The Open Soul - Part 7

Christ Crucified is an invitation into meaninglessness

Can human beings make meaning in the world if they have let go of ideas of good and evil, light and darkness, even God to such a degree?

The apostle Paul spoke of this when he said that Jews were looking for signs and Greeks for wisdom, but he preached only Christ crucified. (1 Corinthians 1:22-25). To Jews, signs were a way of interpreting God’s favor and making meaning through power,[1] and to Greeks knowledge and understanding satisfied the human impulse to make meaning through making sense of things. 

Christ crucified is the breakdown of the use of power to move to a more ideal situation and a breakdown of what makes sense. “It is the absence of divine confirmation of human values.” [2] In this way it not a way to make meaning, but is an invitation into meaninglessness, or as Meister Eckhart might say, into nothingness.

[1] Paul Hessert. Christ and the End of Meaning: The Theology of Passion. (Rockport MA: Element Inc., 1993. Out of Print), 19.

[2] Hessert, 26.

The Open Soul - Part 6

Jesus was inviting them to let go of everything – even God .

Immediately following Peter’s rejection of reality, Jesus speaks to his disciples about self-denial, 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  (Matthew 16:24-25, NRSV).

The self-denial that he spoke of was not fasting, or sexual abstinence, it was not giving up sleep or fun as many of the church fathers presumed, but was the emptying Miester Echkart described - an emptying of self, a kenosis that consents to be nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing.

Jesus was inviting them to let go of everything – even God (himself). In this kind of emptying, the self becomes a no-thing, sin becomes a no-thing and even more radically, God becomes no-thing.

Peter Rollins states that “speaking of God is never speaking of God but only ever speaking about our understanding of God.”[1] Our self-denial must be absolute, including even our ideas of God and our grasp on God. Our ideas of God are idols.

Simone Weil echoes Eckhart again when she says that God cannot be contained and thus our intuitions are tainted by human imagination and fantasy.[2] In this way, faith requires that God must become a no-thing to us, because God is necessarily not an object.[3] Weil adds that the object of attention must be nonexistent for another reason as well. Spiritual life is perfected in attention made of God’s love for God. Thus, the subject and object are identical with the activity of attention itself. This attention leads us deeper into the nonexistence of the object of attention.[4]

Perhaps the most radical aspect of this is the letting go Eckhart speaks of – letting go even ideas about God being good or compassionate.[5]

[1] Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, (Brewster Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2006), 34.

[2] Simone Weil. Gravity and Grace, trans. Arthur Wills (Lincoln Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1997) 147-149.

[3] Hase Shoto. “The Structure of Faith: Nothingness-qua-Love” in The Religious Philosophy of Tanabe Hajme: The Metanoetic Imperative. trans. T. Unno and J. Heisig (Berkely: Asian Humanities Press, 1990, 90-96.

[4] Simone Weil. Waiting for God. (Pennsylvania: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1st ed., 2009) 107, 112.

[5] Eckhart, 55.

Authority

Jesus refused to play the authority game.

Jesus prayed:

“the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. … I ask that  they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.”  John 17:14, 21

What is Jesus asking here? 

What is his prayer about? 

He is saying that we do not “belong to the world” in the same way he does not. 

He is also saying that he wants us to be one with God in the same way he is one with God. 

In what way was Jesus one with God?  A lot of metaphors are used.  He was God’s son.  He was God in flesh.  He was God.

But what happens to us if WE are one with God in this same way? 

We are God’s child? We are OK with that

We are God in flesh? Wait, getting into territory we can’t deal with

We are God? Nope - heresy

This great heresy was first committed by Jesus, when he made claims to be God’s son, god in flesh … God.  His culture rejected it in the same way we reject the statements above when they are made about us.  These are things we are not supposed to say, or believe. 

But perhaps, this is nothing more than an expression of a state of consciousness.  A state of consciousness that realizes that all is one.  That we and the divine ground of being are one, just as Jesus and God were one. 

That his prayer has been answered.

Most people who have had this revelation, or an experience of this oneness, keep their mouths shut for fear of being thought crazy, or a heretic. 

After all, Jesus had this revelation, Jesus lived in this consciousness and he was crucified for it.

If you believe God is an absolute omnipotent, omniscient, cosmic-ego type of authority, then to claim to be God is to introduce democracy into the kingdom of heaven, to usurp divine authority and to speak in its name without proper authorization.

When Jesus made such democratic claims:  when he claimed he could forgive sins, when he healed, the religious folks asked,  

 “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?” Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me.” They argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But shall we say, ‘Of human origin’?”—they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet. So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”

In other words, Jesus refused to play the authority game.  It’s not a contest of authority in the spiritual realm.  It is a shared oneness.  Oneness that says we can also forgive sins, heal others, and more.  Jesus said we would do even greater things than he did.  He was not worried about being the ultimate authority.

Jesus was happy to make it democratic.  He was happy for us to be one with the divine force in the same way that he was. 

He hoped we would believe this and act upon it.  He hoped we would say to mountains in our lives to be cast into the sea, and it would happen.  He said that when we forgave someone, they were forgiven.  That’s a lot of authority.  God-like in fact.    

 Religion tells us that what we say must be authorized by some other authority (i.e. Moses, Jesus, Paul, etc..)  It cannot be our own. WE are not allowed to be an authority. 

Heaven forbid! 

Chaos would break out!  

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Certainty IS the sand

They think they have built their houses on a rock – a rock of biblical certainty, when in fact they have built them on the sand that IS certainty. 

Usually, people come to religion looking for certainty.  Looking for answers.  Looking for assurances and comfort in a world full of chaos and uncertainty. 

And they usually “find it.”  Or at least end up feeling like they’ve found it.

An examination of religion reveals that it rejects uncertainty in all its forms. Religion names definitively what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false.  You might think that there is a contradiction between religion’s rejection of science and its rejection of certainty.  Isn’t science revealing facts and religion is rejecting those facts – thus rejecting certainty?   

The mistake we make is to think there are scientific certainties.  If we zoom out and look back over the course of scientific exploration, we see that most things that were accepted as scientific certainties, were later rejected as false.  The earth is not flat but round.  The atom is NOT the smallest particle of matter.  Gravity does not behave as we thought and disease is not from demon possession, bad humors, bathing or fresh air. 

This kind of ever-moving, ever-changing understanding is frustrating and maybe even a little bit terrifying to the person who is looking for certainty.  Most recently we’ve been witnessing this frustration and fear centered around COVID and how the science has unfolded.  Each time information about COVID and vaccines was given to the public, it changed.  Of course, it changed because that is the nature of science, one piece of information leads to another and the body of knowledge changes continuously.  But, nevertheless, this has led to widespread distrust of the science around it all.  How can it be true if they keep changing the information?  To be clear, much of the information that was put out there was stated to the public as though it were certain.  Maybe this was done to try to calm people’s fears, like when we tell someone, “it’ll all be OK” when in fact we know no such thing.  Or maybe just out of ego – who knows.  It was a  mistake.  When we tell people something is a fact, then change that fact – especially when the “fact” may have life and death implications for them – we risk losing their trust.  And so, religious folk have rejected science at least in part because it does not provide them with the certainty they seek.  It contradicts the certainty they believe they have based on their religion.   They think they have built their houses on a rock – a rock of biblical certainty, when in fact they have built them on the sand that IS certainty. 

As a culture we have no idea how to remain calm in the face of uncertainty. 

Thousands are deconstructing their ideas about religion, god and spirituality and leaving churches en masse because of this very thing.  Religion told them it had some facts.  Turns out those facts might not be certain. 

If we are to navigate this life, and maybe even survive, we have to learn how to hold uncertainty because the thing is – we just don’t know. 

We can decide that’s terrifying or we can decide that’s fun.  It’s up to us. 

Life and whatever is beyond this life can be one big exploration.  Turning a corner to discover there is always another corner to turn.  Or it can be paralyzing as we maintain an agenda to find the answer, solve the puzzle, get to the bottom of this endless, wondrous, mysterious bottomless pit. 

Spirituality is the embrace of mystery.  Dive in and keep going!

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The spot you are headed to

Release your responses and return to a place of rest.

“ It was evening and had grown quite dark and Jesus had not yet returned. His disciples went down to the sea, got in the boat, and headed back across the water to Capernaum. A huge wind blew up, churning the sea. They were maybe three or four miles out when they saw Jesus walking on the sea, quite near the boat. They were scared senseless, but he reassured them, “It’s me. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.” So they took him on board and immediately they reached land—the exact spot they were headed to” John 6:16-21

This was the passage that was read to me in a guided meditation called “Lectio Divina” recently. If you’ve never heard of Lectio Divina, it is the practice of a contemplative interaction with a text - usually a sacred or religious text of some kind. Everyone does it just a little different, but my favorite method is:

1) Rest. Take a moment to become still and present to the moment. Breathe, close your eyes and become relaxed. Express your willingness to open to the voice of spirit.

2) Read. Choose a short passage - read it slowly. Listen for a word or phrase that is addressed to you. What jumps our at you? What “shimmers”? Allow for a few moments of silent repetition of the word or phrase. Savor it. Ponder it. Listen to it without judging or analyzing.

3) Reflect. Read the passage again. Slowly. Listen for how this passage connects with your life. What do you need to hear.

4) Respond. Read the passage a third time. Slowly. This time, imagine yourself in the story. Who are you in the scene? What do you hear, see, smell, feel? How is this connected to your life? What is your response? Allow your response to flow spontaneously from your heart as fully and as truly as you can. At this point you are entering into a personal dialogue with spirit “sharing the feelings the text has aroused in you, feelings such as love, joy, sorrow, anger, remorse, desire, need, conviction, consecration. “ Observe your response without judging.

5) Rest. Release your responses and return to a place of rest. This is a posture of yieldedness and abandon.

6) Record. Journal about the experience.

So, in my interaction with the story from John 6, it occurred to me that as soon as the disciples saw Jesus in the situation and took him in, they were at their destination. Is this some miracle where Jesus got them to shore immediately? Or is it that when we take the Christ consciousness into our boat, we are immediately present and thus at the spot we need to be at. It’s so easy to miss the sacred in a difficult situation. It’s so natural to fight, resist and shut down out of fear. We don’t see the spirit in the storms, we just strive to find peace or to come ashore. But as soon as we are able to hear the voice of the sacred that says “I’m here - don’t be afraid” and we take the sacred into our boat, we are already at our destination. There is nowhere further to get to. We are home.

I am doing some work in counseling these days. By work in counseling, I mean work on myself, in myself. Pulling up some stuff that I’ve shoved down. Dealing with it and more importantly feeling it. I have a tremendous capacity for compartmentalization. I can set things aside so that I am not slowed down by them. I can tell you about my feelings, but actually feeling them in my body is much harder. It makes me tired. I don’t like to be tired. It slows me down and keeps me from doing all the things.

I’m trying to see the sacred in the tired. Welcome it into my boat. Sleep. Let it take me to the exact spot I am headed to - this moment.

To Comment click on the header “The spot you are headed to”

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Freedom - we hate it

The freer the world becomes, the more anxious it becomes. 

We hate it.

We are terrified of it.

Oh sure, we say we love it.  As Americans it is our thing.  The land of the free, the home of the brave. 

But we AREN’T brave in the face of freedom. 

What we love is rules. 

Rules keep us safe.

Rules keep the other guy from running the red light and killing us.

Rules keep charlatans from selling us poison marketed as a cure.

Rules keep strangers from entering our homes and taking our possessions. 

Or at least in theory. 

We don’t want complete freedom.

Freedom is anarchy and we don’t want that. 

We only want freedom to the extent that it means that we are free to create a set of rules to live by.  We don’t want OTHER people to make the rules.  That’s a dictatorship. 

Like a teenager that can’t wait to get out from under his parent’s rules. WE want to make the rules. WE want the control. That feels like freedom.

But of course, that’s not really freedom for anyone else.

The trouble lies in creating a world that is equally free for everyone.

The trouble comes when we can’t agree on the rules. 

If the rule we like is a rule that says no one can kill another person, we want the freedom to live by that rule and to enforce that rule upon others.  This helps us feel our world is a safe place. 

If the rule we like is a rule that says that no one can kill an unborn child, we want the freedom to live by that rule and to enforce that rule upon others.  This helps us feel our world is a safe place.   

If the rule is that this war is a just war, we want the freedom to fight it so that our enemy does not overtake us.  It helps us feel that our world is a safe place. 

If the rule we like is a rule that says that everyone should be vaccinated, we want the freedom to live by that rule and to enforce that rule upon others.  This helps us feel out world is a safe place. 

Rules will keep us from being killed.  Rules will define what exactly killing IS, when it’s murder and when it’s not.  Rules will help us feel that the other guy has to take me and my loved ones into consideration when making his choices.  His freedom is not absolute. 

But what if we feel UNSAFE because of a rule that makes someone else feel safe? 

What if I feel unsafe in a world where abortion is illegal?  What if I feel unsafe taking a vaccine?  What if I feel unsafe in a world where my child could encounter unvaccinated children?  What if I feel unsafe in a world where my child might go to war? 

In situation after situation, freedoms that make you feel safe, will make me feel unsafe. 

So…. we don’t really love freedom.   

We love rules. 

Freedom creates chaos and chaos creates anxiety. 

The freer the world becomes, the more anxious it becomes. 

Anxiety is the evidence that I am free and don’t know how to be free or how to let others be free. 

What should I do with my life?   The choices are endless because I am free.

Who should I marry?   The choices are endless because I am free.

What is my purpose?   The choices are endless because I am free.

What if screw it up? 

What if, my loved one, because she is free, leaves me?

What if my neighbor, because he is free, kills me?

What if, because I live in a democracy, my government enforces taxes upon me? 

What if those taxes fund wars?  Abortions?  Big pharma?  Big oil? 

What if our freedom leads to the destruction of the planet?

What if……

Freedom is nothing more than an infinite set of what ifs. 

We like rules.   

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The World is Burning

We must not look away

We must not look away. We live in a time of racism, xenophobia, and rampant misogyny; a time of nationalism, capitalism, and open bigotry; a time of climate collapse and mass extinction that may well count us among its casualties. So many of us are adherents or former adherents of the most dangerous faith the world has yet known. My friends, don’t you see the world is burning?

https://christiansocialism.com/white-evangelicalism-psychoanalysis-politics/

I'm Tired

Tired of the shit show

I’m tired. 

Aren’t you tired? 

Tired of the shit show in politics that we’ve been watching for god knows how long?

Aren’t you tired?

Tired of everything being a fight, a contest, an exercise in us vs. them?

Aren’t you tired?

Tired of Black people being killed?  And women being raped? And refugees being put in camps?  And innocent folks being locked up and killed by the justice system?

Aren’t you tired?

Tired of being used as a pawn in someone else’s quest for power and control?

Aren’t you tired?

Tired of being told who your enemy is, when in fact, you need not even have one?

Aren’t you tired?

Tired of worrying about whether or not you will have security in your retirement or healthcare tomorrow?  Tired of wondering if our financial system is about to collapse?

Aren’t you tired?

Tired of working, and working and working while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?

Aren’t you just tired?

I am. 

Meaningless, meaningless

Today, god affirms the meaninglessness of all evil…

“Today god affirms the meaninglessness of all evil and the shitty randomness of all that is shitty and random. Today is for the countless victims of the unfair trial, today is for the needlessly downtrodden, today is against the lynchings and pogroms carried out in the name of this crucified messiah. Today there is no deeper meaning to your depression, to your divorce or to the death of your child The death of the Christ affirms what you knew in your gut all along, that your trauma is utterly meaningless. Today there is no grand plan. Today, guilt lies firmly at the feet of the abusers and injustice remains wholly unjust. Everything that is random remains divinely…. random” Adam Dawkins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0cefepgtGs&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

Chaos

…you did not recognize the time of god’s coming to you

I’m writing this during the COVID-19 crisis.  People are practicing social distancing, there’s no toilet paper to be had …. anywhere.   Stores and businesses are closing.  It feels like chaos.   Folks are losing their jobs, their retirement accounts, their peace of mind.  

In the Bible, Luke 19, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and says,

“If only you could know what brings peace, but it is hidden from your eyes…. Because you did not recognize the time of god’s coming to you”

The back story here is that the Israelite nation was about to enter a period of destruction and chaos. Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and they would be overtaken by their enemies and “dashed to the ground.” 

Not a happy time. 

Not at peaceful time.

It feels a little like that right now with what’s going on with COVID 19.  Not happy.  Not peaceful.  

I get why Jesus might be talking about knowing what brings peace.  We all look for peace during chaotic times.  But why is Jesus talking about “the time of god’s coming to you?”

What could this mean?

We usually equate “god’s coming to us” with good things.  Beautiful events.  Moments of awe and wonder.  Victories.  Light and joy and all that good stuff.

Chaos is not disorder. Chaos is the totality of existence. You could call it God. You could use the term, the Tao. I like chaos. It means more to us in English. Chaos is all things, wild and wonderful, connected perfectly by the life force. Frederick Lenz

Could chaos also be god coming to us?

Could the chaos that occurs within a cell when it mutates and creates something novel be god coming to us?

Could the chaos in ecological systems that maintains the equilibrium of the planet be god coming to us?

Could the chaos in economic and political systems that correct imbalances of power be god coming to us?

Could god come to us through death and destruction?