A Bit of Heaven on Earth

We have a rose variety in our backyard called "The Pilgrim". This is a photo of its latest bloom, which graces passersby with a candy-sweet-almost-tastable fragrance. The Pilgrim is named after pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, who swapped stories on their long journey. A pilgrim seeks to find a bit of heaven on earth. Certainly this rose fits that description. Where in your life do you sense a sliver of bliss midst the ordinary?

Sometimes we go on pilgrimages in our dreams. I had a dream last night in which my aunt was caring for many children. One was a luminous little girl who received special guidance and encouragement from her older sister, who realized her giftedness.

The children went on a journey. After some travel, the little girl ascended a hill and sat down. She placed a white sheet over her head, which then draped her body. She used mud to make a faux beard for herself. She then gathered her congregation and became their rabbi.

She looked around at her siblings and gave them each a wafer of bread saying, "This wafer is heaven come down to earth to nourish you."

My partner and I were watching the whole scene in my dream, and I heard a voice saying, "This is your something beautiful you have been looking for." I woke up with tears of joy in my eyes.

Whether we go on a long pilgrimage or never leave home, the destination is the same. Our life journey's goal is to find a little bit of heaven here on earth. We can search the world over, but if we don't find it first and last within ourselves, it will always remain elusive.

Eventually, the end of all our wonderings is to realize that the heaven, the beauty, we have been searching for was in us all along. A dream or a fragrant rose can evoke the inner heaven, and we well up with tears of joy and break out in a smile.

But that bliss is present even on the most mundane of days. How do we access it? The better question is: how do we let it access us? Bliss is waiting to explode in us and through us every moment. When we lay down our fixed positions, stories, and strivings, the bliss naturally emerges. Even if we only bloom for a few moments, we will have become a bit of heaven on earth for ourselves and everyone around us.

Say Hello to Miss Bee!

Say hello to one of the busy ladies who now calls our backyard home. Our new hive of bees (called a "nuc") has arrived. They are filling their new home with wax and tending a burgeoning brood of offspring. The ladies would like me to share a little bit about their lives.

• These busy ladies build wax and tend brood on frames. The frames are housed in a large wooden box called a "super" This weekend we will add a second super on top of the bees' current home, which is almost full.
• When the second super is full, we'll put a metal grate above the second super and add a smaller box on top of the grate. The metal grate will allow the worker bees to get into the "penthouse" and fill it with wax and excess honey but will prevent the much larger queen from fertilizing the cells in the top box. We will rob, or harvest, any honey in that uppermost box later this summer. Since we are midst a drought, however, the bees may not make much excess honey this first year for us to rob.
• The worker bees are female and start their lives tending to the brood and cleaning the hive. After a few weeks, they leave the hive and become foragers bringing back pollen and nectar to the hive until eventually their wings wear out. Those who are born closer to winter may live a matter of months instead of weeks as they live off of stored honey during the cold months when minimal food is available outside. The hive dramatically reduces in size during the winter, and this is the time when a hive is most likely to collapse, as ours did in February.
• One of the most interesting behaviors is the daily scouting report. Early in the morning, while it's still too cool for bee comfort, brave scout bees leave the hive to search for sources of pollen and nectar. They return to the hive with a lively report. They dance! The vigor and movements of the dance tell the rest of the hive the location, quality and amount of sustenance within a radius of about 2 miles. The hive then makes a collective decision about where to focus foraging based on the scouting report.
• Unlike the short-lived workers bees, the queen bee may live for 2-5 years. What makes her a queen is her diet. All honeybees eat royal jelly for the first three days after hatching, at which time they switch to a diet of honey. A queen bee larva is only fed royal jelly.  Royal jelly is not only what makes her a queen but is also the secret to her longevity.  (Supplement and beauty product purveyors take note!)
• Workers may create a new queen if the old one isn't up to snuff or if the hive is getting so large that it's time to split up the collective, swarm and colonize a new home. The old queen slims down to improve her aerodynamics and takes some of the old guard with her to start a new hive. The new emerging queen will either also start a new hive (if it's still crowded) or will stay and be the queen of the current hive, in which case she will kill her still-pupating queen sisters so that she has no competition for the throne.
• The drones are the other residents of the hive. They are, in essence, the lazy, do-nothing males who sit around while the women do all the work.  They are fed by the women and luxuriate while the females remain incessantly busy. Until....it's time for a new queen to mate. When that happens, she leaves the hive. The males follow and try to catch her. In true survival-of-the-fittest fashion, those with the best genes catch up with and mate with the queen, who may mate with up to twenty of the drones. Royal marriages are short-lived in the bee world. She returns to the hive to lay up to 2,000 eggs a day or 1,000,000 eggs in her lifetime.
• The drones, having had their jollies, return to the hive. The females, however, are done with the males at this point. They have served their one and only purpose, and the females have no more use for these slothful moochers, who are barred from re-entering the hive. They have neither stingers nor the ability to feed themselves, and so they soon die, having been discarded by the industrious women.

Our new residents thank you for your interest in their lives and ask you to select bee-attracting plants and minimize the use of pesticides so that they, in turn, can pollinate plants that add nutrition and beauty to your life.

Momentary Freedom

The photo is of a papaver hybridum, or "Queen's Poppy", in our backyard. Each magnificent bloom lasts only a day before its ephemeral beauty blows away. Like a short-lived blossom, each moment is a purity unto itself. Ephemeral. Unrepeatable. Unique. Having its own meaning apart from any other moment.

Our minds try to categorize and order our moments. We assign them meaning and place them in the context of other moments. That's normal and necessary in order to function in daily life. The downside is that we lose the purity of the moment. We create stories to explain or control events, which takes us out of experiencing the next moment freely, as it is.

I go out into the yard and step in dog poop. I'm annoyed. I clean off my shoe. It's an unpleasant task. As I approach the door to the house, I have a choice.

One option: Will I carry the annoyance inside with me? Will I keep it alive with a narrative about how the dogs always poop in the most inconvenient places and then blame myself for not picking up the poop every day? As I turn the door knob, I'm still in the backyard, irritated, and I bring that foul mood into the house.

Another option: I leave the annoyance in the backyard. It happened. I choose to move on to the next experience. I turn the door knob and am greeted by two dogs, tails wagging, whose exuberance lights me up.

"Just know, 'I am not the imagination' and be free." Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj (as rendered by Prasanna)

Our imaginations birth art, weave tales, invent products, and dream us into new potentials. They also generate unnecessary drama, prolong suffering, and create negative fantasies that have no root in reality.

You are not what your imagination generates. Know this and be free.

Experience what is happening. Feel the emotions. Perhaps even indulge in weaving a tale around that experience.

Then realize you have a choice:

Buy into the tale as absolutely true and fan the emotional flame it evokes for minutes (or hours, days, even years).

Or hold the tale lightly as one possible perspective and then let it go in order to experience the purity of the next moment.

If the moment is "sticky" (hard to release), breathe and refocus on what is currently happening. Focused attention on the present is an easier path to freedom than trying to let go of the past.

There is choice in every moment. What will you choose next?

What We Can Learn from Time Travelers

Forgive me for making a Star Trek analogy, but I am a lifelong Sci-fi nerd. A recurring theme in Star Trek is the messiness of time travel. Those who go back in time to prevent a problem often create worse problems than what they travelled backward to fix. Eliminate a youthful indiscretion, and the whole tapestry of one's life unravels. Save one friend and millions die who did not die before. The problem with time travelers in Star Trek is that they fail to take into consideration the interrelatedness of everything.  They often create self-fulfilling prophecies. A self-fulfilling prophecy is the act of creating the very thing we wish to avoid (or something even worse) through short-sighted behavior.

Many of our responses to today's crises are becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Examples:

• A drone strike kills 5 terrorists but creates 20 more terrorists, survivors enraged because the drone also killed their sisters and mothers. Their subsequent attacks (or anticipated attacks) lead to more drone strikes.
• Intractable poverty in communities of color opens the door to crimes of desperation. The over-response of police (racial profiling, excessive use of force) creates a police state that only intensifies desperate rage, crime and violence, which, in turn, ratchets up the aggressive response of law enforcement.
• Lack of good jobs leads some to look for powerless scape goats, such as undocumented farm workers. Draconian legislation forces migrants out of the fields and back across the border, leaving behind crops with insufficient labor to harvest them. The dip in economic output drags down other sectors of the economy, yielding even fewer good jobs. (See Alabama's response to undocumented immigrants.)

Our fearful responses create or exacerbate the very catastrophe we wish to avoid. 

The reason a prophecy fulfills itself is because our aperture is too small. We narrow our field of vision to the scapegoat, cost or symptom at hand and fail to see the bigger picture.

• Terrorism is not just about perverted religion; it's about economics.
• No fence or harsh immigration edict will prevent desperate people from crossing a border to endure exploitation here if the alternative is starvation at home.
• Unrest in communities of color is lead by a few bad apples, and it's also symptomatic of deeper issues of unacknowledged racism, income inequality, and a subtle form of segregation enforced by a militarized police force and a prison industrial complex.

More pointedly, we fail to take full responsibility for our own behavior and its contribution to the situation. For instance:

• Is there a link between the $3 shirt purchased at Walmart and the poverty in Central America that leads millions to cross the border?
• What's the connection between the hegemony of Western countries/companies pursuing their economic self-interest in the developing world, and the resultant political/economic instability in developing countries that then becomes a breeding ground for anti-Western religious extremism and terrorism?
• Have centuries of institutionalized racism created an uneven playing field that is a daily, lived reality for those stuck its mire but that remains invisible to those who believe that racism and its consequences are largely a thing of the past.

The problems we face do not happen in isolation. Those "lousy people out there" do not operate in a vacuum. Everything is interconnected.

Self-fulfilling prophecies flourish when there is a lack of honest self-reflection about how our choices (past and current) are part of the problem. We avoid such self-reflection because it would require us  to make changes that do not immediately serve self-interest.

When we attack and scapegoat, delay and deny, the problems only return to a simmer until they boil over again with greater fury.

While we can't travel back in time to fix what got us here, we can choose to see how our fearful responses create self-fulfilling prophecies. We can acknowledge today our shortcomings, prejudices, errors, privilege, and addiction to comfort and convenience. And we can expand our self-interest to include other people and other species because what affects one affects all; maybe not in the short term, but over time, it is inevitable.  

Suspicious Activity Around Cats

Being a cat is not as easy as you might think. Our 12-year-old cat Jezebelle likes to wander through our front yard with occasional sojourns into other neighborhood yards. This tiny, affectionate kitty is known and loved by everyone on the block.

A couple of weeks ago I went on a hike. As I was returning home, my partner Herb and I received a text from a neighbor: "A man just tried to steal Jezebelle. She escaped. The man sped away in a red van, license number 7....."

I ran home and called for Jezebelle, who came running from a few houses away. I put her in the house for safe keeping.

Meanwhile, Herb called the police and reported what had happened. The police talked to our neighbor and looked up the license plate. The officer told Herb that they had encountered the man before and that he lives in his van.

He asked if Herb wanted to press charges. Herb responded that he had compassion for the man's plight and wanted first to learn what the man had to say for himself. Herb hung up and told his concerned and bewildered coworkers the news.

The next morning on this way to work, Herb saw a red van parked three blocks from the police station. He stopped to check the license plate. It was the same van!

He called the police and talked to the dispatcher.

"I'm calling about the man who tried to steal my cat yesterday."

"You're calling about what?"

"My cat. A man tried to steal my cat, and I see his van."

"This is the police department. Are you sure you have the right number?"

"Yes, I talked to an officer yesterday, and there's a police report. He's just three blocks from your office. If you send someone now, you can still intercept him."

The dispatcher made Herb go through the whole story again until she understood the situation. An officer was dispatched. By then, of course, the van was gone.

A few minutes later, one of Herb's coworkers saw a red van on her way to visit an ailing friend. Remembering Herb's story from the day before, she texted Herb with the van's license plate number. Same van! She told Herb that the driver was changing clothes in a parking lot, which, it so happens, adjoined the property of the police department.

Herb called the police department. The dispatcher (a different one) listened to his story. Herb  pleaded, "Just send someone out your back door, and you'll see him!" As precious moments passed, she tried to make sense of the situation. So Herb switched tactics.

"Are all of you dispatchers in the same room."

"Yes, we are."

"Then please just stand up and say, 'Who talked to the crazy guy about the cat and red van?'"

"What?"

"Just ask!"

"Ok....Who talked to the crazy guy about the cat and red van?"

A muffled voice is heard: "Oh, that was me! I'll take it."

Soon an officer was dispatched. As Herb waited on the phone, his coworker called to say the van was on the move. She followed. A genuine car chase ensued!

Herb connected his coworker with the police. The van travelled about a mile to a locksmith, located next to a pet grooming salon. Why was he going to a locksmith? Were incarcerated, elderly kitties being held for ransom somewhere?

Herb received a text from his coworker: "Got him!" The police officer questioned the man and then called Herb, who, after hearing the story, agreed with the officer that there was no need to press charges. What happened?

The man explained that he sees Jezebelle in our yard everyday and just wanted to pet her. He knew he should have stopped to explain to our neighbor what he was doing, but he just got back in his van and drove off.

The officer admonished the man for unsafe driving and disturbing behavior. "You can understand how stopping in the middle of the street, running into someone's yard chasing after one of their pets, and then speeding away, would raise concerns. You can't just stop in the middle of the street like that. And you can't run into people's yards after their pets."

The man said he understood and that it would not happen again. The officer replied, "We now have you on record as someone having 'suspicious activity around cats'."

Over the next few days I slowly began to coax Jezebelle back outside. She was in no hurry to leave the safety of indoor kitty life. Adding to her trauma was an incident three days beforehand when another neighbor's black behemoth of a dog escaped his back yard and bounded onto our front porch, where Herb saw the dog with Jezebelle in his mouth, shaking her violently back and forth.

But that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say, Jezebelle escaped unharmed. Tonight, she snoozes, curled into the tiniest ball of fur, snuggled safely between her two humans.

What "Truth" Do You Live By?

Holy Week follows the trajectory of Jesus' last week from life through death to resurrection. The story is filled with pivotal choices, perhaps none more poignant than Pilate's dilemma. Should he release Jesus whom he believes to be innocent? Or should he give in to the crowd's thirst for blood and avoid a riot? In the midst of his quandary, Pilate asks Jesus, "What is truth?" Pilate then chooses his truth. He hands Jesus over to be crucified.

Pilate's choice is understandable. He was afraid. I've been reflecting on the fearful part of me. It yearns for control, wants approval, wants to get things right, and wants to be acknowledged as "a good boy". Beneath all that is really a yearning to be loved.

In meditation last week, I focused of being loved until I believed it. How would you live if you deeply believed that you are loved unconditionally with a love that can never be taken away? 

Only when I am rooted in being loved, does my compulsive grasping for control start to shift. When there’s (ultimately) nothing to fix within me, I feel less compulsion to fix everyone and everything around me.

It feels like a death as I choose to notice but not live by those familiar voices that strive for control, perfection, approval and being "right". But on the heels of this "death" can come a resurrection. Once the illusions have been debunked, I stand empty, cleared of what I believed to be true but now know to be false. In that space, I have three choices:

• Return to the familiar story lines because I fear being without them
• Judge myself andy my story lines, which only reinforces my bondage
• Choose to believe a new story that is life-giving

To believe in my own beloved-ness - to wholeheartedly put my trust in it - is a brave, revolutionary choice. It's a movement from fear to love through death to resurrection. It is The Way to eternal life.

While beliefs do have tentacles in the unconscious, they can be transformed. A new belief is cultivated by daily choices that align with that belief. Even when we don't feel the truth of a new belief, we act as if it were true until the new belief takes root. To believe is literally to "live by". 

What is your truth? What will you live by? There is choice in every moment. Will you choose fear or love?

A Prayer for Holy Week: God, I choose to believe that I am innately, completely, and irrevocably loved. Help my unbelief! When the fear-based stories arise, help me see them for the illusions that they are and let them go with compassion. Help me live by the truth that I am loved. Amen.

Do You Know Jack?

Last month a colleague from Interfaith Center at the Presidio invited me to Pantheacon, which is a conference for indigenous religions, paganism, and a diversity of other earth-based spiritualities. While there I attended a presentation by author Christopher Penczak entited "Four Jacks, a Queen, and the Wheel of the Year". He led us through a guided meditation in which we met four "Jacks", each representing a different season of the year, a different season of life:

• Jack of the Green: Spring. Return of the green as the Spring Equinox inaugurates the growing season. Last year's seeds sprout, emerging from their winter slumber.
• Jack of the Corn: Summer. During the summer harvest of corn and wheat, the sun reaches its peak position in the sky, symbolizing our full creative powers.
• Jack of the Lantern (Pumpkin): Fall. Squashes and gourds are sacrificed to provide food through the winter. The hallowed-out pumpkin has surrendered its flesh to sustain life, and its seeds go into the ground.
• Jack Frost: Winter. The earth rests, and the seeds lie dormant in the ground awaiting the return of Jack of the Green.

The Jacks revolve around the Queen, the Lady of the Lake, who turns the wheel of the seasons with ever-flowing water. She represents the eternal midst the changing seasons. The cycle of birth, maturation, sacrifice for future life, and death/burial continues unabated, and yet, the wheel turns around an Eternal Presence that renews and sustains.

How might these four Jacks speak to where you are on your wheel of life?

• Jack of the Green: Pause. Observe. What life-giving newness is just starting to sprout around or within you?
• Jack of the Corn: What is the new level of maturity to which you are being called?
• Jack of the Lantern: What is life calling you to sacrifice so that LIFE may flourish?
• Jack Frost: What type of rest/restoration do you need?

You can also look at these seasons as a mirror for the stages of life. Where are you in the life cycle? Are you in the autumn years yet still clinging to summer or spring?

What enables us to transition through seasons and cycles is a deep trust in the Eternal Presence. Called, experienced and defined in many ways, the Eternal Presence, when trusted, enables us to let go of each season when it has passed and immerse ourselves in the next season with equanimity.

Notice the changing season.

Trust the Center that holds you.

Surrender that which is passing.

Engage with what is emerging.

When we stop our striving against seasons and cycles, life flows with grace.

Do You Have Phantom Conversations?

I was walking up a steep hill in our neighborhood on a sun-baked late winter day with unseasonably early irises blossoming my path and wild turkeys chit chatting in the distance. Yet, I barely noticed any of it. My mind was busy having an unpleasant conversation...with someone who wasn't there. Do you ever have "phantom conversations"?

There are wonderful conversations to be had with someone who is not present. Perhaps we might seek support or advice by connecting with the essence of a deceased loved one. Or we might want to prepare...once or twice...for an important meeting by rehearsing what we will say.

I define a phantom conversation as repeated, agitated internal conversations with someone not present. It's not a one-time rehearsal for a talk I plan to have, but rather ongoing inner disturbances that often occur in lieu of actually speaking my truth to someone.

Now there is one helpful thing about a phantom conversation. Sometimes in the midst of my internal rant I realize that my self-righteous position is absolutely ridiculous. I end up saving myself and the other person a great deal of unnecessary drama.

Mostly these inner diatribes are just a ticker tape of my judgments and self-defenses. When I can liberate myself from their addictive lure, I realize the total futility of proving myself right to someone not present.

So how do I liberate myself when caught up in a phantom conversation? Midst my rambling, I realize that I've not been hearing the gobbling turkeys or savoring the jasmine fragrance. The present moment intrudes on my illusion, and I return my attention to what is right in front of me.

I then choose to open my heart with the power of gratitude and let this moment nourish me. For me gratitude is often the key that will open my mind and free my heart. Otherwise, the lure of the internal drama is simply too strong. In that gracious space, a smidgeon of compassion for the person I've been "talking at" might sneak up on me.

Perhaps such a shift is what it means to live a contemplative life. Contemplation, originally comes from the Latin templum, which is a "place of observation". So, contemplation is to engage from a place of observation. The contemplative life is cultivating the ability to observe both our inner workings and our outer reality simultaneously, and then take an appropriate action here and now with a free mind and an open heart.

Of course, this is not easy. We have spiritual "practices" because this game of life is challenging.

Cultivating inner freedom through non-judgmental self-observation is my daily commitment. Like an addict, I have to return each day to the admission that I'm hooked by phantom conversations and other unhelpful habits of my psyche. Then I return my attention to the Highest Power of the current moment, reconnect with gratitude, and pick up my conversation with the here and now. Some might call that a return to sanity. I call it prayer.

Who Really Speaks for God?

I've been watching Facebook posts by high school and college classmates who quote the Bible in their political tirades. When called out on misogynistic, homophobic, racist, Islamophobic or jingoistic views, their response is, "Don't be a hater. These are God's views too. I'm just repeating what the Bible says. Because it's the Word of God, I have to say and believe these things, and so should you." Actually...

What you are saying is NOT the Word of God. It is your conditioned interpretation of cherry-picked passages from Scriptures composed by men writing about their experience of God from their Iron-Age cultural perspective.

When a position no longer commands logical or moral respect, the last resort is to trot out a Scripture passage. The Bible has been quoted with deep sincerity to support any number of positions which we now deem downright sinful, such as denying women the right to vote (I Timothy 2:11-14), slavery (Colossians 3:22), and a callous disregard for those living in poverty (John 12:8).

While most of my former classmates use Scripture to "prove" right-wing political stances, a radically different perspective can easily find standing in Scripture:

• What were the Sodomites doing that so offended God that God incinerated them? Ezekiel 16:49 - "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." The sin of Sodom sounds more like a gathering of Congressmen with their behind-the-scenes funders than the elderly lesbian couple trying to get married in your state. If anything, this Word of God would denounce laws and policies that further fatten the wallets of the military industrial complex, oil companies and pharmaceuticals...and thus fatten the wallets of their executives...at the expense of peace, the environment, and the health of the general public. Instead, the true "anti-Sodomite" Word of God calls for a livable minimum wage for all workers.
• Leviticus 24:22 - "You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God." and “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt." Exodus 22:21.  How should those whose ancestors were once foreigners treat foreigners now? How can those who benefit from a self-created system that legitimizes and rewards their own status treat those who lack any status? In these passages, the Word of God calls for a path to citizenship for all resident aliens (yes, amnesty), the elimination of squalid detention camps for immigrant mothers and their children, the extension of the Affordable Health Care Act to undocumented workers, and a little humility about our own status here in the land of the free.
• Exodus 22:25 “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest." The Bible does not endorse a specific economic system, but it certainly is no friend to unfettered capitalism. This Word of God would require mega-banks to open branches in impoverished neighborhoods and offer no-cost loans to businesses and individuals trying to rebuild their communities. During the mortgage crisis, the Word of God would have demanded that bailout money actually bail out families struggling to keep their homes rather than enable the ongoing folly of Wall Street's gambling addiction.

Thus says the Lord!

Scriptures violate the Spirit that sparked them when they are used to crush the soul, institutionalize oppression, or uphold the status quo at the expense of the common good. Without that Spirit, a semantically accurate rendering of a text fails to be God's Word for us today, and a seemingly literal truth becomes patently false.

The Bible turn us upside down with an experience of God, of Christ, of Spirit that ever-expands compassion, joy, inclusivity, reverence for Mystery, commitment to justice, and a sense of communion with all life. Scripture inspires the embodied knowing that neither we nor anyone else are ever beyond the embrace of the Divine.

Any use of Scripture conflicting with that Spirit is not the Word of God. It's merely a human opinion hiding behind a fading religion.

Jesus Wasn't Nice

We confuse "being nice" with love. Jesus was loving, but Jesus was not concerned with being nice. Being nice is often an attempt to avoid conflict, prevent/repress anger, earn approval, and project a facade that evokes admiration and affection.

Love boldly enters into conflict with the goal of honest reconciliation. Love acknowledges and appropriately expresses anger. Love is transparent and emits adoration and affection.

Years ago a work colleague aggressively challenged a decision I had made. My fear told me to keep the peace, apology and reverse course. Upon reflection, however, I realized that my decision was appropriate and important. I held my ground. Though my coworker became belligerent, I remained firm and respectful, while also tending to my anger and hurt.

After some weeks, we worked our way through to a resolution and established a much stronger bond than we had before. If I had acquiesced for the sake of being nice, resentment would have smoldered against my coworker and against myself.

Jesus overturned vendor tables in the temple and told his friend Peter to "get behind me Satan" when Peter pleaded with Jesus to take the easy way out.

Love does not take the easy way out. It is the way through. Passing through fear, hurt, and anger, true love creates a deeper connection than is ever possible by avoiding issues for the sake of being nice.  Being nice is a seductive quagmire that lures us in with promises of safety and affection, yet which yields neither in the long run.

I grew up in the south, where being nice was seen as a supreme virtue by many. When I moved to New York, I found the abrasive honesty there both jarring and refreshing. No longer did I have to say, "Bless your heart", when I was feeling "go to hell".

Sometimes the best way to bless a heart is to call out devilish behavior. Truth without love is not true. Love without truth is not love. Ultimately, you cannot have one without the other.

Jesus never mastered being nice. If he did, he may have lived a longer life, but it's doubtful any of us today would know his name or want to be like him.

What Are You Radiating?

My great aunt Petzie died in Michigan last year. Last week would have been her 96^th birthday. I first met her when I was a teenager living in Texas. She came to visit us, and I was enamored with her. She radiated love and spoke of Jesus as her best friend in a way that made me believe she and Jesus had something special going on. Then I learned more about her story. She raised eight children as a single mother. She got up at 3 am each morning to run a paper route. Then she came home, got the kids up, fed and off to school. She then went to work, after which she came home and took care of the kids and often did a third job at night to make ends meet. In the midst of all this, she battled both a brain tumor and polio, which left her with a significant limp. Yet she lost neither her gratitude nor her sense of connection with God.

As a teenager, I pondered how unfair it was that this amazing woman had to face such unrelenting hardship. Then it dawned on me that it was this constellation of hardships that transformed her into the woman she became. Rather than become disheartened, her heart expanded with new challenges until she radiated a gritty love that did not waver. In seeing her, I felt I was seeing a bit of God's radiance.

I'm reminded of the story in the Bible where Jesus hikes up a mountain with three of his friends. While there, Jesus starts to radiate God. Then a cloud envelopes them, and a voice from the cloud says, “This is my beloved one. Listen to him.” Not your average hike!

So what are we to make of this? If the only point of the story is that Jesus was uniquely God, and we aren’t, that might inspire worship but not much else.

What if the story of the transfiguration of Jesus is meant to transfigure us? That is, what if Jesus radiating Divine Loving Essence is intended to spark the same radiance within each of us?

The ultimate point of the Jesus story is not that we worship him but rather that we become more like him. 

And what was he like? With each trial, rejection, betrayal and hardship, he made a choice. Rather than react with vengeance or self-pity, he surrendered into a deeper place of the heart. He identified with The Essence of Life rather than just with his one individual life. The radiance of Sacred Essence beamed brightly until not even his skin could conceal it.

It really was revolutionary, and many religious folks simply couldn't bear it, especially those who made worship and dogmatic purity a substitute for personal transformation and social justice.

We have the same choice. Will we allow ourselves to feel the pain of not getting what we want without getting stuck in the muck of disappointment? Will we identify less and less as our collection of moods and self-absorbed story lines? Will we respond to shortcomings in ourselves and others with ever-expanding understanding, truth-telling and compassion? Will we respond to challenges from an Inner Light that shines on every thought, word and action, yet is beyond them all?

If so, we will be transfigured. We will become more Christ-like, and the line will start to blur between where God ends and we begin.

My God's Bigger Than Your God

Years ago when I was an assistant pastor of a church, an elderly couple asked me what would be the eternal fate of some dear friends of theirs who were Jewish. I struggled to answer their question. What I was supposed to say as pastor of their church conflicted with what I felt to be true in my body. This inner conflict was but one instance in an ongoing series of experiences that led me to question, and eventually to leave, that church. What I eventually realized was that the particulars of my religion had come to violate the essence of my religion. Claims of exclusivity and doctrinal purity created a sense of "Us vs. Them" and a worldview in which we were right and virtually everyone else was on the highway to hell.

Why would a God who is defined as love create a spiritual system in which most of the world's humans are destined for eternal damnation? Theologians have vomited volumes trying to get God off the hook, but I think we are actually the ones on the hook for promulgating a theology which says, "My God is bigger than your God". We have largely created a God in our image, and the image is ugly.

Violence in the name of religion thrives...ISIS and Boko Haram...Buddhist violence agains Muslims in Myanmar...verbal violence against LGBT folks spewed from Christian churches in the U.S. and Africa that inspires physical violence...misogyny justified by patriarchal interpretations of scriptures...economic and racial oppression...desolation of our planet in the name of "subduing" the earth.

What would it look like if peace, justice, and compassion thrived in the name of religion? Much progress as a species has been informed by the world's religions (the work of Gandhi and MLK, for example), but such progress came from a deeper understanding of religious tradition that appropriated, interpreted, and refashioned ancient texts for modern reality, rather than use religion as an excuse for immature, ego-centric, privilege-protecting, fear-based, oppositional, self-aggrandizing, oppositional behavior that betrays the original spirit of the religion. Such religion transforms neither an individual nor a society.

We can fall in love again with the Sacred Mystery of Life to which religious traditions originally pointed and become more compassionate, understanding, just, kind, engaged, humble, open, curious, joyful, accepting, and peaceful.  Then it will no longer matter whose God is bigger or better because. In the name of God, we will have become bigger and better.

From the Sufi poet Rumi:

Something big is coming. It’s still a secret, but arriving everywhere. The atmosphere is charged with longing and searching. The pilgrims and the mystery-lovers know. They are gathering now The sound of prayer drifts across the dawn. It’s Muslim, Jew, Christian All mingled All religions All this singing One Song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The sunlight looks a little different on this wall Than it does on that. And a lot different on this other one. But it’s still one light. We have borrowed these clothes These time and place personalities From a Light. And when we praise, We’re pouring them back in.

The Mind is Like a Fox Terrier

"I have nothing to do with this talking. It is just like the sparrows chirping."  Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Prasanna

Below is a haiku inspired by the the quote above and by this photo of Cowboy, our Fox Terrier. Please share a haiku that comes to you as you view the photo or reflect on the passage about the nature of the mind and the chatter it generates. (A traditional haiku is 3 lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 syllables.)

Mind's chatter is like

A Fox Terrier: always

Seeking attention.

A Whale of a Tale that Misses the Point

Last week I finally took down the remaining Christmas decorations, including this glass whale ornament. It reminded me of the Biblical story of Jonah, which most people know but few understand. What is the actual point of the story? You may recall that Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh and proclaim that God is going to wipe out the city unless they repent of their thuggish ways. Jonah, an Israelite, loathes these violent oppressors and hops on a ship going the opposite direction.

Soon a whale of a storm arises, and Jonah fesses up that he's the likely cause of it. The sailors reluctantly throw him overboard, and the seas calm. If not for a great fish swallowing him whole and subsequently puking him onto dry land, Jonah would have drown.

After cleaning himself off, Jonah trudges to Nineveh and delivers the message. Shockingly, the king and the entire city believe Jonah's message and repent of their wicked ways.  God decides to have mercy on the people of Nineveh and does not destroy them.

The End, right? Not so fast. There's one final chapter, and without it, we easily miss the punchline.

After delivering his message,  Jonah sets up camp just outside the city, finding shelter under a fast-growing shade plant. And Jonah starts to pout: "God I should have known you'd do something like this. I wanted fireworks. I wanted you to exterminate them. But God, You're a soft touch. You're gracious, compassion and overflowing with love. This isn't fair!" Jonah grumbles himself to sleep.

The next morning, Jonah awakens to discover that a worm has eaten his beloved shade plant. Jonah rails against God over the plant: "I'm so mad. I wish I were dead."

God's reply: "You're this worked up over a plant? And yet you gripe at me because I have compassion on 120,000 people and their animals? Get a grip!"

The story of Jonah is really a mirror. Insert your own loathsome group for Nineveh: bigots, terrorists, Republicans, Democrats...and see how the tale morphs if you then put yourself in Jonah's place. However far your mercy extends, the message is to stretch compassion and forgiveness until no one is left out, especially your enemies.

It's easy to make this a miracle story about a big fish that saves a man by swallowing him whole. It's far more difficult to take a serious look at the limits of our compassion and forgiveness. Perhaps that's why few people make it to the final chapter.

Getting the Best Deal Possible

My mother and I used to plan our Christmas shopping days like two generals preparing for a military campaign. We'd lay out flyers, ads and coupons on the floor and map out our goals for each store, each of which was grouped by location, all of which was coordinated with a list of which gifts to buy for whom. Armed with our agenda, we'd set out for the day. Part of the strategy included procuring the right gift at the lowest price. In those pre-Internet days, we'd often visit two or three stores and compare prices until we felt reasonably certain we had found the best deal possible. Only then would we make the purchase. Sometimes these shopping days would last 10-12 hours. We'd come home exhausted but satisfied that we'd done well.

I wonder if there's some aspect of this approach to Christmas shopping that permeates other areas of life. Do we hold back a part of ourselves, never "making the purchase", because somewhere out there is still that "best deal possible"? 

What if, however, we already have the best deal possible? What if the friends, partner, job, home, etc., we have right now are exactly what we need? Rather than continually search for the best deal possible anywhere for anyone, can we recognize when we already have exactly who and what we need here and now?

And what if this yearning for the best deal possible is, at its root, really a spiritual matter?

What we are ultimately yearning for are love, happiness, self-acceptance, and inner peace. These graces can't be bought or sold. It is the essence of all spiritual practice to cultivate an awareness that they already and only reside within us.

Will we choose to trust that we are unconditionally lovable and loved throughout eternity? Will we open to the wellspring of gratitude so that all the glory of the Universe is available to us every moment? Will we cultivate self-acceptance and inner peace so that our daily successes and failure rarely rattle our core sense of identity?

When we invest ourselves wholeheartedly in these inner graces, we no longer need fantasy because our outer experience begins to mirror our inner reality. And it is in our inner reality that we discover we've had the best deal possible all along.

Is It Time for a God Break?

I've been struggling to keep my "God space" throughout the day. Every morning I meditate and pray. I often sense a deep inner stillness, an aliveness within me that transcends yet embraces all my problems, foibles and unanswered questions. By mid-morning, noon at the latest, I've lost most of it. It's vanished midst the detritus of unending tasks, interpersonal challenges, and E-distractions (email, Facebook, etc.) Where did God go? Where did I go?

At the conclusion of his book Resurrection Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic, Adyashanti writes:

Ultimately, what allows us to embody the full measure of our life is a sense of stillness. One of the underlying, almost unspoken themes of the Jesus story is the stillness of eternity. It's Jesus in the desert, Jesus on top of the mountain. In such moments of aloneness, we give ourselves to that which is quiet within, to the deepest type of listening. True spiritual action in the world comes from a deep sense of inner stillness, rooted in that point around which the changing world revolves. And within the changing world is the spark of eternity - always free, always content, always the quiet and silent life-giver to our lives.

How can we possibly find inner stillness midst such a flurry of activity that is our lives? I think Jesus embodied the Way: take a break. Reconnect.

Even when thousands clamored for his attention, he would go off to pray for a bit up the mountainside. When those in authority demanded an immediate answer to a delicate situation, Jesus paused, bent down, and drew doodles in the dirt. Then, he stood up and gave an answer. (John 8)

So today, when I feel like a spun top that's losing balance, rather than plow through, I intend to pause and take a God-break.

When I become aware that I am no longer rooted and inwardly still, no longer in alignment with my Inner Compass...or when I face a particularly challenging situation...or even as a preventative measure throughout the day...I intend to pause and go even deeper into "God space".

The way to stretch "God space" is not to lengthen morning meditation time or detach from the world, but rather to disperse "God breaks" throughout the day. It's not magic nor wishful thinking but rather a decision to pause long enough to remember deep in my bones who and what I AM so that I can be busy and inwardly still simultaneously.

Falls' Crimson Angels

Our Japanese Maple has reached its peak glow. Its crimson foliage embraces our statue of Kwan Yin, the Buddhist personification of compassion, who returns to earth to spread mercy. Below is a haiku inspired by the photo. Please share a haiku that comes to you as you view the photo. (A traditional haiku is 3 lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 syllables.)

 Fall's crimson angels

Dance around compassion's face

And then fall earthward.

Life is Hard. Math is Harder.

Do you remember when parents would come to see what their little urchins do in elementary school all day? I remember one such evening in third grade. My classmates offered MOMA-worthy collages and watercolors. Feeling less creatively-inclined, I filled half a chalkboard with a complex math problem that was above third-grade mastery. I felt a deep sense of accomplishment with my numerical art. It seemed that with enough persistence, every problem had a solution.

Living life as a math problem to be solved, however, yields some lousy equations. One that I'm particularly aware of is:

Life = hard = can't keep up = shouldn't be this way.

When that's been my basic operating equation, I've noticed three responses:

• Walking around with a sense of weary heaviness
• Escaping into fantasyland or addictive/compulsive behavior
• Erecting numbing walls that block out heaviness (but also joy and love)

What would happen if I changed my equation? In fact, what if I simply threw out equations altogether? What if I started living life less as a math problem to be solved and more as a work or art that is unfolding organically? What if I trusted the Flow of Life?

This transition from math class to art class is a process, and I'm learning as I go. One tool that is helping is the phrase: "That's not my problem."

• When the old equations start calculating the future, I say, "That's not my problem. Future Scott will handle that just fine."
• When the past demands that its numbers add up, I reply, "That's not my problem. Scott did his best with the resources and level of awareness he had back then."
• When I simply can't control or solve a problem in the present, I respond, "That's not my problem. The position of God has already been filled."

Fortunately, life is like a chalkboard. We can always erase our equations and start over.

The Heart of Jesus

The other day I was speaking with a woman about her experience of Christianity. After having explored various other religions, she has gained a new perspective. She said, "Christianity is a religion of the heart, but we've turned it into a religion of the head." I immediately resonated with her insight. Every religion has a particular gift to offer. Buddhism awakens us from our illusions through practices that still the mind's chatterbox. Judaism stokes the fires of social consciousness with a passion for repairing the world as our service to the Divine.

Christianity offers a mystical path of the heart. Jesus was not concerned with creating an institution or promulgating doctrine. Jesus sought to move people from fear to love, from self-preoccupation to selfless service, and from mindless religion to heart-centered engagement.

The purpose of Christianity is that the story and Spirit of Jesus so deeply move us that we simply can no longer be ego-centric. That's it. It's not an intellectual construct or even an article of faith. It's the installation of a new operating system.

This transformation has two movements: letting go of fear-based living (which feels like a crucifixion) so that love-based living arises (a resurrection). When that shift happens, then we "get" Christ; we become a new creation; the old passes away, and all things become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

This path of Jesus is a heart-broken-wide-open. Anything less might look religious, but it's not Christian.

Doggie Shadows

Sometimes I feel like I'm chasing my own tail, round and round and round,

like a whirling dervish unable

to find God at the axis of spinning.

Dizzy and confused, I look down.

The Always Shining Light

shows me I've really been chasing

my own shadow.

When the silhouette is still,

I realize I have a choice.

It has no independent existence.

I can make the shadow wax and wane,

flicker in and out,

simply by shifting my position in the Light.

Realizing the truth,

I no longer need to chase my own tail.

My own shadow

stares back at me.

I finally catch up with myself.