01/21/07, Sermon

The right kind of company gives you, you. Brings you to life. Doesn’t tamper with your controls. Listens you to a deeper level of understanding your own interests, and aptitudes, and desires, and knacks, and inclinations, and instincts, and perceptions, and perspective, and capacities, and capabilities. Connects you with your own gifts, your own genius. Encourages you to “do what’s you”—to find your own heart, and live your own life—in right relationship with those about you. Where do you go to be listened to the truth of your own self, your own soul? You need to go there more often.

The right kind of people are holy people. The overriding characteristic of holiness, whether in places or in people, is that, in its presence, we become whole. Wholeness is an indicator of holiness. And, wholeness does not mean perfection, but recognition and integration. Wholeness is a healing of the fragmentation within and without.

The path to wholeness, the way of integration, begins with the recognition and acceptance, with compassion and understanding, the contradictions and discrepancies within and without. We live on the boundary between yin and yang. We see with a kind of seeing that sees how things are and how things also are, with a deep-seated confidence in our ability to find our own way to our own heart over time. Holiness knows we don’t have to be whole on its, or any, time table. That the time it takes to become whole is the time it takes to become whole. That all paths eventually lead to the recognition, realization, reconciliation, and reunion of the self we are and the self, or selves, we also are. That “awake” is not a state of being, but a growing awareness of our lives and our place in them, of the moment and its antecedents and implications, of how things are and what we can do about them. That what is important to us is a function of where we have been and how we have responded to it and where we think we want to go from here—of what we like and don’t like—of what we want and don’t want, of how we see and evaluate what is seen.

What should be important? What should we like? What should we want? What should we care about? What should we serve? What should we think? What should we feel? What should we believe? What should we do? How should we live? Who should we be? Who is to say? How would we know if they know what they are talking about? What determines the operative “shoulds” that govern our lives?

I suggest that we think about these questions in terms of life or death. Does our life serve life or death? Whose life is served by the life we live? In what ways does our living bring life to life in ourselves and others? Who dies, who lives? Christianity’s contribution to the pot of religious stew is the recognition that in living we die, and in dying we live. Our challenge is to die the right kind of death, to die a death that produces life, not just to die. What is the nature of our dying? Of our sacrifice? What do we die for? What does our dying bring to life?

One of the 10,000 spiritual laws is that the gun is always to somebody’s head, the cross is always on somebody’s back. This means we have to give up “this” to get “that.” Somebody is always sacrificing herself, himself, for someone else. Parents sacrifice themselves for their children, children for parents, one spouse for the other spouse. We are always handing ourselves over to something, to someone. Soldiers sacrifice themselves for their country, or for their sense of honor and duty. Workers sacrifice themselves for their jobs. We are always giving ourselves up to something or other. And, if we don’t, we do.

If we refuse to sacrifice ourselves for anything, that, too is a sacrifice of sorts. We die by refusing to die. We become cold, and hard, and bitter, and rigid, and die even though we might continue to go through the motions of living, because we refuse to pay the price of right relationship by sacrificing ourselves for the sake of the relationship. We cannot be good company without sacrificing ourselves—without letting go of something that is important to us for the sake of something that is more important, namely, the company we offer to those about us. We cannot live without dying, and we cannot do all the dying—we cannot die all the time.

It would be easy enough if the rule were simple and straight-forward: You have to always sacrifice yourself for the sake of the relationship no matter what. But, the complicating factor is that there is no relationship if the others in relationship with you don’t care, and don’t reciprocate. There is no relationship if the others in relationship with you aren’t sacrificing themselves for the sake of the relationship. Then, you are dying for nothing. The relationship is not capable of life, and cannot sustain life, and will only drain you dry.

What do you then? Then, you wake up, and consider your options, and make what you think is your best choice among the choices available to you. “This is the way it is. And, this is what can be done about it. And, that’s that.” You may continue to die in the relationship that isn’t a relationship, for a number of reasons, but, now, you are dying for yourself and not for the relationship. And, the right kind of death has life-potential even in the most life-less of circumstances. Where is your best chance at life? When to stay is to die, and to leave is to die, where is your best chance at life?

We are here to live, not to die! But, we pay a price to be alive. In living, we die, and, in dying, we live—if it is the right kind of death! Ah, to die rightly, now that’s the problem! And, that’s the catch. Which ditch to die in? There are no answers to that one. We figure it out for ourselves, one ditch at a time.

Where do we draw the line? Frasier Snowden says “The only true philosophical question is, ‘Where do you draw the line?’” It’s philosophical because the answer isn’t “out there,” like, “What’s the phone number of the water department?” Or, “Where did you put the umbrella?” It is “in here,” like “What is worth doing with my life?” Or, “What does it mean to be alive?” Where do we draw the line? We make the call. For better or worse. And learn as we go.

Being good company and living in right relationship depend upon good line drawing. We have to know where we stand in relation to someone else, and where they stand in relation to us. We have to know where we stop and they start. We have to know what we will do and what we will not do for the sake of the relationship. I will not pay your car note or your house payment, for instance. And, I will not keep your dog, or let you borrow my camera. You’re on your own when it comes to a number of things you might like me to “die” and do for you. Sorry.

Not really. Our capacity for right relationship with one another hinges on two things, on our ability to say, “No,” and on our ability to take “No,” for an answer. Can we say, “No”? Can we take “No,” for an answer? Let me be more specific. When was the last time you said “No” about something that deeply mattered? When was the last time you took “No” for an answer about something that deeply mattered? Can you draw a line? Can you honor a line that is drawn? And maintain relationship?

If a relationship can tolerate lines, it is well on the way to being a “right relationship.” If we are always avoiding lines, acting as if there are no lines, refusing to draw lines—if we are never saying “No,” or taking “No” for an answer—we may be “making nice,” or we may be controlling or being controlled, but we aren’t in “right relationship.” Right relationship cares about us and cares about the relationship, but not at the expense of the relationship. We die for the relationship—all parties in the relationship die in various times, and places, and ways for each other—but the relationship does not die for the sake of the people in the relationship. If the relationship dies, it’s all over.

The relationship dies if one person does all the dying, or if no one ever dies, for the sake of the relationship. In right relationship, everyone gets to draw lines, and everyone gets to honor the lines the others draw. Everyone gets to say “No,” and everyone gets to take “No” for an answer. Everyone dies and everyone comes to life. When who does what is the merry dance of relationship.

And, in order to dance the dance, we all have to have the room we need to make the adjustments, and the accommodations, and the alterations that relationship requires us to make. Nothing is forced in right relationship. Everybody has room to work in right relationship. No one ever says anything on the order of, “If you love me you will like spinach right now!” If the spinach line needs to be drawn, it will be drawn differently. It will be drawn in ways that give others room to deal with spinach in their own ways. Maybe I don’t eat spinach in the others’ presence. Or in the house. We work it out with room to work. The room to work is essential. And, when everybody can’t get their way, somebody dies for the sake of the relationship. And, the same person can’t do all the dying. Or, the relationship is dead.

So, the relationship factors itself into our lives. We live in order to be alive, and we cannot be alive apart from our participation in right relationship, and right relationship requires us to understand the formula: in living we die, in dying we live, if it is the right kind of death. If it is the kind of death that serves life, and brings life to life. Which means, of course, that in right relationship, there is a sense in which all die when any die, and all are made alive when any live.
There are no winners and losers in right relationship; no one up and one down positions. All die, and all are made alive, when all care as deeply for the others as they care for themselves.

01/18/07

The path leads to life. The way is the way of life. It comes down to being alive. How shall we live, is the question. What shall we do to bring life to life? How shall we live together in ways that enhance life among us all? What do we need from each other in order to truly live? What stands between us and life? These questions, and the ones they raise, are worthy of reflection, rumination, exploration.

Poking around in them, turning them over, smelling the interesting odors rising when they are stirred, stirs something within us. Wakes us up. Opens our eyes. Reorients us and sends us off in a new direction. Asking the questions engages us in The Quest. And, we are off, before we know it, seeking life.

It helps to know that it is life we seek. That it is living we are after. That we are looking for avenues into being alive. The adventure is life. LIFE. We are seeking to live before we die. What will it take? Eyes to see, don’t ‘cha know, ears to hear, a heart that understands. Loaded up with those babies, you can’t help but be alive.

Where do we get them? Do I have to do all your work for you? We get them by waking up, paying attention, being aware. Waking up to what? Paying attention to what? Being aware of what? Really. What do you people do with your time? What do you spend your days thinking about? Soap Operas and Sales?

Start with your body’s reaction to the events and circumstances of your days. What does your body feel in response to the choices and decisions you have to make? Start there. Get to know your body from the inside out. And your initial, intuitive, tendency toward one thing and away from another. Wake up, pay attention to, be aware of your body and your intuition. We spend our lives looking for guides, ignoring the guidance from within. Thinking somebody out there knows more than we do about living our lives. We seek the gurus and walk past the One Who Knows. What am I going to do with you?

01/14/07, Sermon

We can only see as much as we are able to see—as we are able to bear—in any moment. It all depends upon what we bring to the table. Joseph Campbell says, “Either you can take it, or you can’t.” Col. Nathan P. Jessup, in A Few Good Men, says, “You can’t handle the truth!” There you are. We can only see as much of the truth as we can as we can “handle,” as we can “take,” If we are going to see more than we see, we are going to have to enlarge our capacity to bear what we are seeing.

The spiritual task is to increase our ability to “handle,” to “take,” the truth. The spiritual task is to “bear the pain” of the truth of our lives, and of life itself. We will never be able to see things as they are until we can make our peace with things as they are. Jim’s Fail Proof Formula for making our peace with our lives is simple: “This is the way it is, and this is what I can do about it, and that’s that.” For some reason, we don’t seem to be able to do it. The one thing that remains true about us, across the ages, as individuals and as a species, is that we cannot look our lives in the eye without blinking. Really, without looking quickly away. Really, without running away. And hiding out, in any of the escapes and addictions that happen to be at hand.

We cannot deal with the disparity between how things are and how we wish they were—between the world we can imagine and the world we live in. We cannot face the truth of the life we wake up to every day. “Here it is again,” the world seems to say. “Can you take it today, and tomorrow, and the day after that? Can you take it and go on taking it? Can you take it, and take it, and take it?” And, the answer through the centuries, through the ages, over the long expanse of time that the question has been asked, has always been, “Not by ourselves we can’t!” Not alone, we can’t. Not cut off from, detached from, excluded from, isolated from the right kind of company.

We can’t take it, we cannot handle the truth, alone. We make it together in this world, or not at all. On our own, we are at the mercy of the cold winds of hopelessness, and helplessness, and fear, howling up from the depths of the Void. But, together, we serve as buffers for one another, protecting each other by the warmth of caring presence from the spirit-crushing pressure of despair and desolation. It only takes two or three of the right kind of people to comprise the right kind of company, to mediate the presence of God, to enable us to take it, and keep us going. But, it takes two or three. We are not built to live well alone.

The spiritual journey is not a solitary enterprise. We cannot undertake it alone. We hold one another up. We encourage one another. We exist for one another as reminders of more than meets the eye, and, of more than words can say. It is easy for us to wake up each morning and slip over into weariness and despondency. It is easy for us to succumb to the deadly quartet: “So what? Who cares? Why try? What difference does it make?” On our own, we do not have what it takes to, in Paul’s words, “Fight the good fight, keep the faith, finish the agonae.” Or, to “run with perseverance the agonae that is set before us.” This life is the agony, the agonae, that weighs heavily upon us. It takes us all to have a chance.

Here’s the deal, as truthfully spoken as it has ever been laid out before you: We nurture, and nourish, the spirit of the other. We keep the spark of life alive in the eyes of one another. We bring hope and heart to life. All of you feel better in the company of the right kind of people. All of you live better in the company of the right kind of people. If you are going to give me anything, give me the right kind of company! And, don’t give me anything you wouldn’t give yourselves!

It is our work together to create a place together that is a good place to be. It is our work to be good company. It is our work to master the art of right relationship, and to offer to each other the kind of communal spirit that regenerates spirits, and restores souls, and resurrects life, and transforms the world—by reminding each other of, and living together as evidence of, the “more than meets the eye”—by living in the midst of what is true as those who know, and exhibit, what is also true. It is our work to care for one another. In so doing, we off-set the impact of the uncaring, impersonal, nature of the universe, and bring something new to life in the world, and in each other. The “something new” is the very essence of life, the heart of life itself.

Human beings have always speculated about the existence of life beyond life, a spirit world beyond this world of normal, apparent reality. Eternal life. Abundant life. Life everlasting. We have, as a species, yearned for a world where we can be fully, completely, wholly alive without the limitations and restrictions of this “vale of tears.” We live in a world where living takes the life right out of us. We all understand the difference between going through the motions of life and being fully, vibrantly, joyfully alive. Because this world seems to be more about death than life, we look to the world beyond death as the place of life, and light, and peace. The “new thing” is the work to create enclaves of that world in the midst of this world. We carry out that work by caring about one another.

In this world, we are taught to care about the wrong things. That’s what this world will do to you. This world will tell you the wrong things are important. Like money, for instance. But, not just money, lots of it. Wealth! Prosperity! This world would have us believe that wealth and prosperity are essential, that life depends on them, that we cannot “really live” until we have “taken care of business,” and become wealthy, and prosperous.

Wealth is a problem. We don’t need people to be less poor so much as we need people to be less wealthy. But, try selling that idea. Nobody’s buying that. Everybody will tell you the way out of poverty is into wealth. Everybody thinks wealth is the answer to poverty. But, money is the barrier. Less money means fewer barriers. It means more connection. More community. Fewer walls. More caring. Less poverty. But, it is a strategy that will never be tried. The world has done a good job of convincing us that wealth is important. That’s what the world does. It destroys our perspective and undermines our ability to know the good when we see it. In this world, we care about the wrong things.

The hope of the world are eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand. But, don’t think that the world will rush to be saved. Right seeing, right hearing, and right understanding are threats to the world’s very being. It will kill those who threaten its life, even though it is only an artificial, life-less, existence it calls “life.” The world will not die in order to live. It will kill to keep from dying.

Do you begin to understand the nature of the cross? And the Communion Table? Do you see what these things represent for us, who dare to talk about seeing, hearing, and understanding? These babies are ever-present reminders of what we are up against, of the price we will pay for being alive. But, don’t take my word for it. Just begin to live together in ways that bring life to life in the world. In order to live, we die; in dying we live. That realization is Christianity’s fundamental gift to the world. It means our work is cut out for us.

Our work is the work of bringing life to life in the world. We do that by bringing life to life in our own lives and in the lives of one another. We cannot do it alone, remember. It takes us all.
The work of bringing life to life is carried out on three fronts. The first has to do with coming to terms with how things are. “This is the way it is, this is what can be done about it, and that’s that.” We have to make our peace with “the facts of life,” with our lot in life, with who we are and how it is with us. The second has to do with the world’s approach to solving the problem of the way things are, which is, basically, denial, escape, and addiction, on the one hand, and despair on the other. In the world, if you aren’t depressed you’re in denial.

The third front is the boundary between the first two. We live between the way things are and the world’s response to the way things are, as those who have more to say about both. Eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand perceive more to life and living than meets the eye. We know very clearly how things are and how things also are. We live between what happens in the world and how the world responds to what happens there, and we bring something new to life.

We bring life to life. We bring compassion and hope to life. We care about one another. We live beautiful lives in the midst of the worst that life can do. We create the Promised Land on the boundary between the world and the way the world responds to the world. We build there the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God. We live there as those who look life in the eye, without flinching, but seeing past “the facts of life,” to “more than meets the eye,” and living lovingly, compassionately, in light of that vision, so that all might see, and be glad.

Our work is the work of resurrection, and restoration, and new life. Our work is to be alive in the moment of our living. Our work is to care about one another in ways that break through the desolation of isolation, and offer each other the wonder of the right kind of company, and save the world. Of course, the world doesn’t want to be saved, but that’s another sermon.

01/07/07, Sermon

How do we do it? No recipes allowed! We do it by faithfully refusing to faithfully take instruction or follow directions, including this directive to not follow directions. “Listen to me,” he said, saying, “Don’t listen to me!” Or, anyone else! Don’t take anyone’s word for it! Figure it out for yourself. Make it up as you go along.

Somebody else’s path is somebody else’s path. It isn’t your path. How can you be true to yourself and walk their path? How can you find your way by walking their way? Where do you think the ways, the paths, lead, anyway? They lead to YOUR heart, that’s where. They lead to YOUR “beam,” to the life that is YOUR’s to live. To the life with YOUR name on it. What good is a way that leads you to somebody else’s life? You should be searching for a way that leads to YOU.

We keep hearing, and perhaps, repeating, the phrase, “There are many ways up the mountain, but there is ONE mountain.” The implication is that God is THE mountain, that all paths lead to God, that God is THE core, or center, or ground, which draws all people to God. No matter how many ways there are of representing God, or expressing God, or understanding God, or saying who and how God is, and isn’t, and not matter how different, or even, mutually exclusive those ways are, there is, nevertheless, ONE God referenced by all of these various ways.

We might believe that one approach is as good as another, and that all approaches work equally well in leading us to God and connecting us with God. Or, we might believe that some approaches are better than others, and that some are downright stupid, and others are dangerously harmful, not only to one’s search for God, but also to one’s spiritual, and emotional, and perhaps even, physical wellbeing. But, we like to believe that, in the end, no matter what, we are all working toward the same goal, just taking different routes to the same destination, and that we will all wind up “in God,” “at God,” “with God” sooner or later. Well phooey on all that!

Listen carefully now. I don’t want you to miss this. God is the PROCESS, not the goal, not the outcome, not the destination. God is not the end, the center, the core, the mountain. God is the manner in which we conduct ourselves as we wander around searching for God. God is the HOW, not the WHO or the WHAT! If we want to find God, we have to live in Godly ways. If we want to be “in God,” or “with God,” we have to “be as God is” starting right now.

Of course, there is a catch. Two catches, actually. The first catch has to do with our search for the path that leads to ourselves, for the life that is ours to live. We cannot find the way alone. The other catch has to do with how we conduct the search. We have to look for the path as God would look for the path. But, we cannot practice godliness alone. We need one another to find ourselves. And, we need one another to practice being God in the world.

It takes all of us. That’s one of the 10,000 spiritual laws. It takes all of us to ground us, center us, focus us, keep us going, and keep us from “flying off the handle,” and “chasing wild geese,” and “following red herrings,” and “going nowhere fast.” It takes all of us to wake us up and enable us to be aware and alive. The rest of us force discipline upon us and require accountability of us. We cannot live any old way at all and be true to ourselves, and be as God is.

We pay a price for being true to ourselves, and, for being as God is, and without the rest of us around, we wouldn’t have what it takes to hand over the fare. We pay a price for being who we are, who God is. Jesus went to the cross for being who he was, for being who God is. There you are. Crosses of some variety wait for us all. The burden of being who we are, and who God is, within the context and circumstances of our lives is the cross we bear. How are you going to be you, and being who God is, doing what you do, living the life that is truly yours to live, the way God would do it, live it, within the context and circumstances of your life? It takes all of us to help you answer that one. You cannot do it alone. Do not even try.

It is the hardest thing you will ever do, paying the price to be who you are, to be as God is. Without the rest of us with you, you would quit immediately. “What’s in this for me?”, you would ask. “What am I getting out of all this? When is it going to be my turn?” You need us around to remind you that what we get out of it is that we get to be ourselves. We get to be as God is. We get to be who we are, as God is, within the context and circumstances of our lives. That’s what we get.

The catch is that we can only become who we are, as God is, in the company of the right kind of people. The company of the right kind of people is God to us. And, they enable us to be as God is—to search for the way to be who we are as God would do it. We incarnate God in the search for ourselves.

But, all of this hinges on two things: 1) Will we submit to the discernment and wisdom of, call it “the Body of Christ”? And, 2) as the Body of Christ, will we, conscientiously and consciously, make every effort to be discerning and wise, not using our power for manipulation and control? We have to be good for one another. We help one another toward discernment and wisdom, toward awakening and awareness, toward understanding and peace, toward compassion and right living. Everything hangs on our finding, and being the right kind of company.

I suggest that we look for, and work to create, the following in our search to find and be the right kind of company. I suggest that we look for an orientation, a spirit, that acknowledges and affirms us, our lives, and life itself. That does not attempt to separate us from ourselves, or from our lives, or from life itself. That helps us see into the heart of things, and recognize how things are, and how things also are, and keeps us company as we decide what we will do in response to it, without telling us what to do. That listens. That answers our questions out of its own experience, out of its own heart. and not out of some storehouse of doctrines, or platitudes, or formulas. That recognizes itself as “a process of discernment and wisdom,” that is becoming increasingly discerning and wise, but does not, itself, have the answers, or, even, a clue about how it is supposed to be done, but loves the quest and delights in the dance, and walks with us joyfully along the way.

The right kind of company knows that we bring God to life in the way we look for God. It understands that if we want to know God we have to live as becomes God. It sees that if we are going to take up any spiritual practice it must be the practice of compassion, and justice, and kindness, and gentleness, and patience, and acceptance, and peace. It must be the practice of letting God come to life in us, and through us, in all our relationships, and into all the world. It must be the practice of being God in the way we live our lives.

12/31/06, Sermon

Orthodox Jews have their way of looking at things. Evangelical Christians have their way of looking at things. Islam fundamentalists have their way of looking at things. Tibetan Buddhists have their way of looking at things. Pakistani Hindus have their way of looking at things. You have your way of looking at things. I have my way of looking at things. And, so it goes, around the world and throughout the universe.

We have our way of “structuring reality,” of “securing the future, of saying how things are, and how they got to be that way, and how we need to live in relation to them to give ourselves the best chance at a life worth living. How can we protect ourselves, guard our interests, break even, or, perhaps, come out ahead? How can we turn the odds of winning at life in our favor?

We all have our angle, our rituals, our system. Everyone knows what to do to get God, or the gods, on his, on her, side. Everyone expects a pay-off, either in this life, or, at least, in the life to come. Who are we kidding? What are we thinking? That our fortunes are going to turn on whether we bring our votive offerings to the altar, or wear the prescribed costumes, or pray at the prescribed times in the prescribed ways, or believe the beliefs of our ancestors?

Here’s the deal. It comes down to your life and you. What do you need to give yourself the best chance of living a life that is worth the trouble? And, it is trouble. It is not easy living out a lifetime in this world. Living takes the life right out of us. Where do we get the energy for the undertaking? It takes more than eight hours of sleep and three squares a day (and just achieving that is hard enough). I don’t care who you are, or what kind of life you have, you have to make your peace with it. How do we make our peace with our life? How do we restore our souls?

That is the religious problem. How do we take life as it comes to us in one hand, and ourselves in the other, and merge the two, blend the two, reconcile the two in ways that take the requirements and realities of each into account? How do we feel good, happy, content, and at peace about the lives we are living? It is easier, of course, for some of us than others (To be gay, or black, or poor, or Native American, or to have special needs, for example, is to have your work cut out for you), but the suicide rate and the amount of prescription “mood-altering” drugs taken by the well-to-do suggests that none of us have an easy route to nirvana. How do we get there? We all have our mo-jo. The Mormons have a particularly compelling approach. “If you just do it like we tell you to do it,” they say. “Your kids will not be on drugs, you will not be divorced, or destitute and homeless, and the societal family ideal will be yours forever.” A large number of people feel that letting someone else tell them how to live their lives is a small price to pay for security, stability, predictability, and peace of mind. That has been the way religion has tended to “solve” the problem of reconciling ourselves with our lives over time. “Just let us tell you how to do it, and you will live happily ever after.” The spiritual approach is quite different.

Joseph Campbell says, “We know when we are ‘on the beam,’ and when we are off.” The spiritual task is to be “on the beam,” and stay there. The spiritual presumption is that we are happiest when we are “on the beam,” and unhappiest when we are “off the beam.” There are two problems with being “on the beam.” Finding it and figuring ways to stay on it and “pay the bills.”

“The beam” has a spiritual dimension and a physical dimension. You might say it is “sacramental,” in that it is an outward, physical, tangible, concrete expression of an inward, spiritual, orientation, intention, perspective, or way of being. “The beam” is how we incarnate our “essential self,” our “essence,” our “spirit,” who we are really in the world of normal, apparent, reality. It is not easily done. It is what we do to bring our spirit to life in the world.
The world is not interested in our “essence,” or, in our spirit. The world is interested in goods and services, “food, clothing, and shelter,” hot and cold running water, garbage pickup and mail delivery, money in the bank. and internet access. What you do with your soul is not the world’s problem. The world is not a soul-friendly place. Neither is the church.

The church talks about saving souls, but the church has no process, or method, for helping you connect with your soul, or restore it, or express it in the way you live your life. The church is quick to tell you what you should think, believe, and do—how you should live—what you should be interested in. But, the church does not spend any time helping you discover what your interests actually or and how you might serve them with your life AND pay the bills. The church, like the world, operates out of a practical, left-brained, rational, logical approach to the problem of adjusting you to the world. “Just do what we tell you,” it says. “Think what we tell you to think, believe what we tell you to believe, act like we tell you to act, and you will be happy.” The soul has to re-invent the church in order to survive in the world.

And, of course, that is what we are about here. The re-invention of the church. The creation of an atmosphere that focuses us, not on the solution, not on the resolution, but on the recognition and experience of the spiritual problem. This place is not an escape or a hide-out. It is more on the order of a torture chamber, a dungeon of nightmares and horrors. Here we face realities square on that the church of our experience dismissed, discounted, or denied. Here, we look into the heart of things, understand how things are, and bear what must be borne.

For instance, you have heard me say before, and you will hear me say again, that we live on the boundary between yin and yang. We bear the pain of the tension of opposition within and without. The cross in our midst reminds us of the agony that must be borne when transcendence and imminence coincide, as they do in us. The thematic dichotomies in the Bible, and really, in all great literature, come alive in us: Bondage and freedom, guilt and redemption, death and resurrection, being lost and being found, sin and forgiveness, fear and peace, resistance and surrender… All these themes play themselves out in our lives, and tear us apart, or would, if we didn’t deny them, or face them squarely in the company of one another.

The church as it ought to be enables us to live on the boundary between yin and yang, and do the work of integration, which is the work of recognition, and realization, and awareness, and acceptance, and peace. We live at odds with ourselves, our lives, one another, and God. And, it is the work of the church—it is our work—to make our peace with all that pulls us apart. It is the work of the church—it is our work—to face squarely what must be faced, and to bear consciously what must be borne. “If you want to be my disciple,” says the Christ, calling us to the task of being the Christ ourselves, “you must pick up your cross daily, and follow me.” The cross is the agony of The Beam and The Bills.

We live strung out between two mutually exclusive realities. We cannot stay on The Beam and pay The Bills, but, paying The Bills only enables us to live without being alive. We live on the boundary between yin and yang, and work to integrate the opposites of Beam and Bills. That is the spiritual task, and we will work hard at it every day for the rest of our lives.

You have heard me say before, and did not like it when I did, that we live on the boundary between despair and denial. That sounded too raw to you, too negative, nihilistic, dark and ugly. You come to church to hear something light, and inspirational, and sentimental. You come to church to hear an encouraging word. There is discouragement aplenty where you come from, and you need something to counter the daily doses of despondency and desolation. I call that denial. But that doesn’t mean the alternative is despair.

On the boundary between despair and denial there is something else. Call it hope. Call it faith. Call it love. Call it a new reality, a new world. Call it the relentless refusal to be done in by the futility and desperation of lives that have given up on, or forgotten the importance of, doing the work of integrating The Beam with The Bills.

On the boundary between despair and denial, we come alive to the work of being spiritual beings in a material world. On the boundary between despair and denial, we look both in the eye without giving into, without being consumed by, either. We say something on the order of, “Yes. That’s how it is, all right. And, THIS is how it also is!” And, we align ourselves with, and live out of, our heart’s true love in the direct, exact, midst of the world’s denial and despair.

We do not buy the world’s requirement that things have to have an impact and make a difference in order to be valuable and worth doing. We take photographs that stir our souls, even though we would make a lot more money from photography if we quit taking pictures. We talk to people about the church as it ought to be, even though the church as it is has all the power and momentum it needs to stay as it is forever. We write songs and sing them, even though no one pays us for them, or applauds. We share ourselves with those who need an experience with caring presence, even though the cold winds of the Void seem to prove it’s a waste of time to love anyone, or anything. We live between The Beam and the Bills and laugh at the wild absurdity of needing to be true to ourselves in a world that pays us handsomely to turn our backs on ourselves and pretend we are someone else.

The work of the church as it ought to be is the work of waking up, being fully aware, and becoming completely, wholly, joyfully alive in the world of the walking dead. It is the work of living on the Beam and paying the Bills. We cannot begin soon enough!

12/24/06, Sermon

The problem is that we don’t like our lives as they are for very long ever. Adam and Eve tried to improve Paradise. There you are. Dissatisfaction is the background noise of existence. No matter how well it is with us, we can always imagine how it could be better, or are always nagged by an unspecific disappointment in something, we don’t quite know what, about the way things are. At their best, things aren’t quite right somehow. The problem is not with “the things.” The problem is with us. WE are not quite right, somehow.

Spiritual discipline is the art of restricting the distracting possibilities, limiting our options and our choices, and seeking what is truly important. The Dali Lama cannot go anywhere and do anything. The Dali Lama is confined. His life is a prison cell. His daily routine consists of “the same old same old.” We could not be the Dali Lama. We would go mad in a month. Or less. But the Dali Lama can be the Dali Lama—without wishing he were someone else, somewhere else, instead. Pick someone, or any ten people, out of the stands on Super Bowl Sunday, and live with them for a while, long enough to be able to sense the differences between them and the Dali Lama. You will have an idea of what we are up against. We have to have something to take our minds off how it is with us. The Dali Lama sees into the heart of the nature of things.

The entertainment industry is the backbone of the economy (Well, maybe not, but overstatement is what I do best). We all suffer from a variety of attention deficit disorder because there is too much to take in. We live as nuclear powered ping-pong balls in a culture that is on a constant high, or after one. The lights never go out in Vegas. How long do you think the Dali Lama would last in our world? How long do you think our world would last in the Dali Lama’s? Whose world do you think is the hope of the world?

How much external stimulation do we need to be fully alive? At what point does external stimulation become deadening? What are we chasing after? Running from? Seeking to shake, or to find? What do we want? We don’t have an inkling. That’s the problem, don’t you see? We don’t have an inkling about the nature of the problem. We think there must be something that we are seeking, to shake or to find, else why the wild scramble to leave here and go there? We think there must be some reason for our dissatisfaction, some fix, or cure. And, we don’t see that we are just hooked into a search without the possibility of a find.

The culture requires us to buy, spend, amass, and consume. The culture requires us to go, and do, and look, and taste, and listen, and feel, and smell—to experience everything but the experience of our experience. The culture does not allow us to be conscious of the emptiness of the life it sells. The culture does not permit us to be aware that we are grabbing for moonbeams, reaching for apparitions. We are convinced that we are on the trail of something significant, closing in on something big. Something that will finally make us happy. We are only making the culture happy. There is nothing in it for us. There is nothing there. We are on the fast track to nowhere.

People go to Super Bowls who don’t like football because they think the Super Bowl is the place to be. The culture has conned us all. The spiritual task is to be awake, aware, and alive in a culture that gets along very nicely with us asleep at the wheel. It will not be easy. It starts with us thinking about what we are doing. With us thinking about who we are and what we are about. With us thinking about what is important. With us thinking about what we need to do what is ours to do. With us knowing the difference between a prop and a tool.

It is hard to think about these things in this culture. This culture discourages thinking, reflection, realization, awareness. This culture encourages experiential living. Go! Do! Look! Listen! Taste! Smell! Feel! Then, do it again! It is hard to sit still in a culture that tells us doing nothing is the worst imaginable sin. The Dali Lama sits still for long stretches of time. Who do you think knows more about being alive? A Super Bowl cheerleader or the Dali Lama? It is hard to be awake, aware, and alive in this culture. And, so, we have to do what is hard.

Look at where you spend your money. What have you bought lately that you need? What have you bought lately that you spend time with? What have you bought lately that you enjoy? What are you doing spending money on things you do not use? Look at where you spend your time. What do you do that brings you pleasure? That brings you to life? That you enjoy doing? How much time do you spend with things that give you energy and life and how much time do you spend with things that drain you of energy and rob you of life? What can you do to shift the balance in the equation more toward what you love to do?

What does it take for you to be happy? To what extent does your happiness depend upon the happiness of someone else? If you can’t be happy until someone else is happy, where does that leave you? Spending all your money and time trying to make who happy? Wake up, here. Snap to, here. What are you thinking? Oh, I see, nothing. You aren’t thinking at all. What are you going to do about that?

The spiritual task is reclaiming yourself. Restoring yourself. Reorienting yourself. Living, brace yourself, I’m going to say it, for you. Now, I know we are supposed to live for others, and die for others, and serve others, and let our lives revolve around the needs and desires of all the others in our lives. Yes, I am well-schooled in the age old formula for JOY: Jesus first, Others second, and You last. Dead last. DEAD last. The people who sold us that recipe were dead, even though they smiled a lot and bounced wherever they went.

Jesus said it best, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Love your neighbor as though your neighbor is yourself. Love your neighbor as though you and your neighbor are one. That’s putting you right up there with your neighbor. Don’t honor your neighbor one bit more than you honor you. The spiritual task is to be the you who can love your neighbor. Once you live in right relationship with yourself, the rest falls neatly into place So, what are the discarded, rejected, neglected, abandoned, exiled parts of yourself? Who is the “you” you won’t allow yourself to be—the “you” you won’t permit at the table? How do you expect to be reconciled to your neighbor if you cannot look all that is you in the eye and say, “Welcome!”? The spiritual task is welcoming your prodigal side home.

This gets us back to where we came in. The spiritual problem is that we cannot be at peace with our lives as they are—with our world as it is—with ourselves as we are. We cannot bear the idea of being locked up forever in this life as it is right now with ourselves. Won’t somebody deliver us please!!?

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: To you is born this day in the City of David a savior who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And, suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude o f the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, peace and good will among all people.” (Luke 2:8-14)

The source of our alienation and discord is not so much that we are cut-off from God as it is that we are cut-off from everything, ourselves included. WE are essentially dissatisfied, disenchanted, disappointed with all of it, God included. We don’t like God any more than we like our world, any more than we like our lives, any more than we like ourselves. We don’t like any of it as it is. Adam and Eve tried to improve Paradise! That’s how it is in all of our souls! We can imagine a world that is infinitely better than the world we live in. THAT’s the spiritual problem. How do we reconcile ourselves to this world, this life, this self, this God? How do we make our peace with this “here,” this “now”?

Last week I talked to you about the NO!-Problem as having to square ourselves with a world, with a life, that is saying “NO!” to us at every turn. The other side of that problem is that we are forever saying, “NO!” to the world, to our lives, to ourselves, and to God. This is the other NO!-Problem. This world, this life, this self, this God will not do! We have to have a different world, a different life, a different self, a different God if we are to be happy, tranquil, serene, and at peace. You would have to be insane or quite stupid to live with this “here,” this “now” and be essentially okay and at ease with it. “We have met the enemy and it is us!”

What are we going to do about it, is the question. The spiritual question. The question at the heart of what stands between us and the realization of “peace on earth, good will to all.” How do we live with this “here,” this “now”? How do we live with this world, this life, this self, this God? How do we open our eyes to the truth of how it is with us, see into the heart of how things are, and let it be, because it is? Some of the 10,000 Spiritual Laws come into play here. One of those Laws states: “We cannot see what we will not allow.” We cannot see how it is until we can “let be what is.” The corollary states: “We cannot allow what we will not see.” The seeing and the permitting are one thing. One implies the other. We get there with time, intention, and one another.

We open ourselves to the truth of how it is with us, and wait, within a community that helps us bear what must be borne. None of us can face the truth of how it is with us alone. We cannot forgive ourselves, love ourselves, stand ourselves alone. Wholeness and integration are communal endeavors. But it takes a community that knows what it is doing. It takes time in a room full of the right kind of people to become the right kind of person ourselves. Together, we move toward the peace that comes with recognition, realization, and reconciliation. Together, we stretch and yawn, like a baby in a manger, and open our eyes to a lifetime of becoming awake, aware, and alive.

12/17/06, Sermon

It is the place of bad religion to serve as a mechanism adapting us to the world, and the world to us. We no sooner plop out of the womb than someone is telling us, “NO!”. And, we have a problem. Because they are bigger than we are. You might call it “the religious problem.” “NO!” is the problem bad religion is invented to resolve. This puts the phrase “no problem” in an entirely different light. We call on someone bigger than those who are bigger than we are to take care of the No!-Problem for us. We will do anything to have the No!-Problem resolved to our liking.

We will toe the line to have a more important line erased. We will give up simple pleasures in order to be accorded the rapture of eternal life. We will restrain our impulses, discipline our inclinations, withhold our urges, walk the straight and narrow, and keep our noses clean and to the grindstone in light of the abundant joys and glories of the world to come. We will give up “this” to get “that.” “We will give to the God so that the God will give to us.” Bad religion in a nut shell.

Don’t think too hard about it, or it will fall apart before your eyes. What kind of God would be dependent upon what we give to the God? I told you not to think about it! What kind of God would hang around us hoping we will sacrifice our chickens (or our children), and blessing us with rain for our crops and plagues on our enemies if we do? What kind of God doesn’t have anything better to do than play the part of a genie with an arm load of wishes for those who learn the secret of rubbing the bottle, or tickling the fancy of the God? What kind of God can’t just go get for himself, for herself, the kinds of things he, she, waits with such fervent hope for from us? Don’t spend too much time with the questions. Bad religion isn’t built to deliver us a God that makes sense. It is built to deliver us a God who can be bent to our wishes and cajoled into catering to our desires—who will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves--who will remove the chaffing “NO’s” from our lives, and give us a life made to order, if not in this life, then certainly in the life to come.

The Religious Problem is the same problem around the world, across the ages. How do we get what we want and avoid what we don’t want? How do we have our way? What do we do about “NO!”? How do we adjust ourselves to the world and the world to us? The world is a world about which something must be done. And religion, bad religion, is our way of doing it.

We are born into this world, and notice right off that we die. Not only do we die, but those who are life itself for us die! And, in the words of a New England tombstone, “It is a terrible thing to love what death can touch.” How do we get ourselves wrapped around that one? But, it is not only that one. We are offended and appalled at every turn. “Live eats life”! How’s that for a fundamental shock to our system? How do we make our peace with a world wherein “Life eats life”? The world is too much for us. It’s too real, too raw. We need a buffer, a filter, something to put between us and it. We need bad religion.

“Life is not fair,” and that weights heavily upon us. There is nothing about this experience called life that makes sense, that stands to reason, that follows, reasonably and logically, consistently and dependably along a wonderfully predictable “if then, therefore” path. We never know what’s going to happen. We can’t count on anything. And, no matter how bad it gets, we are always inviting one another to be glad it isn’t worse yet. This world is a hell of a place. And, our work is the work of adjusting ourselves to it, accommodating ourselves to the realities which govern our lives. Bad religion is the tool we use to do the work.

Bad religion puts us in accord with the inevitable and unavoidable realities of life in the world, by telling us that those realities are God’s will, or by telling us it is our fault (Sin, you know), or by telling us that God is on our side against those realities, and will transform them, or disappear them, in time, if we are faithful and believe. Good religion, on the other hand, looks the world as it is squarely in the eye and creates a space within the world in which the laws—in which the ways—of normal, apparent reality do not apply. “My kingdom,” says Jesus, “is not of this world.” Getting that is the pivot point which turns bad religion into good.

Bad religion revolves around the question, stated or implied, “What am I getting out of all this?” Or, “What’s in this for me?” This is the question at the heart of the story of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, and each of us, and all human beings, live with an eye out for what they/we stand to gain—with an eye out for their/our own advantage. There is not a culture in the world, nor has there ever been one, nor, will there ever be one, that does not (will not) understand and practice the concept of living so as to have the advantage. It is the fundamental human orientation. It is, if you will, a neat summation of all that is wrong with “the world.” The minute we strive to have the advantage it all goes to hell. Eden disappears, and we are left in the middle of the biggest mess imaginable. Yet, what could be more human? What could be less divine? Exactly.

Enter Jesus. With the temptations in the wilderness, and with the final temptation in Gethsemane, and all the temptations in between, Jesus refused to live with his own advantage in mind. His food, he said, was to do the will of the one who sent him—to bring God to life in the world through the way he lived in the world. The boon, for Jesus, was not personal and private, but universal and very public. It was nothing more than the experience of bringing God to life in the world—of being in the world as God would be in the world.

Religion at its best understands what Jesus understood, and lives so as to be God, to exhibit God, to disclose and reveal God, to incarnate God, in all of its relationships. Religion at its worst says, “If we give to God, God will give to us,” and sets up systems and schemes whereby rewards and blessings accrue to the adherents of religion at its worst if they are carefully faithful, believe the right things and make the proper sacrifices in the proper ways. There is a better way. A religion worthy of the title enables us to transcend the world without denying the world—enables us to live in this world in light of another world, enables us to bring to life within the systems and structures of this world the transforming reality of different way of doing things.

In the Bible this different way of doing things is called “the promised land” in the Old Testament, and “the kingdom of God” in the New. The promised land and the kingdom of God are characterized by the experience of right relationship in all relationships. People there are as concerned for the interest of one another as they are for their own. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” What becomes of our concern for personal advantage in that kind of atmosphere? It is replaced by an abiding interest in, and commitment to, the welfare of all people, even at the expense of our own.

The way of the world is not the only way. That is the foundational realization of good religion. Religion at its best brings the best to life in the world no matter what. Religion at its best does what is good whether that does any good or not. Religion at its best is not a way of getting what it wants from the world, but a way of giving what it has to offer to the world. Religion at its best stands at the threshold between worlds. It lives on the boundary between yin and yang. Its validity and vitality, its foundation and its life do not depend upon anything happening, or not happening, in this world of normal, apparent, reality. It is not interested in its own good. It doesn’t care about the odds or the advantages. Religion at its best brings God to life in the world for the sake of bringing God to life in the world.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.(Luke 1:26-38)

We are all Mary the Virgin, carrying God in our womb. We are all Mary, the Virgin, bringing God to life in the world. There is more to life, and living, and being alive—there is more to us—than the on-going, never-ending work to accommodate ourselves to the world and the world to us. There is more to it than getting what we want, and keeping the world from taking it away. There is more to it than living to have the advantage, and gain the high ground, and have it made. We are the Mother of God! We suckle God! We tend and care for God! We watch over God, and nurture God to life in the world! And, we do that by the quality of our interaction with the world.

“You have heard it said,” says Jesus, “but I say unto you!” “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye…’ You have heard it said, ‘Keep the commandments and make God happy so that you may be blessed and happy yourselves.’ You have heard it said, ‘Cover your bases, mind your manners and your P’s and Q’s, and straighten up and fly right…’ You have heard it said, ‘Watch your step so that God will take care of you.’ But, I say unto you: Live out of your heart and let compassion be your guide. Bring the qualities of God to life in your lives. Practice the art of loving presence in all situations and every circumstance. Be a reliable source of goodness in the world, so that all people find refuge in your company and are blessed by their relationship with you. And, if you are going to understand anything, understand this: It isn’t about being rewarded for your efforts. It isn’t about what you get in life, how much you have, or how easily things come to you. It is about bringing love to bear on the world around you. It is about generating goodness, and kindness, and peace. It is about bringing God to life in your lives so that when people are with you it is as though they are with God, and are with God, so that you and God are one.”

12/10/06, Sermon

“Somebody’s got to do something about these Romans!” That’s the underlying sentiment that lays the groundwork for “Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given.” We long for a deliverer only when deliverance is out of our hands. The child to be born becomes the hope of those who have no hope. Where is David the King when you need him most? Who will be Little David for us? Son of David? David without the excesses and deficiencies? When will the Deliverer come?

Whenever the Deliverer comes, he won’t be the Deliverer we have in mind. When he comes, he won’t come talking about the Romans. He will come talking about us. “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and mind, and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself!” How’s that for deliverance? How’s that for the solution to the Roman Problem? “Do unto others as you would do unto you!” How’s that for deliverance? How’s that for the solution to the Roman Problem? Deliverance is never our idea of deliverance. The Promised Land is not what we have in mind.

The Deliverer has us pegged. “You don’t need a child to be born,” he says. “A child wouldn’t do you any good. You wouldn’t listen to a child! You wouldn’t listen if someone should rise from the dead! You need ears to hear, eyes to see, a heart that understands. No child can give you that! You need to wake up, be aware, be alive! No child can do that for you! Your only hope is to be born yourselves, from above!” Which is exactly Jesus’ advice to Nicodemus, and to all of us (John 3:1ff).

We are at the point of deepening/broadening/expanding/enlarging the idea of the birth of the Christ into a metaphor encompassing all people, as the story of our own spiritual becoming—our own birthing, our own awakening. We trek to the manger, to the place of nondescript beginnings to behold the child who is beholding us. Who IS us, each one of us. We cannot mistake Jesus for the only Christ. You are the one! I am the one! The birth we celebrate at Christmas is our own birthing, our own becoming, our own awakening. As we come to the manger, we recognize our responsibility for our own spiritual growth, and for that of those about us. Those at the manger are responsible for the one in the manger. The baby in the manger cannot be separated from those gathered at the manger. Christmas Eve is about our birthing, our awakening and our responsibility for waking up, for being awake. We are advocates, guardians, for the babe we are, for the babe each other is.

There are two metaphors for visualizing what we are about that I would like for you to carry with you for the rest of your life. One is the scene from the movie The Miracle Worker, where Anne Sullivan is holding Helen Keller’s hand under the water pump, with water flowing over her hand while Anne makes the sign for “water” in Helen’s palm. Something happens. Helen “sees.” Helen gets it. Helen is born from above. Everything is transformed.

Hold that image in tension with the story of the blind men and the elephant. The blind men argue, debate, condemn each other to hell, and wage war (well, not really, but the logical implication of the story takes us there) because all don’t “see” the elephant in the same way. Nothing happens. No one is born from above. Nothing is changed.

The spiritual journey is exactly the distance from the elephant to the water pump. The blind girl “sees” water. The blind men do not “see” the elephant. There you are. Your work is cut out for you. It is the work of moving from not seeing to seeing. See?

“The message of the Messiah,” says Fred Craddock, “is that there is no Messiah.” No Messiah can do for us what must be done. The problem is not with the Romans. The problem is with ourselves. The problem is how we see the problem. What is The Problem? What is The Problem from which we need to be delivered? What would deliverance do for us? What exactly do we need? What does Jesus find lacking in the people? “They have eyes and don’t see,” he says. “They have ears and don’t hear.” They do not know the time of their visitation. They do not understand the central place of compassion in their lives. They are asleep at the wheel.
What we need is waking up. What we need are eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand. What we need is a perspective that takes itself into account, so that we see that what we see is limited by how we see. So that we see that our view of the good is restricted by, and to, what we think is good. Who can show us what we don’t want to see?

One of the things we don’t want to see is that the Messiah is not who we say he is. Jesus didn’t have it all figured out. Jesus was not the all-knowing adult among the two-year-olds on the playground. Jesus was one of us. More awake than average, and more vocal, but growing in awareness, and coming to see what he did not see just like the rest of us. The gospels present us with a beautiful opportunity to witness Jesus’ growth toward realization and enlightenment, and awareness. But, we generally miss it.

We take all the words in red, in those red-letter-editions of the Bible, at face value, and treat them as though they are equally valid across time and space. Over the course of his life in the gospels, and certainly among the differing views of his life offered by the gospel writers, Jesus is reported to have said and done things which are startlingly contradictory, yet, we gloss over the conflicts and string the accounts together in one smooth, un-rippled, reading. If we highlight the oppositional nature of what we find, we can spot the shifts, the transitions, the growth points in Jesus’ spiritual development over the course of the three, or so, years of his life the gospels discuss.

For instance, how do you square the Parable of the Prodigal, or the Parable of the Good Samaritan, with the Parable of the Foolish Bridesmaids or the Parable of the Net of Fishes? At what point in Jesus’ career did he tell each of the parables, and would he tell them all, in the same way, at the end of his life? How did Jesus’ idea of God change over the course of his life? Is God like the Prodigal’s father or like the King who kills the people who killed his son, or like the harsh task-master in the Parable of the Talents who harvests where he does not plant and reaps what he does not sow? Jesus’ view of God is hardly the same across the board. Do the differences suggest a shift in Jesus’ understanding of God? How comfortable can we be with the idea that Jesus’ understanding of God changed over time?

To suggest that Jesus changed his idea of the nature of God is to shock and appall those who think Jesus came fully developed from the Virgin Mary’s womb, and was The Teacher from birth, with nothing to learn about anything. ever. How do we come to think something about Jesus we don’t already think? How do we come to think something about Jesus that stands in stark contrast to what we already think? How do we get to the point of laying aside what we have been told to think in order to be able to think something else? How can we think about what we think about Jesus without running the risk of jeopardizing our eternal salvation and damning ourselves to the lava lakes of ever-lasting hell?

How does the church change its mind? How does the church say, “Boy, we were wrong about that! We’ve always been wrong about that! We can’t believe we were so wrong for so long about that, but we can’t deny it either! We were dead wrong about that!”? Once something is believed for a generation or two, it’s believed forever. You can’t un-believe something your ancestors believed. It’s to desecrate their memory to un-believe something they believed with all their hearts, and minds, and souls, and strength. If it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for us. If they believed it, it must be true. We’ll believe it, too.

The people who have told us what to think about Jesus have done an amazing job. They have told us what to think and told us not to think about our thinking or we’ll be damned forever with no hope of redemption. That’s powerful stuff. Voodoo can’t touch it for its power to bind us with its hypnotic spell of tunnel vision—of seeing, and hearing, and thinking, and believing only what we have been told to see, and hear, and think, and believe. We have been charmed by the best in the business, and think that if we think, it’s all over for us.

How do we break the spell? How do we cast off the charm? Who is going to kiss the frog, or the sleeping beauty, and bring us back to life? Who is going to wake us up? How do we get from here to there? Particularly, if we don’t see the need for making the trip? Who will deliver us? Good questions, don’t you think? How do we wake up when we have been hypnotized into being “very sleepy”?
In all the old stories, it takes a shock to the system to do it. Maybe it comes in the form of a vision, like the burning bush, or the call to Abraham. Or, maybe it takes the visit of a handsome young stranger, or a gnarled old wizard. Or, maybe it takes just getting fed up. Somebody gets a hankering for something different, something else, something more, saddles up and rides over the hill, and comes back to say, “Hey, you should see what’s over the hill!” And, some go with her, or with him, and some stay behind. And, what’s the difference between those who go and those who stay? We could speculate for days, and never get to the bottom of it. Some go, some stay. Some think about their thinking, some never do. Are we going, or staying, is the question.

Joseph Campbell says, “Either you can take it, or you can’t.” Take what? Waking up. Take waking up. Take being awake. Take seeing life as it is. Take seen it for what it is as it comes right out of the box. How do we do that? How do we see, and hear, and understand? How do we come by eyes that see, and ears that hear, and hearts that understand? How do we see that we don’t see? Hear that we don’t hear? Know that we don’t quite get it yet? Who can tell us what we don’t want to be told?

We are not in charge of our own awakening. We look, but we do not see. We listen, but we do not hear. We say, “Lo, here! Lo, there!,” but what we seek is neither here nor there. And, we cannot deliver ourselves from “this body of death,” from the world of the walking dead. But, we can be delivered. We hear some things no matter what our frame of mind is. Some things shock us awake regardless of the deadness of our spirit. Sometimes, we look without seeing; sometimes we see without looking. Sometimes, we are like the man on the ox looking for the ox; like the woman with her glasses on a chain around her neck, looking for her glasses. Then, “Boom!”, as John Madden would say, there it is. A gift of grace. We look, and nothing. We look again, and there it is. We are not in charge of the kingdom’s coming to us, or through us into the world any more than we are in charge of the seasons, or in charge of the hen’s laying, or the tomato’s ripening. But, we can buy a hen. We can plant tomato seeds, and water them. And wait, like babes in a manger to grow up and begin to see.

12/03/06, Sermon

Let’s get some things out of the way. Here’s the first thing: What are the safe-guards? The standards? What keeps us from going over the edge? From stepping over the line? Where’s the child who can see that the emperor is wearing no clothes? Fooling ourselves is what we do best, you know. Shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best. Talking ourselves into what we have no business doing, or having, is what we do best. What’s to keep us honest with ourselves and one another? What’s to keep us awake, aware? What’s to keep us from going to sleep at the wheel, or going to sleep with complete trust and confidence in whoever is at the wheel?

The history of religion is the history of people fooling themselves and being fooled. There is a sense in which the religion of our experience is the result of smooth talking and easy listening. Or, fast talking and slow listening. We have been sold things we had no business buying. Enough is enough. If we are going to create the church as it ought to be, there has to be a clear understanding among us regarding what’s what—regarding your role and mine.

As I stand before you and bluntly state what I see and how I see it, you have to take the position of Vance Arnold and say, “Wait a minute! Not so fast! Everybody can’t wear red shoes!” I can get by with defining myself as a radical Christian liberal who throws out the doctrines, and the dogmas, and the rituals, and the liturgy, and the Bible as long as you aren’t buying it. As long as you are saying, “Wait a minute! Not so fast!” The right kind of community has to be a place where any perspective can be spoken, but no perspective is revered as the last word in perspectives. The distance between where I am and where you are is the safe space that allows people to develop their own views and positions without thinking they have to see things as I do to be a part of things here. As long as you don’t buy what I’m selling, other people who walk into the gathering don’t have to buy it either, and can use the freedom of thought here to find their own way.

The way, you might say, is the way of right relationship between each one of us and the rest of us. We have to listen to ourselves and we have to listen to one another. And, we have to decide for ourselves what we are going to do, think, and believe. I am a part of the material you use to construct your own path. And, you cannot give me more of a place in the construction of that path than is warranted. And, who decides what is warranted? You do, and you had better be right about it.

In the recent past we have seen the power of guileless enthusiasm in the service of wacky ideas of God in the so-called “ministry” of Jim Jones, and Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart (Do you see a theme developing here?). David Koresh had his mis-guided followers, and the poor folks waiting to be taken to glory in the space ships following the comet had their mis-guided leader. And, it is the easiest thing in the world to take yourself, or someone else, too seriously. As the paid Declarer of Truth As I See It, it is my place to be outlandish. I have the responsibility of stretching your perspective, of challenging your assumptions, of broadening your horizons, of blowing your mind. But, you can’t take my word for anything, and you can’t let me get by with talking you into anything. Your responsibility is to say, “Wait a minute! Not so fast!”

If all you ever heard from me was nothing more than “the same old, same old.” If all you got from me were the clichés, and the platitudes, and the maxims, and the tired old formulas, then one of you would have to play the part of the radical, mind-stretching voice. But, none of you is paid to do that kind of thing, and, if any of you began to do it, the rest of these good people would likely turn on you in a “who do you think you are” snarly kind of way to keep you in your place as member and not leader of the community.

The leader has to be the person who is paid to lead or things get ugly. The leader has to be the one who shakes things up. The leader has to challenge and confront and confound and call forth. The leader has to lead, and the followers have to follow, but the followers cannot follow too closely. The followers have to buck, and snort, and resist and ask questions for clarification and elucidation. Otherwise, things go too far in one direction or another and the wrong kind of community develops.

The right kind of community lives on the boundary between yin and yang. It fosters perspectives which take themselves into account. It does not require its members to sign a pledge of allegiance or a loyalty oath. It creates an atmosphere like that of a college dining hall, with groups of people scattered throughout the room, eating together, without thinking that their table is the only table and that all the others are unwelcome intruders, but also without thinking that everyone should be eating at the same table. The leader of the right kind of community is responsible for setting a clearly defined course, for stating bluntly what he, what she, thinks about a wide number of issues that are pertinent to the life of the community, and to the lives of individuals making up the community. And, the leader is respected and honored, but not taken too seriously. And, the leader doesn’t take himself, doesn’t take herself, too seriously, and does not take personally not being taken too seriously, but goes about the business of leading with the understanding that the community cannot follow too closely if it is to be the right kind of community, because the more narrowly the community allows itself to be identified and defined, the fewer people it will be capable of serving, and the less likely will be its chances of having any positive impact on the way life is lived in the world.

In order to have a chance at being the right kind of community, you have to know that you are here to find your own way and not to take up mine—or anyone else’s. If you take someone else’s word for it you lose the magic of your own voice, of your own thinking, and you get off the path with your name on it, and lose the way, and become lost among the bright lights everyone else is shining in your eyes, trying to show you the way, which is their way, as they shout directions telling you what to do and how to think to be as they are. But, you aren’t to become as they are. You are to become as you are. Yet, you aren’t to take your own way so seriously that you can’t receive instruction or insight from others. It’s a balancing act, a dance. And no one can tell us exactly how to do it. When to listen to whom? How to do what? All things come to those who wait, and watch. But, it is a special kind of waiting, and watching. It is a special kind of waiting and watching that involves nothing special. It comes down to “just sitting” with our ears, and eyes, open.

The spiritual discipline of “just sitting” will take you to the heart of things. When we “just sit,” things come up. Let them go, they continue to come up. The “10,000 things” pass before our eyes, pass in review. The vast majority of these things are static, the background noise of our lives. Some of them are the pertinent issues of the day, of the moment, which need to be attended and addressed. How to tell one from the other is a matter of listening to, of observing, our physical reaction to the thought. How does our body respond?

The body knows, you know. The body is our fail-safe guide to the issues that must be resolved. What is the physical sensation that is connected to the thought? What is the word that best describes the sensation? Tightness? Soreness? Choking? Nausea? Say the word until you find the right one, the one that fits exactly the sensation. Then, say hello to the word.

“Hello, Tightness.” And, invite it to speak. “What do you have to say?” And, listen. Wait, listening. Accept whatever comes without defending, justifying, excusing, or explaining. If what you hear is accusatory, say, “Something is fed up with the way I’ve been doing things.” And, wait, listening. Your role is to listen, accept, identify the emotional tone of what you hear, and create a loving, gracious, hospitable, receiving, space for what has to be said. Your role is to get to the bottom of things. Your body’s role is to serve as the doorway which carries you there.

You can “just sit” with a physical symptom. Treat the symptom as that which something is using to get your attention. Find the right word to describe what it feels like to have the symptom—what the physical sensation of the symptom is. Say the word, greet it, welcome it, ask it what it has to say. Wait, listening, accepting, welcoming, hearing it out.

And, don’t think you already know what it’s going to say. Don’t think you already know all about “the problem.” Listen, accept, welcome all the way to the core of what it has to say. Who is “it”? Not you. You are not “it.” It is not you. And language is important to keep you and it separate, not enmeshed. Do not say, “I am afraid.” Say, “Something is afraid.” Something is trying to get your attention, so address it as “Something.” Our place is to listen to what something has to say. We “just sit,” and listen, and clear the way to the heart of things by so doing. “Just sitting,” we know the truth and are free to do what must be done. If you are going to do anything, “just sit” in the right frame of mind. That is the power, the force, that transforms the world.

11/26/06, Sermon

There is one thing about you that is true, no matter who you are or what your name is. You don’t get enough cooperation. They aren’t lining up out there, asking what they can do to be of help, and how they can make life easier for you. We come here out of lives that seem to be intent on doing us in. And, it’s up to us to deal with it. If we didn’t have a spiritual side, it would be all over. If it were just about physical reserves and resources, we wouldn’t have a chance.

There is no immunity against the unwanted. We cannot be smart enough to outwit disappointment, and heartache, and betrayal, and failure. The skill of life has nothing to do with dodging the wrecking ball. It has everything to do with accommodating ourselves to the unacceptable. The people who seem to be Teflon-coated have a knack for telling themselves the kind of thing that enables them to live on in the aftermath of the unraveling of their lives, the destruction of their dreams.

Nothing can happen to us that we can’t make better or worse by the way we respond to it. We have the power of life over our lives, over what life can do to us. The choice of life is the fundamental choice. We are not necessarily alive just because we are 98.6 and breathing. Being alive is a spiritual experience. Life is the spiritual quest. The spiritual journey is the distance from where we are to where we have to be to be fully alive, fully awake, fully aware, fully ourselves, fully human. What do we need to be alive, is the question. It isn’t what we generally think.

We generally think we can’t be alive, happy, content, at peace until we get things lined up and in place. And, since something is always coming along to upset our scheme, we are always upset. The people who are alive, take the next upsetting event in stride, accommodate themselves to the unacceptable, “let be what is,” and live on “anyway, nevertheless, even so.” The work is adjusting ourselves to what must be done “now,” in light of what is happening in our lives and in the world. The spiritual task is the work of adjustment and accommodation.

It is the work of working with what we have to work with to make what can be made there. The spiritual task is the work of bringing life to life in the world. Life is not what we find in the world. Life is our gift to the world. Well. That’s easy to say. Hard to do. Practically impossible to do. Because we keep losing the way and thinking that having our way, getting our way, IS the way. Our lives, too often, come down to a battle of wills, with us trying to will what cannot be willed within circumstances that don’t seem at all interested in what is good for us or what we want. How do we go on living when living takes the life right out of us? That is the question at the heart of life. Answering the question is the essence of spiritual discipline, of spiritual practice.

The only thing between us and the world is our spiritual practice. Spiritual practice provides us with the perspective required to do the work of bringing life to life in the world. We do not live easily, lightly, in the world. The world is a mine field, a store house of booby traps and time bombs waiting to explode. Something precious is always going up in smoke. It is not a place for the tender and the timid. Even the toughest are traumatized by life in this world. And, being vigilant and on guard only makes us anxious before we have anything to worry about. We cannot avoid the experience of grief, loss and sorrow. But we can live in the world as it is as those who are alive, as those who bring life to life again and again, because this is the only world there is, and if we aren’t going to live here, we aren’t going to live at all. We do it through the agency of spiritual discipline, of spiritual practice.

Life is a spiritual discipline when lived with intention and integrity (Integrity has nothing to do with morality. Integrity is being true to yourself within the context and circumstances of your life—being who you are, where you are, when you are, how you are, without cutting yourself off from others or the rest of your life. Just try that, if you dare, and see how long you last! It is the essential spiritual practice.). Being fully, truly, alive is a spiritual practice. So is silence, and meditation, and patience, and acceptance, and awareness, and mindfulness, and attention, and breathing, and walking, and washing the dishes… Everything is a spiritual discipline, a spiritual practice when done in the right spirit, with the right attitude—when done in the spirit, with the attitude, of complete openness to the all-ness of the moment of our living.

The only thing standing between us and this kind of openness to the moment of our living is us. Our ideas for the moment—about the moment—interfere with our being open to the moment. We keep looking for the door that will open to our dream life or allow us to escape from life. We want the answer, or the exit, the way to glory or the way out. We look for the door that will permit us to leave this world for some other, better world. But we are the door we seek. We open the door of consciousness, of awareness, of mindfulness—we open ourselves—to the full experience of life as it is.

The experience of the experience of life is the primary spiritual practice. It all begins with the awareness of what is, with the openness to the moment of our living. And, if that awareness, that openness, is blocked by fear, or anger, or emotional or physical pain, then the focus becomes being aware of that, being open to that. The goal, then, is to experience fully our inability to experience life as it is. We open the door of our consciousness to the full experience of whatever is most pressing in the moment. And, if we don’t know what that is, we simply sit, silently waiting, looking past the routine mind clutter, watching for the major angst to appear.

Or, we listen to our bodies. The body always knows. Nothing is hidden from our body. We can fill our minds with the 10,000 things and keep our attention forever away from what it is that needs to be attended, but our bodies are not distracted. Our bodies bear the truth. When mind begins to listen to body, things begin to stir. Sometimes, awful things. And, it can be good to have a therapist within reach, or, a therapeutic presence. It is asking too much to think we should be able to face the awful things alone. Opening the door of consciousness is not a solitary undertaking. It takes a community awaken us and bring us to life.

“Nothing is to be unconsciously done.” How’s that for a “Rule of St. Benedict”? For a way of agreeing how to proceed together? “Everything is gleaned for its gift, for its ability to disclose, reveal, unveil, enlighten.” We process everything. We think about everything. We sit before everything, waiting to see, waiting to be shown, waiting for the depths to be made visible. We mine everything for the gold. Consciousness, awareness, is the Philosopher’s Stone, turning base metal, turning raw experience, into precious stone, into the stuff of life, and light, and peace. We are Alchemists of the soul, of the spirit, wandering along the way in search of truth. The essential truth is the truth of who we are, the truth of what we are about and how we bring that to bear on the circumstances of our lives. Finding that, embracing that, expressing that is the sum total of the spiritual quest.

And it takes us all to do it. Spiritual practice is essential, but not enough. It takes participation in a spiritual community to bring life to life in the world. Participation in the right kind of community IS spiritual practice! The right kind of community is a nursery of sorts, nurturing us to life, helping us to find, to form, the perspective necessary for dealing with the realities of life in the world, helping us to process the impact of those realities, waking us up, enabling us to be aware and alive, keeping us company, and reminding us of what is, and is not, essential to our being, and to being human in the world.

The right kind of community listens us to life in the world, opening us to the experience of our experience and helping us toward the perspective that is the foundation of life, and light, and peace. The community brings us to life by insulating us against the hard realities of life in the world. By listening to us as we process our experience with those realities, and by reminding us of the larger reality of life beyond the realities of life in the world. There is more to life than living would lead us to believe. It is the work of the right kind of community to connect us with the more, and to bring us to life in the midst of the worst that life can do.

11/19/06, Sermon

Charlie Hawes says that when he was the Episcopal Campus Minister at UNCG, he would occasionally go for lunch at the cafeteria, and in that huge dining hall, there would be in one area, tables with athletes eating together, in another area, there would be people from the Psychology Department eating together, in another area, black students would be gathered, eating, in another area, art majors would be gathered, eating. All over the dinning hall, groups of people would be collecting around common interests. All of the people there would have a connection with the university. All of the people there would share a common experience of being hungry. Yet, within their larger identity, they would be eating with, and talking to, people with whom they shared a more intimate bonding.

None of the groups gathered for lunch ever tried to, or probably even thought of, expelling any of the other groups because the other groups weren’t their kind. Because they were sinners and shouldn’t be allowed to eat in a dining room with the chosen ones of God. The Psychology Department never rose up against the Music Department. The Athletic Department never challenged the English Department about its right to be in the lunch room, or a part of the University. All the people in the room, and all the departments within the university, recognized the right of the other people to be in the room, and the right of the other departments to be a part of the school. And, no one ever tried to get them all “together,” to eat around the same table, to take the same classes, to agree about the same principles, and be of one mind about everything pertaining to life on campus.

This past week North Carolina Baptists said you can’t be Baptist and gay. Said you can’t be a Baptist church in the North Carolina system and have a gay member in your church. Said, in a manner of speaking, if you have long hair, or a tattoo, or a nose ring, you can’t eat in the dining room. Said, in a manner of speaking, if you don’t take the oath and swear to be like the rest of us, and look like the rest of us, and talk like the rest of us, and act like the rest of us, you don’t belong in the lunch line.

This morning, we have baptized a gay woman, and welcomed her and her partner into the membership of the congregation. The timing is one of those coincidents of life that make you think, “This couldn’t possibly be coincidental. Some Higher Power, with nothing better to do, like ending the war in Iraq, or waking the Bush administration up to what is decent, and loving, and just, and good, must have arranged the baptism for this particular Sunday as an expression of Christian irony and to give Jim something to say.” It is the nature of coincidence that it couldn’t possibly be coincidental. That is what coincidence means. Very low likelihood.

But, back to the point. You couldn’t ask for a better arrangement of the extremes in one week than here, with what the Baptists have done and we are doing. The question the arrangement brings up for me doesn’t have as much to do with gay rights as it does with how we are going to eat together in the same room. We all claim to be Christian, but the Baptists say to the homosexuals, “You can’t be Christian and act like that!”, and we are tempted to say to the Baptists, “You can’t be Christian and act like THAT!”

The question is how can the church be more like a college dining hall and less like an exclusive club for members like us only. How can we create the church as it ought to be without implying that it is restricted to people who think, and believe, and act as we do? How can we bring ourselves into focus, clearly defining who we are and what we are about, knowing what we stand for and what we stand against, without cutting ourselves off from, or thinking that we are superior to or better than, those who are different from us? How can we believe what we believe and make room in the dining room for opposite beliefs? How can we be truly inclusive, open-minded and home for all souls?

Through-out the history of the religion, proponents have declared that, in order to be a member of the religion, in order to be Christian, people have to behave and believe in certain ways. There are Presbyterians this very moment in this very town who can be overheard saying (like their Baptist counterparts), “You can’t belong to the church of Jesus Christ and be gay, or ordain those who are gay to office in the church.”

And, at the same time, through-out the history of the religion, there have been those who have followed Paul’s lead in saying, in effect, that at the Communion Table, and in the church, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Or that, “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…Indeed, the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the food would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And, if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be. If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? …If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body” (1 Cor. 12:12-31, portions). The work of the church is working out what it means to be different and together.

Being “one in the Lord” is a lot like being a student at UNCG. Students at UNCG are all over the place in their beliefs and behavior, but they are all students at UNCG. They eat together in the same dining hall but they don’t think alike. How much uniformity does the church require? How much diversity can it tolerate? How different can we be and still be the church? We have to see to it that we can be very different!

When Claude Ashin Thomas was here, he talked about the importance of belonging to a community of like-minded people. It takes a community of like-minded people to ground us in our own sense of value, and form our identity, and develop our perspective, and bring to consciousness, into awareness, who we are and what we are about—as long as that community listens with compassion and acceptance and understanding to us, and grants us the room, and the permission, to say who we are and what we are about, even if that is contrary to ideals and ways of the community. Like-minded-ness is not agreement, is not mindlessness, is not thoughtlessness, is not blindly following the leader, is not walking in step, is not reading from the same script, is not wearing the same clothes (And so, Vance Arnold’s warning about those red shoes!), is not becoming invisible and indistinguishable from everybody else in the room.

Like-minded-ness is about what holds us together as a community. It is, simply put, our granting one another the right to see what we see, and say what we see, and live in light of what we see without imposing our views on anyone else. We are like-minded about our freedom to see whatever we see, however we see. The right kind of community guards the right of individuals making up the community to be true to themselves, to their perspective, to their sense of the good. Yet, at the same time, the perspectives of the individuals making up the community shape the community, define the community, and create the community identity. And, the more narrowly the community is defined by the perspectives of its members, the fewer members it will have. Narrow perspectives are self-limiting and communities, even the right kind of communities, are forever limited by the perspectives of their members. How to be inclusive, open-minded, and home for a wide variety of souls is always the essential question with which the right kind of community constantly wrestles.

How do we define ourselves without becoming so narrow that we become radical extremists who are no more inclusive than the North Carolina Baptists? What are the safeguards against exclusive-ism? The new bumper sticker on the rear table reads: “Coexist,” written in the symbols of various religions and positions on various issues. How do we do that? How do we respect one another in our different-ness? How do we all eat together in the same dining room?

I think two things are required: consciousness and confession. We have to be mindfully aware of the times and places and ways we cut ourselves off from others in defining ourselves. We have to be clear about who we are without dishonoring other people for being who they are. We have to catch ourselves in the act of presuming that we are the way, the truth and the life, and that no one can come into the kingdom without doing it the way we do it, believing the way we believe, thinking the way we think, and calling good what we call good, and calling evil what we call evil. And we have to confess our failure to respect and honor all people, and live humbly, with compassion and justice toward all living things, while remaining true to our selves and our own values. It is the hardest thing there is. And so, the cross exists before us as a reminder of the price we pay to be inclusive, open-minded, and home for all souls.