Failing into Grace

Tags

ego, empathy, God, Inspirational, life in the meadow, selfishness

If you have been a regular reader here, you know I have spent a lot of time grousing, whining, and otherwise kicking the couch about the weather and all the miseries visited upon moi in the meadow.

There has been plenty of sympathy coming my way, and the Contrarian has worked his tush to the bone trying to keep me mobile so that I could carry out my personal agenda.

Once again, I was reminded, as I have been through most of the season, that when it comes to disasters, I’m getting off quite easy.  Travel to Haiti, Chile, the East Coast of the US, and well, most anywhere in Africa, and let’s compare notes. I think I fare quite well.

I’m reminded of a joke the Contrarian likes to tell. Some years ago, there was a flood in Cedar Rapids. Not nearly as awful as the recent one of two years ago. The Contrarian was living in the city at the time, and the Gazette asked readers to send in their stories of personal tragedy from the floods. The Contrarian quickly wrote off his and sent it in. Much to his chagrin, nobody published his distressing tale of his sock drawer being swollen by the humidity and not closing properly.

Well, my woes have been significantly greater at times, but my reaction has been over the top a good deal. Mostly, I’ve given some version of “Calgon, take me away!”

From time to time, I’ve seen stories about victims of much greater disaster and I’ve reminded myself of my “relative” ease. That happened yet again yesterday, when I saw on Oprah (I know, I don’t care for the woman, but my alternatives have shrunk to Dr. “how’s that workin’ for ya?” Phil, and The Price is Right ).

Anyway, Oprah had the woman who had been attacked by the chimpanzee and had had her face destroyed. She unveiled for the first time. It was awful. Most of it will not be corrected ever. She is blind, hand-less, and cannot eat anything but liquefied food. Yet, she survives, and has desires and plans for the future.

I wondered. When does an epiphany actually take? When does the aha moment, the transcendent point in time, actually work? When do I (this is my confession after all), actually change my life as a result of my horror, shame and guilt at moaning over relatively minor inconveniences? When do I stop implying that I’ve been let down by somebody or something. When do I stop feeling life is unfair to me?

Time and time again, some one suffers a life threatening incident, and relates that they have a new lease on life, a new take on life, a new reverence for every moment. No more sweat the small stuff for them. Does it take? Is it life changing? Really? Forever?

Or is it just me, who is profoundly shamed and determined to do better, only to “forget”  all my new found meaning within days? hours?  For it seems to happen again and again.

As I watched this woman struggling after having nearly every single aspect of her life destroyed or altered in permanent ways, I once more felt so guilty of feeling sorry for ME. I determined to do better. Will I? I have no idea.

I’ve withdrawn from my church ministries, realizing that the Contrarian was beating himself up trying to get me to church on Sunday and all the other days I had meetings or ministry. I do disservice to him since he does all he can, and I do worse disservice to my church because I am simply not reliable at this time. That’s a step to reassessment perhaps. A step to reclaiming my life as it is, not as I would have it.

Remember, the wise saying that life is what happened while I was planning how I wanted my life to be. It’s true. Fair or unfair, this is the hand I’ve been dealt, and it’s a life millions would give everything they have, to have. I have books, a computer, tons of yarn, a husband to laugh and share everything with, pets who adore me (most of the time), beautiful sunsets and warm crackling fires to ease the pains of age. I eat well, sleep comfortably, and have plenty of diversions. I can pray, and read and study. I have use of all my faculties and limbs.

I am trying to remember that it’s not all about me. The weather is not all about our mud problems. It’s really about whether thousands will be forced from their homes by water that will destroy their belongings–all of them. It’s about people who don’t have food, and clothing, and shelter. It’s about people who die from lack of health care. It’s about kids who turn to the wrong things because they have no future that seems worth working for.

I don’t know if this time it will sink in or not. I don’t know whether I’ll change or not. I hope I do. My selfish adherence to me and my needs and wants and all that is tiresome, and frankly embarrassing to accept in myself.

I am in my meadow, and I am living here today. I offer this not as the “hopefully, there are others out there like me.” I deeply hope there are not. I offer it by way of confession, and hopefully that will induce a determination within my heart. Are you listening God? I’m failing, and only you can grace me with hope for a better me. Amen.

Are You Idolatrous?

Tags

Christian theology, ego, God, humanity, idolatry, Jesus, Mind of Christ, sin

Of late I’ve been reading John MacQuarrie’s tome Principles of Christian Theology. MacQuarrie, a Scotsman, and Anglican was a systematic theologian and taught for some years at the Union Theological Seminary in NYC. As theologians go, he is more readable than some for the lay reader.

I have found his take on sin quite interesting. He points out that much of Christian theology has gone off the road in its assignment of sin as individual for the most part. I’ve mentioned this before, that many of our churches spend an inordinate amount of time on personal salvation, and never get to the institutional sins we face.

MacQuarrie is four square with the idea that sin is both individual and communal. Along with that he claims that the worst sin of all is idolatry. Not in the sense that the average fundamentalist would define idolatry, but in many more senses, some of which we don’t think of.

So we are not talking about “other gods,” the bugaboo of so much of the first 1500 years of identifiable Hebrew/Israelite history. You remember, I’m sure, the constant refrain, “but X worshiped other gods and did what was evil in the sight of God.” Much of the Hebrew scriptures is in fact a constant refrain, of turning away, punishment, repentance, turning back to God, and then repeating the cycle.

We are talking about the “idols” we are more familiar with in the New Testament. Money of course comes to mind a good deal. Jesus uses the incident about the wealthy young man to illustrate that we can love God or we can love the personal world we have created. Not both. We can be wealthy, and love God, that is a very different thing. But our money must be seen as a means to an end, and the end is not our personal comfort and leisure. It is garnered for a higher end, the betterment of those in need.

We of course, can add power, position, fame, and tons of other substitutes for money. We can idolize beauty, or knowledge for itself. The list would be endless, limited only by the uniqueness of the human being.

What was funny, and a bit of a surprise is that MacQuarrie argues that atheists are idolaters. Their idol is humanity. They cannot, through the use of their senses, see God in creation, and so conclude he cannot exist, and that all that has been achieved in human history has been the direct and complete result of man’s actions alone. They have come thus to idolize themselves as the creator. In some haunty arrogance they pat themselves on the back and deny any other superhuman force can be at play.

He is also a firm believer that we should never over extend one of the natures of Jesus over the other. Both are essential and as human, MacQuarrie even suggests that Jesus at least at some points, sinned. Else, he could not be truly human. But, and this is an important but, when Jesus gave everything up on the cross, he gave up the last idol of all–the human ego. He surrendered all to the Father, and thus made perfect the modeling of humanity.

It is because of his utterly true and real humanity, that we have the opportunity to reach for Christ mantle. It is only because of his complete self-giving that we are shown the way to also strip ourselves of that which holds us back. We of course, never succeed completely. Not even the saints, the mystics, the desert fathers and mothers ever attained perfect self-giving. But we known the means of attaining it, and we can try again and again.

So, the answer to the question, “are you idolatrous” is a resounding yes. We all are. We are caught up in our own dramas. Yesterday I was reading the story of Jesus teaching in the temple in John’s gospel. Jesus spoke of the Father, and the Pharisees asked, “where is your father?”

I pondered that, and concluded, that my Father is in the neat box I’ve constructed for him, and which I have placed in the closet for safekeeping. He’s safely out of the way, not interfering with my life much. I and you and all of us construct a God that “works” for us. One that comports with our personal “theology.” We give lip service now and again, by volunteering, giving money, and attending services of worship.

Jesus shows us that we have a very long way to go. In some sense, it is hard, yet, the truth is freedom comes from complete obedience. The reason? Once we abandon our own “needs” and desires from the equation, we almost always know exactly what is the right thing to do. We are freed from the constraints of having to balance our lifestyle against what our heart tells us we should be doing. We are no longer trying to find the balance between self giving to self and self giving to others. We realize finally that the self giving to self comes naturally when we empty ourselves entirely to God’s call of radically open love to all.

It’s an uncomfortable realization to be sure. It’s so much easier we think to keep God boxed, like a toy we take out to admire from time to time. Jesus had a lot to tell us about temptation and sin. But when we take up the cross as our own, we will see more clearly I suspect, not as Paul said, as through a glass darkly. No we will see with eyes unscaled.

I’m not sure I’m up to it today, but tomorrow? Yes, perhaps like Scarlett, I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Learning to be Human

Tags

contemplation, divinity, ego, gospels, humanness, Jesus, meditation, psychology, Syro-Phoenician woman, the Now

As I think I mentioned, I’ve been reading Richard Rohr’s, The Naked Now. It was really a foregone conclusion that I would adore his writing, I’d heard enough said about him from a number of bloggers who read him and were praiseworthy. That was plenty of recommendation.

Rohr talks about how to experience the Divine in the way the mystics do, and that essentially is in the practice of “now.” It is a well grounded practice in Eastern faith traditions, and frankly, has a long history in Western faiths as well, just by another name. In the East, the method of practice is meditation, in the West, it is called contemplation.

Both involve letting go of ego and past and future, and centering on the now. This is where we meet God. This is where we listen, open ourselves and wait. This is where we, if we surrender ourselves, find guidance. For all those who have experienced this wonder, whether for a moment or for long periods, it is in some sense indescribable, but pure joy. There is a oneness, a feeling of connectedness to all that is.

As anyone who has practiced either meditation or contemplation can tell you, the effort is hard. There is nothing harder to control than one’s own mind. The ego has a vested interest (it’s own perceived survival) in maintaining control, and keeping things within “known” parameters. To surrender to the Spirit, is to step off the cliff without a parachute. The ego fights mightily, and as anyone who has tried will tell you, the mind fills with one inane and disconnected thought after another, as one, in increasing desperation, tries to “quiet” the mind. But it is never about forcing, it is about letting go.

Living in the now means to be centered in the feelings, and senses fully of what is happening around you. Not thinking of what needs go on the grocery list, not recalling last night’s movie, not rehashing an argument of a week ago. It is smelling the flowers, feeling the sun upon your cheek, hearing the rustle of leaves in the trees, seeing the sparkle of sunlight upon the dew lipped blade of grass. It is being drunk in this moment of time.

While it is a perfect place to be, it cannot be the only place, lest we never get up, never move, and die of hunger and thirst. We must plan at least to shop and clean and it is also valuable to reflect, hoping to stave off repeating mistakes again and again. Still, we strive to be “now” people as much as possible, where we are called to be authentic and to respond authentically and with full attention to the world. As Rohr and others point out, we are Spirit, our job is to become fully human.

One point is made clear, that much of “now” work is non-dualistic. And we in the West, particularly, have a tough time with non duality. We are a right/wrong, up/down, happy/sad type of folk. Nothing brings this closer to home for us than contemplation of the humanity/divinity of Christ.

We by creedal refrain proclaim this belief. We assure anyone that it is true, (at least for most Christians). Yet, in our hearts of hearts, we are nearly incapable of realizing such a situation. How indeed can Jesus be fully human and fully divine at the same time?  We struggle with this, and imagine some switch whereby Jesus turned first one, and then the other on and off. One idling in the background while the other surges to the fore. We imagine, as best we can, but we don’t truly get it.

Yet the bible has a couple of stories that help us see it at least. One is the story of the Syro Phoenician woman. The story was apparently well known, used by both Matthew(15:21-28) and Luke (7:24-30). A Canaanite woman approaches Jesus and asks for help in healing her daughter. Jesus at first refuses, until the woman reminds him that even the “dogs receive the scraps from the table.” Jesus then does as she asks.

The story has always been difficult for me. Who is this Jesus who is so rude and dismissive? He has been traveling afoot for perhaps hours, and he clearly wants some peace, without the crowds demanding of him. When the woman approaches, alerting perhaps others that he is in fact the famous Jesus, he responds with  “it is not fair to share the food for the children with the dogs.”

This is mighty mean stuff. He refers to the woman and her child as being unworthy, dogs in comparison to the Israelites. He is dismissive. He appears tired and angry at the interruption. In a sense, one can think that Jesus was distracted with other thoughts, and reacted to the woman without thinking.

A similar story is told in all of the gospels about the cleansing of the temple, one of which in John, is replete with Jesus fashioning a whip out of cord to accomplish the task. Many people recoil again, at the anger expressed by Christ.

I think that we find in these stories, that perhaps unknowingly, the writer relates a glimpse of the real humanity of Jesus peaking through. Jesus was perhaps the human being who had transcended more than any other into the realm of perfect unity with the Divine, illustrated by living mostly in the Now. Yet, in his very humanness, he too, from time to time, failed and was overcome by ego. He too let gain purchase the too human emotions of frustration, anger, and perhaps physical exhaustion.

These stories, serve to point out to us, that we are in process. Even Jesus was it seems. His humanness in this is something we can relate to and thus we can truly seek to emulate his way of living. He failed here and there. We fail more than we succeed, yet, we are given courage and strength by his slips.

It is said, that without Jesus’ humanity, there is no point for us. If he is not us, then our efforts can come to nothing. These stories feed our need to feel that the effort is worthwhile. It is well we remember this. Tomorrow is another day to get up, dust ourselves off, and try again. Jesus, and the Creator beckon. Will you enter into the Now with them?

Circling the Sun

Tags

brain physiology, choice, ego, God, Iran, psychology, sin, theology

Forgive me if this comes out somewhat disjointed. But in order to figure this out I need to set it down. It’s one of those living with the questions type things, and I don’t really expect an answer to be spit out so much as I want to finger the parameters of question.

You see, I don’t believe in Satan. I cannot reconcile God to be “all knowing” and the “perfect” creator, and then that he creates a creature who ends up flawed. Oops, Satan chose to wrestle power from God? If he knows God better than I or we, how could that be? Aren’t we told by the religious righties that all will be “understood” one day when we croak and meet God face to face? Well Satan supposedly met God face to face and opted for his own ego driven power base. Makes no sense to me.

So I see Satan as but  a metaphor for our egos, that thing which makes us realize that I am I and not you or we. It has many drawbacks as we know. One is that it seems to think its survival is paramount to all other living things. It will go to extraordinary lengths to preserve itself, even including ending another live to preserve itself. We sometimes protect that right, and sometimes we do the anomalous thing of extinguishing that life. In other words, sometimes it’s okay and sometimes not, and it’s best to understand quite clearly the difference.

Sin, in my humblest of opinions came into the world when the first of our barely human acting ancestors denied food or shelter to another of his kind in the hopes of enhancing his own survival. That’s how I see it. We placed ourselves first.

Now this is where it gets sticky to me. On the one hand we have, as all life on this planet does, a strong, sometimes overpowering desire to survive. And survive we do, sometimes against incredible odds. Yet on the other hand, we also will offer our lives for family and friends, compatriots, and country. One cannot lay this down merely to helping the species or one’s offspring survive, since sometimes clearly that is not at risk. It is sometimes just inexplicable, and fully altruistic.

Yet, it seems nearly undeniable that we always act in our own self interest. Think about that. It may seem strange, since we all can vision a whole lot of crazy behaviors that don’t seem objectively to be directed toward self interest. But I think they still are.

The bank robber seems hell bent on personal destruction. The consequences of being caught are grim, at least they seem that way to us. The same goes for the drug addict, the alcoholic, and a whole host of “self-destructive” behaviors we can name. But clearly, at the moment of decision, they seemed to be the best solution to whatever problem the person faced. All other choices seemed “less good.”

So we have three things here. First we introduce sin (bad behavior vis a vis the admonition to “do unto others”), as a means to protect our survival. Second, we have undeniable altruistic behaviors that clearly can’t aid survival, and third we are driven always to make a constant choice as to each action or inaction we take–is this the best alternative for me at this moment in time?

There is a war going on inside that I suspect we are often unaware of. We are making thousands of choices per day. Most we do with little or no thought, but we do the action, or don’t do the action based on this largely unrealized assumption that we have weighed alternatives and judged this choice the best.

That much of what we do appears thoughtless to others is somehow our failure to really empathize. We engage in this process yet we don’t recognize it in others, perhaps because we judge their choices to be “wrong” and alien to our own thinking.

Worse, we then conclude that the “other” opinion or choice is not just wrong, but that the person who makes that choice KNOWS that it is wrong and chooses it anyway. For purposes of greed, sociopathy, or any other ignoble reason, the “other” is deliberately making the “wrong” choice. Somehow we internalize it even worse, that they are doing this deliberately to make us angry, to stick it to us.

Yet in the end, the real problem as was said in “Cool Hand Luke,” is ” failure to communicate.” A failure to communicate empathically. I’m unable to see the processes by which you came to decision A, in large part because you are yourself unaware of how you got there. You are sure, just as the sun shines that you are right. I am just as sure that you are not. And I am just as unaware of how I got to where I am. But I’m here now, and God damn it, I am right, and you are wrong.

You see where we get? We end with a fist shaking at each other, and all because we can’t puncture that veil of how you decided that this was the best choice. And more to the point, we aren’t much inclined to try. We are right after all, and you aren’t.

I guess I’m convinced that we need to spend a lot less on armaments and plasma screens, and I lot more on brain physiology and psychology. Maybe if we could understand how we decide better, we could understand each other better.

Iran is at a strange place. Much like China was a few years back. There is a huge disconnect between a significant part of the population. China just cracked down. Will Iran? Probably. Somehow they see it as the right choice, and in their collective self-interest. I’d like to understand, but I can’t.

Peeking Inside My Head

Tags

ego, faith, God, meditation, personality, religion, self

Eye of God

Sitting in the bar the other night, having a rousing conversation with God, I paused. . . .

Okay, so I wasn’t sitting in a bar, but I do have rather intense conversations with God on a regular basis. No, I’m not crazy, I don’t hear voices or see things that other folks don’t. Nothing so mundane and thoroughly explainable as that.

But I do imagine God’s response to things I think about a lot. It seems rather normal to me, and is, I find a pretty good check on my tendency to put me first. Who is me, after all?

I’m tempted to say that I’m not really who you think I am, or I think I am, most of the time. This is a bit of a test actually. Imagine someone, anyone asking you, who are you? Note your response. . . . I’ll give you a minute.

If you said, “I’m a wife, mother, accountant, Catholic, feminist,” etc, etc, etc, you’ve fallen into my trap. You are repeating what other people define you as, what your ego defines itself as. That’s not at all who you are actually.

(TRUMPETS PLEASE). You are: “a spiritual being having a human experience.”

The ego takes the sum total of memory, of experiences, and conversations, of the looks given and received, words said and received, and creates a “personality” from this, and declares itself IT. Our conscious mind does this automatically it seems, without direction.

Yet, those of us immersed in meditation practices know that hidden deep inside, under all the chaotic yammering that goes inside our heads, is our real self, inextricably bound to God, or at least  many of us so  believe.

It is God as us, that spark called Spirit, shared with this living flesh, abiding in us, as us, watching, experiencing, and when given permission by “us” acting through us.

It’s at the same time, simple as a drop of rain, and as complicated as the most detailed of chemical compounds. We ignore it, and go blithely on our way, stumbling through life, thinking we are personality us, or we recognize the true us, and spend hours upon hours searching and trying to connect, to be aware of God within us.

It’s hard, and it can take a lifetime. It sometimes no doubt is never achieved, this blissful state of Oneness we so desire. Yet, those of us convinced of its reality, cannot stop the quest.

I was over at Dave’s blog earlier today, commenting on a post he did on Bill Richardson and the death penalty. I saw a “quote of the month” that was ironic to me, true and not true at the same time. To paraphrase, it said basically, that you are probably on the wrong track if you find that God dislikes the same people you do.

No doubt there is a lot of truth in that, but it’s one of those things, that also carries its opposite I think, or it can. It depends you see. Depends on whether you are on the right track in fact. Then perhaps your sense of good and bad is pretty darn good, and God would agree with you in principle at least.

Now, you have to understand that I start from the premise, that no one is lost. I don’t believe in hell, except for the fact that you can create a pretty darn nice one here on earth. God is sad when we do that, but he can’t stop us from our choices.

I believe that God calls us to him, but those who can’t or won’t answer, for whatever reason, aren’t punished but received home with open arms come that point of transition. What comes next I have no clue, but I sure hope its growth and learning, and lots of traveling around the universe, seeing all the sights and having important  work to do.

I do tend to think that those who progress farther along the path in life graduate higher and have more important work than others, but that doesn’t mean that the non-believers are left to being janitors, it just means they start learning from farther back.

This means of course that the proverbial bad guys (Hitler, Dalmer, bin Ladin, Stalin, etc, etc, etc, ) get there too. This drives some people utterly wild with anger. I find it right and good that God does thusly, and I find it amusing that it rankles some minds to distraction.

After all, these self-proclaimed righteous types always claim they do “right” because they love God. Truth is, they do it because they feel this is the price to be paid for eternal life. And it drives them batty to think that they “sacrificed” so much for nothing. They cannot and will not allow that it is possible. Why society would fall apart if everyone acted out from their baser instincts.

I guess that depends on what you think about humanity. I tend to think that we basically “get it” instinctively that we can’t steal, kill, and otherwise disrupt each other willy nilly and survive. What we do to another would and will be done to us. Common sense tells us to behave and to do so fairly rationally.

After all, I know of no study that suggests that atheists are law breakers and immoral turds to a degree any larger than anyone else. In fact, I think they tend to be at least as good as everyone who professes God.

So like I said, I have these conversations with God. Sometimes they are a hoot. Like this one:

“Okay, Pops, what do you REALLY think of George Dubya and Darth Cheney? The truth!”

God: “Two of my favorites actually smartie. George is like a big dumb kid, with a good heart, hoping to please. But I admit, you can get lost in that head of his. Not much up there, if you get my drift.Easy to manipulate and he ends up doing stupid things. He never got over that meeting when they sat him down and told him they wanted to run him for president. Reality never really set in until about year 7, when he started to get the feeling he had been. . . err used. That’s why he wouldn’t pardon Scooter Libby, just wanted to stick it to Dick for running his presidency into the ditch.”

“Dick, now there’s a piece of work. He actually thinks he’s me. Thinks he knows what I want. Couldn’t be more wrong, but wow you can’t get passed that arrogance. I keep toying with the idea of letting him think he’s gone to hell when the time comes, just for a few minutes…just to shake him up. Otherwise, he’s gonna argue with me about how we conduct business up here. And well, there is only ONE of us after all.”

Hope you enjoyed the trip through my head!