Coming Out of the Closet...Again

I have a confession to make. I've been seeing someone. It's been very intimate and private. Yes, my partner knows about it, and it's ok. Where does this happen and who is it? Early mornings in my studio I close my eyes, relax and let myself descend into a sanctuary I've created in my own imagination. In that sanctuary I sense that something other than my conscious mind takes over. There I have met with my grandparents, my parents, Buddha, Mary, and animal guides. But the most frequent visit is with Jesus Christ.

I know that for many of us spending time with Jesus sounds like a fundamentalist's relic, laden with toxic theology. But this is not the stale, suffocating, disconnected-from-real-life Jesus Christ of organized religion. It is a living, fresh encounter with a vibrant Christ. During and after these times together I feel liberated, whole, inspired, encouraged, grounded and washed over with love. I feel as if life is starting over with unlimited potential.

What do we do? Sometimes, we sit in a beautiful garden and admire nature. Sometimes we enter a chapel and soak in the luxurious silence. Sometimes we look out over the ocean and chat. Other times symbols or feelings or colors or other sacred figures appear, each with a message or healing gift. It's as if I'm meeting Jesus for the first time and discovering that he's exactly what I had hoped he would be: warm, welcoming, insightful, funny, mystical...someone who really gets me, meets me where I am and gently leads me to a more authentic expression of myself.

So, what is really happening? Is it all just my subconscious mind creating fantasies in a state of half-sleep? Am I actually on tuning in to the Spirit of Christ, whatever that means? I'm not sure, and I don't think it's relevant. I only know that I am experiencing Life as freer, truer, lighter and more trustworthy. A bit more compassion is flowing for others and for myself.  And it's a result of rekindling a relationship I had almost written off as irreconcilable with my sexuality, intellectual honesty and my affinity for other faith traditions.

I'm not sure what to call myself as I come out of the closet and claim that I regularly meet with Jesus. The only word that comes to mind is "grateful".

P.S. Please join us for classes this spring on Self-Hypnosis and Mindful Photography.

Have You Outgrown Your Image of God?

I once did a year-long internship in New York on Long Island. On days off I would take the Long Island Railroad into the city. Years after the internship was over I still pined for New York, particularly the energy of Manhattan. I returned about once a year to visit the wonderful people I had met and to immerse myself in familiar favorites (MOMA, Broadway shows, Central Park, and The Cloisters) as well as seeking out new experiences. Several years ago I decided to explore moving to New York. Rather than live as a tourist, I decided to live like a resident. What would it be like to bring groceries home on foot from the nearest store, which was four blocks away? What would it be like to walk through the snow to and from the laundromat in February?   How would I thrive week after week, month after month in weather that was far too cold for my comfort level? How would I feel living in a fifth-floor, 350 square foot, walkup flat?

I quickly realized that I was not so much in love with the idea of living in New York City. I was in love with the idea of being on a permanent vacation in Manhattan. What seemed like magical perfection in my 20's now seemed like far too much discomfort, frenzy, noise and effort with not nearly enough connection to nature. I had outgrown my image of the perfect place for me to live.

Just as I had outgrown that image of where to live, I realized I had also outgrown my image of God. The God who sent all non-Christians to hell or who condemned homosexuals or who wanted women to keep their mouths shut in deference to men, that God no longer resonated with me. I could no longer relate to a God more petty than I knew myself to be. My image of God was too small.

Have you outgrown your image of God? Is even the term "God" insufficient for your experience of the Divine, of the Essence of Life? One way to tell is by the fruits of your divine image. If your experience of the divine makes you more open-minded, open-hearted, fully alive and willing to serve your neighbors and even have compassion for your enemies, then that image is congruent for you. If, however, your image of the divine leads to judgment, fear, self-loathing, restricted living, and spiritual highs with no genuine concern or action for those at the bottom of life's barrel, then that image of the divine is too small.

The spiritual path is one of surrender, embrace and surrender. We surrender and release an old image of the divine with gratitude for how it served us to this point. We embrace the new life-giving experience of the divine that is emerging for us, knowing that it too must be surrendered some day if we are to keep evolving.

The journey never ends. You can never experience the fullness of the divine. The Mystery is inexhaustible. Therefore, our images of the sacred are always incomplete. That is not meant to discourage but to excite us. Whatever our experience, emotion, dream, woe, latent potential or growing edge, the divine is already there ready to meet us with more life-giving possibility than we can imagine.

I read once that if you started at one tip of Manhattan and ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at a different place for every meal, it would take over 80 years to reach the other end of Manhattan. And, of course, by then new restaurants would have arisen, not to mention all of the non-eating stops along the way that are worth savoring. If it is impossible to experience all that a 3-mile strip of land has to offer, then how limitless are the adventures within the entire sacred universe. That exploration is one thing we can never outgrow.

P.S. Join us for a day retreat on Saturday, December 1 and explore what the divine is for you now and update how you relate to the sacred so that it is meaningful and life-giving for you today. For more information and to register, visit the Classes page.

The Frustrating Silence of God

God has really been irritating me lately. I need clear direction and answers for some important questions about work, career, and income. I've tried prayer, meditation, sitting in silence, journaling, nature walks, talking to friends, guided visualization....The absolute silence is galling. I appreciate lovely notions about "The Cloud of Unknowing", Mystery, and letting go of certainty over and over again. Great. Beautiful. . . Now how about some answers!

• Which option should I choose when pros and cons clash like hyper-partisans in Congress with no clear sign of what is for the highest good of myself, much less the rest of humanity?
• While I'm at it God, how about answering for drought, AIDS, and violence perpetrated in your name?
• For that matter, why not just lay out clearly the meaning and purpose of our existence in a way that can be understood and accepted by all cultures, races and religions?
• And above all, please explain the popularity of the Kardashians.

Of course, one possibility is that there is no God, and that I'm just talking to myself. Perhaps, at most, there might be some sort of evolutionary force moving the universe forward. But there are no answers to be found there, only an impersonal sense of participation in a grander story than my own. While that has a modern poetic vibe, it does nothing for my deep yearning to connect with Something alive and tangible. How can I find guidance or be intimate with an ineffable cloud of mystery that seems like a paler version of "The Force" as presented in Star Wars?

And herein lies the dilemma. I want the answers to my questions, and I would abhor any God who would tell me what to think and do. I've already experienced that fundamentalist version of the divine. It was toxic, soul-numbing and asphyxiating. Yet I want God to function like a Ouija board: answers appear, and I can either follow them wholeheartedly as genuine spiritual guidance, or I can laugh the whole thing off as a meaningless parlor game.

It feels like a spiritual version of teenage angst. I want an external source of wisdom ("Help me Obi Wan Kenobi!") to clearly say what life is about and what is the right thing to do, and I also want complete freedom to make up my own answers. ("Luminous beings are we. Not this crude matter. You must feel The Force around you." Yoda)

Irenaeus said that the glory of God is a human fully alive. Perhaps the divine, whatever it might be, is not so interested in giving me answers but in me growing up so that I know myself, connect with LIfe within and around me, and generate my own answers. In that creative process I think God also comes fully alive.

A Bridge to Somewhere

The late Senator Ted (the Internet is a "series of tubes") Stevens once tried to push a bill through Congress that would have built a $398 million bridge in his home state of Alaska between the towns of Ketchikan (population 14,000) and Gravina Island (population 50) because the existing ferry service was considered inadequate. It became known as "The Bridge to Nowhere". Recently I listened to an Easter sermon by Dr. Jim Rigby in which he said that the Easter resurrection story only makes sense when we see ourselves as an evolutionary bridge between the life that came before us and the life that will come after and through us. In other words, the deeper message of Easter is that we are an evolutionary "bridge to somewhere".

A bridge is not the destination. My life goes into a tailspin faster than Herman Cain's presidential campaign when I forget this truth: The unfolding story of the universe is not about me. It is about the universe, about Life itself. If my molecules, my kindness, my work, my relationships in this brief lifetime bless some form of life beyond myself, then my body is, in a very real sense, resurrected.

A central failing of American Christianity (and of most spiritual practice in this country) is that we don't care very deeply about anyone or anything beyond ourselves. We talk about heaven and the afterlife but show little concern for those going through hell here and now. We get our inner bliss on by meditating, aligning chakras, and pretzeling our bodies like yogis until we become oblivious to the pain in dilapidated apartment complexes across town. We worship superstar spiritual teachers but lack the humility to learn from a wise African-American cleaning woman we see every day. Such a religion/spirituality will always be characterized by fearful, narcissistic grasping. It is a self-centered bridge to nowhere.

Whatever our beliefs are about the afterlife, we can experience a bridge of connection that spans our differences and links us with life everywhere. Such a universal connection would include:

• Placing our individual lives in the context of the ongoing story of Life itself. Otherwise, talk of the afterlife is simply a glorified ego trip.
• Revolutionary, evolutionary practices done individually and in supportive communities where we break the trance of myopic navel-gazing and get real with each other.
• A mindful awareness about how our daily choices affect the people we live and work with, cashiers and waiters that serve us, impoverished women in Latin America who make our clothes, children yet unborn in Asia, and species in the Pacific Ocean yet to emerge.

In this kind of spirituality, anxious grasping for the afterlife transforms into a conscious connection with the Spirit of LIfe here and now. The isolating hell of "me, myself and I" becomes a resurrection in which I find myself by losing myself in something grander than myself.  The tragedy of my finite existence becomes a celebration of my unique chapter in life's everlasting story. A bridge to nowhere becomes a bridge to somewhere.

Thank you for reading this post. If you would like to explore together (either online or in person) what a down to earth, LIfe-serving spirituality will look like in the 21st century, please provide your feedback and also sign up below for email notification of future posts. Let's get the conversation started. Thank you!

Religion for Grown Ups

Religion has become a dirty word. Pope vs. condoms, misogyny, Pat Robertson, homophobia, radical jihadists, Buddhists vs. Hindus vs. Muslims vs. Christians vs. Jews. I keep waiting for a Jerry Springer episode on religion: "On today's show a paternity test on all the people who claim God as Father." Many have jettisoned the whole proposition. Some of us have opted for the uber-popular moniker “spiritual but not religious”. Sounds good. But how do we live that? Meditation? Energy work? Crystals? An ungrounded, isolated spirituality easily slides down the slippery slope into a woo-woo path that makes us feel better but does little to transform us or the world.

What if there is a choice other than anachronistic religion, woo-woo, or giving up on the matter altogether? What if we’ve missed the point of religion? According to Cicero, religion is derived from the Latin relegere, which means “to go through again, read again”. Others claim that it derives from the Latin religare, which means “to bind”, in the sense of binding together a people and a deity.

Is it possible to take a "new read" on how we can bond with each other and with that vast Soup of Existence in which we live, move and have our being? Can we redefine "religion" to mean the conscious choice to explore again and again without judgment or dogma what it means to be a human being in a universe far more vast, interconnected, mysterious and wonderful than we ever imagined?

What if that exploration done individually and in community yielded something other than demonized groups, guilt, or chakra-obsessed chai drinkers whom you can’t possibly relate to? What if religion could actually open minds, upgrade perceptions, laugh at itself, evolve us, transmute our foibles, energize our latent potential, and propel us into radically loving, creative responses to the challenges of our planet?

If so, we might finally have a religion for grown ups.

How would you describe a religion/spirituality for grown ups? What would it look like? What affect might it have?

Spiritual Direction in Healthcare

How can space be created for genuine human connection in a healthcare setting? What might self-care look like for caregivers? The December 2011 issue of Presence: an International Journal of Spiritual Direction explores these questions in an article my friend Hannah O'Donoghue and I co-wrote. Below is a PDF of the article. Please share your thoughts on the article and your own experiences with healthcare and as a caregiver.

Click here to download the article.