My Sermon on Climate Change and the Parable of the Lost Coin

This is a Sermon I gave at Seattle Mennonite Church on Sunday June 23rd.

In the Parable of the lost coin, Luke 15.8-10, the woman has lost one 10^th of the coins she has and yet exerts effort to find that which is lost and asks others to celebrate when she finds it.  For me this parable is about whether we value what is lost and whether we are willing to put forth effort to prevent its loss.

Humanity at this point, potentially faces the loss of a liveable planet, and yet for decades we have turned our attention from the potential loss, hoping it will not be true, disbelieving it is true, or even intentionally lying about whether it is true.  Sadly, while we have always had and do now have the knowledge of the actions needed to stop climate change, we have lacked the political will to make it happen.  Individually and collectively we have not made the changes.

To make this choice we must value even the loss of a small percentage of what we have.   We must stop having acceptable sacrifice zones (as the oil companies have called areas that have been decimated by strip mining) and treat everything that the Creator made as precious. 

One small example of this is the Monarch Butterfly.  At this time there are only 20% of the butterflies worldwide that existed in my childhood.  Because of an amazing experience I had in my teen years in a field with Monarch’s I have always considered them to be a sign of the presence of God.  So the threat to their existence is even more poignant to me.  We have known for decades that this is because of pesticides we use that kill them, but we have been unable to pass laws that would limit the use of those pesticides.  Bees also are threatened by these same pesticides.  Yet bees pollinate every third bite of food we eat, so as all life is bound up in the web of life, their fate is intimately connected to our own.

As a Quaker I share with you the distinction of belonging to historic peace churches, and churches that affirm a call for simplicity and social justice.  Climate change brings all of these precious values into the for front, because as it turns out the solutions to climate change are solutions that call us into right relationship with the earth, and require a more equitable society and in fact cannot be effected unless we adopt a new paradigm – one that you and I would recognize as the values of the Peaceable Kingdom.

As a Quaker I do not really believe in the concept of sin so the call to repent in the parable I struggle with.  However, if there is anything I could define as sin, it would be the destruction of the life on earth.  I cannot think of a more profound turning away from God.  When I heard that Exxon, and it turns out several other oil companies also, knew in the 70’s of climate change, predicted in fact the exact outcomes that we are now experiencing and deliberately spread misinformation and doubt rather than sounding the alarm and changing their business practicees…yes that to me is sin.

Mennonites chose many, many decades ago to forgo a focus on politics as belonging to the realm of Caesar and to focus instead on creating God’s kingdom.   In my more than a decade of climate activism I find that many people feel helpless in the face of climate change.  They feel the problem is too big and that only politicans can solve it.  I believe that mindset both disempowers us and also creates despair.   So I have taken a Mennonite position, in that I look for the answers outside of national politics and find that there are indeed things we can all do.

So back to the Monarchs & the bees – there has been a national campaign to boycott different places like Lowe’s and Home Depot till they stopped carrying Round up.  And it worked.  We have the power of the pocket book with corporations that despoil the earth.  Turns out that trees and certain regenerative agriculture practices have the ability to pull significant amounts of carbon out of the air.  The Plant for the Planet kids have calculated that each of us in WA need to plant a 150 trees in your life time (although ASAP would be best).  These are examples of actions people can take that ripple out and have a bigger impact than just individual action. 

People ask me how I find the hope to do this work, of fighting climate change?  I have felt called to fight for God’s creation, for all of life, and for a better society for our off spring.  In so doing I have been brought into a community of beautiful souls that gives reality to the song we will soon sing, “We shall be known by the company we keep.” I have seen that the way out is the way towards the Peaceable Kingdom which I was already striving for before climate change.  I also have become crystal clear that it is not knowing the outcome which must direct my action, because even on a sinking ship I would want to strive for treating each of us with love, with kindness, with justice and mercy.  This to me is what it means to live faithfully, and I invite you to join us in living our faith’s in the face of climate crisis.

Nothing for Granted

I feel very blessed to have had a lot of contact in the last year with Native Culture.  I also have had to fight through westernized ways of thinking and living on the earth to fully grasp what I see in Native Culture.  One of the profound lessons has been about gratitude.  I come from Swedish ancestors which as a culture, it is not big on “please and thank you”, so for me to observe at a Native event that every person who takes the stage thanks oh at least 3 other people, was at first hard for me to understand. They thank each other for things like arranging the chairs, making the food, a good speech, etc.   In short for things that white people rarely say thank you for and in a sort of class based way take for granted.  The task oriented part of me wanted to just get on with the event. However as I began to let it in, and when I reflected I realized how much more gracious, welcoming and relationship affirming this way of living is.

And this was for me the real ahah when I realized that nothing is taken for granted.   It occurred to me then that in original tribal culture if you were dependent upon nature for food and weather that supports abundance then you are both very attuned to what the weather, animals and plants around you are doing, but you also don’t take for granted that you will eat.  You are grateful for the abundance that you are part of the web of life and you understand that how you treat that will effect your future survival.   In other words, if you take it all, there will not be any to go to seed and provide for next years bounty, so you learn to live in caring relationship to that which is around you.  Also, when you are dependent upon the sensible and timely actions of the rest of your tribe for your mutual survival then again you are appreciative of the things they do that make your life better. Taking nothing for granted.

I watched a man come out of prison once after 30 years.  He could be brought to tears by being able to touch a tree or finding a pine cone on the sidewalk.  Even when someone addressed him unkindly or some snafu occurred he was still happy because he said “today was still a better day then any day in the joint.”  Little children also have this same awe at the world they find, and they also have a lot more joy than most adults.   Buddhist refer to this as “beginner’s mind” by which they mean that if we drop preconceptions, expectations and grasping behaviors we are able to be present to this moment, exactly as it is, in a way that enables much gratitude and awe and even joy.

I knew a woman that was going blind, and even as she did she invited everyone she knew to join her in what she called the “thanksgiving game” which she explained was finding as many things as we could to be grateful for.  I was thankful for the invitation but soon saw I sucked at this “game”.   Primarily because I was not thankful for obvious things.  I was not thankful for my health because it was good and it felt like it “should be”.  I was not thankful for my college degree because I got it a long time ago and worked hard to get it,   ETC ETC.  There was a lot of privilege and expectations that left me with big blind spots.   I felt in fact daunted by how I was going to learn to be better at being grateful.  

But this idea of taking nothing for granted….sort of tips that whole problem on its head. It makes very obvious how to notice what to be grateful for.

What if we were free?

Recently I have been contemplating the strange reality of people being obedient to laws or rules or policies that they believe are wrong or are not in their own best interest.   I think for example of the centuries of women who obeyed husbands who were controlling, violent or destructive to them.   Children similarly follow their parents directives even when they are harmful to them.  Police and military in dictatorial or fascist states have fired on their own people - on people who are their neighbors sometimes even their own family because they were following orders.  People have stayed in jobs they hate following orders or policies they hated or found immoral.  Slaves who were not always in chains stayed and did not run away even when raped and family members killed.

Granted threats of violence or economic controls often are insurmountable controls especially if acting without allies.   But really when you look at it deeply all these groups of people were socialized to believe that this was their lot in life.  In many cases religions or social beliefs taught them they were inferior or deserved to be treated this way - or that God wanted it that way or would punish them if they did not stay in situations that were bad for them.

I long for the day we will not think so badly of God.   When we could not imagine that a loving God would ever consign anyone to suffering or injustice.   I long for a day when religion would be a force for courage to stand up to injustice rather than to buckle to it and conform.   I long also for the day when religion enflames our heart with a sense of what an egalitarian and humanitarian society looks like and when our thirst for justice is so wrong that we cannot be still.   If societal norms can keep us in great suffering why can they not induce us to suffer for great good?

Call me a dreamer, but I have been thinking a lot recently what if all the women married off without a voice simply walked out?  What if all the government workers in any country who were asked to carry out an injust or oppressive law simply refused?   What if all the people in slavery walked off or refused to work?  What if each of us refused to do anything that we thought was morally wrong?  What if we each felt so much fidelity to our own soul that we would not take on bad karma?  What if we believed in ourselves enough to trust our own thinking and our own consciences?  Would we then be living in Heaven on Earth?  I'm not thinking this would be easy.   Some people would die (as they will now also).  But maybe it would be revolutionary. 

Cinderella - Modern Mythology and its' Lessons

Children's stories that have been told for over a 100 years take on the quality of mythology.  Like all myths they communicate information that is significant to the culture and underlies paradigms in the society.  So yes I am actually going to talk about Cinderella.   This ancient myth (the oldest variant apparently from 6 BC Greece and popular in Europe in the 1600s and incorporated into Grimm's fairy tales in 1812.   I believe this tale was popular for centuries because for centuries of class based society and female economic subordination - Cinderella represents the possibility of women being rescued from poverty by marriage to a "prince".   For the most part this is all we think of it - as a sort of sappy love story where true love overcomes evil step mothers.

However, I would like to bring out two aspects of this myth that I think are worth noting.   One is an important anti-dote to female co-dependence.   Cinderella takes matters into her own hands.   She does not settle for her step-mother's dictate that she cannot go to the ball.  She, granted with the help of magic, goes anyway.  As a psychotherapist for almost 25 years I have often had clients tell me while dealing with oppressive treatment that they are afraid of "hurting" the person oppressing them if they say no or refuse to do what they are told.   While finding a husband is not exactly a feminist mission, I would still say Cinderella, for her era, was way ahead of her time.  She was not co-dependently care taking her step mother or step sisters.   She was looking our for her own interests.

The other symbol I think noteworthy in this tale is the step sisters efforts to "stuff" their feet into a shoe to small for them.  (In fact in the Grimm's version they actually cut off their toes and stuff their bleeding feet in, so desperate are they to try to win over the prince if even fraudulently so.)  How often have we each done this?   Been so anxious to make something work, to see a certain outcome that we try to stuff ourselves into a situation or a time frame in which we really don't fit.  We try to force things to work.   And of course to no good outcome.  As the tale tells us, when it's right - the fit is effortless.  Many spiritual teaching are about the "way", the dao, the effortless path.

It is also worth noting the Prince's mission.  He sees what he wants and then with the only clue he has, a shoe, he goes about finding it.  What if we all held a clear picture of what we wanted and did not compromise for anything less than that?

Like Ants

Have you ever watched an ant colony?  Ants coming and going all seemingly very busy.  Occasionally you see two ants cooperating or apparently aware of each other but for the most part they all seem very focused on missions taking them in various directions and for purposes that are not clear to the observer.


Because of the school walk outs and Walk for our Lives I have had reason to see ariel shots of large crowds of people.   In some of marches people are moving in the same direction.   The DC march for our lives had so many more people than the Trump inauguration that people spilled out of the mall onto adjoining streets and from high up it looked like several rivers coming together at one outlet.   In one shot I watched of students who had marched to a cement square where they were waiting for others and no speaker was speaking: many were standing still but groups of two or three would move in a same direction but simultaneously people moved in all different random directions.

Recently I have been very aware of different groups of people moving with intend focus on tasks designed to try to improve our country.  I have been aware of gun control activists, DOCA activists, the renewed Poor People's campaign, climate activists, etc.  Like the ants sometimes they are aware of each other, occasionally collaborating but for the most part singularly focused on their own mission.

I have also been aware at the same time, usually from the media, of people singularly focused on things I regard to be utter nonsense: which movie stars are divorcing, some "innovation" in processed foods, attempts to collect obscure items from the past, the 5 hours a day most Americans spend watching tv, attempts to invent machinery which will be impossible to use in the climate future that scientist tell us we are on, time spent on hold on customer service lines for mistakes on our bills, hours and hours devoted to incremental gains in personal sports performance, hours spent balancing check books which years from now will be pointless, etc etc.  (I'm sure you have your own list of things you deem a waste of time)   In fact if on our death bed we could all trade back in the hours and hours of things we did that were a complete waste of time for more years of life we would all live decades longer!!!  Again I imagine some being very high up in the sky watching all that random and rather pointless activity and ....well seeing a bunch of ants wandering around.  Would it help any of us discern what is pointless activity if we viewed it from a distance, or asked ourselves will this matter in a year? In a decade? on my deathbed?

All of this has prompted me to wonder about human consciousness.  Buddhists speak about mindfulness as an antidote to a sort of mindless sleep walking - caught up in seeking pleasure, pride and vanity, carried away with strong emotion, and afraid of death or even change.  What would our world look like if we were not sleep walking?   What would it look like if more of us were in touch with our actual soul's purpose, if we were moving like the ants who know where they are going and why, rather than the ones who seem to aimlessly circle?  What would it look like if we were aware of all the other ants in our nest and our connection to them?  What would it look like if we shared a sense that our nest is threatened and our very survival depends upon our collective joint coordinated action?

Celebrating Holidays

This is the time of the year that the controversies break out about whether Christmas should not be publicly celebrated or whether "all holidays" should be celebrated.   I definitely understand that the way Christmas has been celebrated in the US for certainly hundreds of years has been an insensitive and oppressive way of treating a majority religion like it is everyone's religion and posing it as the "norm".    However, I think to go in the direction of celebrating no holidays is to deny the cultural richness of this nation and to impoverish us all.

I think there is something useful that can be done in the direction of celebrating all holidays - however as a friend pointed out to me today that also has to be done with cultural sensitivity and awareness.  I'm not suggesting we try to all celebrate rituals that are not ours - but I am suggesting we recognize they exist and show respect and appreciation for what they represent.  Christians often attempt to give Jewish people "equal airtime" by recognizing Hanukkah which in reality is a very minor Jewish holiday which happens to fall closest to the biggest Christian holiday.  At the same time Christians commonly schedule meetings and other important business events on what is the most important Jewish holiday which is in the fall in either Sept or Oct.   Rosh Hashanah is the first day of a 10 day period of repentant and atonement for personal and national sins.  Can you imagine how the US would be affected if we even for a moment considered what our "national sins" might be and were willing to be humble (let alone atone for them)?

Muslims have two different significant holidays (well Christians have Christmas and Easter).  Both are on Islamic Lunar calendars and so they shift around.  Eid Al-Fitr is celebrated at the end of Ramadan (a month of fasting during daylight hours in May or June), and Muslims usually give zakat (charity) on the occasion.  Ramadan is intended to deepen compassion and faith in God. Eid Al-Adha, the holiest of Muslim holidays, is celebrated on the tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah and lasts for four days falling generally in Mid June through the end of Aug, during which Muslims usually sacrifice a sheep and distribute its meat in 3 parts: among family, friends, and the poor.  It is about the willingness to make sacrifices and be faithful even when what is asked of us may seem too much or too hard, and how God's purpose may surprise us.  Again what if US people considered the values of compassion, and faithfulness.   These are not values we generally focus on.

The Buddhists have many sacred days and they vary slightly in different Buddhist countries as well.  But Vesak, the birth of Buddha is the most important, also on a lunar calendar it falls in May.  Like the celebration of the birth of Jesus this celebration focuses on the story of his life and refocusing on the 8 precepts - that which Buddha taught. Follows are not to kill on this day (no eating of meat) and release animals and insects as part of a ceremonial focus on liberation.   Not to sound like a broken record but what if Americans reflected for a day on non-violence and on liberation of those who are not free?  It would seem a great improvement of our national character.

I could go on pointing out the holidays of various religions but you get the idea.  What if we had tv shows, symbols, talks about these holidays on the days they were celebrated?  What if we had flex time that allowed people of what ever faith to have their most important holiday off?  What if we actually had these on our calendars so we knew when they were? What if we considered these values in the cycle of our year - not in celebrating rituals that are not ours but in considering the values behind them?   
I have loved that our nation at least reflects on gratitude during Thanksgiving (but needs to lose the mythology as to why - which is a perverse rewrite of our oppression of the Native people who lived here before us).  It has led me to consider what values I wish our country celebrated and to consider creating traditions with friends and family that do uphold other values.  For example, I have long thought I should have a "cooperation day" celebration.  (In my head everyone would bring a soup ingredients and collectively make a soup and while it was stewing cooperate on some craft project which would be donated afterwords to the poor.  Since we have national holidays in Jan, Feb, April, May, July, Aug, Oct, Nov and Dec.  I have believed this holiday should be celebrated in June.

Stories of Faithfulness

What are the stories we tell about our own lives?  I have just been through a 4 day run of going to various different story telling events from hearing several Native American story telling styles to just a story jam where people told their stories.  I was asked why I as a therapist who spends many, many hours of the week listening to people why I would during free time listen to more stories of people?  The answer is that I am interested in how we tell our own stories…the meaning we put on events and whether or how we notice the presence of the spirit in our lives.  I am also fascinated by the ways in which our lives are interconnected, woven into a web even when we don’t know it.  

This weekend I heard three stories that were told in very different settings by people who did not know each other that speak to the amazing way the Divine connects us to each other for the purpose of healing.   The first story was simply one of how a woman was reached out to over the internet by someone who had been the Goddaughter of her Father.  This was significant to her since she never knew her father who left her mother right after she was born.   The woman told her she had some family pictures and mailed to her photos of her parent’s engagement and honeymoon.  It was surprising and yet healing to look at these pictures and discover that her parents had clearly been in love.  (A thought that had not occurred to her since she had only known her divorced and embittered mother.)

The next story came from a doctor told about a time when he was in residency and during his rotation in the emergency room.   He woke up on a Monday morning at 2am from a nightmare in which a young woman had come in having an asthma attack and despite everything they did to try to help her she had died unable to breath.   He was so upset by this dream that he went to the Pulmonologist asking to be instructed on all emergency steps he could take if someone in ER could not breathe. He told the Sr Doctor that he felt certain he would be faced with this situation.  The doctor felt busy and did not see the point of this and put him off till “tomorrow”.   He put him off every day for 3 days.  Finally on the 4^th day the Resident insisted the doctor make the time to tell him stating that we have used up all the waiting time.   As he began explaining the doctor did sort of get into it and the Resident was able to make a careful step by step list of options to try which ended with “and if none of that works you will have to call me, we will have to operate immediately and put her on an artificial lung”.

Within the next 16 hours a young 21 year old woman was brought into ER by her parents, unable to breathe.  The young resident followed carefully the step by step instructions that he had and nothing worked.   She was down to only 4% oxygenation level.  People die at 3%.   He called the Pulmonologist who indeed had to operate quickly and put her on an artificial lung.  Only because the resident had known exactly what to do and had tried everything quickly was there enough time to get the Pulmonologist in there and they saved her life.   Her parents were extremely grateful and then said: “It is the strangest thing our daughter actually had a dream Monday night where she dreamt that she had an asthma attack so severe that she could not breath at all.”   The resident asked what time she has this dream and was told at 2am in the morning.

  

It strikes me that only God can make an intervention like this.  Both parties, who did not know each other, were armed with the knowledge to save the young womans’ life.  What an act of faith it was for this non-religious resident doctor to believe his own dream.  It strikes me that our very lives may depend upon the faithfulness of strangers.

In a remarkably similar vein another story I heard this weekend was from a Native American man in his 50’s.   He told that in his twenties he was so ruined and desolate from his experience in the Residential Schools that he wandered for a decade drunk and homeless till a powerful native healer had come to him.   She had gone on a vision quest and when emerging from a sweatlodge an image of a small 5 year old boy who had grown up with straight water on one side and curved water on the other side (an accurate description of his Washington birthplace).   She also got that he had been damaged and that he needed her to find and heal him in order that he could do a great work for his people.  She searched for 3 years.  Finally one day she found him on the street hung over and dirty.   She sent him to shower in her hotel room and gave him clean clothes to put on.   They talked about his life and she spent two years on his healing.  He has been sober ever since. He also has worked to support other native youth and now to help Native people to stop the fossil fuel projects that threaten our future.

Again in this story I am amazed by the faithfulness of this native medicine woman to believe she could find grown up, a man who she had seen only as a vision of as a boy. She had the faith that the vision was real and that she could find him with virtually no clues or directions.   I am awed that she had the dedication to persisted for three years till she found him and two more years through his healing.   I am again struck that only God can plant such visions.   And from the small act of making sure someone gets some photos, to the medium act of being a pest till you get the expert answers you need, to dedicating of years and years to the healing of another.  It is so clear how deeply we are all connected to each other and how critical a difference our faithfulness makes in the lives of others.

What have you heard? Have you been faithful to it?  How has God used you for the healing of others?

Your Evolutionary Question

When the Celestine Prophecy, a spiritual novel by James Redfield, came out in 1993, it was widely read by spiritual types.  I however somehow did not read it till 2006.  I loved the various spiritual insights and truths he shared in the form of prophecies that the main characters were finding from thousands of year's old scrolls.  But the most fascinating part for me was his encounter with a priest, Father Sanchez who teaches him about the 6th insight, and in so doing also helps him to identify his evolutionary question.  For most people who have read this book when I mention the evolutionary question this has gone right by them and they don't remember it at all.  For me it is the most important part of the book.   Perhaps this is because I am also a therapist and I'm so impressed with how it weaves family of origin material with our being able to understand our spiritual purpose in life.

I have written elsewhere on this blog about the idea of chosing our parents.  Redfield also works with this idea and in the encounter between the main character and Father Sanchez, the priest guides him at looking at the qualities of each his parents, their sort of motto in life or stance towards it, what he learned from each, and what was the unfinished business of their lives.  From this broad over view the Priest helps him notice that he has woven these bits from his parents together into a spiritual question that he has chosen this life time to pursue and to work with.  This is called one's "evolutionary question" (because when we pursue it we grow.)  In a handbook Redfield wrote to accompany the book he has a series of questions designed to also help people identify these influences which shaped their journey.  Interestingly in Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects there is one exercise entitled: My Choices in this Life Time which coming from a Buddhist perspective of reincarnation also posits that we have chosen the conditions of this life time and that we have chosen them to prepare us for the spiritual work that we are here to do.  I have in my practice developed a way to help people identify in two to three sessions what their evolutionary question is.

What a marvelous compass to have, to have a really big perspective on the events of our lives and the influences of our parents in shaping our spiritual purpose in life.   What an amazing thing to walk conscious knowing that you indeed have a spiritual purpose and to be able to cleave closely to it.  I have found that when one knows what it is, it is possible to ask on a daily or weekly or monthly basis where you are at with your question - to return to it a guiding force and a clarifier about the current experiences one is having and the decisions that you have before you.  What is your evolutionary question?

The Mother's within us

My daughter never knew my Mother.  She had died decades before my daughter was born. On a few occasions during her childhood she showed curiosity or tried to ask me about my mother, what she was like, etc.  That is a very hard kind of question to answer.  While we can give some superficial kinds of descriptors of another person, it is very hard to describe the breadth and depth of another persons personality and energy in the word.

When my daughter turned 11 she started babysitting.  It was an amazing and powerful experience to watch her in action, to see a maternal energy coming out of this one who was so recently a young child herself.  It was a little like when she first started talking and I felt like a curtain was pulled back and I suddenly knew what her mind was like, how she thought.   As I watched her with children there was this odd dejavue experience.   I partly recognized my own parenting style coming through her, but also I would have to say, I also recognized the way my mother was with children coming through her.

Science has now come to understand that from the moment we are born we carry the eggs inside us that will one day be our children.  On some sort of mysterious level those eggs "hear" or experience everything their mothers experience.   There is now in fact evidence of multi-generational trauma that is carried in our DNA.  I would like to believe there is also multi-generational joy and love that is also carried in our DNA.

In the past year or so it occurred to me finally to say to my daughter:  "You remember when you asked me what my mother is like?"  She nodded.  "You already know.  You have already met her in the many ways I carry her in my being and my way of being."  So on this Mother's Day, it does not matter if your Mother is dead or hundreds and hundreds of miles away.   She is with you.

This is my Mother holding my sister with me looking on.

For those of you who know me and my daughter you will 

note that genes do repeat!

Counting our Blessings

I see with bemusement as I look back over my past 3 posts here that my "new idea" for this post echos the themes of the past 3.   Well sometimes we must look at things from many angles to get something.

In the work of Joanna Macy she starts with Gratitude and then goes into grief for the world, then seeing with new perspective and then into taking action. In a couple of previous posts I have written about the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference, by Eileen Flanagan about using the Serenity prayer to try to discern whether something is a thing we can change or a thing we must accept as is.  And in last month's post I talked about the significant difference in happiness of when people "compare up"  vs when they "compare down".

Today I was reminded by a friend that when we live fighting the reality of the experience we are having, fighting the injustice of it, the way in which it is not what we wanted or dreamed of, that we make ourselves unhappy.  (Similar to comparing up, glass half empty or not having the wisdom to know what we cannot change and must accept.)   My friend reminded me of his own amazing discovery of how to actually be happy while literally in prison for decades.   It starts with gratitude, counting your blessings and being truly happy for what you do in fact have.   In the comparing up mode we discount our blessings seeing them as "normal" and "as it should be" - thus not of importance or value.

All this begs the question of what is in fact changeable.  It is possible to live as if everything we encounter just is, and we have no personal power and must just endeavor to be happy in an injust and immoral society.  I would argue that that way of living is as much a cop out as deciding to me miserable by fighting everything happening in our lives.   It would seem to me that when we can ground in gratitude and learn to be happy there is a slack from which we can see what step might be before us for justice and try to take that step.   If we can take actions for justice from a place of non attachment then we are either devastated or ego stroked by our outcomes.   We are just faithful.

Many years ago a friend wrote me around Thanksgiving time that she was playing the "Thanksgiving game" on a daily basis.   This was a woman who was in grave danger of loosing her eyesite entirely, but she was noticing what to be thankful for each day.   I notice another one of my Facebook Friends, a climate activist is posting something she is grateful for each day.  These are inspiring examples to me of people remembering to count their blessings.

Fish tails and other tales of beauty

Over a dozen years ago someone sent me the quote: "An idealist is someone who is always homesick for a place they have never been".   I relate to this quote immediately because I have been homesick my whole life for the Kin-dom of God: for a place where Justice rolls down like rain, where love is practiced with abandonment, and where kindness and equity run hand in hand, and where community is a way of being. It has been very painful at times to not live there.

But recently I have been thinking that I have been approaching this the wrong way.  Happiness studies show that people who compare "up" are unhappy, and that people who compare "down" are.   This is another way of saying do you see the glass half empty or half full.  But I think of the story of a man in a Nazi concentration camp (I believe Victor Frankl) who was served a bowl of soup that had a bit of fish tail in it, and as the light hit the scales and reflected off in a sort of rainbow way he marveled and rejoiced over the sheer beauty he saw.   When I first heard that story many years ago I was sort of stunned that anyone in such a horrible and oppressive situation could find any comfort or joy while in such a setting.   And it seemed hard for me to understand that such a "small" beauty could do it for him.    But now I am aware of how often people who are in the last weeks of their lives talk about how love and beauty or the only things that really matter.

I had a weird day in which their were various frustrating things, and opportunities to feel discouraged or annoyed.  But if I am honest there was also the opportunity to notice an amazing couple who had adopted numerous special needs kids, or a whole group of people just trying hard even as they perhaps miss the mark, or a moment looking out on the Sound where the water was all shimmery and the sun was hitting it in a way where it just looked like a thousand diamonds.  I realize maybe the Kin- dom of God is not some magnificent place of perfection that I can never quite get to, maybe it is just these small moments over and over again.

Living into Impotence

I suspect this title will not excite people about reading this post and for men may even seem a bit ominous.  But I ask you to read on.

I am middle aged.  I have lived long enough to see that not everything we try for do we get.  I have lived long enough to also learn that you can warn people about dangers and snares that you know about personally, but they have to learn from their own experience.  I have lived long enough to learn that all set backs are not permanent, but neither are all victories.  I have experienced many loses in my life, starting very young, and I have learned that there are loses that cannot be recouped, out run or redone - they simply must be accepted.   Accepted not as a defeat, but as sand inside an oyster, and some as compost for the plants that are coming.

In the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Difference and When to Let Go. by Eileen Flanagan she takes the serenity prayer and talks about how we come to terms with it.   She notes among other things that most of us are naturally pulled in one direction or the other with it.  I certainly recognized for myself that I am pulled to take courage and try to change things..even things like national policy.  But one of Eileen's points was that we do have to discern when we need to go the other direction which in my case means when to find serenity by accepting things as they are.  I don't recall if this is in her book but to believe that we can change anything is in fact a form of idolatry.  It is to believe that we have God like powers.

In a society racked with injustice, and in this country at this moment in history, this would seem an almost impossible task how to be at peace with the world as it is.  As a person who is actively working to stop climate change and who is surrounded by other climate change activists who often feel quite frantic about, as joked yesterday: "Repent the world is coming to an end" type feelings.  I have learned even with climate change to hold it in spirit.   I hold it with a spirit of curiosity, knowing that I do not know how things will turn out.  I have learned with great difficulty to practice non-attachment around the outcome.  Sometimes I cannot tell if it is simply a slick form or bargaining or denial.   But it seems like there is some peace from saying both in the face of hopeful signs and in the sign of terrible signs  "I don't know what will happen."

I was so pleased when Wen Stephenson's book: What we are Fighting for now is Each Other, came out.  I have not read the book yet.  I just love the title.   It summed up for me that I cannot be fighting for the outcome but I can always act for Love - the love of Life, the love of the planet and all those on it.  I can notice the spiritual practice of non-attachment to outcomes that Buddhism preaches.  The Truth is I don't know what will happen; none of us do.  As I write this the Lacy Dalton song is singing: "listen to the wind,  The only thing you can trust is change."  This also summarizes the form of detachment I am talking about.

As a therapist for 23 years now I have had ringside seats at many disasters.   Some that my clients were fighting as hard as they could.  Others that even as I gently tried to question or discourage they went towards like moth to the flame.   But there is nothing like being a therapist to teach you that you are not in charge of other people's lives, you are simply a witness.  Hopefully a loving and constructive or supportive witness, but a witness none the less.  This then becomes its own spiritual practice of learning to keep handing it back to God even as you pray for others.   and yes to keep breathing into your own impotence, to meet the limits of what you can do, or what you should do, to surrender again and still keep your heart open, feel the pain, release the pain, and then do it again.

Joanna Macy likes to ask the question: What have you allowed to break your heart?  To break your heart open?  This spiritual practice of living into impotence is not for the feint of heart, but it is a powerful spiritual practice.   It is is not the same, at all, as giving up or becoming hopeless or helpless. Because inside of this practice is really the turning towards the strength of God, and the wisdom of eternity.  Recently I have heard both Native people and a famous civil rights leader say: "We have been here before and we will be here again, we know who we are and we are not giving up".   There own familiarity with suffering gives them strength, endurance and resilience.  Impotence is about being without power but it is also about how you live into that.  Do you live into it as a loss, a humiliation, a defeat, or do you live into it with humility, serenity and hope?  Do you live into it alone, isolated on your own terms or do you live into it with Grace and Presence?

The Ocean of Non-attachment

I am at the ocean. Yes, in January.   I recommend it.  Divorced from laying in the sun or running in the waves there is an even clearer sense of the eternal majesty of the waves and their reminders of the eternal majesty of the Divine.

For me there are spiritual practices associated with the ocean.   One is the practice of non-attachment.   Buddhist monks have a practice of spending days painstakingly making beautiful Mandala designs out of different colored sands.   Then after their careful work is completed they ceremonially destroy the work.  This is a ritual expression of non-attachment and the impermanence of all things.

Long ago when my daughter was small we would come to this same place and we would enjoy making a sandcastle and then we would watch the tide come in and destroy it.   Later with her stepfather and her step brother we would build an even bigger one with an extensive moat system and we would race to complete it before the incoming tide would come for it.   We would play at defending it, and then finally stand back and watch its ultimate destruction.   A reminder that nothing man made is actually permanent or stands against the sands of time.  After my divorce, I came and built a sand castle just to watch it wash away, just to acknowledge the years of work I had put into the marriage and then to release it.  There is a funny kind of peace I cannot properly explain about knowing that in the end it all, everything we do, returns to the ocean.

There is another beach ritual that goes hand in hand with this.  It is the throwing of the rocks in the ocean.   Some year when I was full of angst and troubles I stood watching the crashing waves and the majesty of God.  I began to pick up rocks and name them for the troubles of my year, and then to “give them to God” by throwing them into the ocean.  I would do this till I could think of nothing more to throw in.  I would leave feeling lighter - emptied.  I value the practice so much I often recommend it to clients  to release  grief or anger.

I remember one year I picked a particularly big rock to throw in to represent a whole ordeal I had gone through for more than a year.  I happened to throw it right as a gigantic wave came and even though I backed up to not get water in my shoes the wave brought that rock back and deposited at my feet!  I said:  “I understand God, I am not as done with that one as I wish.  I have not fully let it go.”   And sure enough during the next year, at moments I could feel that thing washing up at my feet again.    I’m happy that this year I am having a year where there is nothing I feel I need to throw in the ocean.  I think I have been learning to throw them into the eternal ocean all year long.

Where is God in Darkness?

I have written in other spaces about my concern that the incoming Trump administration represents the rise of fascism in the US.   This raises interesting spiritual questions about how we respond to destructive things happening around us, where is God in dark times and what does this mean about evil?

Has God abandoned us, or is punishing us by allowing this to happen?
If one holds to the view that God created us with free will then that means that those who are not listening to God are always free to stray from what God might intend for us and to do great destruction or evil.  That evil affects other people.  The price of freedom is a God who is omni-present, but not all powerful.

Where is God in this situation?
God is always present as a source of guidance, comfort, and strength.   It is even more important in crisis to turn to God.  God cannot however stop the suffering caused by others' application of their free will.  Buddhism does have much to say about how we manage suffering.

What does God require of us?
The Bible answers this question of what God requires of us saying:
"To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."  Micah 6:8
I think those spiritual theologies that say we are co-creators of the world we live in and the lives we walk in, also suggest that we are to embrace the highest truth we know and live it.   I think in a time where hatred rises up and causes the scapegoating and targeting of some people that means saying no to that.  I think in a time where violence rises up it means acting with non-violence.  I think in a time where the earth is pillaged, polluted and destroyed it means aligning our life style with an honoring and protecting of the earth (as currently modeled by Native people at Standing Rock).  In a time where there is an increasing assault on free speech, on free press, and on civil liberties it means standing up for those and protecting supporting those others who also speak out.   In a time where vote suppression and gerrymandering threaten our very democracy it means standing up to fight for democracy.   And all of these things mean turning to God for the courage to act for justice.  In short, in a universe where people can do destructive or evil things, we are called upon to speak truth, take action and to hold up the Light of Love.   To remain silent or passive is to passively allow the evil.

Is there no Light in this Darkness?
Neale Donald Walsh has written quite a bit about how it is only the dark that allows us to know the Light.   That the Light longs to be known by us.   Perhaps another way of saying this is that we sometime must struggle in order to learn; contrast is one of the ways by which we learn.  If one believe in reincarnation then we have come to earth in incarnations intended to maximize our learning, and the encounter with darkness or evil is not a detour or a mistake, it is an opportunity for learning, and opportunity to bring forth light.  We are not called to do this alone, it is what community, especially spiritual community is for.

Why is this happening when I don't want it to?
While we may co-create our own personal reality, it is also the case that as a collective humanity, or a society we also create certain shared realities through our shared consciousness. There are lessons we are trying to learn as a collective.  It is worth asking: How could it serve the learning of the American people to grapple with the person of Donald Trump and the type of leadership he is bringing?  It is easy to point fingers of blame at figures in history like Hitler or Trump who are the apparent center of so much darkness, but that really gets all the rest of us off the hook.   We must look at the fear that is always the fertile ground for fascism.   We must examine where we have stood in relationship to fear? We must do the spiritual work of looking at the anger, the pull for easy answers, for power, the arrogance, etc that live within us and are mirrored by Trump, rather than simply demonize him.

How do we respond to this spirituality?
Responding to an already negative situation with more anger, violence or fear only magnifies the negative energy.  Going numb or in denial also does not serve the Light.  Joanna Macy tells the story of the Tibetan Shambala prophecy.   The Tibetan's believe that there comes a time of great darkness and chaos when the world as we know it is completely threatened.   At that time many souls come to earth for one purpose: to fight for our world as Shambala warriors.   They are not intended to fight with normal weapons of violence, but rather with spiritual weapons of wisdom and compassion.   Wisdom brings great clarity and vision, but clarity alone does not bring the passion for action.   Compassion brings great love which can move people to action, but action alone is not productive without clarity or focus.   So they must use wisdom and compassion together to fight for our world.  I believe that this is a time when we all must become Shambala warriors.

Is their an opportunity is this experience?
When lived spiritually all experience contain an opportunity.  Chaos, danger, conflict, destruction.... all of these things carry in them the seeds of change and the possibilities for transformation.   If Hillary Clinton had been elected, most good liberals would have continued to focus little on the situation, even as our planet is threatened by the crisis of climate change, even as racism was literally killing Black people in the streets daily.  When evil becomes as blatant and undeniable as it now is, there is a moral imperative put before us all.  The addition of the Trump administration to the Climate crisis demands we quite literally transform the current power structure or we will die.  So it is time for each of us to reach down to the foundations of our spiritual traditions and see what God calls us to do.

Love Speech

This is the eve of our US election.  It has been a painful election season with constant attacks by both candidates upon the other.  The vitriol has been so bad most people are tuning out and have stopped watching (eg. sharp drop off in ratings by the third debate.) Voters report being weary of this election.  I have noticed recently how we have without every signing up for it been bathed in "hate speech".  This is disturbing in that studies of the rise of fascism say people are more willing to accept absolute power and charisma if they are first afraid.  When afraid we are more willing to blame others, to scapegoat and to yes: hate.

Recently, I heard someone say that just as we need Love, that Love needs us - that it is the only way through us that Love can manifest in the world.   This idea got me to start thinking of the idea of "Love Speech".   “What does Love Speech sound like?”   There were two kinds I thought of.   One is the kind of thing Quakers talk about when they talk about "speaking to that of God in another person" which means to call out the Highest in them.   But the other way I think of that is sort of what Martin Luther King, Jr use to do which was to talk about Love, to remind us of it in the midst of our struggles.  Another age old religious concept is that of prophetic speech.

I invite you each to think about how you might be a vessel of Love Speech?  Especially in the next few days when anger, disappointment, fear and alienation might be in high gear in this country.

The Spirit of Love that Connects us all

About 8 years ago a friend of mine very suddenly died.  She had had a cough for weeks, she thought the remnants of a cold she could not shake.  Finally one night in frustration she went to the emergency room to get an antibiotic.  Instead she left with a referral to hospice.  They had x-rayed her lungs and seen a mass too huge to be operable.  It took her a week to tell everyone.  It took me two weeks to recover from the shock.  We made a date for me to come see her a week later.  But on that date her husband called to say that she was in so much pain she had been given a heavy dose of moraine and was out of it.  We rescheduled, but the same thing happened on the next date.  Then they stopped taking calls.  She died 6 weeks after she went to the hospital for the x-ray and I never got to say goodbye.

I was sad and shaken that she was gone so fast.  I also learned.  I learned that it is a myth this idea that there is some permanence to the people we know.  Anyone of us could die in a car crash or have a heart attack today and be gone.  The idea that we will know someone is dying, and that we will be able to rush to their side, is not true.  I could have just taken that as a bitter fact, but instead I chose to make sacred that fact. I started a new Birthday tradition.   I consider as I write my birthday cards to people what I would want that person to know if they, or I, did not make it to their next birthday.  I consider whether there are any unfinished messages, but most especially what the appreciations and unexpressed love and gratitude are.  Wayne Dyer is famous for saying "Don't die with your music in you."  I would change that to be:  "Let not death separate us, without our Love being fully expressed."  People tell me these birthday cards are unlike any others they get - very special and precious.  I knew a woman who held a living memorial for herself a year before her death (she was very slowly dying) because she said she did not know what good it would do for all the nice things to be said about her after she died!  This is funny, but how true.  Why do we wait until after people are dead to say those precious things?

Today is 9/11.  A date I generally try to ignore because I do not like the focus on terrorism and the justification of the US's numerous wars abroad.  But what touched me then and ever since is the kindness that people showed total strangers and loved ones a like on that day.  Today on NPR there was an interview with the CEO of one of the companies that occupied the upper floors of tower 1 of the twin towers.   This man lost 642 employees on that day and only lived himself because he was taking his son to his first day of Kindergarten.  In the interview the reporter is asking him about the loss of all of his employees, and he tells her that he also lost his younger brother who was only 36, He says that his brother called his sister and she said "OH thank God, you are not there. You are safe" and he said "No, I am here.  I am going to die.  I have called to say goodbye to you and that I love you."

I started to cry at that point in the story, as I have for 15 years whenever I hear the numerous stories of people calling from the burning towers or from the plane that they know is about to be crashed into a building.  They call their loved ones to say goodbye, as do children from schools where students with automatic weapons roam the halls killing people.  I have been told that soldiers as they lay dying in battlefields call out to their mothers and wives.  It is fundamental to human nature that as we face death we turn to the connect of love we have to other humans.  It is as the former Prime Minster of Canada said on this death bed:  "Love is the only thing which matters."  For me this truth is a profoundly spiritual one as well that Love is at the core of Life.

Facing Pain: The Spiritual journey

I have previously reviewed the Untethered Soul by MichaelSinger.  Singer throughout the book invites us to notice the ways we avoid our own pain.  In one chapter he talks about what if you had a thorn in your body that you orchestrated all of your efforts to not have touch anything so you would not feel the pain.   In another chapter he talks about the way dogs can be put on a collar that when they reach an invisible boundary will shock them (mildly) so that they don’t try to go there any more.  He says that this is how we live…not going towards activities that cause us discomfort.  He continues, that all of our efforts to control the events in our lives is again an attempt to avoid certain feelings.

As a therapist I know that when people have PTSD that they will avoid activities, places, and emotions that remind them of their trauma.  But the thing is, as Singer points out, we are all this way.   We don’t want to do things that embarrass us or might make us look bad, or just simply bring up emotions that we find uncomfortable.  I think with pride of my daughter who has never developed much a bicycle habit and deliberately is choosing to take the challenge of trying to do much more riding with her boyfriend who is a very active cyclist.   Most people finding themselves not skilled at something, in the company of someone more experienced than they will shrink back.   She also must face painful memories of how her father acted as she learned to ride, and other traumas.  But she is determined.  As has frequently been the case in her life she is an inspiration to me because I know I have avoided physical activities that I did not feel that I was good at.

Singer says: “Spirituality begins when you decide that you’ll never stop trying.  Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes.”  He describes being mindfully aware when you encounter your discomfort, recognizing it as your “edge”…your self imposed limit to your own cage.  And then he says you deliberately go beyond so you are not controlled by fear or your own suffering.  I have previously written about Tara Brach’s teaching around facing our fears.   What a crazy notion right? Going right towards our fears, not being controlled by our fears.

I see now that I have been avoiding something…perhaps for years, maybe for a life time.  In the past month I have paid a price both monetarily and in hassle because I did not want to face this something.  But eventually my own grasping efforts to avoid it ran out and there I was.   And you know what is funny?  It was not bad, in fact it brought me into deep connection with my own soul.   I also look back at the memories and feelings I thought it would bring flooding up, and they are there but I realize “hmm they are sort of photos of a not very good day.”  They simply don’t have the power they did when I was experiencing them originally.

What are you afraid of?  What might you have to feel if you went towards that which you are afraid of?  And what might happen on the other side of that fear?

Discernment...or how not to kill yourself working for social justice.

Many religions have a tradition around discernment - some do discernment of gifts, for others it is discernment of leadings (of the spirit) or callings.   This is a discernment of what God wants us to do in a given situation or with our life.  Generally, the distinction is made between an intellectual decision making process or a "worldy" one.   Both are seen as coming out of individual will or secular values.

When people come out of traditions that do not put forth a discernment process it can be confusing to know how to do spiritual discernment.   Some traditions suggest that people turn to clergy or gurus for this sort of discernment.   All traditions that I am aware of suggest that people test their leadings with their faith community to make sure that they are not simply engaging in delusion, fantasy or personal ego.

I write here about the discernment process of Quakers (or Friends) as it a process easily duplicated by anyone.   Quakers form a "clearness committee" of those considered wise or experienced in the spirit when trying to make important decisions like whether to marry, to join the church, to make a significant career decision, or if lead to some sort of "witness" or leading on behalf of social justice.  The group enters into prayerful silence out of which the person with a leading or calling speaks about the leading as they understand it.  The group considers this prayerfully and asks questions.   The questions are not leading questions or oratorical questions, but are simply intended to help the person look more deeply.   They also share reflections or "light" as it is available to them. It is NOT an advice giving forum.   The group acts to confirm or deny (I am aware of at least two incidents where the clearness committee did not find the person "clear".) that what the person is feeling seems true and rightly lead to the clearness committee as well.

Thomas Kelly, a famous Quaker theologians writing in the 40's, wrote a whole chapter on discernment in his book A Testament of Devotion.  Parker Palmer a modern day Quaker theolgian wrote a short book entitled: Let your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.  More recently Quaker Nancy Bieber wrote a whole book on discernment:  Decision Making and Spiritual Discernment: the Sacred Art of Finding your Way.

Here are Kelly's much quoted words about how God particularizes a concern is us:

"I dare note urge you to your Cross.  But God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizes His burdens in us....
     In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It maybe or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security."   (Amazingly he was writing this during WWII because it is a timely now as it was then.)   He goes on to say:
     " Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world, kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world.  Our churches were meant to be such groups, but now too many of them are dulled and cooled and flooded by the secular."

I first read these words when I was in my early 20's and I think reading it saved me. Like many people of faith that have strong social justice traditions I absolutely could have died on too many crosses! If I had tried to act on every issue or cause that I could see was unjust or important I would have run around in a frenzy or burned myself out in short order.  Or I would have simply given up like so many people do, deciding that I am only one person to small and insignificant to change the world and thus decided to sit at home or take up tennis and leave the worlds problems to "leaders"...(whoever those people are!  ;-)  Instead I experienced the incredible relief of realizing I had only to listen for what God had tenderized my heart to and given me the gifts to respond to.  I took great comfort in the phrase: "God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks."  I understood this to  mean I could pay attention to just one issue (or the closely related/ intersectional ones.)  And as the world has become more complicated and more at risk it has been even more of a blessing to focus on just what is given to me.

It was such a relief to have this "permission" to not do everything!  It has meant over the years that I could simply be grateful for the work of my comrades (some known some not) who work on other issues that I care about but am not called to.  I celebrate their victories fought for all of us, and I know that they rely on me as well to do my part on the issues I work on and they do not.  Singer song writer Libby Roderick expressed this very beautifully in the song Cradle of Dawn.   "Sunset in my country, Sunrise in mine...forces facing us are terrible in deed...in the morning I will plant another seed and while you sleep it will take light. ... I feel you there in the dark...I will hold the light up while you
sleep."

Nancy Bieber in her book first identifies ways the world asks us to think about decisions and then offers faith based ways to test discernment.
The worlds way:
Is this safe? Will this build security for me and mine?
It is it likely to be sucessful?  How are we defining success?
Does it lead to independence?
Will I gain in status or prestige?
Will it bring happiness?
Alternatively she says faith based discernment questions would be:
Is this decision sacred? Is it holy?
Is this "mine" to do?
Will this decision do the least harm?
Is this decision congruent with others we have made wisely?
Is this Love's way?

For many the path to discernment will not be as "upbeat" or clear as this sounds.  In Parker Palmer's book he repeats an often repeated Quaker wisdom that some times we find direction from the doors that close behind us.  He also talks about the role of depression in discernment...as well as patient waiting and the importance of knowing ourselves deeply.

Kelly identifies 4 steps to being faithful to leading:
1) The first step of obedience is the flaming vision of the wonder of such a life, a vision which comes occasionally to us all...this vision of an absolutely holy life is, I am convinced, the invading, urging, inviting, persuading work of the Eternal One.
2) Once having the vision, the second step to holy obedience is this: Begin where you are.  Obey now....Walk on the streets and chat with your friends.  but every moment behind the scenes be in prayer, offering yourselves in continuous obedience.
3.) If you slip and stumble and forget God for a hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely upon your own clever wisdom, don't spend too much time in anguished regrets and self-accusations but begin again, just where you are.
4) The fourth consideration: "Don't grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, "I will!  I will!"  Relax.  Take hands off.  Submit yourself to God.   Learn to live in the passive voice- a hard saying for Americans - and let life be willed through you.  For "I will" spells not obedience.

Many decades ago I sat with a Catholic priest who was helping me with discernment.  He listened carefully to the outpouring of details about what I had been doing and what I was confused by and he asked me two simple questions:

1:  Does it give you joy?
2.  Is it life giving?
These two questions have steered me right over and over again for many, many years  I would add one more question:
3)   As best you know if the prompting from God or from some other source?

One last piece of advice from Richard Bach in his "handbook for Messiahs"
"And try not to take yourself too seriously."

Suffering

Last Sunday a gun man entered a Gay night club in Orlando, FA and killed almost 50 people and wounded many, many more.   US drones are flying over the middle East killing people, and climate change is causing the daily extinction of many species.   I have been thinking about suffering.

Clients often ask me why there is suffering.   We struggle against what we see as the unfairness and randomness of suffering.  It is unfair.  We feel if we could understand why suffering took place this would change it.  Each great religion offers explanations for suffering.  It does not change it for it is still part of our world.  We secretly hope that if we could understand suffering that we could escape it, and yet there is no escaping it.  Have you ever known anyone who did not suffer at some point in their life?  I certainly have not.  The question of why there is suffering is the wrong question.  The real question is how do we respond to suffering?   Perhaps if we could stop struggling against suffering like an animal in a trap we could learn to turn towards in and learn to respond with compassion.  Suffering is indeed with us like air, water and breath.

Christianity says that because God gave us all free will that this includes the freedom to do the wrong thing - to "sin" or to do evil.  But Christianity also says that God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ stood looking down from a hill upon humanity and wept in response to our suffering (and way of treating each other.)  Christians are directed to identify the ways they sin or separate from God and bring themselves back to God and to pray for others to also have redemption.

Buddhism says that suffering is the nature of human experience.  But it also teaches that mindfulness is the way to reach detachment from the illusion of our experience being reality.  the Maras are the several forms of suffering that we are said to experience and believers are taught prayers of loving kindness designed to hold both people close to us and even total strangers in compassion and healing energy.

Judaism says that God contracted the divine self to make room for creation. Divine light was held in special vessels, or kelim, some of which shattered and scattered. While most of the light returned to its divine source, some light attached itself to the broken shards. These shards constitute evil and their trapped sparks of light give them power.

The first man, Adam, was intended to restore the divine sparks through mystical exercises, but his sin interfered. As a result, good and evil remained thoroughly mixed in the created world, and human souls also became imprisoned within the shards.  The “repair,” referred to in Judaism as Tikkun Olam that is needed, therefore, is two-fold: the gathering of light and of souls, to be achieved by human beings through the contemplative performance of religious acts.

It is noteworthy that all three of these great religions identify suffering - two of them describing it as separation from God, and all three see the way out of suffering as a spiritual path, that it is our intentional striving for good that is believed to be the cure.  All three call their followers to compassion in the face of suffering.  Buddhism says we cannot stop or end suffering we can only learn a way to be with us that releases us.

Coming Home to the Holy One

Becoming disconnected from the Divine or losing our spiritual way is an age old spiritual problem. Almost all religions proscribe steps one is to take if one is disconnected from God to reconnect. Prayer of course is one of the main ways we are encouraged to make that connection.  Recently I was listening to a talk by Tara Brach (which I highly recommend checking out: https://www.tarabrach.com/) When she made the comment that the surest way to turn back to the Holy was to turn towards love.  I noticed that just asking myself the question: which direction is loving? seems to help re-orientate me.

Buddhism suggests that the first spiritual motion is to stop, to reflect, to pause and to be mindfully aware of what we notice in the gap.   While Buddhism does not believe in a Divine entity I find that for myself taking this pause on a daily basis is the best way for me to take inventory and notice both if I am connected or disconnected from the Divine Parent.   It is also the best way for me to notice what are the spiritual issues in my life.

Buddhism also describes the Mara (the demon), said to have 5 daughters or Kleśa-māra (unskillful emotions - or the things that make us off center): greed/attachment/desire/passion, hate, delusion, aversion/discontentment and the worst being fear.  It is said that as the Buddha was about to reach enlightment Mara sent all 5 to tempt the Buddha. Buddha had resisted the first 4, but to resist fear Buddha touches the earth drawing upon its strength and energy as an anchor.  As a therapist I often find that when working with people in facing the hardest emotions: fear, rage, grief....that people are greatly aided by calling upon God but that for those who do not believe in God that calling on something Vast and mighty like earth, wind, fire, the ocean or mountain is what it takes to anchor us.

What can anchor you? What can help keep you from negative emotions that take you away from God? What kind of prayer practice keeps you connected?   What have you learned disconnects you?