Dayeinu!

Recently I went to Point Reyes National Seashore and walked along the cliff-ringed beaches, listening to the roaring surf as foam bubbled onto the shore. While that was magnificent, I found that I was just as mesmerized by the slender shadows of grasses waving upon the sand. If I had only experienced those oscillating silhouettes dancing on the dunes, that would have been enough. This week the Jewish tradition observes Passover, an annual meal to commemorate liberation from a period of slavery in Egypt. Passover has a universal message. Even the name Egypt is rich with symbolism. It literally means "narrow places". What are the narrow places in your life that need expansion and freedom?

During the Passover Seder meal, the story of liberation is recounted. One popular Passover song, "Dayeinu", lists 15 blessings from the story, anyone of which would have been enough. Dayeinu means "it would have been enough". If only one of those blessings had occurred, that would be reason enough to celebrate every year with a meal of remembrance, but in the midst of so many blessings…

What is your Dayeinu? What blessing in your life is so AWE-some, WONDER-ful, that, in and of itself, it is worthy of an annual remembrance? Who or what, when you take the time to savor and remember, fills you with such gratitude that you feel like you are going to burst and overflow? What makes you sing "Dayeinu"?

When we practice Dayeinu an odd transition starts to occur. More and more people, places and experiences prompt gratitude, to the point where even a few blades of grass casting shadows becomes reason enough to be on the planet, just to experience that moment. This ordinary, often difficult existence suddenly reveals itself to be one miracle after another. If only we have the awareness to recognize it, and when we do have that quality of awareness…Dayeinu!

New Life for an Old Coat

This year marks the 75^th anniversary of the film The Wizard of Oz. Actor Frank Morgan portrayed The Wizard and also Professor Marvel, the once magnificent showman who fell on hard times and was relegated to working county fairs in Kansas. To play this part, Frank Morgan needed an elegant coat that also had fallen on hard times. So rather than create such a costume, the wardrobe department bought fifty dusty coats from a secondhand clothing store. Frank Morgan and the director chose a tattered, black Prince Albert coat with a velvet collar. One day while filming under the hot movie lights, Frank Morgan was sweating profusely while wearing this heavy coat. During a break in filming, he took off the coat and turned the sweat-soaked pockets inside out so they could get some air. That’s when he glanced down at the lining on which was written the name of the original owner as well as the tailor in Chicago who made the coat. Coincidentally, the original owner shared his name: Frank.

This coat was about to be seen by millions in movie theaters across the country. So, Frank Morgan did a kind thing. He had the studio track down the original owner, who, it turns out, had died twenty years before, but his widow still lived. She was touched that this Hollywood actor would want her to have this final reminder of her late husband. Yet, this coat was no longer the same. Only a short time earlier, it was one step away from the trash heap. Now it had a whole new life in a timeless movie. And having been given new life, it was happily returned home where it belonged.

Do you ever feel like you are getting a bit threadbare and tattered? Even as spring brings promise of new life, the reality is that it all starts with dead seeds planted in the dry dust. For old coats, dead seeds, and  tattered souls, the common need is hope.

The Biblical prophet Ezekiel had a vision (Ezekiel 37) in which dry bones come back to life. This vision was a lifeline of hope for the original hearers who were living in exile after their nation had been obliterated. Bereft of identity and seemingly any future, they felt like a valley of dusty bones.

Then this vision of hope breaks out. Life comes from the four winds, from breath and from God putting God’s Spirit in people. The bones reunite, put on flesh and breathe again because of wind, breath, and spirit. In the original Hebrew of Ezekiel's prophecy, they are all the same word, RUAH.

Why is the same word used in such diverse ways? Perhaps because each version of new life is all the same thing. The wind at your back. The breath of friendship. The Spirit of your God. They are different forms of one movement, any and all of which restore life and hope.

But there’s a catch.  Revival is not individual. It’s communal. The prophecy was not for a person but a people. We are the means of renewal for each other. This is just the way Life/God seems to operate:

• As we inhale gratitude and exhale compassion, we become the Breath of Life for each other.
• The wind at our back is the encouragement we give one another.
• The Spirit in us, literally “inspiration”, is Sacred Essence flowing through us to inspire each other.
• That’s the way it works. Life/God revives us is through each other.

Here's one extra detail about that coat from “The Wizard of Oz”. According to oral legend (and one documented account), this coat had travelled from its creation in Chicago until it reached a secondhand clothing store in Los Angeles.  Of all the clothing stores in Los Angeles, the wardrobe department happened to pick this store, and of the fifty coats brought back to the studio, this one dusty coat was selected, and it fit Frank Morgan perfectly.

What I did not tell you was the full name of the original owner. Frank Morgan was stunned when he looked at the lining and read the name of the coat’s first owner...a man who had the coat tailored in Chicago, a man who had died twenty years earlier, a man whose coat was saved at random from a used clothing store, a man named...L. Frank Baum, the author of “The Wizard of Oz”.

Finding our way home takes brains, heart, and courage, that is, a community, and sometimes a wee bit of magic. When we feel dry, alone and without purpose, remembering where we belong is the wizardry that restores hope. In the context of community, we are revived and become revival for others. New life for coats and people comes when we find our way into belonging, that is, we make our way home, and there truly is no place like home.

Jesus in My Latte

As I wait for a friend, a barista whisks steaming milk

like a stylist teases hair,

creating the perfect palette

with which to practice one's craft.

"Low fat latte for Scott…"

I look down at my brew.

Looking back at me?

Not vague impressions

of a leaf

or a heart,

but the unmistakable visage of

one who's face we've never laid eyes on

yet whom we immediately recognize.

Jesus is in my latte.

I chuckle. My friend arrives.

We admire the coffee artist's

temporary exhibit.

My heart, filled with concerns,

dozens for today,

a hundred for tomorrow,

smiles and melts.

Maybe that's all we need to know about Jesus.

The way he looks at us,

The way we hear his voice,

The way he touches us,

makes us melt, open and smile.

The barista's name is Daniel,

literally, "God is my judge."

In the Bible, Daniel is a shrewd

yet beloved interpreter of dreams,

whom even a hungry lion refuses to judge.

Why is my life so heavy

with a never ending list

of potential catastrophes,

a lion's den of worries,

any of which, if they came to pass,

would obviously

and without end

be my fault?

This gregarious, latte Jesus laughs through

my angst, silly projections and unconscious fears

of being judged. Whatever God is…Judge?

Unknowable Essence? Wishful Thinking?...

The face of Jesus brings the entire Notion

down to earth and

lightens it up.

I take a sip and watch Jesus

transfigure into Gandalf.

Soon my miraculous visitation is

just an amorphous, toasty beverage

that warms my entire being,

a gift no less divine.

Perhaps God is

nothing more than an

artsy barista, who whisks

each of us into an

ephemeral froth of

divine playfulness,

whom discerning connoisseurs

sip with glee.

Transformation: Becoming Who We Already Are

This past weekend my friend Hannah visited us. We had a lovely time eating good food, catching up, telling and retelling stories. We also explored the Haight Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. It's the start of an old joke: "An Irish Catholic sister and a gay minister walk into a hippie neighborhood…" On Sunday, we attended Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church and enjoyed a wonderful homily on transfiguration/transformation. Afterward we discussed how this transformation thing works. Is it something we do? Is it something that is done to us? To what degree can we move it along, if at all? And, what exactly do we mean by transformation anyway?

So here are a few thoughts on transformation:

• Transform = trans (across or beyond) + form (to shape or change). To transform is to move beyond our personas, travel across self-imposed barriers, and morph into a fuller manifestation of our innate truth. In other words, we become a purer essence of who we already are.
• Most self-improvement modestly improves a fixed self without risking any transformation. It is short-lived tinkering.
• On the other hand, if we continue relating to life as we always have, we will continue to reap more of the same.
• Life has a way of transforming us, but it usually takes great pain to pry us free from our smug, spiritually-lazy attachment to our habitual ways of being.
• Can we choose transformation without trauma? Yes. And No. We can choose it, but we cannot will it to happen, at least not the kind of inside/out transfiguration we crave.
• Transformation starts with a choice. We desire to change and commit ourselves to growing up as best we can, though we know not how. That simple decision is the key step that starts the process.
• That desire then stokes a fiery intention: "I live my life by fear no more." "I choose gratitude here and now." "I pause to check in with my own wisdom." "I surrender perfection and welcome what is."    This is our "YES" to life.
• We also say "NO" to all that conflicts with our intention, including our addictions to control, safety and making a good appearance. Usually this requires some sort of regular practice: a hobby in which we lose all sense of time, nature, meditation, art, music…the kind of activity in which you find yourself by losing yourself.
• So far, this only makes us available for transformation, and yet this is as much as we can do. Then something mysterious happens. Our Wise Inner Self (a.k.a. Life/God/The Universe) meets us at the point of our willingness. The fierce intention to become more/better/truer is our part, the rest is done on levels beyond words, deeper than conscious mind, and more inter-connected that we imagine. Transformation is an alchemy in which our surrendered willingness activates sacred Energies and latent Potential on our behalf.
• The process is not predictable, quick nor linear, but it is progressive, genuine and surprising.
• One day we realize that, though still imperfect, we are nonetheless changed. And having arrived, we see that the transformation we sought was within us all along.

These are my reflections. What is your experience?

P.S. If you or someone you know is in need of a ceremony (wedding, memorial service, etc.), please see my new Ceremonies page.

Surprised by My Own Unfolding

"I would love to live as a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding." John O'Donohue

Have you ever had one of those moments when everything came together into a singularity of bliss? It never lasts for long and evaporates as unexpectedly as it appears. Nonetheless, when those occasions unfold, they exude hope, a sense of purpose, and oodles of joy.

I had such an experience Saturday night. At the Chaplaincy Institute's monthly interfaith service, I (along with three classmates) had the honor of receiving my certificate of completion for the Interfaith Spiritual Direction program.  I also transferred my ordination to the Chaplaincy Institute's Interfaith Community. The community celebrated these milestones along with the announcement that I am now the Acting Director of Interfaith Community for the Chaplaincy Institute.

What a change! Over the past year or so, I felt despondent, discouraged and utterly confused. Where was my life going? What is my work? Where is my community? What the hell am I doing? So I waited. I noticed. As each next step appeared out of the fog, I took it, not knowing where it would lead.

When I first moved to California, Stephanie Warfield, a friend in Austin, e-introduced me to John Mabry, the Director of The Chaplaincy Institute's Interfaith Spiritual Direction program. While I have been a spiritual director for several years, I'd never completed a certificate program. The opportunity to do so while also learning about multiple faith traditions (included working with people of no faith tradition), excited me.

Then a fellow student in the program, Amy Hoyt, became the first person to transfer her existing ordination to The Chaplaincy Institute, which is not only a seminary, but also an interfaith community. When I left parish ministry 17 years ago, my ordination was eventually "inactivated" since I was not in a ministry setting with the denomination that ordained me. Reactivating my ordination had not been on my radar screen for some time. Next thing I knew, I was completing all the requirements to transfer my ordination to the Chaplaincy Institute. Now I am once again endorsed as "clergy in good standing".

Then Jim Larkin, the kind minister who shepherded me through that transfer process, announced that he was stepping down from his position as Director of Interfaith Community. I applied for the position, was hired, and started last Monday! I now feel at home in community and in my vocation.

This was no strategic, step-by-step plan. I did set my intentions (prayers) for the kind of work and community that I longed for. Then I kept my eyes open, noticing any subtle hints that emerged. I waited. I struggled. I kept returning to my intentions. I applied for jobs. I tried out various communities and groups. The desert stretched out before me in limitless, frustrating desiccation. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, streams converged to form this oasis.

Of course, I still have no idea how all of this will evolve. But, in this moment, I am filled with gratitude for how this life is unfolding. I feel supported by the Universe (God) and by so many loving people, including my friend Kathleen who gave me the ministerial "charge" (words of encouragement and blessing for the way forward), and especially by my partner Herb who put the stole on me during the service.

As you reflect on your life:

• What yearnings do you notice?
• How might you activate that yearning into an intention?
• What subtle hints, crumbs along the path, align with your intention?
• What is your best guess as to your next, single step forward?

Those moments of bliss, those times when life "comes together", are neither guaranteed nor permanent. They, are, however, more likely to be noticed and appreciated through an open heart, an open mind, and a willingness to be carried along by the surprising unfolding of life's river.

You Cannot Fail!

A little over two years ago I left Austin, Texas for a move out to my current home here in California. Before leaving I stopped by Austin Presbyterian Seminary to say good-bye to the students and staff who had been so supportive of the spiritual direction work I had done there over the years. What I remember most from that last visit was a brief talk with Jackie Saxon, the Vice President of Student Affairs. She asked how I was feeling about the move.

"I feel both excited and scared", I replied.

Jackie said, "Excitement and fear are two sides of the same coin. They go together. That shows your goal has heart and life. If you felt no fear, neither would you feel any excitement."

"You're right. I just don't feel like I know what I'm doing. I don't know if it's going to work out. I'm going where I feel led, but it all seems so uncertain."

Jackie took hold of my shoulders with a firm, yet compassionate grip, looked me in the eyes and said these words that still ring in my ears as prophetic truth: "Hear me. You cannot fail! It may not go as you have planned it, but that is not failure. Whatever happens is the bridge to your next adventure. You cannot fail!"

What would you do if you knew you could not fail? What would you attempt if you knew that even those inevitable missteps and sidesteps were all ok? What if what seems like failure (when things don't turn out as you hope and plan) is actually the bridge to your next adventure?

What if you could not fail? What adventure would you go on? What change would you make? Who might you become?

As we enter 2014, I encourage you to live as if you were enrolled in a school where there is no failure, only learning. The school is life, the curriculum is what is present in your life right now, and the Teacher is Spirit/God/The Universe, who is collaborating with you for your highest good and the well being of all concerned. With that understanding, what would be a wholehearted step forward for you, an adventure worthy of your precious energy? Knowing that you simply cannot fail, what will you do?

Do You Believe in Santa Claus?

If you ask a naïve child: “Do you believe in Santa Claus?” he replies “Yes!”

If you ask a bright child the same question, he replies “No!”

However if you ask an even brighter child, he replies “Yes!”

- - Ronald Rolheiser in Forgotten Among the Lilies - -

Not long ago, my partner and I had one of the worst moviegoing experiences of our lives. We went to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The movie itself was quite good. The audience, however, was atrocious.

Parents, who apparently had never uttered the word "no", brought throngs of ill-mannered adolescents who kawkawed through the entire movie like a murder of crows. As we entered the theater, two of them ran up from behind us and attempted to shove us out of the way in order to get prime seats. (My outstretched leg halted their progress.) The gossipers seated behind us provided a cacophonous secondary soundtrack, and with one exception, none of these urchins every said "please" or "excuse me" during their repeated foot-trampling escapades in and out of our row. By the time the movie was over, we were eager to enter the whole lot of them into a Hunger Games lottery.

We were particularly eager to see this movie because we had enjoyed reading the trilogy. In our heads we had conjured a complex, virtual reality of characters, districts, the topography of the games, the ambience of the capitol…a vibrant and fluid mental landscape inspired by the books. If we had seen the movie first, our imagination would have been narrowed to the vision of the film's director.

This struck me as an analogy for the spiritual path. We start off taking things literally as we have been spoon fed them. We naively believe in a literal Santa Claus. This is fine as the starting point in which we first learn the stories, but eventually we have to throw off this limited literalism that denies the reality in which we live (or we become rigid fundamentalists). Eventually, we no longer believe.

Then, at some point, if we are lucky, we realize there is a deeper truth beneath these stories, myths, scriptures and dogmas. It's not the stories themselves which were important, but the Ultimate Reality to which they point, which is, after all, a Mystery. While we may no longer believe that a rotund philanthropist trespasses across the threshold of every household and is then whisked away by airborne caribou, we do start to believe in the spirit of generosity, altruism, good cheer and kindness. We can once again say with integrity that we do believe in Santa Claus.

What it requires is that we release those "film interpretations" that narrow our perspective without losing The Story itself. We read both sacred texts and the sacred scriptures of our own lives side by side. Imagination sparks. Hope inspires. Compassion exudes. Otherwise, we've missed the point. Even the Christmas story itself needs to pass through this dialectic of belief, unbelief, and then deeper belief that rhymes with the holy experience of our own lives.

Perhaps if those adolescents at the movie still believed in a literal Santa Claus, we could have threatened them with lumps of coal for Christmas. While Santa won't literally shaft them with lumps of coal, I do believe it will happen in a deeper sense. Soon enough the smartphone or Wii given at Christmas will seem like a lump of coal when it is tossed aside as obsolete.

We all get to the point where life feels like a bag full of charcoal briquettes. In those moments will we keep grasping for new toys to distract us? More lumps of coal in the making? Or will we choose to believe in and embrace the Essence of Christmas…a human heart broken open by compassion…awe-filled eyes that see the Sacred Presence everywhere…satiated gratitude for the simple goodness of being alive...in this body...here and now.

Do you believe?

Frozen Chosen

After months of lovingly coaxing our adolescent plants toward mature vitality, we have met our match. Jack Frost has come with unexpected fury to Northern California. The mulch pathway is a concrete tundra. Ice crystals encrust leaves like minuscule toxic parasites. Citrus fruit, approaching peak ripeness, is now fit only for the compost pile. Perennials that were grasping for the sun only a week ago are now a black, drooping mess of frozen protoplasm. It's discouraging. It makes me wonder if the divine feels the same way about religious communities around the world. Tended through millennia of revelations, incarnations and evolutionary progress, we still seem frigid and immature.  One Christian denomination is even sarcastically referred to as "The Frozen Chosen". It must be quite discouraging.

Part of the reason for this limp spirituality is that we have little depth. (Matthew 13:6) We get just enough spirituality or religion to inoculate us from the real thing. We get a taste of the divine, of the Essence of the Universe, and then we march on with our lives feeling quite content with ourselves, rooted in nothing deeper than our own egos.

We adore the words but don't catch the Spirit underneath them. We luxuriate in the religious rituals, but we never move on to the One to whom they point. We are like small children who are more excited by the wrapping paper than the present itself.

What's needed is a little less religion and a little more spiritual practice. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“The whole purpose of the Bible, it seems to me, is to convince people to set the written word down in order to become living words in the world for God’s sake. For me, this willing conversion of ink back to blood is the full substance of faith.” Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

The "full substance of faith" is to make the ideas of religion concrete. Less talk. More action. Less piety. More gritty willingness to engage life as it is…with compassion. Only then will sacred ink become living blood and the Word become flesh. (John 1:14).

This cold spell will give way to warmth. Eventually Jack Frost will return north. What will we discover when the ground thaws? Those plants with sufficient depth will revive. May the Sacred Gardener discover that we too have sufficient root, flower and bear delectable fruit.

The Cross of Being Human

What meaning does the symbol of the cross or crucifix still hold, including for those who may not identify themselves as Christian? Does it have anything of value to offer in today's world? I purchased this crucifix shown in the photo while visiting Paris in 2002. On the back is a sticker which reads "Fabrication Francaise". Whenever I look at it, I not only think of the universal meaning of the crucifix but also of the particular place where I found this version of the symbol.

It occurs to me that this paradox of a symbol being both unique and universal is telling us something about what it means to be human. On the one hand, we are more than our egos. When I find myself grasping, resisting, ungrateful, indignant or just plain pissed off at the world, I realize it's time to let go into Something Larger.

I have found Buddhism particularly helpful at such times with its notion of not taking the personal self so personally because even the person we identify with as "myself" is a constantly morphing fabrication of the ego. What is essential is Spirit, Buddha mind, Christ consciousness, Ground of Being, or whatever name you choose to give that Source which animates us and into which we release when this life ends. When caught up in self-pity, self-entitlement, or self-preoccupation, it is into the vast web of Everything-ness that I release (eventually and often after much kicking and cussing).

On the other hand, there is a "me" present in this moment, a unique expression of that Source that will never be repeated. I have passions, insights, talents, desires, flaws and dreams that no other being will ever embody in this combination.

This part is actually harder for me to live. I can more readily surrender into the Light of Being than I can see my particularly wavelength of color in the Light. It is easier for me to chock things up to Mystery and sit with an uncomfortable unknowing than it is to for me to know and act on what is true for me as this one-of-a-kind human being. My deep fear is that I may not be loved or liked when I fully unfurl my hues and tints. Yet without an intimate knowing and passionate expression of who I am, my life is muted and gray. The Light of the World is also diminished, refracting one less color.

This is the cross of being human. One aspect of me is always grateful, irrevocably loved, and, on a deep heart level, belongs to everyone and everything. In that space there is no separation and no fear. Another part of me is defined, has boundaries and has places of belonging and not belonging. It is that space of Oneness, Love and Wholeness that I have the courage to express my uniqueness that may or may not jive with the uniqueness of others.

We are both divine (or Life Essence) in a way that can never be separate or defined from any other part of life. And we are also separate, defined, colorful, individual expressions of the divine. Both are true. The beams of the cross itself, one vertical and one horizontal, symbolize this intersection of the eternal and the temporary. Jesus Christ represents the conscious embodiment of this intersection, this meeting of the holy and the ordinary at the crossroads of humanity. The cross of being human is to live both fully.

Do You Hate Samaritans?

Do you hate Samaritans? If not, one of Jesus' most famous teachings, The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), won't work as intended. The leverage point of the parable is that Jesus' hearers despised their northern Samaritan neighbors, and to have one as the hero of the story was shocking. The purpose of such parables is to turn everything upside down and inside out. In fact, Jesus' subversive goal is to disorient our entire world view so that we can reorient to the mind of Christ, the mind which sees beyond the confines of naked self interest.

"His [Jesus’] whole mission can fundamentally be seen as trying to push, tease, shock and wheedle people beyond the 'limited analytic intellect' of their egoic operating system into the 'vast realm of mind' where they will discover the resources they need to live in fearlessness, coherence and compassion – or in other words, as true human beings."        Cynthia Bourgeault in Wisdom Jesus, p. 37

Jesus spoke the parable in response to a lawyer who asked for an iron-clad definition of who qualifies as a neighbor. Unless you hate Samaritans, however, Jesus' response is unlikely to evoke its intended visceral reaction, which is necessary to short-circuit the egoic mind. So, what's a non-hater of Samaritans to do? If I may be so bold to suggest, we can try to update the characters so that they push our buttons and push us beyond our normal thinking. Here's my update of the story:

An African-American gay activist leaves a local bar late one Saturday night. A couple of skinheads beat him and leave him for dead. A couple of regular churchgoers see the beating and take a step closer until one of the perpetrators wields a weapon, and they wisely run for safety. A few moments later, an overworked Latina social worker hears the man moaning in the dark alley and assumes it’s one of the city’s countless homeless whom she spends virtually every waking moment assisting. On this, her one free night a month from the responsibility of work and children, she simply has not the energy to deal with it and walks on by. A few moments later, Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in town for a political fundraiser, passes by and catches sight of the man out of the corner of his eye. He orders his driver to stop. He and the driver get out and take the man to Cheney’s personal physician who always travels with him. Dick Cheney provides the gay African-American activist, who has no health insurance, with all the financial and medical support he needs to heal and get back to work with the proviso that the man tell no one who has helped him.

What reaction do you notice in your gut? This is my take on updating the story. How would you modify it to create a visceral reaction so that you get the parable and so that it gets to you?

Passion, Passion, Passion!

This is a photo of our passiflora loefgrenii, also know as the garlic passion fruit, which is known for its otherworldly beauty, lusciously hued petals and fruit with a translucent pulp that is proven to ward off vampires with hints of garlic midst the sweetness. Geeky gardeners like us are quite smitten with this rare perennial vine from Brazil. What are you passionate about? Faced with insurmountable mountains of work that never reach completion, intractable geopolitical crises seemingly beyond our ability to impact, and the exhausting challenges of mere day to day survival, it's easy for our passion to wilt. Yet without that spark, responsibilities become burdens and generosity degrades into resentment. So how do we reclaim our passion?

I recommend a blast from the past. Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (or just Rumi to those of us who feel like old friends through his unsurpassed Sufi poetry) injected an unstoppable torrent of vivacity into ordinary script. His urgent plea was for everyone to connect with the divine essence beyond words. Yet even that is a limp description of his charismatic fervor. He urged us to forsake everything that does not drip, saturate and overflow with the Beloved juice that makes the universe run.

What's required to do so? Merely a single-minded dedication to pursue it wholeheartedly, and in the process discover that the heart...and everything else...becomes whole. That dedication says an emphatic "no" to extraneous wastes of energy (fool's gold) and "yes" to all that vibrates with the fierceness of being alive (pure gold). It's not about forsaking responsibilities but rediscovering them from a gut-emanating, all-embracing compassion. It is consciously living from our most root Essence until we are once again swept up in the passion of existence itself.

Whether you find that passion in your partner's smile, busting a dance move, singing off-key with every fiber of your being in the car, or exuberantly cultivating a passion flower, the invitation is always toward more life, more expression, more of the real stuff that makes everything else worthwhile. As Rumi said in a poem translated by the nearly-always-spontaneously-combusting Andrew Harvey:

Passion burns down every branch of exhaustion.


Passion is the supreme alchemical elixir, and renews all things.


No-one can grow exhausted when passion is born,


so don’t sigh heavily, your brows bleak with boredom and cynicism and despair—


look for passion! passion! passion! passion!



Futile solutions deceive the force of passion.


They are banded to extort money through lies.


Marshy and stagnant water is no cure for thirst.


No matter how limpid and delicious it might look,


it will only stop and prevent you from looking for fresh rivers


that could feed and make flourish a hundred gardens,


just as each piece of false gold prevents you 


from recognizing real gold and where to find it.



False gold will only cut your feet and bind your wings, 


saying “I will remove your difficulties”


when in fact it is only dregs and defeat in the robes of victory.


So run, my friends, run fast and furious from all false solutions.


Let divine passion triumph, and rebirth you in yourself.

P.S. Happy Birthday Rumi! Last week was your 806 birthday, and you never looked so good!

Mismatched Shoes

Yes, I did it. I was in such a rush to get out the door for an appointment that I put on two shoes that did not match. About a block away from my destination I realized what I had done...too late to turn back. We all had a good laugh when I arrived. [Yes, prepare the meds and set up my psych exam.} Sometimes, however, a mismatch is exactly what is needed. In many spiritual circles, we only dance with sweet qualities: love, peace and joy. God (the LIfe Source), however, is varied and diverse, encompassing a full range of energies.

In Muslim and Sufi communities, a list of 99 names for the divine provides endless opportunities for reflection. In the Sufi tradition, these names are divided into two categories: Jamal and Jalal. Jamal are names which relate to beauty, that is, they have a feminine sense of warmth and loveliness. These qualities include compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love. Jalal refers to those qualities related to majesty, which have more of a masculine feel. These qualities include power, independence, advocacy, and justice.

In the midst of these 99 divine qualities are some that are mystifying and off putting: "The Restrainer", "The Humiliator", "The Reckoner", and "The Distressor". We could chock these strange divine names up to the influence of patriarchal waters that have washed over our great religions. That's too easy. Part of the purpose of such a list is to normalize our human experience by finding in the divine every aspect of the psyche.

These qualities, especially the ones that repel us, are worthy of contemplation and cultivation in order to be well-balanced human beings. For what is the purpose of reflecting on the divine if not to become more divine-like ourselves? Each of us at times needs more restraint or humility. There are moments when we need to call up that divine anger when someone's harmful behavior requires a reckoning. Even distress has its place. An old adage says that Jesus came to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". Causing distress for the privileged is the first step toward justice and equality. For every beautiful/lovely shoe, there is by necessity a corresponding, seemingly mismatched shoe of majesty/justice.

The key, of course, is to know which quality, which shoe, is appropriate in each moment. If we only step with one foot, we don't move much. [Case in point...Washington, D.C....For most of his two terms, President Obama has focused on the qualities of gathering/relenting. Republicans have displayed firmness. To make progress, each needs to try on the quality displayed by the other.]

So how do we discern which quality is appropriate for the moment? Which do we overemphasize or underemphasize? Which quality does the divine yearn for us to put on? More and more I'm relying on my body to tell me. When my feet, my stomach and my jaw feel open, free, loose and buzzing with energy, then I sense that I'm embodying the appropriate choice for the moment: whether that be the bliss of compassion or the clarity of anger. When I feel constricted, devoid of life, or about to burst with frustration, that's a cue that a different quality is necessary.

Where is Aliveness in this moment? Step, walk, run after it! Whether or not your shoes match makes no difference. It may well be the mismatched pair that brings you closest to the divine and sets you on the truer path you've longed for all these years of forced marching.

Is Lake Tahoe Good Enough?

Lake Tahoe. Lying in a hammock last week overlooking the placid waters, I wondered what could be better. Of course, my mind quickly had an answer: "The two jet skis could be silent. If only the sun would move off my face, I'd be more comfortable. I wish I had brought something out here to drink." My bliss was turning into a disappointment. Here I was lazing away an afternoon in one of the most beautiful locations on the planet, and I felt dissatisfied. How did this happen? Fortunately, I remembered something. I was at a retreat center where the theme of the week was gratitude, compassion and forgiveness. The guest facilitator was Dr. Fred Luskin, Director of Forgiveness Studies at Stanford University. (Check out his YouTube videos and his book Forgive for Good.)

Dr. Luskin's basic take on forgiveness is that it is making peace with not getting what we want. When I wasn't getting the perfect "Lake Tahoe viewed from a hammock" experience, I recalled what we had learned as the first step toward making peace with what is: gratitude.

Gratitude begins with: “I am not the center of the universe.” I can see Lake Tahoe without feeling that I own it and that it owes me something. I am part of it. It is part of me. What created that lake observes it through another part of itself (me). This is humility. When I quiet the screaming mind that always wants more, I notice what I’m already given. Then my suffering shifts to gratitude.

Our biology/neurology predisposes us to find problems in order to keep alive, but not to make us happy. We have well-developed threat monitors. For most of us, the part of us that finds good has atrophied.  We need balance. Wholeness is to appreciate the goodness without pushing away the suffering. Yes, there are real threats and suffering. Most of the time, however, in the midst of this unpredictable, dangerous world, we are ok. That in itself is reason for gratitude.

Fred Luskin shared an easy way to monitor whether we are cultivating gratitude or suffering. In any moment we can notice if we are responding to life with “Thank you!” or “It’s not good enough.”

Studies show that 75-80% of our day is consumed with “It’s not good enough.” No need for judgment. It's a biological survival mechanism. It's just not conducive for happiness. For happiness we need to balance that problem-obsession with gratitude.

Gratitude is saying “thank you”. If we are the center of the universe in our own experience, then everything must be perfect…otherwise we complain. We can even turn abundance, even Lake Tahoe, into a problem. We have so many choices, and every choice makes us count the missed opportunities of options not chosen. It’s like online dating, which creates anxiety about what is lost/missed by the innumerable choices not selected. “I deserve to get more/all”. This is the polar opposite of gratitude and "thank you".

So in that moment by Lake Tahoe, I chose to say "thank you". I inhaled appreciation for my surroundings, relaxed my tensed belly, and exhaled. I kept doing this until my self-absorbed compulsion for more/better subsided. "Thank you" was enough. (Mystic Meister Eckhart said that if "thank you" is the only prayer you ever learn, that's enough.)

A deep, in my body sense of gratitude turned an agitated moment into a happy one. Nothing had changed. Except me.

Kitty Community

Our family includes two dogs (a sweet, behemoth of an Airedale and a Fox Terrier with an Othello-sized jealousy streak) and two cats (a sleek, black Siamese and her curvaceous, calico daughter). The dogs, Flash and Cowboy, stay indoors except for their walks and daily romps in the backyard. They lie next to their humans, follow them around the house, and wait impatiently for the next treat or playtime with their addiction of choice: The Kong! Neither will go outside to play without the other by his side.

The cats, Jezebel and Bebe, are much more independent. While Jezebel snuggles next to us every night, most of her day is spent outside. She and Bebe go their separate ways and roam the neighborhood, making friends and mostly taking naps in the sunniest spots they can find. Yet even these independent cats seek community: someone to lay next to, someone to groom and be groomed by, and someone with whom to dine.

We Americans emphasize the individual. Other societies emphasize community. Neither is right or wrong, good or bad, but a balance is needed.

When I visited Japan, I learned to greet people by their family name because that family identity is the most precious and accurate way of introducing one's self, more so than one's individual name. You simply won't find an empty bottle or scrap of paper lying on the sidewalk, even in major cities like Tokyo. Why? Because each person sees the sidewalk as her or his responsibility to keep clean on behalf of the whole community. In America our streets our littered with the debris of our self-preoccupation.

The downside of Japanese identification with the community is that the needs of the individual are often compromised for the sake of community, family, and corporate loyalty. Commuter trains are full of dapper business people just leaving work at 10pm on a Friday night.

Jezebel and Bebe embody a middle path that balances independence and belonging to one another. Most of us have lost the sense of being part of a village, much less the greater whole of humanity. Living alone, or in our nuclear families or with small families of choice, we feel starved for deeper human connection. Our self-centered stories fail to give us the context for who we are.

So how do we experience that balance of community and individuality? I asked the cats. They told me it's all about listening to the purr deep within you. Sometimes that purr compels you to be alone and explore the limits of your freedom. However, that purr always leads you back home, back to where your heart beats to the rhythm of another's heart. Back to where you are always welcomed with nourishment. Back home with the collective where you start to understand deep in your fur what all your individual wanderings meant. Curled up together, you can deeply rest...at least until the dogs arrive.

For reflection: Where do you sense an opportunity for deeper community? What is your next step in that direction?

P.S. If you live in the Bay Area, come join us for our weekly experiment with community: Tuesday Night Live.

The Koans of Jesus

"What is the sound of one hand clapping?" "What moves, the flag or the wind?"

Huh????

These are koans, which are nonsensical Buddhist riddles, the very contemplation of which exhausts the rational mind so that a deeper wisdom emerges. When one of these riddles does its job, how we perceive reality changes. We no longer connect the dots of our lives in the same way.

What if the teachings of Jesus also function as koans? What if his parables were really wisdom tales intended to dislodge us from our comfortable, but limited, way of viewing reality? In fact, what if Jesus was really a Wisdom Teacher concerned more with our awakening than with our orthodoxy?

This is the notion promoted by Christian writer Cynthia Bourgeault and other progressive theologians. Of Jesus she writes:

"His parables are much closer to what in the Zen tradition would be koans - profound paradoxes (riddles, if you like) that are intended to turn the egoic mind upside down and push us into new ways of seeing...He is very deliberately trying to short-circuit the grasping, acquiring, clinging, comparing linear brain and to open up within us a whole new mode of perception (now what we see, but how we see, how the mind makes its connections.) This is a classic strategy of a master of wisdom." Wisdom Jesus, pp. 47, 50, 51

I love this approach to the teachings and life of Jesus. Most of us only hear the Bible through layers of church-speak that obscure and deflate its transformational power.

How can we hear sacred texts anew so that they turn our assumptions inside out? How can they mirror back to us our unconscious patterns of thinking and doing? How can they come alive and speak directly to our lived experience here and now? How do we recover the original punch these stories had? For unless scriptures create a visceral reaction and jar us into a new level of awakening, we have not really heard them.

Try this:

• Read a story from the Bible (or any sacred scripture) aloud. Better yet listen to it read to you. The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) and Jesus' other parables are excellent passages to use for this practice.
• Notice what your first gut reaction is to the story. Before the mind has a chance to tame the story, start writing the next chapter, that is, what you imagine might happen next. Let it be pure, spontaneous and uncensored.
• Then look at what you wrote in response to the passage:
  • What do you notice?
  • What is the dominant emotion you feel as you read what you wrote? Do you feel angry, sad, hopeful, confused, open like a breath of fresh air, deflated? What do you feel in your body?
  • What does your writing reveal about how you relate to life? How is it mirroring back to you habitual patterns of thinking, feeling or acting?
  • Particularly lean into any parts of what you wrote that are uncomfortable. What is being reflected back to you? How is this passage turning you upside down and inside out? 
  • What new way of relating to life, to yourself, to others, to the divine is possible?

When we treat the teachings of Jesus as koans, they regain their wild, untamed potential to surprise and transform. When we hold them as universal tools intended to enlighten rather than indoctrinate, they begin to shift consciousness and take us into the felt wisdom of our bodies. They attune our hearts to the frequency of compassion. They empty the inner clutter and create spaciousness. They jolt us into alignment with the flow of Life.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? It is the sound of wisdom awakened.

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.

Seeds of New Life

About a week ago we planted various seeds for our first garden here in California: swiss chard, okra, bush roma beans, butter lettuce, arugula, sweet corn and leeks, to be adorned with marigolds and zinnias. Seeds are now pushing their way through the soil toward the beckoning light. I can't help but ponder the timing of these rising seeds. This is known as holy week in the Christian tradition with its theme of Christ's death and resurrection. Whether or not this is your tradition, the message is universal. Something is always dying, and this death is necessary so that something new can be born. For a seed to sprout, it must be buried and left for dead in the earth. This surrender is necessary for new life to break through.

In the Biblical stories about people encountering Jesus after his resurrection, there is a common theme. They don't recognize him. He appears to be a gardener...a traveling stranger...a beach bum. Then suddenly, their eyes are opened and they see Christ. The Christ of their expectations, the Christ they could control and predict, the Christ they could confine to one human body, had to die. Then they saw the Christ, the divine...everywhere. Their eyes were opened to a world of wonder. The seed planted within them had sprouted.

What in your life needs to die? What needs to be surrendered so that something new can emerge? Is it that tired story you retell that needs to be laid to rest so that you can birth a new narrative? Is it an outdated image of the divine so that something truer can emerge? Is it an addiction to control and perfection so that something surprising and uncontrollably alive can spring up? Is it a prejudging of a person or group that must be sacrificed so you can start to see the divine, see something sacred and precious, in more and more faces? (Of course, no aspect of us totally disappears but rather is accepted, transformed and integrated.)

Whatever needs releasing, the first and only required step is a willingness to surrender it. How does that willingness to let go actually result in letting go and then give birth to something new? That no one knows. It is a mystery called life.

P.S. If you want to let go of what no longer serves so that something new and alive can be born, join us on Tuesday nights, starting April 16, for a weekly gathering called Tuesday Night Live.

The Body Mantra

I've been noticing a number of bad equations circulating in my head. These formulas equate two things which are, in truth, not the same. But I often act and feel like these formulas are valid. Here are a few of my untrue equations:

Someone is disappointed = I've done something wrong.

Someone is pleased = I've done something right.

GLEE still = good television worth watching.

Everything got completed and was done correctly = I'm a good person.

Things did not go as planned = I screwed up.

The script of any Twilight movie = ...Wait a minute, they had scripts?!?

What untrue equations still operate in you? Often I don't even realize that I'm being run by one of these faulty formulas until I've made myself, and most likely those around me, miserable.

I have, however, found a reliable way to change my operating system so that I'm running on a truer equation that yields better results. In last week's post, I wrote about living from a place of "belovedness", from the sense that I am already and irrevocably loved, and I am eternally ok.

I'm discovering that the key to living from this belovedness is physical, not mental. I can't think my way into belovedness. Instead I rely on my body. When I have felt in my bones, down to my core, that I really am all right...in those moments I sensed a warm, vibrating, open peace. Rather than try to reason my way back there, I get still and focus on returning to that same felt sense. It's not so much the feeling that I'm going for, but the shift in perception because everything looks much different from a felt sense of "all is well".

It's much like meditating with a mantra. A mantra is a word or phrase chosen before meditation begins. When the chatty-Cathy mind inevitably starts to wander, focus returns to the mantra as a way to re-center. When I drift off into a Sea of Bad Equations, my body feels tense, closed, cold and agitated. By shifting my focus back to that space of "all is well" within me, I use my body as a mantra that resets my entire way of interacting with life. My body becomes the sacred path back to reality.

Those false equations still float around within me, but I don't have to be run by them anymore. My body tells me so.

P.S. If you'd like to practice creative ways of resetting your old equations, join us on Tuesday nights, starting April 16, for a weekly gathering called Tuesday Night Live.

Stratego: A Poor Strategy for Life

My Uncle Frank came to visit my grandparents every summer when I was growing up. He and I would play games and cards hour after hour. I particularly liked Stratego, a board game in which two players pit their armies against each other. I developed a strategy that I employed every time, which almost always resulted in a win. Basically, it was a defensive posture focused on protecting my flag and setting traps in which the parts of my defenses that seemed weakest actually obscured hidden dangers.  I rarely went on the offensive, trusting that the way I set up my army usually guaranteed victory before the first move was even made. By the time my uncle figured out where my flag was, he usually did not have enough resources left to capture it.

Looking back now, I realize that I also began to employ this same strategy with life. Prepare thoroughly in advance, survey the board and plan for every possibility, control everything you can, and then trust that things will go your way because they should go your way. For the most part, this strategy worked well in school. (Isn't school essentially a prolonged board game?)

When entering the world of work, relationships and adult problems, however, this strategy simply did not work anymore. There were too many variables. No matter how hard I prepared and planned, the unexpected happened. Life turned out to be a Mystery that could be neither controlled nor understood.

Somehow this didn't seem fair. Why shouldn't life function like Stratego? If I did my part, shouldn't the world do its part and cooperate? Through all my hard work, have I not proved my worth and earned some sort of reward?

My resentful attitude reminds me of a character in a story Jesus told, which is commonly known as "The Prodigal Son". Both sons in the story are actually lost. The younger son wasted his inheritance on partying. The older son stayed behind on the farm as he thought a good boy should, yet he resented how his life was turning out. He worked hard every day, followed the rules, and was the poster child for responsibility, yet no one seemed to notice. No one even gave him a "like" on his Facebook page. Yet, his irresponsible partying brother comes home, and his father throws him a ginormous party. And the kicker: the older son stays out in the field all day working while the party is underway. No one even bothers to tell him about his brother's return and the shindig.

The father's words to him as he sulks in the unfairness of it all still resonate for me today: "All I have is yours already." This is the message the older son and I both need to hear:

By all this hard work, you are trying to earn what is already yours. You are innately worthy and beloved. No amount of strategy or work can earn what must be received as a given. Receiving your "belovedness" as a given, life starts to feel more like a gift and less like an imposition. A joyful balance of responsibility and freedom emerges. Yes, your brother needs to learn responsibility, and you need to learn freedom. Wholeness is the balance of both. And the balancing point is compassionate self-acceptance.

Life is far more mysterious, complicated and glorious than a board game. Perhaps the greatest mystery is that I am already worthy and forever ok without doing anything! Living from a sense of being irrevocably loved, that resentful sinkhole of compensating for the feeling that I'm never enough...that sinkhole starts to fill from the inside out.

I'm learning a new approach to this board game of life, and living from my "belovedness" may turn out to be the riskiest yet most rewarding strategy of all.

P.S. Beginning in mid-April, a new group will meet every Tuesday night to experience and explore together this mysterious freedom and "belovedness". For more information, go to: Tuesday Night Live.

Swimming Upstream

At Muir Woods National Monument I recently watched the endangered Coho salmon prepare to spawn, which is shown in the video below as a male and female make a redd for their offspring. (A redd is a gravel depression salmon create with their tails and into which the eggs are laid and fertilized.) Coho salmon are making a comeback in the Redwood Creek that flows through Muir Woods here in Marin County, California. Each December after the first heavy rain, the sandbar at Muir Beach breaks. The seam allows salmon to leave the ocean and swim upstream to the creek where they hatched about three years before.

The parents undergo dramatic physical changes on this final journey. Their jaws and teeth become hooked. Their skin blushes with hues of red and pink. With immense effort, they make their way upstream. Finding a shallow spot for a redd, they create their nest, lay and fertilize their eggs, all the while maintaining their resistance against the incessant current. Having completed this final phase of the life cycle, they die having given their lives so that life may continue.

The final lines of The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi capture the spirit of the salmon's life cycle:

"It is in giving that we receive...It is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

Of course, their behavior is driven by instinct, a genetic imperative that lacks our tendency toward prolonged self-reflection and angst. It simply is the way of things. The salmon just keep working their way through the water.

I, however, am not as zen as the salmon. I want to know why the current is against me, how to control it, and what's the meaning of it all. I gripe about how wrong it is that I must swim upstream when life should be so much easier.

The salmon school me in living. They inspire me to swim with my whole body, heart and soul, whether the current is with me or against me. They invite me to remain open to the inevitable changes that will occur in life. They remind me that, ultimately, this existence is not really all about me. My individual life serves the greater cause of Life itself, of which I am part.

The salmon don't pause to ponder what the meaning of it all is. They embody their purpose. They live who and what they are with every ounce of energetic verve in their being. That's all they do, and it's enough...for them and for us. As Joseph Campbell said:

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

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