining ways.

Recovery includes feeling what we feel AND remembering the life that is still OUR life to live, and knowing we have what we need, what it takes. Recovery is finding our way back to ourselves and living out of our connection with who we are within the context and circumstances of our lives. Recovery is regaining our sense of integrity and living out of our sense of what is integral with who we are within the context and circumstances of our lives.

Those of us who are off track, either because we have been knocked off track, or because we have simply drifted away from what is integral, have to get back on track, those of us who are on track have to stay on track. That's all there is to it.

The three watchwords for doing this, for getting on track and staying there, are: Integrity, Integrity, Integrity. Integrity connects us with the core of who we are. When we live with integrity, we live with authenticity. What we say is important IS important and our lives reflect its value. Integrity is alignment with the values that are core values and are truly worthy of our allegiance and loyalty.

We know when we are at-one with ourselves, when we are living in ways that are integral with our core. This is integrity. We have to live out of our sense of what is right for us, of what is appropriate for us in the situation "as it arises." This is our truth. Truth is not static reality apart from us. We create truth as we form our lives with integrity, doing what is truth for us, living lives that are aligned with values that connect us to the core of who we are.

Truth is about how it is with us, within and without. It is who we are and what our situation in life is. We are to live in ways that relate the who to the what. Relating who we are to what our situation in life is, the who to the what, is the work of soul, the work of life. When we do it well, we have life and have it abundantly, we are alive in the deepest sense of the word. We are alive to the extent that we live with integrity—being who we are--within the circumstances of our lives.

There is only one path to LIFE: Living with integrity, living to be who we are, to express who we are, within the context and circumstances of our lives. One of the indicators of living with integrity, aligned with who we are, is the degree of spontaneity we exhibit in our lives. How free are we to live without thinking how we should live? That's the test that tells the tale!

The obsession with doing it right is the neurotic need to be pleasing. Who must be pleased? What would happen if they are not pleased? Who do we think is watching, observing, grading? Whose life is it? Who gets to say how we live our life? We cannot live with integrity, with spontaneity, AND be pleasing to our parents, our children, our spouses, our partners, our friends, or the Lord God Almighty.

We also cannot live with integrity and spontaneity if we are concerned about making a profit, about having something to show for having lived. Don't have to have anything to show for it! What would you do for itself alone, with no reward, recognition, fame, fortune, glory, attached? We have to have more of those things in our lives.

We can’t live with integrity and spontaneity when we are concerned about doing our duty. Doing our duty untracks us, gets us off the beam. Social duty, or Christian duty, are authoritative should’s distracting us from the inner voice calling us to live aligned with our own integrity.

No one can give us our mission, our destiny, our life. No one can tell us what the beam is for us. We find our own path. It's about the work, stupid! The work is never about the money. The work is IT. Finding and doing the work that is ours to do is life itself.

There is a beam with our name on it, a track our life is made to run on. Our task is to find the beam, the track, get on it, stay there. This is to live with integrity. We keep thinking there is more to it than living the life that is our life to live, doing the work that is ours to do. NOT!

We are to live our life, OUR life, not frantically seeking satisfaction, but focused on bringing forth what is ours to give, loving who we are. We lose the way looking for it. We set aside the best seeking something better. Sin is not knowing when we are well off, or what's important.

Why work when you don't have to, ask the masses who think it is about not working, who think it is about lolling around, sipping sodas. It's about The Work! We live to quit working, to get away from work, when life is found in doing the work—the true work that is ours to do. Getting this wrong is the essence of sin, you know.

Sin is missing the mark, missing the point, thinking the wrong things are important, not getting it. Just try to talk someone into getting it who doesn’t get it! Jesus couldn’t do it, neither can we! But, Jesus didn’t let that stop him. He led the Revolution anyway, even though no one got it at the time.

The Revolution is led by those who know what is truly important, who know what they need to do to live with integrity, and do it. The Revolution is led by those who live out of their own integrity and let nature take its course. Living like this, in the service of what is truly important, what counts, matters, makes a difference, is subversive, insurrectionist, seditionist in the fullest sense. And, we get there by listening to ourselves, aligning ourselves with core values, and living in ways that are integral with that which is deepest, best, and truest about us. Living in this way is living well, and it requires us to live lives that are slower, quieter, simpler, more reflective and aware than the lives the culture encourages. May it be so for us all!

Saying and Hearing the Right Word

You pay me to say the right things. This doesn’t mean that I’m right about the things I say, just that you pay me to be right. I can be wrong, but you pay me to say the right things, in the right ways, at the right time, to the right people (that would be you). Now, the catch here, and this is going to sound like I’m writing myself a free pass, or asking you to write me a blank check—the catch is that the right word is, more often than not, the wrong word. The word that must be heard is the word that cannot be heard—because it is too painful, too burdensome, too far from what we want to be told, too hard, too true, or just not capable of being heard at this point in our life. We cannot hear what our life experience has not prepared us to hear. So, if you don’t like what you are hearing, it may not necessarily follow that I’m doing a bad job (Of course, that could very well be the case. I can’t offer you any old word. It has to be my best effort at offering the Right Word). It could also be that you aren’t doing a very good job of squaring up to the truth. Or, it could be that you cannot hear what I’m saying because you haven’t lived long enough to know what I’m talking about. How would we ever know whose fault it is if the right word isn’t heard?

There is a scriptural formula for determining whether the words of a prophet are true. This is set out in Jeremiah, who was saying one thing to the king and to Jerusalem, while the paid priests of the state were saying the opposite. Who was the false prophet? Who was the true prophet? Jeremiah declares, “When the words of the prophet come to pass, then it will be known that he was a true prophet.” Jesus said the same thing to those asking him to justify himself and his words: “Wisdom is vindicated by her children” (Luke 17:35). And, sometimes, it is by her grandchildren.

It takes a while for the validity of a word to be verified by our experience. By then, it is generally too late for us to benefit from it. It would certainly be too late for us to know whether I’m slacking off on my responsibility to say the right word or if you are slacking off on your responsibility to hear it. It is enough for us all to know what we are responsible for. I am here to say the right word. You are here to hear it.

The right word can only be heard by hearts that are at the point of being able to recognize the truth of what is said, but it is too easy for each of us to blame the other if nothing is heard. I could blame you for being “hard-hearted and stiff-necked.” And you could blame me for being ambiguous and incomprehensible. Or, as one dear soul once said, “Jim, why don’t you talk to us about things we can understand?”—which I took to mean, “Why don’t you tell us what we have always heard?” All of which is to say that we have our work cut out for us. I have to say the right word and you have to hear it, and neither of us can blame the other for being obstinate or obtuse.

This means we have to grant the other the benefit of the doubt, as we each endeavor to do our part in saying and hearing what needs to be said and heard. You have to trust me to be working to say the right word. I have to trust you to be working to hear it. The work we do together produces the word that needs to be heard. I need you doing your work in order to speak the right word as much as you need me doing my work in order to hear it. Your hearing enables my speaking, my speaking enables your hearing, and together we produce a dialectic which creates the truth.

This means I am not the authority on what constitutes “the right word.” No word is “right” in and of itself. Everything rides on how those who hear it work it out for themselves, work it into their lives. “Wisdom is vindicated by her children.” You don’t come here and take dictation in order to memorize it so you can repeat it as heard to yourself and others forever. You hear what is said and turn it over, work it into your own soil, make it your own. You may transform it completely.

We have changed the meaning of the words of the prophets and the apostles and of Jesus Christ God’s Only Son Our Lord himself! We say what their words mean to us. We make them ours. We would have to interpret their words to them because of the changes we have made in order to make their words intelligible to our generation. We make the right word right by the way we hear it, by the way we fit it to ourselves and ourselves to it. How do we all know the right word when we hear it? The first rule is: No quick dismissals! We have to sit with it for a while, walk around it, mull it over, reflect on it, wonder about it, let it do its work. I have to do that with the word I say to you. You have to do that with the word you hear me speak.

The right word is yeast in the dough, a seed in the earth, the stone that the builders reject. It is like the dragon hatching, like the new life aborning. It is a threat to all that we have heard before, to the old life based on the old words. The right word can be consoling, comforting, healing, renewing, and it can be a threat and a terror, so we must not dismiss it outright. We have to spend the right kind of time with the words we hear to know if they are right words. This is doing our part.

I’m talking here about the importance of meditation—not blanking out your mind, but focusing it, thinking about the word you hear and what feels wrong about it and what may be right about it. I’m talking about the importance of reflection. About the importance of prayer.

Prayer is primarily attitude, orientation, a certain quality of spirit, of soul. It is openness, and respect. It is honoring the otherness of the other, of the situation, of the word, in a way that brings the other, the situation, the word, in and makes the other, the situation, the word, welcome. Prayer is making all things welcome and offering them, spoken or barely perceived, to the numinous reality that is our home in a way that recognizes our home is with all things, so that nothing is shut out, shunned, banished, but received, heard, understood, honored, and made room for. This is one of those hard words that cannot possibly be right because it is so wrong. How can we welcome all things when some things are so obviously horrendous and atrocious? Well. What would it take to understand the atrocities in a way that allowed us to receive them well? We must not hurry here, but sit, thinking, prayerfully.

An Analogy

Here’s an analogy for you: Let’s take Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Let’s say they are you. Both of them. Adam is the dull, boring, same old, same old you, and Eve is the vivacious, lively, looking for action you, and the two of you are stuck in the same body. When you work together, the Adam side of you tempers the Eve side of you and the Eve side of you pulls, pushes, the Adam side of you deeper into the possibilities of life, of YOUR life, the life that you are built, created, to live. Your Adam side is the contemplative, reflective, meditative side, and your Eve side is the experiential, explorative, inventive side. Both are quite necessary in making YOUR life work.

The snake and the forbidden fruit are your curiosity about, your interest in, your intrigue with ALL that life offers. You like YOUR, life, the life that is truly yours to live, but. There are all kinds of other lives out there, and you would like to try them out, just to see what it might be like. The lights and action of Gay Paree, for instance, present a compelling distraction, and what’s a little action going to hurt? So, you leave the way, turn aside from the path, follow your own idea of what life could be, and drift away from the life that is YOUR life to live. You could have been a teacher, perhaps, but business school promised more income, and your dad is a banker. You could have been a concert pianist, but architecture is art, too, and with job security. So, you drifted into a life, a world, really, that is not YOUR life. And you heard the door click shut behind you, but you didn’t think anything of it because you were taken by the sweet thing, or the handsome hunk, at your side and you were off on your great adventure together.

Well, you woke up about the time of your second divorce and remembered what you left behind, and thought that maybe there is more to it than this, and wondered how to find it. You looked around to discover that you were in a second garden. Call it Gethsemane. As you think about it, there was something in the first garden about an angel with a flaming sword guarding the way back into Eden. Symbolic talk, meaning that to get back to the beginning, you going to have to die, or feel like you are dying. Dying is what Gethsemane is all about. There is death in handing the reins of our life over to the “Thy” within. New birth, remember, is a dragon climbing out of the egg. Your new life eats your old life screaming alive. “Thy will, not mine, be done!”

Just who is the “Thy” here? Everything hangs on our getting this straight. It’s the way back to Eden, the way of death that is life, understanding what’s at stake in “Thy will, not mine, be done.” Who is in charge of our living? Where do we go for guidance and direction? How do we know, how do we decide, what to do? The tricky part of “Thy will, not mine, be done,” is that WE say what the “Thy” is saying! How do we know? You can see that there might be a bit of a conflict of interest here! How do we get ourselves out of the way to hear what the “Thy” wants done? THIS is exactly the Garden of Eden story! Adam/Eve (you), the snake/temptation (self-interest), and the “Thy.” The question is, whose side are you on? Let me make it clearer.

We stand between two worlds, physical and spiritual. We balance the demands, the needs, of two worlds. We live two lives. We have a life that the physical world gives to us and a life that the spiritual world, that our soul, gives to us. Two worlds, two lives. And we have to live both of them at the same time. Our spiritual life is not something we do with prayer and meditation or going to church. We don’t call time out and go be spiritual for a while. We have to be spiritual all the time, within the physical world. The spiritual life is the life soul insists that we live in the world, the life we are called to incarnate, bring forth, give birth to. How alert, aware, attentive are we to this life that soul is calling us to live? Our primary task is listening to psyche/soul and aligning ourselves with the life that needs to come forth through us into the world. Problem is, no one teaches us to do this.

Well, here goes: Our body is our most direct connection with psyche/soul. We have to learn to listen to our body, read its signals, know what it is saying, follow our body’s lead. Next in line, I would say, are dreams, fantasies, slips of the tongue, songs we hum absent-mindedly, and spontaneous responses to the experiences of life. Then, there is the encounter with the numinous, the white rabbits, the things that catch our eye, wink at us, stop us in our tracks, compel us to respond, or not. These experiences are all avenues into the inner world, windows into the way things are, or need to be, within. We have to be alert to, and tune into, the inner world in order to hear what the “Thy” is saying to us.

We have to become students of soul, our own soul, in order to know what we have to say to ourselves and how to live in response. Here's your homework assignment: Pick a day, or part of a day, an afternoon, THIS afternoon, perhaps, and don't know what to do. Do what you FEEL needs to be done. FEEL your way through the afternoon. FEELING what needs to be done next, now. Not thinking, FEELING! Stop thinking! FEEL! You know whether another cup of coffee is called for, or a trip to the toilet. You don't think those things, or plan them in advance. You feel them, and do what is called for in the moment of your living.

Spirituality is not about being told what to believe. It is strengthening our connection with psyche/soul through practice, practice, practice. We wouldn't think of learning to play the piano or tennis or bridge without practice. We don't learn to play the piano by listening to a lecture, or lots of lectures, about playing the piano. Practice! Practice! Practice! We don't learn to play the piano by reading a book, or lots of books, about playing the piano. Practice! Practice! Practice! We don't learn to play the piano by visiting places where pianos are played, or built. Practice! Practice! Practice! We don't learn to play the piano by watching someone play the piano, or by listening to piano concertos. Practice! Practice! Practice! We practice listening to the “Thy,” to psyche/soul, to do what needs doing! Then, we only have to find the courage to do it!

A 747 Leaves A Lot To Be Desired!

We all know plenty of people, more than our fair share for sure, who think they can do a better job with our lives than we are doing. They are quick to step forward with timely pointers, suggestions, recommendations, cures, sometimes criticisms. It is all well intended, I’m sure, and designed to get us to stop doing what we are doing and start doing what they think we ought to be doing instead.

Once, in Amory, Mississippi, Gladys Drane, I’m sorry you didn’t know her, shook my hand after the Sunday service and said, “If I give you the money, would you get a hair cut?” By then, I had played the game for a while, and, without a pause, replied, “You could give me the money.” In every congregation there have been people who knew more about how my life ought to be lived than I did. They have offered to pay for my family’s membership in the country club and my dues in Rotary or the Lions Club. They have suggested that I had no business talking to them of Marcus Borg and of not telling them everything John Calvin said.

You have had similar experiences with those dedicated to your personal improvement. Those Who Know Best (Truman Capote’s phrase) are everywhere and are determined to make us into who they want us to be. We just won’t do as we are. And, of course, we have been bruised enough at that spot for it to be a very tender place in us all. We are quite sensitive to falling short, afraid we aren’t good enough, certain we should be doing more to deserve a place in the human family, and sure that we will soon be asked to leave the room. But really now. Just take a look around.

If you put us all on a table, and slowly circled it, taking stock, adding up our assets and liabilities, you would come to the conclusion that each of us leaves a lot to be desired. There is more that we don’t do than we do. Certainly more that we don’t do well than we do well. Many, perhaps most, of us have more reason to be ashamed and sorry than to be proud and brimming with confidence. But, before you go off on yourself, or give up completely and curl into a fetal position for the rest of your natural life, consider this:

A Boeing 747 leaves a lot to be desired. Wait! Did I hear someone say, “747?” What an amazing coincidence! For right here on the Communion Table is my very own scaled down model of a 747! What do you think about that! Yep. A 747 is one of my symbols that keeps me on track and helps me stay sane by reminding me that even a Boeing 747 on its best day leaves a lot to be desired.

Think about it. You can’t comb your hair with a 747. You can’t brush your teeth with one. You can’t mow the lawn with one. You can’t plow the garden with one. You can’t dig a hole with one. You can’t play tennis with one. You can’t drive it to the grocery store, and even if you could, you would never find a place to park. You get the idea. There is more you cannot do with a 747 than you can do with one. A 747 is like us in that it does not do all things well. But, it does what it does very well. So do we. We don’t disparage a 747 for not being more like a canoe or a garden hose, why do we berate ourselves for our deficiencies?

We are ashamed of ourselves for not being more of a Renaissance Woman or Man—a Jane, or James, Bond—who knows everything and does all things well. However, if we are going to denigrate and belittle ourselves for our insufficiencies, we should add our capacity to come up with sufficient ideals to the list. We are certainly insufficient in that regard. We have the wrong ideals. A person with no weakness, no defects, no blemishes, no gaps is more robot than human being. Give me someone who stumbles around a bit and can’t find the door or the light switch! Let me BE that person! What fun would there be in doing all things well? When would you ever laugh at yourself, or cry? It’s much better to be the way we are!

We all have our deficits but. We do some things really well. The work is to let our deficits stand without interfering with what we do well. We have to find our song, our gait, our niche, our beam and do what we do well, without dissing ourselves for what we don't do well at all. We are likely to be a disappointment to someone on some level, and to some people on all levels. A 747 has more things that it doesn’t do, cannot do, than it has that it does do. So do we. Our task is to do the things we do well and let that be that, without apology, embarrassment or shame. And, if someone gives us down the river because of something we can't do, we only need to tell them a 747 couldn't do it either.

The Animal Projection Exercise

Working with a symbol is like working with a dream. It keeps opening to multiple levels of meaning. Follow it wherever it leads in your imagination. Our imagination is the key. We imagine, intuit, our way into knowledge. We do not reason our way there, but reason has its place. Imaginative thinking makes, deepens, expands the connections which our unconscious implies with the symbols in our dreams. For example, in a dream, our unconscious implies, suggests, that we are a ripe tomato. Imaginative thinking discloses in what ways we are a ripe tomato. We make the connections that were, before, absurd.

In working with our symbols—and they have to be OUR symbols! No one can give us our symbols. We are seized, gripped by them. And, in working with them, we have to get the right side of our brains into the action. The logical, rational, intellectual left side needs all the help it can get. The problem is the logical, rational, intellectual left side of our brain thinks it is all it needs and believes it is King of the World. The left side of our brain can't begin to answer the important questions on its own. We have to form a sacred partnership with the other side. Here is one way to do that:

If you were an animal, what particular animal would you be? What is the first animal that comes to mind? Bring that animal clearly into focus in your mind’s eye. For the remainder of this exercise, allow yourself to become the animal. The following questions are directed to you as the animal.

1. What kind of animal are you?

2. What is your name (the first name that comes to mind)?

3. What do you like best about being this animal?

4. What do you enjoy doing most as this animal?

5. Where do you like to spend your time?

6. What are your ambitions—what do you want for yourself?

7. What are your hopes and dreams about?

8. What are your greatest fears or concerns?

9. Upon what does your happiness depend?

10. What do you need most as this animal?

11. Where do you go to be nurtured and strengthened?

12. What motto do you live by?

13. What burdens do you carry?

14. What gift is yours to give the world?

15. What do you think of the other animals?

16. What do the other animals think of you?

17. What would you like to tell the other animals?

18. What do you think the other animals would like to tell you?

19. What strengths do you have as an animal that you could use in your life as a human being?

20. What message do you have for your human side?

As this exercise comes to a close, become yourself again and thank your animal for its presence and its place in your life. Your animal has a gift to offer you. Receive the gift from your animal, and present your animal with a gift in return. Promise your animal, if you mean to keep the promise, that you will invite her or him to visit you again in the near future. Say goodbye for now and return to this place of apparent, normal reality. What did your animal give you? What did you give your animal? Spend some time this week considering the gifts and what meaning they might have for you.

Ride The Dragon!

We cannot live if we are afraid to die. This is the message of Easter. Jesus rose from the dead long before he died. Death couldn’t touch Jesus. He lived with nothing to lose. That’s the Easter story. Jesus’ entire life was Easter. Death could not keep him from living, from being fully alive.

Jesus was not afraid of dying and could therefore live exactly as he needed to live, in saying and doing the things that needed to be said and done in the society of his day. Once you are not afraid of death, there is no reason to hold anything back, and you can live straight from the heart with perfect integrity, with your words and actions exactly aligned with that which is integral to your heart and soul. Then, Easter is every day, and you are free to live the life that needs to be lived in each moment. Not even Caesar and the Legions of Rome can take that from you. Nothing can.

This is the key to understanding Easter. You rise from the dead the moment you decide you are going to live no matter what. I believe Jesus made this very decision in the aftermath of the death of John the Baptist. Jesus did not come forth until after John died. John’s death was the resurrection event of Jesus’ life. When John died, Jesus stepped forth from the tomb, in a manner of speaking. And he lived his life from that point on as one who was not afraid to die—as one who put everything on the line all the time. He climbed on his dragon and rode it fearlessly, as we must, if we are to ride our dragon at all.

Did I say dragon? What a coincidence. Look! Here on the Communion Table is a little dragon breaking out of its egg. This is my Happy Easter Egg. It is my symbol of what Easter is about. You’ve heard of Easter Eggs. New life, new birth, resurrection. Happy Easter! Well, here’s an Easter Egg for you. This boy, or is it a girl? This Momma will eat you alive if you are not careful! If you are afraid to die, you better not come close! New life is for those who are not afraid to die. We like the idea of new birth, of new life, but when the egg hatches, a dragon steps forth. The new life eats the old life alive. What do we think?

We think of new life on our terms, all tame and domesticated, with strolls in the park and sweet rolls in the coffee shop across the street. But new life is not just any life. It is not our old life only better. It is new in every way, particularly in what it requires of us. It requires us to live straight from the heart, with perfect integrity, so that our words and our actions are exactly aligned with that which is integral to our heart and soul. That’s new life for you. The old life was never anything like that!

The new life is the life that is the dragon. Living that life is riding the dragon. It’s riding the dragon because you can’t do it if you are afraid of anything, especially dying. You can’t live if you are afraid of dying. Why die not knowing? Not knowing what we could do if we lived holding nothing back? Why hold anything back? We are saving ourselves for what, exactly? We are waiting for what? What has to happen before we have what it takes to reveal ourselves, spring forth, see who we are and what we are capable of doing with the life that needs to be lived, that needs us to live it? What are we waiting for before we jump on the dragon and ride into the rest of our lives?

In order to be alive, we must live the life that needs to be lived, that needs us to live it. We cannot be alive and live any old life, lolling around the pool, snowboarding until the boredom sets in. Only the life that needs to be lived—that needs us to live it—will do. The life that needs to be lived is the dragon! Eating alive and screaming the life we would like to live, wish we could live, want to live.

The three temptations of the Buddha under the Bodhi-tree were desire, fear, and duty. You have to hold the line and stay with what is right for you, no matter what. STAY ON THE BEAM! STAY ON THE DRAGON! The Dragon is the Beam which is the Cross. RIDE THE DRAGON! STAY ON THE BEAM! CARRY YOUR CROSS! Live the life that needs to be lived! “Leave the dead to bury the dead!”, shouts Jesus from the back of his dragon, on his way to die, living a life death could not touch.

Why die having not lived? We owe it to ourselves to incubate the egg and hatch it and see if we have what it takes to ride the dragon throughout our lives. Why die not knowing what we are made of, what we are capable of, whether we have what it takes to do what needs to be done? It’s Easter! Death cannot touch those who are not afraid of dying! Why hold anything back? Ride the dragon!

We Grow Into The Unknown

What I am about here is the orchestration of perception. I take the director’s baton and tap, tap, tap, bring into harmonious arrangement the squawking chaos of discordant perspectives by inviting you to speak your truth of the particular part you are to the receptive ear of the whole. Our voices unite us in the oneness of expression when, speaking, we are heard, respected, honored, well received and understood.

Each of you has your own way of seeing, your own way of apprehending and assessing reality. I am not about to talk you into seeing the way I see, into valuing what I value, into thinking the way I think, but. By saying what I see and think, I can force you into reacting to what I say, into thinking about what I say, into thinking for yourself about what I say—and if I can get you to think about your reaction, to dig into it, the exploration can be fruitful. You may well deepen, expand, enlarge your thinking just by thinking about your thinking. Or, you may just retrench yourself in your preferred pattern of thought. Oh well.

But the rule here is to dig where there is water, where there is emotional response to what you see and hear. Opposition is as valuable as agreement. What we are looking for is the emotional level of your response. The more stirred up you are, either positively or negatively, the better. Explore your reaction. What buttons am I pushing? Why are they hot for you? What memories come to mind in relation to that button being pushed? Talk to the reactive side of yourself. Interview her, him. See what she, what he, has to say. Spend time digging down to the heart of the matter. Poke around in the muck. See what is there. What ALL is there.

What I’m good for is waking you up to you, inviting you to meet yourself, your own thoughts and explore where they come from, where they lead. You have to do the work of figuring out why you are responding to me as you are. It isn’t a matter of getting me to be more like you want me to be, to say more of what you want me to say, but of examining your desire to change me. What’s up with that, as they say.

The same goes for your reaction to one another, to what the other is saying. What is going on? You have to do the work required to know. You have to trace things back to the source in order to find and face what is there. It isn’t enough to say, “Oh, I know what this is about,” and letting it go at that. Pretend you don’t know, or recognize that you don’t know all there is to know. Dig into what it is about. Sit with it. See what comes, what happens. What is being asked of you? What response do you need to make?

We are all blind to what we do not want to see, but. What needs to be seen is constantly coming at us in our physical and emotional reactions to our life experience, and in our dreams. Something is trying to get us to see what we do not want to see. We have to learn to look. This is our spiritual work, looking at what we do not want to see. This is the next piece of the puzzle, the next step in the journey. It has nothing to do with agreement or disagreement with what instigates the reaction. It has to do with following the reaction to its source and seeing what is there to deal with, or follow, or serve. What is there? We have to face the demon, to call it by name, and see what happens.

This is called knowing what is true and what is also true, or knowing how things are and how things also are. We do not know what we do not know, and so, we have to be wondering what else is there, what more there is to know. We grow into the unknown, into the unknown that we don’t know anything about, and into the unknown aspects of what we think we know very well, including ourselves.

We are an aspect of the mystery that we do not know. Life is not so much about getting what we want and arranging our lives like we want them to be, but about knowing who we are, who else we are, who all we are, by opening ourselves to what else is there. We open ourselves to the mystery and assist the unconscious, unknown, energies that are calling our name, beckoning us to take up our work of knowing and becoming who we are, doing the work that is ours to do, and aligning ourselves with the life that is ours to live. This is lived spirituality. It is not head stuff, thinking and believing certain ways. It is life stuff, living the life that is right for us, the life that we are created to live, by stepping into the mystery, into the unknown, trusting ourselves to it, singing our own song, and living the adventure that is our life. Amen! May it be so!

Carrying the Imago Dei to Term

We have to do the work required to bring ourselves forth. There is nothing automatic or natural about the process of the “second birth.” It is brought on by the realization of dissatisfaction with the world as it is, of the emptiness and insufficiency of the wasteland that is our life. And if our life does not seem to be a wasteland, if we are breezing right along with everything as it should be and nothing more than the usual complaints about the weather and politicians to disrupt the flow, then there is no reason to question the framework within which we live, or the structure we have been told holds things in place.

It takes an encounter with unwanted reality to shock us into the realization that the way we have been told things are is not the way things are. Without that, things rock along in an acceptable kind of way, and we live out our days without raising our eyes to the possibilities or digging a well to the waters of life flowing beneath our feet.

We have to be awakened to the inability of our life to sustain itself with a diet of physical food and drink. A tree may get all it needs from the nutrients in soil, water, light and air, but it takes more than that for human beings. We have to be grounded, rooted, in a different medium. We depend upon a vibrant connection with life beyond life, beyond the physical, biological, necessities of life—a life that flows with meaning and purpose and the freedom to explore our interests and devote ourselves to the work of giving physical expression to our creative imagination.

We plant things and paint things and build things and draw things. We see how things could be and work to bring that forth in our lives, and that work brings us to life in a way that a proper diet and exercise could never produce. There is something about us, something within us, that needs to become actual, tangible, real, through us in the world. It is not enough to be born. We are born as carriers, as hosts, of a different sort of life requiring a different sort of birth, and we live our lives giving birth again and again to different manifestations of the creative spirit that dwells within.

It sometimes takes a jolt of reality to wake us up to the failure of the things that are supposed to be satisfying to satisfy, and to send us on the search of the things of lasting, one might say, “eternal,” value. We cannot buy the things that matter, but we can buy the tools to produce the things that matter, to do the things that matter. To do that, of course, we have to know, we have to find, the things that matter. Not the things that are supposed to matter. Not the things someone else tells us matter. But the things that matter because we know, we say, they matter. We find those things by taking up the practice of listening to our lives, of noticing our body’s response to our lives, in order to find what “clicks” with us, what resonates with us, and what does not.

Resonation is the key. Too often, we build our lives around the things we are supposed to do, or the things that are supposed to be fulfilling, when we experience dissonance, not resonance, in response to those things. When we ignore the disparity between how we are supposed to feel and how we actually feel we pay a price. We have to be alert to the sense of being out-of-alignment, out-of-sync, out-of-harmony, and move away from discord to accord in order to find the spiritual ground of our lives, the environment where our spirit thrives, and life takes on new meaning.

We are the point of contact between worlds, and our work is always to connect the worlds, to bring forth the inner, spiritual, world into the outer world of normal, apparent, reality. It used to be that the physical world was filled with messages and directives, signs and portents, from the unconscious. Then we came "of age." And now our task is finding our way back to the land we once knew by paying attention to instinct, being aware of intuition. Looking, listening. The process is to look, listen, see, hear, understand, know, do, be. If we get that down, we save the world.

We save the world by being the self we are called to be. The self we are called to be is the Image of God, the Imago Dei, the Christ within. The Imago Dei is a mustard seed, yeast in the dough, invisibly influential. Cast aside by the builders, transforming the world. You. Me. Us. This is the self within we are called to bring forth, to birth in our lives. We are mid-wives here to assist the birthing of the Imago Dei through us into the world. We are the Virgin bringing forth the Bebe Jesus. Our task is always to take the circumstances and conditions of life, of the moment, and imagine how to use them to bring forth the life within. In so doing, we come alive in the fullest possible sense of the word, and, yes, save the world!

It's A New World

Paul couldn’t know what we know and think the way he thought. For one thing, his idea about the immediacy of Christ’s return in apocalyptic glory to institute the cosmic reign of the kingdom of God would go swiftly out of the window, and he would have to go back to the desert for another three years in order to come up with a newer way of understanding the implications of the life and death and resurrection appearances of Jesus. He would have to make sense of things in a different way. Which is exactly the work that is ours to do. We have to make sense of things in a way that is dramatically different from the way Paul and the apostles made sense of things. What they thought has not been borne out in our experience. We cannot think the way they thought.

This flashes us back to the Wednesday night program this past week. We watched part two in a series about the movement from Jesus to Christ, from the Jesus Movement to Christianity. The narrator mentioned that in the aftermath of the death of Jesus the tradition that had built up around the idea of the Messiah had to be reinterpreted. How many times throughout history have traditional assumptions and expectations had to be reinterpreted in light of events and experience that did not bear them out?

The end is always near. The world as we know it is always coming to an end. We are always having to rethink, re-imagine, re-work, the traditions to take into account the contradictions and incompatibilities between what we have been told and what we experience. We are always coming up against some reality that doesn't square with how we think things are, with how we wish things were, with how we want things to be. That's the end of that world. Poof. Gone.

How many worlds have come and gone? Ways of life, civilizations, ideas about how things are? When the parents divorce, the child's world goes. How many times have the traditions been reinterpreted, revised, to fit new realities, new worlds, incompatible with the old way of seeing? How many traditions, sacred truths, blessed convictions, have dissolved before the advance of a new way of seeing? Don't hold on too tightly to how you think things are! “It’s a new world, Golda!” And a newer one is on the way! Successful religions reinterpret their traditions in light of the new world that has dawned. Unsuccessful religions collapse when their cornerstone beliefs are not sustained by their life experience.

The work of religion is the work of squaring us up with the conditions of the world that greet us at birth. And, at some point in our lives, we have to return the favor and do the work of squaring our religion up with the changing conditions of life which no longer support the beliefs and constructs of our religion. Copernicus and Galileo and Darwin and Jung have given us a world the old religious assumptions don’t fit, and we have to re-think the traditions to take the new world into account, or else.

Always the question: What does this have to do with that? What does this world have to do with that one? What do those traditional ways of seeing and thinking have to do with this new way of seeing and thinking about the world in which we live? What do those stories, that system of beliefs, have to do with this turn of events, this reality?

The movement of soul, the spiritual journey, is always from bondage to freedom—from bondage to the old way of thinking, seeing, being—from bondage to the old traditions—to the freedom of new life, new vision, new ways of thinking, seeing, being. This is the message of Easter, Resurrection, and New Birth. The old has passed away, behold the new has come. And within a generation or less, this new will be old and will be replaced by a newer New, and we will have to move again from bondage to the old way of perceiving reality to the freedom of another new way of beholding the world and our place in it.

Ours is the task of reinterpreting, re-thinking, the old traditions, the old symbols. They are not automatically relevant, pertinent, meaningful. What does that say to this? We have to rework the traditions to make the connections, but, the work is not easy. Who wants to do the work of rethinking, reworking, the old symbols? Who wants to think, reflect, wonder, imagine, struggle to make new connections? Distractions are easier, diversions are more fun. Who has time to spend in the search for meaning and purpose when Wii waits? Wii will have to wait, because no one can re-work the symbols, the traditions, for us. Each of us must do the work for herself, himself. We cannot be told what there is to know, see, understand, perceive, grasp, get. Truth cannot be explained to us. We have to do the work. We have to find a symbol or image that moves us. Listen to it. Follow where it takes us, into the far reaches of a brand new world.

Integrity Is So The Point

Integrity is the highest good. We live with integrity when we live so that outer reflects inner, so that Thou Art That, consciously, intentionally, and the unitive Oneness is apparent, real in our lives. Joseph Campbell says “We should become transparent to transcendence.” He means that we, that our lives, should be like panes of glass through which Transcendent Reality shines. We should live our lives so as to exhibit, express, bring forth, make plain the truth of the transcendent core, or heart, or soul of who we are. There is always more to us than meets the eye, and we are to live so as to bring that forth, giving it birth, bringing it to life in the world of normal, apparent, reality.

This is the work of Incarnation. When we align ourselves with our life, with the life we are called to live, the transcendent source of life shines through our living. We are “transparent to transcendence,” and God is known. This is how we are called to live. This is how Jesus lived: “The Father and I are one. When you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Or, as Paul says it, “It is no longer I who live, but (the) Christ who lives in me.” That’s it. And what prevents it? What gets in the way of that? Oh, everything. Our wishes, wants, desires, fears, ambitions… Our ideas of how our life should be lived. WE get in the way of that. And so, the work—the spiritual task, quest, journey, path—is to get out of the way!

Our life is not a long list of things to get done—to accomplish, achieve, acquire, amass—before we die, and it isn't a place to hang out until we die, it's where we bring forth who we are born, who we are called, to be. Joseph Campbell says, “Each of us has a track to find and follow.” Our life is our canvass and we are the masterpiece we produce by living it. But that is not something we think up and force into being. We don’t produce ourselves so much as align ourselves with ourselves. We acquiesce to the Self within—the Self we are called to be. WE become transparent to the Self within which transcends our idea of who we want to be. We surprise ourselves with who we are.

It isn't easy, being who we are, living the life that is ours to live. Better to be invisible, to go along to get along, to make no waves. The world blends us into its way of doing things. It's easier when we don't think, resist, react, but just go along like unconscious cows. Yet, to make no waves is to disappear beneath the water, to drown in the great corporate sea of unconsciousness that does what is supposed to be done without knowing what it is doing.

But, it's hard enough finding a parking place, remembering what we need at the grocery store. We have too much already on our minds. The life that is ours to live is on its own. We don't want to have to think about who we are and what is ours to do. Inner work is more than we can manage. And it is essential that we do it!

Inner work begins with paying attention to our body. Joseph Campbell says, “Your body is a vehicle of consciousness.” We are consciousness becoming conscious! We become conscious by becoming conscious of our body and its reaction to our experience. Our body’s reaction to external experience is a bridge to the inner world. When we become conscious of our body’s reaction to external experience, we can follow that reaction to its source in the inner world and become aware of what meets us there. Our experience of our experience transforms our lives. Inner world meets outer world. Who we are is incarnated in how we live.

This is much different from memorizing creeds and believing what we are told to believe out of a book of doctrine. What is within that needs to be brought forth, birthed, expressed, made known? How do we place ourselves in its service? Find who we are? Make ourselves transparent to transcendence? These are the questions which ground us in spiritual reality and save the world.

Our work is to find and live our own lives, to be who we are, who we are called to be, within the time and place of our living. Human beings in primal societies have always understood our true work as being that of maintaining alignment with soul, with the unconscious, invisible, spiritual world. As civilization developed, we set that understanding aside in order to serve our own ambitions, desires, and ideas of what was important. That hasn’t turned out so well, and our lives are empty, devoid of meaning, and our life is a wasteland. Now, we are at the point of finding our way back to listening to what the inner, spiritual, world has to say, and collaborating with it along the way.

How do we consciously make ourselves a partner with the unconscious, with the unknown, with what we don’t know? How do we attend, commune with, the inner voices? How do we honor the inner world and recognize it as a full partner in the work of finding our way along the way? The answers to these questions constitute the work of soul. It is the work of aligning ourselves with our lives, and waits for us to take it up and become who we are.

Unconscious Cows

I place before you this morning three things: The First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me!” The central proclamation of first century Christians: “Jesus Christ is Lord!” And, Julie Strope. As we see how these three things are really One, as is the case with every triune configuration when perceived with hearts that understand, we will see what is ours to do in the time left to us.

The First Commandment admonishes all adherents: Do not do it as you see it being done about you! There were nothing but “other gods” in those days, and in these. And the First Commandment calls us away from the way our neighbors are doing things to consider for ourselves how things truly need to be done, so that we might do it.

The declaration “Jesus Christ is Lord” was only half of the formula for first century believers. The other half, always implied and sometimes stated, if only under one’s breath, was “And Caesar is NOT Lord!” In this way, the early church carried forward the Old Testament dharma: “Do not do it as you see it being done about you!”

And, of course, this leads us to Julie Strope. Of all the things you could think to say about Julie Strope, never would you say that she did anything the way it was being done around her. This is the single characteristic essential for the salvation of the world, and Julie has embodied it beautifully, and has lived before us as a wonderful example of how it is to be done.

Jesus stood before the Pharisees, looked them in the eye, and asked, “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” And he asked his disciples point blank, “Who do YOU say that I am?” It is the independent judgment of individual human beings that keeps things balanced and sane, that makes the world livable, that enables life. When we stop thinking for ourselves and stop making up our own minds about what is important and how we will live our lives, things take a quick turn for the worse, and we follow one another like unconscious cows down worn paths to the pasture and back to the barn without ever being alive and present in the life we are living.

Who could be alive and present in the life we are living? Who could stand it? Who could be awake and alive for life as it is being lived around us? It seems obvious that we have to make ourselves unconscious—that we have to put ourselves to sleep—just to make it through our days. DO NOT DO IT AS YOU SEE IT BEING DONE ABOUT YOU! This is the spiritual task, quest, path, journey: Bearing the pain of waking up and living our own lives!

Our work is deciding how to live our own lives in the time and place—within the context and circumstances—of our living. This is our spiritual work and our calling, to bring forth who we are within the hard and fast realities of physical existence. This is the work of incarnation, giving the spiritual “I am” physical, tangible, actual existence in the world of normal, apparent, reality. We cannot hand this responsibility over to some external authority, some culture, some group, some guru, some guide, and go where we are told to go and do what we are supposed to do. DO NOT DO IT AS YOU SEE IT BEING DONE ABOUT YOU!

Our life is all we have to work with. It is the only tool at our disposal in the task of bringing forth who we were born, and who we are called, and who we are built, to be. If we just follow the other cows to the pasture and back to the barn all our lives long we will live and die as an unconscious cow.

That will never be said of Julie Strope. May it never be said of any of us! May it be said of us that we made the decisions that were needed to be made in order to live our own life, and may the life we live as our own be the life that is ours to live, the life with our name on it. Amen! May it be so!