Councils

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Councils".  If only we could; if only we would do the following...especially during this particular political environment:

We must sit down
and reason together.
We must sit down.
Men standing want to hold forth.
They rain down upon faces lifted.

We must sit down on the floor
on the earth
on stones and mats and blankets.
There must be no front to the speaking
no platform, no rostrum,
no stage or table.
We will not crane
to see who is speaking.

Perhaps we should sit in the dark.
In the dark we could utter our feelings.
In the dark we could propose
and describe and suggest.

In the dark we could not see who speaks
and only the words
would say what they say.

Thus saying what we feel and what we want,
what we fear for ourselves and each other
into the dark, perhaps we could begin
to begin to listen.

Perhaps we should talk in groups
small enough for everyone to speak.

Perhaps we should start by speaking softly.
The women must learn to dare to speak.

The men must bother to listen.

The women must learn to say, I think this is so.

The men must learn to stop dancing solos on
the ceiling.
After each speaks, she or he
will repeat a ritual phrase:

It is not I who speaks but the wind.
Wind blows through me.
Long after me, is the wind.

-- Marge Piercy

Going Up the Down Escalator

As Christianity evolved in the centuries following Jesus’ death and resurrection, it naturally drew ideas from the surrounding Mediterranean culture. Roman and Greek mythology and philosophy used a great deal of Promethean, heroic, ascent images. The ego is naturally attracted to heroic language. To the ego, heroism feels like the way to go to God. No wonder Christian martyrs were immediately canonized. We placed our focus on the heroic instead of the transformative, on achieving rather than serving.

If the Promethean is heroic expression, stoic spirituality is heroic repression. We thought depriving ourselves or doing something contrary to nature, will, or body would somehow please God, whereas it only made us feel “strong” and significant. Jesus never advocates either asceticism or heroism. In fact, Jesus says, “John the Baptist came along fasting and living an ascetic life and you were upset with him. Now I come along eating and drinking and you don’t like me either” (see Matthew 11:18-19). Jesus is neither a rigorist nor a legalist. He is scandalously free from these ego games!

We must acknowledge that much of Christian spirituality comes from other sources than Jesus’ teaching. That’s not necessarily wrong, but we have to admit when we’re listening to Western culture rather than Jesus. The ideas and practices we usually associate with religion are not at all what Jesus emphasizes. Jesus is the most unlikely founder of a religion. Religion normally begins by making a distinction between the pure and the impure, the good and the bad. Yet Jesus does the opposite: he finds God among the impure instead of among the pure! He entertains the lost sheep instead of comforting those who think they are not lost.

Humans are so hardwired to think dualistically, to divide the pure from the impure, that in spite of Jesus’ clear example and teaching, Christianity went right back to the same old pattern. The ego desperately wants to feel pure, saved, moral, significant, and superior. We cannot allow God to come down to us, which is the meaning of the Incarnation (see Philippians 2:5-8); we think we’ve got to go up to God. We’re usually going up the down escalator! And we miss Jesus on the way—as he de-escalates into our so very ordinary world.

-- Richard Rohr

The Power of A Dinner Table

Kathy Fletcher and David Simpson have a son named Santi, who went to Washington, D.C., public schools. Santi had a friend who sometimes went to school hungry. So Santi invited him to occasionally eat and sleep at his house.

That friend had a friend and that friend had a friend, and now when you go to dinner at Kathy and David’s house on Thursday night there might be 15 to 20 teenagers crammed around the table, and later there will be groups of them crashing in the basement or in the few small bedrooms upstairs.

The kids who show up at Kathy and David’s have endured the ordeals of modern poverty: homelessness, hunger, abuse, sexual assault. Almost all have seen death firsthand — to a sibling, friend or parent.

It’s anomalous for them to have a bed at home. One 21-year-old woman came to dinner last week and said this was the first time she’d been around a family table since she was 11.

And yet by some miracle, hostile soil has produced charismatic flowers. Thursday dinner is the big social occasion of the week. Kids come from around the city. Spicy chicken and black rice are served. Cellphones are banned (“Be in the now,” Kathy says).  Continue here....

-- David Brooks

Right Question

When something is simple but difficult to achieve, the right question to ask isn’t, “What can I learn to help me get better?” It’s, “What belief is getting in my way that I should let go of?”

-- Morgan Housel

Seasons

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.

-- Yoko Ono

Losing Our Illusions

A few years ago, my wife and I spent a week hiking on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, returning to a comfortable room at the lodge each night for what I fondly call “roughing it.” As we set out on our day hikes, we’d often see kids messing around at the edge of the Canyon where it would be easy to slip, fall, and die. If their parents were watching, they weren’t saying anything, and the kids responded to our warnings with the gimlet eye.

When we met a park ranger on the trail, I told him I was baffled by this parental neglect. He shook his head and said,

I’m not sure it’s outright neglect. A surprising number of folks think of the Canyon as a theme park, a fantasy land that may look dangerous but isn’t, where hidden nets will save you from injury or death. Every day I have to remind some people that the Canyon is real, and so are the consequences of a fall of hundreds of feet. I guess some people prefer illusions to reality — even though illusions can kill you.

The ranger named a problem larger and more pervasive than the fantasy that the Grand Canyon is Arizona’s Disneyland. We Americans prefer illusions to reality at every level of our common life, even though illusions can kill us. Why? Because indulging our illusions comforts us — especially when they’re supported by a culture that loves to play “let’s pretend.”

That culture goes back at least as far as 1776 when America proclaimed the “self-evident” truth that all people are created equal — then proceeded to disenfranchise women, commit genocide against Native Americans, and build an economy on the backs of enslaved human beings. Today, our culture of illusions threatens to take us over the edge, not only on basic issues of justice but in critical sectors of our society like education, religion, and politics.  

-- Parker Palmer

For a thoughtful description of each sector, continue here...

I Used To Think: Meaninglessness

I used to think...that meaninglessness was unnecessary.  Now I know it is when we feel meaninglessness that we often end up seeking, and finding, true meaning.

Flow

​Two different people recently mentioned to me something I said to them a while ago...both, of which, I had forgotten even saying. My initial instinct was to try to remember more about the situation, followed by the next impulse to try to find a better way to remember such things.

It seems like this kind of effort, though, is not really sustainable or even possible (at least for me). I suspect the point is that what I do need to do is continue to learn to say things in the moment -- to flow with God's Spirit within me...not to try to keep track of things.

SW MI, 2016

More pics here....

Jesus' Invitation: Follow Me

I have found the phenomenon of male initiation in every culture and on every continent until the modern era. Something that universal—and so uniform in its goals—was surely fulfilling a deep human and social need. It was deemed necessary for cultural and personal survival, it seems. Throughout history, men were more often in positions of power and privilege, whereas women were often unfairly subjugated. Women, therefore, more naturally learned the path of descent (self-emptying) through their “inferior” position to men.

We recognize in initiation universal patterns of wisdom that need to be taught to the young male in his early “tower building” stages. This was the rather universal conclusion: Unless the male is led into journeys of powerlessness, he will invariably misuse power. He becomes a loose cannon in the social fabric, even dangerous to the family, always seeking his own dominative power and advancement to the neglect of others. The human inclination to narcissism has to be exposed, humbled, and used for good purposes.

Jesus clearly taught the twelve disciples about surrender, the necessity of suffering, humility, servant leadership, and nonviolence. They resisted him every time, and so he finally had to make the journey himself and tell them, “Follow me!” But Christians have preferred to hear something Jesus never said: “Worship me.” Worship of Jesus is rather harmless and risk-free; following Jesus changes everything.

The clear message of Jesus’ teaching has not been taught with much seriousness in most churches. Simplicity, humility, and “descent” were never expected of the clergy—certainly not of the higher clergy—and, therefore, how could we ask it of the rest of the church? Jesus was training the leaders because they could only ask of others what they themselves had done first. Once we saw the clerical state as a place of advancement instead of downward mobility, once ordination was not a form of initiation but a continuation of patriarchal patterns, the authentic preaching of the Gospel became the exception rather than the norm.

I have often thought that this “non-preaching” of the Gospel was like a secret social contract between clergy and laity, as we shake hands across the sanctuary. We agree not to tell you anything that would make you uncomfortable, and you will keep coming to our services. It is a nice deal, because once the Gospel is preached, I doubt if the churches would be filled. Rather, we might be out on the streets living the message. The discernment and the call to a life of service, to a life that gives itself away instead of simply protecting and procuring for itself in the name of Jesus, is what church should be about. Right now, so much church is the clergy teaching the people how to be co-dependent with them. It becomes job security instead of true spiritual empowerment. Remember, anyone—male or female—who has not gone on journeys of powerlessness will invariably abuse power.

The way up is down.

-- Richard Rohr

The White Flight of Derek Black

Their public conference had been interrupted by a demonstration march and a bomb threat, so the white nationalists decided to meet secretly instead. They slipped past police officers and protesters into a hotel in downtown Memphis. The country had elected its first black president just a few days earlier, and now in November 2008, dozens of the world’s most prominent racists wanted to strategize for the years ahead.

“The fight to restore White America begins now,” their agenda read.

The room was filled in part by former heads of the Ku Klux Klan and prominent neo-Nazis, but one of the keynote speeches had been reserved for a Florida community college student who had just turned 19. Derek Black was already hosting his own radio...for the rest of an important story, continue here.

-- Eli Saslow

Thanks, Jim, for pointing out this essay to me.

Humility: More Possible

Organic:  It often seems that genuine humility is more possible after a genuine kind of arrogance.

Truth Comes

I think 99 times and I find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.

-- Albert Einstein

Perhaps, much of our 'thinking' effort is really noise....

I've Noticed: Different Question

I've noticed...that catalysts for change in me have been things that make me ask different questions...than the ones I normally carry around with me.

Adversity

Adversity changes your questions.

Autumn

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Autumn":

I want to mention
summer ending
without meaning the death
of somebody loved

or even the death
of the trees.
Today in the market
I heard a mother say

Look at the pumpkins,
it's finally autumn!
And the child didn't think
of the death of her mother

which is due before her own
but tasted the sound
of the words on her clumsy tongue:
pumpkin; autumn.

Let the eye enlarge
with all it beholds.
I want to celebrate
color, how one red leaf

flickers like a match
held to a dry branch,
and the whole world goes up
in orange and gold.

--  Linda Pastan

Holiness Illustrated

SM Brunch 9: Moral Legislation, Enabling the Media, and Leaping

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

Many flowering plants won't bloom again if you leave the dead-heads unpruned.  How far would an analogy of this extend?

****
Blame for the descent of public discourse can largely be placed at our own feet, because we are buying what the media is selling.  TURN IT OFF and we will stop enabling the media to profit from our voyeuristic tendencies.  And, candidates might actually start genuine discourse again, since they, too, are selling what they think we're buying.

****
C.S. Lewis was wary of "morals legislation". For example, during a period when the criminalization of homosexuality was considered by many to be justified, Lewis asked, "What business is it of the state's?"  Nor did he believe it was the duty of government to promote the Christian ideal of marriage:

A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for everyone. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives.

-- C.S. Lewis

****

Non-Violence

If your ego is still in charge, you will find a disposable person or group on which to project your problems. People who haven’t come to at least a minimal awareness of their own dark side will always find someone else to hate or fear. Hatred holds a group together much more quickly and easily than love and inclusivity, I am sorry to say. René Girard developed a sociological, literary, and philosophical explanation for how and why the pattern of scapegoating is so prevalent in every culture.

In Leviticus 16 we see the brilliant ritualization of what we now call scapegoating, and we should indeed feel sorry for the demonized goat. On the Day of Atonement, a priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was beaten with reeds and thorns, and driven out into the desert. And the people went home rejoicing, just as European Christians did after burning a supposed heretic at the stake or American whites did after the lynching of black men. Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe. It sort of works, but only for a while. Usually the illusion only deepens and becomes catatonic, blind, and repetitive—because of course, scapegoating did not really work to eliminate the evil in the first place.

Jesus came to radically undo this illusory scapegoat mechanism, which is found in every culture in some form. He became the scapegoat to reveal the universal lie of scapegoating. Note that John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin [singular] of the world” (John 1:29). It seems “the sin of the world” is ignorant killing, hatred, and fear. As Blaise Pascal so insightfully wrote, “People never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do it with a religious conviction.”  We see this in much of the United States in our own time, with churches on every corner.

The Gospel is a highly subversive document. It painstakingly illustrates how the systems of both church and state (Caiaphas and Pilate) conspired to condemn Jesus. Throughout most of history, church and state have sought plausible scapegoats to carry their own shame and guilt. So Jesus became the sinned-against one to reveal the hidden nature of scapegoating, and we would forever see how wrong power can be—even religious power! (See John 16:8-11 and Romans 8:3.) Finally Jesus says from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34). The scapegoat mechanism largely operates in the unconscious; people do not know what they are doing. Scapegoaters do not know they are scapegoating, but they think they are doing a “holy duty for God” (John 16:2). You see why inner work, shadow work, and honest self-knowledge are all essential to any healthy religion.

The vast majority of violence in history has been sacralized violence. Members of ISIS probably believe they are doing God’s will. The Ku Klux Klan used the cross as their symbol! With God on your side, your violence becomes necessary and even “redemptive violence.” But there is no such thing as redemptive violence. Violence doesn’t save; it only destroys in both short and long term.

Jesus replaced the myth of redemptive violence with the truth of redemptive suffering. He showed us how to hold the pain and let it transform us, rather than pass it on to the others around us. Spiritually speaking, no one else is your problem. You are first and foremost your own problem. There are no bad goats to expel.

-- Richard Rohr

Rapture

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it’s finally all about….

-- Joseph Campbell

I Used To Think: Open Mind

​​I used to think...that I had an open mind. Now I know that I need to be much more aware of things that close it. For example, what are the elements of prejudice that close my mind in undetected ways?

The Voice of Silence

It is appropriate, even necessary, to let silence speak to us. For it is out of silence sometimes that we can hear...a unique voice we otherwise might not hear. Silence provides us a opportunity to hear our thoughts, to hear our selves.  It gives us a chance to center ourselves and consider the kind of person we want to be, the kind of person we need to be, the kind of person we can be.

My Childhood Home I See Again

'Poem selection' for the week -- "My Childhood Home I See Again":

My childhood home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-notes that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar—
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hallow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Way, Truth, Life

​I am the way, the truth, the life.

-- John 14:6

Could it be said like this?  "I am the way, to the truth, which gives you life."

I have often read this in terms of discreet items, an attempt to include 3 broad domains.  This may well be the case.  But, I wonder more now whether these really are 3 integrated areas, one each leading to the other...all, a part of a larger whole.

Do You Think It's Possible?

It could be that possibility has always been a collision between our limitations and our imagination.

Unfilled

We must deepen our respect for an unfilled thing, in part by not always filling it, especially where time is involved.  Embracing, even seeking space, is vital if we want to become (or remain) whole.

Bearings

We seem to so need our bearings, don't we? Geographically, we want to know where we are.  In our jobs, we want to know how we're doing.  Regarding our pain, what do we need to do or understand to medicate or fix the problem.  How are we perceived by others...and on and on it goes. We often look outward for direction, for light...to try to figure out where we're at, how we're doing.

Where we look is important. While we tend to look outward, perhaps we should more often look inward, where our true source of light is, for our sense of who we are and where we're going...to maintain 'our bearings'.

I've Noticed: Anger

​I've noticed...that my anger is often connected to where I feel or fear rejection.

One Thing I Dread

There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ars Poetica

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Ars Poetica":

To have
even a
lotto chance

of getting
somewhere
within yourself

you don’t quite know
but feel

To cling
to the periphery
through the constant

gyroscopic
re-drawing of its
provinces

To make
what Makers make

you must set aside
certainty

Leave it
a lumpy backpack
by the ticket window
at the station

Let the gentleman
in pleated khakis
pressed for time

claim it

The certainty
not the poem.

-- Leslie McGrath

No Despair

The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

-- Thomas Merton

Being & Doing

I have been having some dialog with a friend about being and doing:

Dana:
Regarding our conversation yesterday on doing and being, I have been thinking about this observation for some time now:

The difference between
    who you are and
  who you want to be
is what you do.

Thoughts?

Gracelyn:
I am curious to hear what your interpretation of what this means.

My initial thought is that I already "do" too much. When I relate or move in a way that isn't who I want to be, I think I need to work harder to change the behavior or the parts I don't like. I so quickly label the behavior as negative and try to shut it down instead of being curious about it and taking it to God... the only One who ultimately has the power to truly change me.

Maybe that is what it is saying...sometimes for a behavior to become routine, it is necessary to be very purposeful about it, and eventually it becomes more of a reflex.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

Dana:
Am I struck by the mixture of the human and divine realities.  Humanly, I do observe a deep connection between what we do and what we become...both good and bad.  Historically, it seems we move in and out of activity vs non-activity for a variety of reasons -- sometimes we talk too much and don't do enough, while at other times we do too much without really thinking about what we're doing or why we're doing it.

From a divine point-of-view, who I want to be as achieved by my own effort seems to always fall so far short.  So, we discover that it is really God who largely helps us become what we cannot seem to be on our own.

But, it seems that choosing a one-or-the-other approach in these kinds of things misses something significant.  The best way I've found to bridge the gap is to describe a kind of cooperation we must embrace with the work God is doing.  We do seem to need to participate somehow...rather than just sit there and assume we can't do anything anyway because God has to do 'it' (anyway).  I kind of like that word, cooperation, because it is something in the end that I must choose to join, to submit to.  And, in this way, I do believe that being active (cooperating) in the process is what moves us toward who we really want to be, something that is often a process, of discovery.

What do you think?

White & Western

I was driving with a tall, strong Tongan man. He told me how much he was struggling being in America, especially with the sense of loss of his roots and those things most precious. He told me how he was working hard to adapt to the white man’s world as best he could.  

I, this little white man, hugged this towering Tongan while he cried.  I told him, “We don’t need you to become white and Western. You are a king of the earth, and we need your glory to bring light to who we all are together."  Continue....

-- Wm. Paul Young