Tattoo

​'Poem' for the week -- "Tattoo":

You do know, right,
that between the no-

longer & the still-
to-come

you are being continually
tattooed, inked

with the skulls of
everyone

you’ve ever loved—the you
& the you

& the you & the you—you don’t
sit in a chair, thumb

through a binder, pick a
design, it simply

happens each time you
bring your fingers to your face

to inhale him back into you . . .
tiny skulls, some of us are

covered. You, love, could

simply tattoo an open
door, light

pouring in from somewhere
outside, you

could make your body a door
so it appears you

(let her fill you) are made
of light.

-- Nick Flynn

Nowhere Else Festival

...what a treat this weekend at the Nowhere Else Festival (including some great pics).  I was so grateful for the space of time to just soak in some great music by Over The Rhine and other artists I'd never heard of before...a grand entrance into summer and a joy for me to share the time with friends and family.

Here are some lines that struck me by Joe Henry:

"Write about one specific thing that means something about everything else."

"No one is about just the one thing they have shown."

"Like light through the pines of our walk, you lead me on."

"You push me away and farther along."

"I speak between the truth and what I mean."

Value of Vulnerability

One reason we Christians have misunderstood many of Jesus' teachings is that we have not seen Jesus' way of education as that of a spiritual master. He wants to situate us in a larger life, which he calls the "Reign of God." But instead we make him into a Scholastic philosopher if we are Roman Catholic, into a moralist if we are mainline Protestant, or into a successful and imperialistic American if we are Evangelical. Yet the initiatory thrust of Jesus' words is hidden in plain sight.

Study, for example, his instructions to the twelve disciples, when he sent them into society in a very vulnerable way (no shoes or wallet, like sheep among wolves). How did we miss this? Note that it was not an intellectual message as much as it was an "urban plunge," a high-risk experience where something new and good could happen. It was designed to change the disciples much more than it was meant for them to change others! (See Matthew 10:1-33 or Luke 10:1-24.) Today we call it a reverse mission, where we ourselves are changed and helped by those whom we think we are serving.

When read in light of classic initiation patterns, Jesus' intentions are very clear. He wanted his disciples--then and now--to experience the value of vulnerability. Jesus invites us to a life without baggage so we can learn how to accept others and their culture. Instead, we carry along our own country's assumptions masquerading as "the good news." He did not teach us to hang up a shingle to get people to attend our services. He taught us exactly the opposite: We should stay in their homes and eat their food! This is a very strong anti-institutional model. One can only imagine how different history would have been had we provided this initiatory training for our missionaries. We might have borne a message of cosmic sympathy instead of imperialism, providing humble reconciliation instead of religious wars and the murdering of "heretics," Jews, "pagans," and native peoples in the name of Jesus.

When we could not make clear dogma, moral code, or a practical war economy out of Jesus' teaching, we simply abandoned it in any meaningful sense. His training of novices has had little or no effect on church style or membership, by and large. When one throws out initiatory training, the whole latter program and plan of life is left without foundation or containment. Now we seek a prize of later salvation--instead of the freedom of present simplicity. I am told that the Sermon on the Mount--the essence of Jesus' teaching--is the least quoted in official Catholic Church documents.

However, there were always people like Francis of Assisi, Simone Weil, Menno Simons, Peter Waldo, George Fox, Catherine of Genoa, Peter Maurin, Mother Teresa, and Dorothy Day who made Jesus' Gospel their life map. They knew that lifestyle was more important than theories, intellectual belief systems, or abstruse theology. Once you know that your life is not about you, then you can also trust that your life is your message. This gives you an amazing confidence about your own small life--precisely because it is no longer a small life, it is no longer just yours, and it is not all in your head. Henceforth, you do not try to think yourself into a new way of living, but you first live in a new way, from a new vantage point--and your thinking changes by itself.

"I live no longer, not I," Paul shouted with his one daring life (Galatians 2:20). And this one-man show turned a Jewish sect into a worldwide religion. Paul allowed his small life to be used by the Great Life, and that is finally all that matters. Your life is not about you. It is about God and about allowing Life and Death to "be done unto me," which is Mary's prayer at the beginning of her journey and Jesus' prayer at the end of his.

-- Richard Rohr

Musical Highway

What Wars

Have compassion for everyone you meet
even if they don't want it. What seems like conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.

-- Miller Williams

Seem To See

At times, we seem to only see what we're already looking for.

I Used To Think: Becoming Big

I used to think...that I needed, to at least try, to become as big as I could be.  Now I know that trying to be big makes others feel small.

Part Of It

​'Poem' for the week -- "Part Of It":

I can only have
part of it.
I want
all of it
but I can't;
for I would consume it
if it were all mine.
It needs to be
embraced
and let go.  Both.
Pain over this
is not my best
informer,
rather
my teacher:
Enjoy the part
I have
and share the rest
with someone else.
Besides
part of it
is more than
enough.

Knowing

The precision of knowing is not what is important, the ​process of knowing is.

We must work it out.  A group of men, I call friends, did some of this 'work' this last week...on an otherwise unsuspecting stove.  More pics here....

Learn by Doing - In The Company of Beggars, Prostitutes, and Lepers

Much of what passes for spirituality and spiritual practice--prayer days, meditation, retreats, spiritual direction, contemplation, ritual, and study--is primarily informed by an exclusive attention to the self and perhaps family relationships, suggesting that much of what we call spirituality is actually some mixture of psychology and private devotion, made sacred by the use of religious imagery. My argument is not that it's worthless, but that it's woefully incomplete. I am concerned that it provides a very limited experience of what Jesus is so passionate about, namely the "Reign of God" (the most repeated phrase in the four Gospels). As I understand the Reign of God, it includes the grace-driven, love-driven transformation of the self and the world. What's more, it recognizes that the transformation of the self and the world are directly connected to each other....

Isn't it instructive that the spiritual formation of the original disciples happens with Jesus on the road? In effect, the disciples learn by doing. They grow into an understanding of this God of love, this God of compassion, this God who loves justice, this God who makes all things new, by participating as active observers and agents of compassion, justice, and newness. And, yes, necessarily, they pause with Jesus to reflect, ask questions (sometimes stupid questions), and pray. But the spiritual adventure described in the four Gospels does not happen in the sanctuary; it happens on the road, in the company of beggars, prostitutes, and lepers.

-- Jack Jezreel

When It Comes to the Next President, We Need More Than Strength

"My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong.” So every president over the past several decades has declared in his annual address to Congress. This is a half-truth in the best of times. Because a new president will be inaugurated in January 2017, there will likely be no formal State of the Union speech next year. Just as well, because it is hard to imagine anyone saying with a straight face that our union is strong.

This is not the first time America has faced daunting internal tensions and external threats. But during this year’s presidential primaries, fear, despair, and dissatisfaction have drawn Americans to would-be leaders who promise radical change to restore our country’s strength.

Yet strength is only one part of real health for nations. All truly flourishing communities must also embrace vulnerability. Continue here....

Trick to Believing

​The trick to believing in something is to commit to it, even though it's possible that you will discover that what you have believed in was wrong. Because, doing so is, in fact, the path to ultimately determining what is worth believing in. Otherwise, you just end up not believing in anything…because you haven't actually tested the truth of anything, in any personal way.

We tend to think we that we need to know something is true first and then believe it, but I suspect it actually works the other way around. We believe first, then we come to know.  And, it is the sometimes agitated, personal process of committing ourselves in belief that enables us to know.

By the way, I am agitated today...while not necessarily good for others, it is good for me to know this.

The More You Open

​The more you open your heart to other people, the more hurt you will experience...AND the more joy you will discover, the more significance you will feel because of the beauty of the giving and receiving, the more you will grow, the more you will enjoy, the more you will discover who you are, the more you will fall in love with, and the closer to God you will become. But, you must open your heart to other people...and you can never stop doing this, or all of this will reverse itself.

I've Noticed: Limited

I've noticed...that I can only love a certain number of things.  I'm not saying I know what that number is, because I also think I can love a lot more than I think I can.  But, it is also true that I am limited.  There is plenty of opportunity for others to love what I can't.

Greatest Tutors

We need to learn to pay attention to what is going on inside of us; these are among the greatest tutors we have. What we learn from these tutors is what, in the end, we have to offer the world.

Prayer Before Reading St. Mark's Gospel

'Poem' for the week -- "Prayer Before Reading St. Mark's Gospel":

Please attack my colonialist ego,
o lion-face, o ancient evangelist.
The carcinogenic self, gleeful
but cruel in its unhealthy glow,
needs every means of resistance,
nor do I expect your treatment to be
remotely easygoing, if any freedom
is to be won from tumor, polyp, cyst.
Don't let my withheld forgiveness
be among the glittering cargo
of my sickly little boat, battered, kissed
by fortune's surges. Let me bestow
instead regard to every fellow narcissist,
to thief and punk, humbug and arsonist.

-- Brett Foster

Thanks, Jim, for forwarding this.

Cubs vs Pirates 2016

Another good Wrigley time, though Conner wonders if he jinxes the CUBS!

A no-hitter for Lester thru 7 innings and some real drama in the bottom of the 9th!  ...more pics here. 

Radical Transformation

Regarding transformation; a little longer than the usual posts, but so good:

Mature religion teaches contemplation as a path to true transformation. But before we are ready to be shaken and changed at our roots, we need religion at its lower levels to help us develop a healthy ego. Ken Wilber describes religion's different roles along the spiritual and developmental journey:

[Religion] itself has always performed two very important, but very different, functions. One, it acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it offers myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals, that, taken together, help the separate self make sense of, and endure, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

This is good and needed. That's how you get started. As psychology would say, you have to have an ego to let go of an ego. You have to have a self to move beyond the self. But most religion stops at this first function, simply giving you a positive self-image and identity--that I'm religious, moral, dedicated, or whatever my sense of worth and belonging might be. Wilber continues:

This function of religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of consciousness in a person; it does not deliver radical transformation. Nor does it deliver a shattering liberation from the separate self altogether. Rather, it consoles the self, fortifies the self, defends the self, promotes the self. As long as the separate self believes the myths, performs the rituals, mouths the prayers, or embraces the dogma, then the self, it is fervently believed, will be "saved"--either now in the glory of being God-saved or Goddess-favored, or in an afterlife that ensures eternal wonderment.

We're never totally sure what "saved" is supposed to mean, but everybody uses the word rather glibly. I suppose in most Western Christians' minds it means going to heaven, that I'm going to get some reward later for behaving or believing in a certain way. It sounds like a very bad reward/punishment novel. It's preposterous that anybody believes this could be the Great God's simplistic agenda, but if you haven't really worked with it (and I'm fortunate that I have had time to work with it), you believe it because everybody else does. You figure this many people can't be wrong. They must be right that life is a giant reward/punishment system, and if you jump through the hoops properly, you'll get the reward. It's not really about becoming "a new creation" (Galatians 6:15). You don't have to be transformed; you just have to play the game right. This is first half of life religion. It deals with the small self, the false self, and is all about requirements.

Wilber goes on to explain the second function of religion:

But two, religion has also served--in a usually very, very small minority--the function of radical transformation and liberation. This function does not fortify the separate self, but utterly shatters it--not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution--in short, not a conventional bolstering of consciousness but a radical transmutation and transformation at the deepest seat of consciousness itself.

This is true religious conversion. This is second half of life religion, although it can happen at any age. The experience occurs when God or life destabilizes your private ego, usually through some form of suffering. It will feel like dying because it is the death of the false self. The small, separate self is shattered, and your True Self is revealed. The True Self is all about right relationship, not requirements. It's not about being correct; it's about being connected, which you always were--you just didn't realize it. This is the self that is capable of contemplation because it no longer reads reality from an egocentric position.

Contemplation is indeed radical because it's a way of being in the world, walking in the world, and seeing the world that is absolutely different than the daily grind of ideas and contests.

-- Richard Rohr

Same River Twice

No man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

-- Heraclitus

Inventions Of An Agitated Mind

Today’s opening line in A Year With Thomas Merton, “You can make your life what you want” if you don’t “drive [yourself] on with illusory demands.” I don’t think it’s entirely true that I can make my life what I want. But it would help if I stopped making demands on myself that distort who I really am and what I’m really called to do.

After five days of silence and solitude, many of the demands that hung over me when I came out here have lightened or lifted. Since I’ve done little this week to meet those demands, the lesson seems clear: they were mostly the inventions of an agitated mind. Now that my mind has quieted, its “illusory demands” have vaporized, and I feel a deeper peace.

-- Parker Palmer

Fool

​He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.

-- Chinese Proverb

I Used To Think: Ask Questions

​I used to think...that I needed to act more courageous and make faster judgments about things. Now I know that it is generally wise to ask questions first.

Tenacious

​Patience is tenacious.

For My Mother

'Poem selection' for the week -- "For My Mother":

Once more
I summon you
Out of the past
With poignant love,
You who nourished the poet
And the lover.
I see your gray eyes
Looking out to sea
In those Rockport summers,
Keeping a distance
Within the closeness
Which was never intrusive
Opening out
Into the world.
And what I remember
Is how we laughed
Till we cried
Swept into merriment
Especially when times were hard.
And what I remember
Is how you never stopped creating
And how people sent me
Dresses you had designed
With rich embroidery
In brilliant colors
Because they could not bear
To give them away
Or cast them aside.
I summon you now
Not to think of
The ceaseless battle
With pain and ill health,
The frailty and the anguish.
No, today I remember
The creator,
The lion-hearted.

-- May Sarton

Enneagram, Con't

Con't from this post:

In the Enneagram tradition, "sin" is simply that which doesn't work, i.e. self-defeating behavior. Our root capital sins can be understood as emergency solutions that we developed in early childhood as a way of coping with our environment. At the time, these coping mechanisms were necessary for survival. But the older we grow, the more they get in the way of living freely as our True Self. 

We all have a little of each personality type in us, allowing us greater understanding and compassion for others. But for our own transformation, we must recognize that we tend to have a primary set of blinders, a primary delusion, a capital sin. There is a key dilemma, a habitual trap in each of us. We must notice how we block ourselves by our preferred style of perception. Even though this way of perceiving reality doesn't reflect the True Self, it seems to "work" for us, giving us false energy and purpose.

The Enneagram refuses to eliminate the negative and is grounded in what Bill Wilson called "a vital spiritual experience." We only have the courage to face our deep illusions when we are entirely loved and accepted by God or by somebody who acts as God toward us. So, with great irony, our faults are the crack that lets grace in, exactly as the Gospel teaches. We must bring our root sin to consciousness rather than deny or repress it. We can only heal our wound with kindness and compassion, not judgment and condemnation.

-- Richard Rohr

45+ Generation: Stop Scaring The Kids

Makenzie showed me this...I'm over 45.

Differently

Organic:  If I don't do anything differently, I can't expect anything to really change.

Easier

Self-acceptance is easier when no one is around.

-- Parker Palmer

I've Noticed: Engages

​I've noticed...that physical activity engages my heart (spirit).

Isn't The Point

Acceptance, of ourselves or others; the fallacies of our character really aren't the point of things, in the end. Who we are becoming and what we contribute is -- the essence that we're called to be, to give to the world.

Come Apart

If you don't come apart and rest awhile, you'll simply come apart.

-- A.W. Tozer

Enneagram

My interest was recently peaked as I ran across the Enneagram spiritual formation concept:

It is a wonderful tool that can help us see and let go of the false self--which masks the image of God within us--and allow us to live from our True Self--the unique manifestation of Love that God intends us to be. It seems we are most defended against that which we most deeply know to be true, our original blessing. 

The Enneagram describes nine different personalities, each of which covers a broad spectrum from "immature" to "mature," or "compulsive" to "redeemed." It is more about recognizing "energies" than it is about describing precise traits. People who know the Enneagram in a superficial way think it's about putting people into boxes, but its real goal is to let people out of their self-created boxes. It makes us aware of our root sin, our passion, our particular trap or blindness that prevents us from experiencing reality holistically and honestly. These passions were called the seven "capital sins" by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, although predictably he missed the most common ones in Western civilization, which are fear and deceit. You can't see as sin what you have idealized as virtue.

Freedom from our habitual trap comes through some in-depth experience of Love, be it a sudden overflowing, hitting the bottom and being lifted up, or the gradual opening through contemplative practice. 

-- Richard Rohr

I will be exploring more of this each week for a while.