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.

The Open Soul - Part 1

We must let go - even of our ideas about God being good or compassionate

The pursuit of spirituality at its core, is for most, an attempt to connect to the transcendent. From the first story we read in the Judeo-Christian scriptures about Eve who eats the fruit in order to “be more like God,” to modern day spiritual leaders and practitioners, we see the common theme is the human being trying to figure out what mindset, what actions, what emotions one must have to access the divine. The medieval theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart put forth that the place where God speaks, and works had less to do with right action, right emotion or right mindset and more to do with space. Eckhart calls this open space the “potential of receptivity.”[1] He says that we create space through silence and stillness and await a birth within us. “There must be a silence and a stillness, and the Father must speak in that.”[2] Eckhart affirms that this birth has nothing to do with good deeds or religious purity as we think of it but rather, it occurs in both sinners and saints – even those in hell.[3] Eckhart speaks of creating a space through the practice of silence and stillness that is absolute and is far more extreme than most Christian practices. It includes letting go of images,[4] understanding,[5] intellect,[6] memory, sense perceptions, imagination and even ideas about God being good or compassionate.[7]

Can we really let go in this way? Images? Understanding? Intellect? Memory? Sense Perception? Imagination ?

Even our ideas about God being good or compassionate?

How could this be possible?

This kind of extreme emptying of the self is a radically different approach from what is typically seen in religious pursuits. Throughout history, followers of the Christian faith have attempted to understand and control connection to the divine not by letting go of images, understanding, and ideas about the goodness of God, but by pursuing and refining them. Asceticism, holiness, purity, good works, right theology, liturgy and iconography have all served as means by which the religious observer might access God. Beliefs that it is the holy person who will be capable of miracles and who will receive good things from God, or that it is the one who believes rightly who will be saved, or that sin and error will separate us from God are central to most Christian doctrine and practice.

But ….

Christian Scripture disagrees. Much like Eckhart’s ideas about the birth of God occurring equally in saints and sinners, the Scriptures tell us that “the Spirit blows where it wishes,” (John 3:8, NRSV), and God blesses both the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45, NRSV).

The idea of access to the divine being entirely unconditional and free and being disconnected from ideas and actions is a difficult one for most. To disconnect ourselves from ideas about good and evil, light and darkness, right and wrong action  – even the goodness of God seems not only counterintuitive to the pursuit of spirituality, but counter to our very nature as thinking humans. Paradoxically it is the move away from such ideas that is at the heart of Christianity in the doctrine of grace.

[1] Meister Eckhart. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart with foreword by Bernard McGinn, trans. Maurice O’C Walshe. (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2009), 56.

[2] Ibid, 32, 33.

[3] Eckhart, 40.

[4] Ibid, 34.

[5] Ibid, 36.

[6] Ibid, 49.

[7] Ibid, 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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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?

My cynical view on relationships

Imagine the person you love. What if they sacrificed themselves on the altar of your relationship?

In marriage as in most things, we tend to strive for success.  We’ve made a commitment.  We’ve made a promise.  We’ve made vows, “in sickness and in health, til death do us part”  …. or something. 

How would you feel if you went into a marriage being perfectly OK with it failing?  How would you feel if the person you married felt that way? 

It sounds cold, it sounds cynical. 

In my first marriage, which was problematic from the start, we went to a marriage counselor the first year of our marriage.  He led with a statement about how in order to really do good therapeutic work, divorce needed to be an option.  We left and never went back because, for us, it wasn’t an option.  Twelve or so years later, I went to a therapist to work on some anger issues I was having.  She led with a statement about how in order to really do good therapeutic work, I was going to have to be willing to consider ending my marriage as an option.   I stopped seeing her immediately.  It wasn’t an option. 

Of course, if you read my blog you know that my marriage fell apart anyway and divorce, which had never been an option became a reality.   I’ve come to believe that one of the things that contributed to the failure of that relationship was the fact that divorce was not an option.

I know, that sounds weird.  Backward.  Like an oxymoron. 

But there are a lot of deeply spiritual principles that are backward, upside-down, oxymoronic.

Love your enemies.

Blessed are those that mourn.

Rejoice in suffering.

Lose your life to find it.

It’s the final one that speaks to my cynical view on relationships.  And here’s why.  If failure is not an option, then the game becomes about survival and success and not about love. If the goal is success, then one or both people in the relationship may stop being authentic and lose touch with what they want and who they are.  If the goal is survival of the relationship, one or both people may essentially give up anything and everything to preserve the relationship.   The problem with that is that if you give up anything and everything, you ultimately lose yourself as well.  You give yourself up in service to the preservation of the relationship.   And then guess what?  It’s not a relationship you are in anymore.  But rather, some version of yourself that you have created that you think will lead to success.  But not the real you.  Not the one that person fell in love with to begin with.  

Relationships take risk.

You have to be brave.

You have to embrace death to live. 

You have to be able to say, “This is me.  This is what I want.  This is who I am and what kind of relationship I’m interested in.” 

You have to be able to say, “If that’s not what you want, that’s OK, but I’m not willing to lose myself in order to save the relationship.” 

and….

“I don’t want you to either.”  

Some might disagree and say that the ultimate romantic move is for someone to give everything up for them. 

“This is how we know what love is, to lay down one’s life for another.”

But laying down one’s life is vastly different than being fake and living a lie.   Laying down one’s life certainly means sacrifice, but it doesn’t mean dishonesty.  

Imagine the person you love. What if they sacrificed themselves on the altar of your relationship? What if they quit doing what they love, gave up their passions, stopped being THEM for you? Can you imagine what a tragedy it would be? How BORING it would be to be with that shell of who they really are?

The times that I’ve had the courage to say to my husband, “This is me and this is what I want and if this is not what you want it’s OK.”   THOSE were the times I was laying down my life.  I was putting my heart out there to get broken in the name of honesty.  In the name of being true to myself and in the name of allowing him to be true to who he is and what he wants. 

Those other times?  When I was pretending to be something else, or cramming myself into a box that I thought might please?   Those times I was trying to force my agenda on him and asked him to be dishonest about what he wanted so that I would be more comfortable? That wasn’t laying down my life, that was just living a falsehood in order to control an outcome.  

To lay down your life is the ultimate risk, the ultimate surrender.  It involves no control of any kind.  

Because love can only exist where there is freedom.  

“The law brings death, but the spirit of grace brings life.”

The shame of suffering

We become resilient not by denying the reality of brokenness or our feelings of vulnerability and shame but by naming them within relationships of safety and empathy.

This article is about a little girl that died. And about how her parents and her church could not accept their grief. And for six days they prayed for her body to be resurrected.

It says so much about power, religion, lament and shame.

“…shame is the primary biological force that evil uses to disrupt and disconnect us from one another and the reality of God’s love. When our faith isn’t strong enough to remove suffering or conquer death, we often feel deep shame over our insufficiency, an experience that gets reinforced by Christian culture’s over-emphasis on the power of faith to produce healing. Suffering is often treated like something worth praying away rather than a meaningful experience through which we might all better know the God who chose to suffer. When suffering lingers, we often become isolated in shame, suffering silently and privately instead of being pitied or further shamed by endless prayers for healing.”

Read it here:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/wakeupolive-heiligenthal-bethel-church-miracle-doesnt-come.html?fbclid=IwAR1QiBmWbm_OSiv4Mmq0VG5AM2m0qSMybYmZr2zYK9oEDIkkiZTOMvPT5VQ

Girl Talk - Part 3 - Paint the Barn Door

It means to put on make-up.

In the FB group where I asked women for the best, most toxic phrases they’ve been given as girl advice, one woman posted that she was taught that woman should be sure to “paint the barn door” before their husbands get home from work. 

Several of us had to ask what that even meant, so she enlightened us.  It means to put on make-up. 

Not only is this supposed to be good advice for women, it’s supposed to be someone’s idea of good “Christian” advice for women. I guess they didn’t read the verse that says that our beauty is not supposed to come from “outward adornment.”

What is the purpose of advice of this type?  It is a message of control.   If we make ourselves as beautiful as we can, we will “keep our man.”  We are in control. 

There are so many versions of this out there.  Some years ago, I was in a women’s bible study, in which the writer of the course said she always makes sure her make up is on and hair is done before her husband leaves in the morning so that the last image he has of her is one of beauty.  This, she stated, would help him resist temptation when he encountered beautiful women “out there” because he would remember he had a beautiful woman at home. 

Is that the kind of society we want to create?!  A world where men are helpless and we hold control over them with our beauty?    Maybe, for some, it is. 

This kind of quest for control comes at a price.  The notion that women are in control of men’s sexual behaviors is one of the issues in rape culture.  A woman is asked, “what were you wearing?” “why were you in that place?” etc… as though she could have controlled the situation with her appearance or behavior.  We cannot expect to put forth messages that perpetuate the myth that women are responsible for men’s sexual behavior, and not expect a backlash in which victims of sexual misconduct are blamed. 

This way of thinking does men such a disservice as well.  Imagine if you were raised with the message that the way another person LOOKED would cause you to either behave well, or badly.  How out of control would you feel?   One woman in the discussion said her husband felt that this type of a message is demeaning to men – and he’s right!  This message of disempowerment is as destructive to men as it is to women. 

Another problem with this type of a message is it makes sexuality about fear and control.  The hidden message is, “I’m afraid my husband will cheat.  I need to do something about it.  I can control his fidelity with my beauty. I need to put on make-up, get a boob-job, diet more, get collagen fillers, botox” ……. and the list never ends because if a little control is good, more is even better.   As long as we operate from this mindset, we can expect that our sex lives will be about fear and control, and not about love and intimacy.   

My first husband was unfaithful.  When we were going through counseling, I tried and tried to figure out what I had done or not done, and what I could do or not do to prevent it.  Maybe if I had been more of this, less of that; prettier, thinner, – something. 

Anything. 

Maybe if I had prayed more or better.  Maybe …… 

And make no mistake, he tried to convince me it was my fault as well. 

I attended a support group at the time and looked around at the array of spouses who had been betrayed;  smart, not-smart, successful, unsuccessful, beautiful, not so beautiful, thin, not thin.  Their stories were as varied as they were.   There was no pattern to it.  It seemed that pretty much anyone could be betrayed for any reason whatsoever or for no reason at all.   My therapist asked me this question, “would there have been anything he could have done or not done that would have caused you to cheat?”  I knew the answer was no and then I knew that there was nothing I could have done or not done that would have kept him faithful.  His behavior belonged to him.  

You would think this would have been a relief and in one way it was, but in another it was not.  As long as I thought there was something I could DO (i.e paint the barn door or something), I had some shred of control.   Once I realized there was nothing I had done or could do, I felt no control whatsoever.   Then, and only then, did I understand the nature of love.  Love is freely given, without trying to control the other person.  You hope the person will love you back, for who you are and not for your paint-job.  You hope they will stay with you as your paint starts to crack and peel, but, sometimes they don’t, and your heart breaks.  

….but, there is someone who will. 

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It's my fault

The thing about blame is it lets us feel in control.

When things in life don’t go as planned – who’s to blame? 

Sometime we blame others and sometimes it’s warranted.  Sometimes we blame others and it’s really not. 

Sometimes we blame ourselves and it’s warranted.   Sometimes it is our fault.  We didn’t show up, we didn’t keep our promise, we didn’t put in the effort that was required. 

And sometimes it’s not our fault, but we blame ourselves anyway.   I’m not good enough, not loveable enough, not hard-working enough, not thin enough, not forceful enough, not gentle enough. 

It’s my fault. 

It’s funny how, even when we’re not to blame, we often still like to make it our fault. 

“If I had just ….”

“If I could only….”

“If I were more….”

“If I were less …….”

The thing about blame is it lets us feel in control.  If it’s my fault, I can fix it, change, control it, prevent it from happening the next time.  If it’s my fault, it’s not random, arbitrary and out of my control. 

I have spent a lot of wasted effort in my life trying to change things about myself or my situation in order to avoid pain.   I say wasted effort because many times I wasn’t to blame and all the gymnastics I did to try to fix the situation amounted to nothing.  At the end of the day, I can’t be anyone other than myself – nor can anyone else.  And that’s no one’s fault – it’s just the truth. 

We don’t like how the world just randomly hands us things – things we don’t want, things we never asked for, things that are painful, things we can’t control.  So whether it’s the fault of another person, whom we can’t control or there is no one and nothing to blame, we find we are out of control. 

We'd rather be at fault. 

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