Prayer beyond words

It’s clearer to me these days that prayer is not words - that if I am trying to find words, or asserting words, even ones I know have truth in them - I’m not getting anywhere. I need to stop. I need to let the whole field of words clear out.

Sometimes I ask a question, like, “what does God know about this?” and then let myself be quiet and still, listening for the answer instead of trying to construct it from my own theory base. Theory is useless. It is the actual fact of the presence of Truth that can tell me what I need to understand.

I build on my experience of what Truth feels like - the fresh, open-air invigoration, the solid and calm reassurance, the unmovable strength of fact. I enter into the wide chamber of light, and let the light burn away all the dust on the edges. I know I’m really praying if I feel the “peace, be still” of Love, dissolving the anxious shoulder-set of feared inadequacy, gathering and bundling me, and whoever I’m thinking of, in the resolution of acceptance and approbation.

At our last spiritual formation gathering, Joyce led us in a reflection on the Lord’s Prayer. After having us listen to it sung, and sharing with us some prayers others had written following its structure, she gave us a piece of paper with each phrase of the prayer on a separate line, and space next to it for us to write our reflections. First I turned the paper over and wrote: no words. I wanted to avoid the much-trodden territory of intellectual thought on the prayer. I wanted anything I wrote to be the result of listening.

Then I turned the paper over and started in the middle, proceeding down and up, just when I heard something. She ended the exercise before I was done, but I still felt what I had was worth sharing. It went like this:

Perfect One
Determiner of everything
- really everything -
You are the Mind, the pattern, the One
And you choose to be - and make everything be - Love
In this warm chamber of light where all things move and love,
Your will is done.

Heaven over earth. Heaven gets to decide what is. Earth must reflect heaven.
You’re the one that knows everything, and You establish it.

You know what I need. You amply supply it. Let me not be so tied up in what I think I need that I can’t move forward. Let me listen and hear what You provide.

You know who I am. You have always known. Let me not presume to assert anything about myself. Let me let You do the talking. Let You speak for me.

Let me offer to each heart a forgiveness bigger than I have a right to give alone, but which I can give because it is Your truth. You love them. You always have. That’s all that matters. This comfort is Yours to give each of them. Let me just reflect this to them, whenever I can.

It’s not a prayer to say the words, but the words that came up expressed my prayer. Still, I need to be sure to insist upon the real thing. Words can be so seductive, especially when they’re pretty. Words can invoke an attractive drama, one in which I get to play the emotional role they assign - whether it is one of foundness or lostness, triumph or despair. Any emotion is a false floor. Communion lies deep beneath emotion, where the circuit connects silently, with unarguable brightness and authority.

Taking thought

I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. Jesus’ query in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:27) “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?”

A cubit is about a foot, so the answer to this would be obvious: of course I can’t decide to make myself a foot taller. The implied conclusion is startling. If I can’t make myself taller by thinking about it, why should I think I have the responsibility for doing anything else about myself? Why would I think I would be created - out of the whole cloth of thought, an expression of the infinite Mind, and then be left with the responsibility of finishing myself? If Mind could make me with this much intricacy, why leave it up to me to determine how strong, how fit, how beautiful I am? Why would Mind make me weak in the midsection, tight in the hamstrings, stiff in movement, or awkward in social situations? Why should there be a battery of things I need to work on in myself to make myself better?

It was a concept that was hard for me to give up - that my life was a daily challenge to improve myself - mentally, socially, physically. I found myself confronted with the concern of what would happen if I didn’t mind these things: I would become a slob, less and less able to move as I wanted to. I would be uninteresting, unattractive. My life would be empty. I confronted the same concern in raising my kids: if I didn’t keep on them to eat well, exercise well, and learn new things all the time, I would be consigning them to inferior lives.

I’ve been trying on a new approach. It is to find the centered stillness that opens up to the vastness of being, to dwell in “the secret place” - the consciousness of the One, and how it controls everything through love. I let myself feel the central order, and the lovely dance that unfolds in all living things - each in itself and intertwining with all others. I realize that God (good) governs the whole thing, giving us each our movement and our power to move, our grace and our graciousness. I let go of thinking I can do anything to orchestrate events, and instead give myself over to the movement of Spirit in me.

Spirit is not inert, so reflecting Spirit, I will be active. Love is not isolated, so reflecting Love, I will be in warm and dynamic interaction. Soul is not ungainly, so reflecting Soul, I will be enough, in my being. I don’t need to take thought for myself. And I don’t need to take thought for my kids, or train them to take thought for themselves. I can let go and notice how Mind is gently putting us all in our perfect place.

I’m seeing good results from this approach. My family is more harmonious, our lives together happier and more graceful. I find myself able to move with a new ease - in walking, in dancing, in interacting with people. And I’ve found a fountain of energy - relaxed, powerful, and full of joy - in surrender to the action of Life.

In the last two days I felt the Christ leading me.
I.
I started off on my bike ride, feeling a little unsettled at the aborted get together I was now not going to have with my friend. My erstwhile friend, I thought. She had reserved the right to cancel if she got too busy, but she hadn’t called me, and I hadn’t been able to reach her. So I decided to just take a bike ride, and was happy about that, because it was a good day for it. I came back just after I’d started because I’d forgotten my cell phone, and decided to check my email one more time. There was the message from her, saying, sorry, I just can’t. Maybe things will slow down next quarter. I hope all is well. Take care.

As I rode off, I contemplated my response. Delete. Just delete - no response. I tried to reestablish connection, but it’s simply not a priority for her. Let it go. And I thought of responding: Whatever. Just that. Then she would know I was hurt, which would be incomprehensible to her, and stupid of me. Bridge burning. Then I collected myself, I reminded myself that I’m willing to be led by the Christ, willing to let go of my own interpretation and see things in whatever way made sense. And the word came to me - I am in charge of your life. I am the source of all that you need. I arrange all relationships, and you don’t have to worry about it.

As I thought further, it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t the right time for that get together. Not because of dates or schedules, but because my thought wasn’t right for it. The day before I had walked with another friend, who had asked me about this relationship. I had accounted some of the things that I had learned from it, some of the way I had let myself be hurt by it, and the time it had taken me to get over it. I realized that, though I may have had a clear thought when I tried to arrange the get together, I was now at a different place, a kind of a tentative, vulnerable but guarded state, hoping for acceptance.

So I let my thought be lifted. I let myself feel the enveloping care of Spirit, wrapping me up, giving me power and light. I let myself feel the gentle infusing of the Christ, like soft, sweet rain, aligning all relationships. Showing that love is the only thing that ever makes sense, and that in love, there’s no tally about whose turn it is to give, or what an outside observer would see as just. In every case, there’s one opportunity for me, and that’s to bring forth whatever Love creates in this moment. Sometimes it will seem miraculous; sometimes it will just seem like the right touch. Always it will make me feel impossibly blessed, awed and grateful, alive in a way I hadn’t thought could be.

Then I knew the right response to the email: OK. Maybe we’ll reconnect at some point when the time is right. love, Wendy. No need for me to outline how that connection would be established, or if it would. Just to let it be, with everything else, under the sweet alignment of that which gives us all everything we need.

II.
My daughter was running late. She had been up late the night before, making preparations for the student literary evening at her school - practicing her piece, making cookies. Now she was trying to get it all together. I was taking up some of the slack, making her sandwich, making a snack for her to eat after school while they prepared. My son came down a little early and flopped in the chair. It was my daughter’s day to put the rabbit out, and I thought it would be really helpful if he would do it for her that once. He wouldn’t.

I reminded myself what I was learning, that there are always two sides to human opinions but neither of them can provide what the people yearn for. So I didn’t press my son about the rabbit, and I encouraged my daughter not to do so either. But I didn’t quite reach the place of understanding - I found myself feeling a bit annoyed with my son, and even speaking to him a little shortly when he asked me to do a last thing for him in the moments when I was trying to get everyone out the door. After they left I remembered.

The only thing anyone ever wants is love. They may learn that the way to reap the greatest feeling of love is to do kind things for others. But there are some times when we all just want to be loved. If my son wasn’t feeling compelled to be kind to his sister, the remedy was for him to feel more loved. There wasn’t any need for me to go down the path about whether I was neglecting his training not to try to make him be kind. It’s impossible to make someone be kind, anyway. The only thing he could learn from was my example, and shrill demands that he be nicer were at the least hypocritical. I saw how, once again, the Christ comes down between all human opinions and stances, neutralizing them, diffusing them, and giving that which everyone really wants but no one, without that touch of unjudging love, knows how to get.

III.
I was praying about the Middle East, Israel and Palestine particularly. There is so much screaming about who is wrong and what the other side needs to do so that things can move forward. I may have my strong human opinions about it, but human opinions are useless. The Christ is the only thing that can solve the problem. The Christ, defined as “the true idea voicing good, . . . speaking to the human consciousness,”* is an impulse to individual thought which takes the quantum leap beyond all the human prerequisites for peace (things the other party needs to change) and shows each person, right where they are, how to love. The result may be an act of miraculous courage or wisdom. It may be a very simple step. It may come from one person, or another. It may be a quiet uprising that sees a way through that no-one ever thought of. It won’t be because one person is better than another, and the ones who make the difference won’t hold themselves up as virtuous. No one will be asked to pay for the good that comes. It will simply be what makes sense. When human opinions are set aside and the Christ is allowed to speak, the result is peace.

*Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332.

My neighbor as myself

I had a dream early Monday morning in which I felt deep emotions - strong love for the characters in the dream, a sense of the importance of the things in their lives going in the right way for them.

On the bus Monday, a woman didn’t want to move her backpack off the chair next to her to give me a seat. She asked me to ask another person, who was also taking up two seats, to move. While I was hesitating, the young woman across the aisle offered me her seat. I hesitated there, too, unwilling to have her stand in my stead, but she indicated a vacant seat farther back which I hadn’t seen, and moved to it.

Sitting in the seat she left, I felt a little discomfited by the exchange - happy enough to have a seat but uncomfortable that someone else had moved for me; wondering if the young man in the seat next to me was her partner and I was causing them to be separated, wondering about the woman with the backpack. I had noticed the helmet on her pack when I still thought she was going to move it, as I expected, for me to sit down, so I surmised she had her bike on the bus. I then noticed that there was also a fold-up bike inside the bus, taking the space of three seats that fold up for a wheel chair to be accommodated. I wondered if it was hers (it turned out to be). I had been more comfortable asking her to move her backpack than asking the other person - a rather flamboyant person of dubious sex who was deeply involved with something with a large antenna - to stop lounging diagonally over two seats.

Then I had a thought: what if all the people I see on the bus are characters in my own dream? Because the emotions from my morning dream were still lingering, this was not a dismissive thought. It had two accompanying parts - one, an opening of my ability to feel love for them; and two, a sense that they were all part of me, all with messages to teach me, all opportunities, tests, as it were, of my ability to love. I considered that perhaps the woman with the backpack was feeling strong in a newfound ability to stand up for herself, to take enough space for herself. I didn’t really think specifically about anyone else on the bus, but as I got off the bus, I found myself thinking of her as someone who had just taught me a great lesson.

I’ve been trying this out, when I think of it, in the days since. My husband will say something to me, and I’ll think, here is a character in my dream. He is mine to love. He is here as an opportunity for me to test my love. And then I’ll respond. My responses then tend to be kinder, because I’m not thinking he should be a certain way. And there’s no place, in thinking of other people, for things like envy, because everything I see is part of my world, and no one else’s.

I’m not saying that I’m the only one that exists. I’m just saying that I’m the only one that exists in my dream. Every other individual is also a perfect reflection of God. But I don’t have the ability to see them that way from within my dream. How I see them in my dream is up to me. And the more I consider my interactions with them as opportunities to love, the more closely, in my dream, I’ll see them as they really are.

Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I’ve been considering, in the last few years, that this can imply that my neighbor is myself. This odd fiction of thinking of everyone I see as a character in my dream, a part of me, can be a working exercise of loving my neighbor as myself. I didn’t think this up and then work on having it happen. It started to happen, and so I started to think about it.

Preparing the soil (more)

Jesus tells a parable about a sower, casting seed. Some of it falls by the wayside, and it gets walked on and the crows eat it; some falls on rocky ground, where it springs up quickly but soon dies; some falls among thorns, where it’s choked by them; and some falls on good ground, where it springs up and bears fruit. Jesus explains that the soil is the Word of God. Those by the wayside are the ones who hear the Word but the devil comes and takes it out of their hearts. Those on rocky ground receive the Word with joy, but have no root within themselves, and soon are offended. Those among the thorns have the Word choked by the “cares and riches and pleasures of this life.” Those on good soil bring forth fruit.

One way I’ve looked at this is to sort of hope that I’m one of the ones with good soil. The sentence from Mary Baker Eddy that I quoted at the top of my last post leads to deeper consideration. She talks about God preparing the soil for the seed. This awakens my awareness that my consciousness is liable to all the conditions in the parable, and that it’s good to be open to receive God’s preparation, because I can sure use it.

The wayside, in my consciousness, is the place whereon the traffic of the world moves - the place where I consider my relative accomplishments and failures, where I try to make a name for myself or at least, within myself, to justify my actions and failures to act. The devil that steals the Word from me is that old paradigm that tries to interpret my experience along a scale of winners and losers, in which worth is a relative commodity which may be earned by some, while others must languish, worthless, in the dust. If I try to interpret any glimpse of the Word within that paradigm, I have lost it. If I think my gains in understanding will help make me better than other people, or better than the person I was before, they won’t be able to do anything - no growth, no fruit.

I have a couple of different thoughts about the rocky ground. One is about when I feel my intention has sprung up fast and then withered. It’s often been when I’ve made a resolution to do something better next time. Then when the next time comes, I find myself in the same struggle. It occurs to me that those resolutions are planted in the belief of temporal life - a state of imperfection that has the possibility of improving along the path through time. Doing well can’t take root in that belief, because doing well needs to be rooted in the fertile knowledge of timeless perfection. If, instead of making a resolution to be better, I find and take in the truth that my being comes from the One sustaining infinite, then my roots can drink and send that truth through everything I do.

I also thought about rocks in terms of what in my consciousness is hard and impermeable. Judgments about others, resentments, self-consciousness, fear. When these are in my thought, I can’t let anything tender in. If I want to bear fruit, I need to let Love prepare the soil by breaking up those hard thoughts with tenderness towards me, melting them away.

As for the thorns - I note that cares and riches and the pleasures of this world can all choke the Word. Cares are not any more virtuous than riches - both of them are material. That is, they act as if certain material conditions determine whether goodness is present or not. The pleasures of the world are the same way. Pleasure is the natural state of being at one with God, but the pleasures of the world say that this good feeling is the result of certain conditions being met. So if I’m following the pleasures of the world, I’m looking for those conditions instead of finding joy here and now.

So I remind myself: God prepares my soil. Love draws my attention to the true things, the ones that absorb the water of Life and nurture sweet seeds. Love compels me to leave the wayside and kneel on the soft ground. Love sends grass and dandelions to break up the rock - experiences that force me to question my assumptions and opinions. Love teaches me to stop spending time among the thorns - stop looking for happiness-engendering conditions and look at present happiness. I am willing to have this be done to me. Which is good, because ultimately I have no other choice.

It Matters Not ...

There’s a place in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy says, “A germ of infinite Truth, though least in the kingdom of heaven, is the higher hope on earth, but it will be rejected and reviled until God prepares the soil for the seed.”

At times I have wondered what about Truth would be rejected and reviled. After all, it’s all good stuff - it’s all about goodness, so why should it be rejected? More recently I asked myself, like what? What germ of infinite Truth would be reviled before the soil was made ready for it? - And then I knew. This one, for example: It doesn’t matter what your material circumstance is (or, as Mrs. Eddy says, “It matters not what be thy lot”).

What does that mean? That it doesn’t matter whether I got what I wanted, it doesn’t matter whether I’m cold and wet or dry and warm, whether I’m rich or poor, whether I have any friends, whether I have succeeded or failed in my life pursuits, or even whether I have failed to try?

Yeah. It really doesn’t matter. But God has to prepare the soil for the seed. What is that? How does God do that?

God prepares the soil of consciousness by so infusing it with the sense of goodness that all sense of material requirements for goodness is overwhelmed. Material things can no longer say that they are needed for goodness to be here, since goodness is so obviously the very substance of being.

Then none of the circumstances of life that I’ve deemed so crucial to my well-being matter, because the good they promised to withhold or deliver is already here.

I’ve visited this concept before. I asked myself, so what would be the incentive for doing anything at all, if I don’t stand to gain anything by it? And I answered, I do things because I’m the expression of Life, and Life is active. I do things because goodness directs me to do them, and I am joyfully humble enough to listen and follow. I do things because I love, and I love to express Love.

It doesn’t matter what my material situation is, but it does matter that I know God is here, and owns each moment. It matters that I notice goodness, and its constancy, and that all my actions proceed from the awareness of goodness. It matters that I keep myself from being deceived into thinking that any picture of someone else being less than good is true.

If my soil isn’t prepared for the seed, I will think it callous to hear that my material circumstances don’t matter. It will sound to me like I don’t matter, or that the standard of goodness demands that I deny goodness for myself. So when I speak to others, I must be very clear in my message that they matter, and this will include careful attention to their creature comforts and to their sense of self-worth. It will include honoring of their stories and their circumstances. It will include compassion for them in whatever difficulties face them.

It is with myself that I have the opportunity to consider that none of these things matter, to be unfazed by cold-and-wetness or lack of sleep, or inattention to my story or disregard of my point of view. And God must prepare my soil for the seed, too. I can only do it as it feels joyfully right, as I move in the consciousness of God’s ever present goodness. I, too, deserve compassion from myself when my consciousness is tangled up in a story. God’s story is always about goodness, and it’s able to reach into any story I might be running and turn me to the consciousness of good.

Digging Ditches, and other spiritual experiences

I’ve taken great pleasure, in the last few weeks, in doing hard physical labor - using a digging bar and a post hole digger to make a deep hole in the ground. The four-foot wide hole goes down three and a half feet, and the narrow post-hole dug one extends an additional four feet down. The last six feet of the excavation is through hardpan - a compacted mixture of clay and sand and rock which needs to be speared with the heavy digging stick to break apart. After the hole got too deep to allow for effective swinging with a shovel, I climbed in and used my hands to fill a bucket, which I would stand up to dump outside the hole. When going deeper down with the post-hole digger, I would pull the dirt up and dump it into the bucket in the bottom of the deep hole. When the bucket was full, I would dump it.

There’s a tangible substance to the satisfaction of the work. Part of it is made of doing something harder than what I am used to doing. Part of it is in the perseverance, and the success of actually making it happen. I feel a steady and warm light, about the size and weight of a fist, a coalescing of the reward of the work, solid inside of me. It makes me feel nourished, strong, and substantial.

I’ve started collecting things that make me feel that way. There is love,similarly solid and powerfully centering, when given freely and with no tally about how it is received. And there is honesty. Last December my friend Laurie, who was visiting from Bali, lost her wallet in a Seven Eleven parking lot. She didn’t even know she’d lost it till the man who found it contacted her. The wallet had everything in it - all her documentation for travel, all her money, her credit cards, the PIN of her debit card . . . And the man was willing to wait there until she could come for it.

I thought about what it would have felt like to be that man. I could feel how what he found in that parking lot was the precious opportunity to exercise his honesty - to reach out and make a big difference to someone. I imagine that that opportunity must have left him with a greater reward than anything that was in the wallet. I could identify with the glow - entirely independent of the gratitude he might receive from Laurie; the internal reward of acting according to his best nature.

I got to exercise my honesty a month after that. The kids behind the counter at the computer store were ready to let me go without paying for the optical drive they had just installed. I asked them twice - they said that was all, I was free to take my mac and go. (And in a way I would have liked to; I wasn’t happy about my mac burning out so soon after the warranty ended - first the hard drive then the optical drive) But I said, Are you sure? You’d better check that - I expected to pay for an optical drive. Then I waited about twenty minutes while one of them went in to talk to a supervisor. And when he came out, he charged me $236 for the optical drive - more than the price I’d been quoted, or the one that appeared on the printed receipt (which their records seemed to show I had already paid). He didn’t thank me for my honesty or for saving him from his mistake. So I didn’t get any external reward for being honest. But as I walked away with my mac, I acknowledged to myself that it was worth the price to feel the surging, centering, comforting glow of an act of honesty. A gift that had been given to me through the circumstance of their inexperience. I felt grateful to them then, and felt compassion for them and whatever mix of thoughts they had that made up their world view and life experience.

There are other things that give me that feeling. The heart-soaring response to a majestic vista, the delight of an “aha” moment, the satisfaction of creating a work of art, the warmth of being in community with others. I’m using these collected experiences to redefine my sense of substance. What if my substance is that solid, glowing feeling? What if the whole point of life is to bring out that substance? What would it mean for me to understand that I don’t need to seek out activities, or manipulate events, to experience that substance? Could I have it all the time?

At our spiritual formation group last Monday, the scripture that was shared referred to drawing water from the springs of salvation. What came to me as I listened was that the springs of salvation are made of the same substance that I’ve been collecting in my experience. I draw water from the springs of salvation when I acknowledge that this is the substance of being. I can have it right now - it’s not dependent on having any material conditions met. And if this is true for me, it’s true for everyone.

More on Humility

In an article entitled, “A Timely Issue,” Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Mothers should be able to produce perfect health and perfect morals in her children . . . by studying this scientific method of practicing Christianity .” I think in prior times reading this, I kind of threw it off as something impossible, or at least something I didn’t have the ability to do. Lately I’ve realized that, perhaps counter-intuitively, this throwing off was an arrogance on my part. The humble position is to take the statement at face value and ask how it is to be done, and be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it.

In my career as a mother, I’ve wrestled with voices from society, and some of my own, that have said I should protect my own rights and dignity by not doing too much for others. I shouldn’t pick up after my kids too much, shouldn’t be the main person keeping the house clean, shouldn’t let my life get too enmeshed with theirs. Lately I’m moving the line I’ve held on that.

When I look at the successes of other people, a primary common quality is that they didn’t stop at any kind of a line that said “this should be enough.” There’s been no line, no limit, just the continued dedication to living in the truest possible way. My cousin Debbi has been like this with her kids. When her youngest was a toddler, she used to take him to the beach every summer day, and they would crawl along looking at everything. It was entirely at his pacing, at his interest. She didn’t think about how she could be sitting reading a book or whether it looked funny or was appropriate to dedicate that many hours, day after day, to the explorations of a toddler. Her love, and her willingness to give all, silenced any such voices. There were similar activities with her other kids - massive amounts of time that she dedicated to being with them at their pacing, doing what was of interest to them. I thought of this last summer as I witnessed, again, the wonderful relationship she has with them, and how willing they are to work with her, to let her encourage them to excel. I realized, it wouldn’t do to come in and just wish my kids would be that way with me, or to expect them to be. A huge investment went into those kids and that relationship, and that is how such fruits are achieved.

My sister is an artist who makes vessels in clay - wheel thrown porcelain, altered and carved to explore the minimal substance required for structural integrity, and the fractal patterns that reverberate through all things of the earth. Though for years she has been creating pieces beyond the skill of others to replicate, she is compelled to continue to push the edges of her skill and her artistic sensibilities. It requires a great humility to continue, year after year, with no sense that she should have done enough by now and should be able to slack off. It requires humility to put oneself daily in the place to be moved by Spirit, to leave behind all tallies and measurements and take a ride on the wind train of infinity. And that is what it takes to actually get anywhere.

So in the case of my mothering, I’m no longer asking if I should stop, because I must have done enough by now. In the case of “producing perfect health and perfect morals in [my] children”, I now recognize that there’s no way that I could ever do that if it were up to me, to my prowess or enlightenment. So it must be a matter of stepping aside to acknowledge that the laws of Truth already have established that perfection, and that I, through humble and never-stopping attention to the law, can sufficiently get my own tangles out of the way so I can see what’s true.

So here I am, at the kindergarten of humility, trying to practice a little bit more each day, so that I can be free, at least in moments, from the tangles of worry and arrogance. And I’m considering: what is meant by the scientific method of practicing Christianity? I know that Christianity is the practice of knowing and loving God, and of loving my neighbor and my enemies with enough strength that they are healed. I think the scientific method of practicing it entails reminding myself of the ontological system that makes it make sense to do so: the fact that, since God is good and all, there is no evil, so I don’t engage with evil or contend with it; instead I hold out for good, bear witness to it, and thus bring it into experience.

I’ll tell you about a way I applied it this morning. It’s Saturday, chores day, and my son was, once again, pleading for me to not make him do his chores before he had a friend over. I refrained from sliding into the usual debate, the tiresome repetition of all the reasons we must do chores first. Instead I looked at the image of my son that was forming in my thought: was he an effort that I had failed at, someone who hadn’t developed the strength of character to pull himself into action and do what was needed? Or was he the expression of perfect Soul, receiving all the information about who he is from the very source of his being, including all right understanding of what each moment calls for and the means for following through? I held to this latter image as I formed my responses to him. The result - chores were completed on time, and our relationship with each other regained the sweetness it should have.

It’s an arresting question how to put something into practice. Practice takes more humility than does the arranging of planks of conviction in my thought. But it is in practice that I am alive.

Parenting Lessons

I’m getting a lot of mileage this fall from a confession of ignorance. A friend said she felt it illustrated true wisdom. Other friends also have given it a proper, respectful space to be listened to. It has made a big difference for me in raising my kids.

The confession is: I don’t know anything about how to help a boy become a man.

It has made me stop trying to pretend I know, or thinking I have any understanding of the best decisions of guidance and discipline for my son. It has allowed me to give up the burden of it and consider that everything he needs, to be who he is, is already in him. It is the nature of his being, as he is created, that provides him now with what he always has been, and develops it day by day. The qualities of manhood, which are so attractive to me even though I fathom them faintly, are already part of who he is. The strength of character, compassion, integrity, and ability to do are not my job to construct in him. Phew! They are part of who he already is as the reflection of God.

As I’ve relaxed in this, I’ve seen, day by day, that it is true about my son. It makes me happy to know him. It makes him happier to be around me. I’m no longer worrying about whether he’ll develop the qualities I think he’ll need. Even if I knew what they were, I wouldn’t be able to make them appear. But I can trust with the same trust I have towards the goodness of the universe that his Creator does know everything he needs (for he is, after all, his Creator’s idea) and gives it to him.

In the last few days I’ve reflected that this is also true for my daughter. Though I may have felt more comfortable about guiding someone into womanhood than manhood, I really don’t know anything about this either. Even what it is to be a woman is something I may be only just now discovering. It is lovely to feel that I and she can both be led, each from within, in the development of our own womanhood.

Jesus said, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?” – implying that none of us could. Depending on interpretation, that could mean: since you can see that you can’t, by setting up a self-help program for yourself or by worrying, make yourself a foot taller, don’t try to set up such a program, or worry, about any part of yourself. God is taking care of all aspects of you. And it can mean, since you can’t, either through worrying or a self-help program, do anything to improve your self-esteem, give up the effort and rejoice in the royal place that you are granted in being the child of God.

I’m learning that this applies to parenting, too. I can’t add a cubit to their stature, I can’t make them be a woman and a man. But I can relax and enjoy the expression of Life that Life, Love, gives to us in our relations with each other day by day.

Casting out the beam

Jesus taught, “first cast the beam out of your own eye so you can see clearly to cast the mote out of your brother’s eye.”

I’ve come to see that this is more than just a figure of speech telling me to pay attention to my own problems before criticizing others. It turns out it isn’t literally impossible for me to have a beam in my eye, and it is with great enthusiasm that I report that I have found out what the beam is, so now I can cast it out.

A beam is a structural member that holds up the floor and the roof of a building. The relevant structure here is my paradigm – my construct of the system of laws that govern my world. Everything I see is dependent on this construct – every deduction I make regarding cause and effect, every conclusion I make regarding what happened and why. And if a part of my construct is faulty, it will distort my vision, hampering my ability to see what’s what. It will be a “beam in my eye.”

So I found out what the beam in my eye is. It’s the notion that it’s possible for one person to be better than another, or for me to be a better or worse person based on my choices. I cast out the beam by realizing that this isn’t true.

There is nothing I can do to make myself a better person. There’s nothing I can do to make myself a worse person. There’s no way for me to be better than anyone else, or worse than anyone else. How does that make me feel? What does it mean?

It means there’s no need for me to ever criticize myself. There’s no need for me to make resolutions to be better. There’s no need for me to look to others to see if they’re doing better or worse than I am. There’s no need to feel anxious because maybe I haven’t done enough, or I haven’t done it well enough.

It is a big structural plank. Lots of things rest on it. Lots of things threaten to fall if I remove it. How can I get myself to be good if my behavior doesn’t matter? What motivation will I have to achieve anything? If I give up that plank, what makes me be good?

God makes me be good, just because God makes me that way. My being good is in gratitude, in joy, in delight – it is what I want. It’s not in trying to measure up, to be worthy, to earn God’s approval. God approves of me because God made me that way.

This was Job’s lesson: he thought God would be good to him if he was good. He needed to learn that God is good anyway, and that he was good because God made him that way; there was no way he could be otherwise. After he learned this lesson, he was healed.

The beam I get to cast out functions like a teeter-totter – giving the sense that one person can be up and another one down. In fact, no matter what we do, we are all of the same quality. We are each here in our nakedness, with all of our mistakes and failures, and all of our beauty, and all of our desire to be redeemed. We are all here with our love, and our loneliness, and our desire to be loved, and our desire to be holy. We are each the child of God.

One theological view says, “God loves you even though you are unlovable. This shows you how great God is.” Another says, “God loves you when you are good. Do well to be worthy of God’s love.” Both of those are just shadows of the truth, that God makes us lovable and good, and loves us that way.

If I can cast this beam out of my eye – this false paradigm that leads to comparison, then I will be able to see clearly to cast the mote out of my brother’s eye, for I will see him with compassion, and with oneness, and with love.


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Giving and Receiving – the divine equilibrium of Spirit

Yesterday a friend shared an experience that had been upsetting to her. She spent a weekend with two other friends – a thing they had done before and which she had happily anticipated. But one of the friends acted differently this time, becoming bossy and controlling, “taking over the whole thing.” This included preparing all kinds of delicious food, but my friend said, “it was all about her.” Apparently she left no room for the normal breathing of relationships, for other people to express what they wanted, to have a say about what was being done, to give their gifts to the group.

I reflected to my friend that I think I’ve been like that friend at times. I had ideas about what things meant and how to do things, and I thought I was being interesting and helpful to share them. On one occasion (when I was once again sharing with the other English teachers how I had approached a certain lesson) I saw a look of unmasked distaste on the face of one of the teachers. But I couldn’t fathom why, and it seemed I couldn’t stop myself from “being helpful” – sharing my experience.

After the conversation yesterday, I felt the need to pull myself back to equilibrium. Though those gaffes are well in my past, and I can mostly laugh about them, I’m not entirely removed from hurt and self-disappointment at discovering that what I meant as a gift was unwelcome; that I had been blind to the needs of others. I needed something more than to reiterate hard-learned lessons about listening, and how receiving another is often the one most needed gift. I needed the clarity of a wholly spiritual perspective.

At feeling this need, I instinctively turned to God, leaning my weight into the all-embracing presence of Spirit, letting go of my own sense of balance to sink into the equilibriating presence of Soul. I remembered that I’ve given up faith in my own ability to find a balance through the careful weighing of give and take. It’s not that I’ve become successful at achieving grace through razor-thin balancing acts. It’s that, when I achieve balance, it’s because I’m leaning on God.

Then I thought about how this law is also governing my friend, and her friend, and everyone who lives in life’s longing for love and fulfillment. It’s actually a force that is governing us more constantly than gravity, though we may think of it even less. Thinking of it more helps me relax and appreciate the glory of being. Understanding it helps me move in accord with the will of Love, and so feel empowered to bring more good into the world. But even when I haven’t understood Love’s governance, it still has shepherded me. How else can I account for the thread of joy that has held my life together, even on days when I didn’t feel it?

On my bike ride this morning I thought about the Bible passage “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” I realized that this supported my earlier thought: God is the giver of everything. Therefore we, as God’s reflection, can’t be tied up in knots with regard to our need to give and receive. It’s not possible for God’s reflection to feel the need to give but be confused about how to do it. It’s not possible for God’s reflection to see a proffered gift as an act of self-aggrandizement. It’s not possible to feel a mismatch – that our gifts are unwanted or that we can’t get what we need. It doesn’t take years of trying and failing to get it right until we learn how to interact in graceful give and take with others. There aren’t people who will just never get it, and I’m not such a person.

I still have a vestigial reflex, when I’m learning a lesson, to conclude that I’ve been wrong, along with everyone else who I believe holds the same approach. Feeling the governance of Spirit, holding each life in the perfect equilibrium of giving and receiving, generating joy and glory, is a sweet antidote, which replaces the bitterness of wrongness with the gratitude of being home.

Another dimension

I have no personal experience with the fierce loyalty of a soldier. I haven’t had the intense feeling of being willing to die for a cause or a person. It’s a thing I’ve read about in books, a thing I’ve felt the edges of in the “yes, ma’am,” of people involved with the military. It’s not something I’ve missed – my tendency is to be suspicious of obedience, wary of the blindness of following orders. Still, I’ve felt, from time to time, a wistfulness for the fervency such an allegiance could have. A book I read recently once again hinted at its power as an ordering principle and a giver of purpose in life. It left me thinking about what it would be like to have this kind of a relationship to God.

The intense eagerness to serve God wouldn’t have the pitfall of serving a person – the inevitable human failings – or of serving a cause, with the tendency of causes to get bogged down in process and co-opted by power-hunger. I felt a kind of swift excitement when I thought of being in service to Love – of dedicating all of my life to standing for Love, living it, acting according to its impulses. Though I think of God as Principle – as the creating, controlling force governing the universe, rather than an anthropomorphic entity, I found this sense of loyalty to be everything I hoped for it – galvanizing, ordering, purpose-giving. It added a dimension to my prayer. I thought, so this is the legitimacy of that whole allegiance concept. It is a thing we are meant to feel. It’s not a seductive but misguided way of having ones life ordered, or a great thing we miss out on if we are civilians. It’s part of the nature of love – part of my nature – to want to give myself in service. And service to Life, Love, is obedience to the great first commandment. Another compelling reason to give my allegiance to God.

More and more lovely clues

I recently read that where Jesus said, “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand,” the Greek word for “repent” has the same root as the word “metanoia”, which I had earlier learned to mean “paradigm shift”. So Jesus was going around saying: have a paradigm shift, because the kingdom of God is here. It doesn’t just mean change your mind within the same structure of right and wrong; decide you’re wrong where you had been thinking you were right. Instead it means change the very structure by which you decide everything you do.

At this year’s annual meeting of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, I heard a practitioner talk about how she had helped a patient achieve physical healing by applying to herself Jesus’ command of “Judge not,” which Jesus illustrates with the following words: “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”

She said she realized she had been thinking her patient had to change some things about his attitude before he could be healed. She realized that this was a flaw in her own thinking, the “beam” that she had to remove from her own eye before she tried to take the “mote” out of his eye. She said the removing of the beam from her own eye was the recognition that God made him already perfect, and he didn’t have to change in order for that to be manifest. Shortly after she recognized this, the patient called and said, “what did you do?” – He was completely healed.

Listening to her account, I realized that the beam in the saying denoted more than an impossibly large object to be unaware of having in my eye, in contrast to someone else’s problems that seemed so real to me. A beam is also a structural component – the main part of a building that holds everything else up. So casting the beam out of my eye means ceasing to rely on the same structure of thought, releasing presuppositions, expectations, and conclusions based on them. With these gone, I can “see clearly to cast the mote out of [my] brother’s eye.” In other words, I can see the evidence of spiritual being which establishes my brother’s perfection in my eyes.

Christ Says Yes III – nothing shall offend them

In my orthodox period, as an aspiring good person, I tended to believe that when people were good, they deserved good things, and when people were evil, they didn’t, Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount notwithstanding. (Jesus says, Love your enemies, …; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.) Also, though I loved Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy,” as immortalized in Beethoven’s ninth symphony, I squirmed a little at the concept that “Everything that’s good and everything that’s bad follows Joy’s rose-strewn path.” I didn’t really want the bad stuff to get to be in there.

Lately I have been loving the concept expressed by these passages. To me they are gateways to a paradigm shift. In order to embrace them in my world, I have to change my understanding – have to open new dimensions in order to include them. The new worldview that includes them is much richer, more comprehensive, and more satisfying than the old one, so I am happy to be here.

I read something in a Christian Science Sentinel this morning which I found very interesting. In a discussion about the practice of Christian Science healing, one of the participants says, “You need to be the practitioner that is in you, with your own love. You cannot duplicate someone else’s life-experience or life model.” (Christian Science Sentinel, June 11, 2007, p. 7.) This seems very true and important to me. I think I allowed at least some of my upbringing to be guided by the grave, hushed voices that spoke, with eyes averted, of some unfortunate choice someone had made. Make sure you don’t do what she did. The implication was that you could make a good life out of negatives, by avoiding all of the bad things other people might do.

To me the message from this practitioner says that I can’t build my life based on what someone else found to be the right path. Similarly, I can’t base what I don’t do on what someone else felt would be a bad idea. There is a good reason Christian Science practitioners don’t give human advice. It’s because human advice is not scientific – it’s not based on anything provable, accountable, or replicable. The advice I would give is, decide your course based on what increases your love.

I will now illustrate why that advice must remain based on spiritual terms – your love – rather than human terms – the activities you take on. For me, one of the things that very greatly increased my love was having a baby. The influx of love for my children also strengthened the love in my marriage, increased my appreciation of others in general, and multiplied the level of my compassion. Yet it’s obvious that it would be very bad advice to tell someone looking for more love to have a baby. I knew it was the right step for me at the time; other people find their right steps, too. One person may find an increase in love by serving in a soup kitchen; another, by climbing a mountain; another, by writing a book; another, by an intense romantic relationship. All of these human things can be right steps for people at certain times. Only the individual, looking within and testing each step along the way for the increase in love, can know what the right step is.

This is the very loving way that the Christ works, leading us from within and saying yes to everything that affirms our being. This also leads us to a judgment-free appreciation for the different paths others take. I’m finding it very freeing to realize that no human pursuit is intrinsically more spiritual than another. An athlete is not less (or more) spiritual than an intellectual; a person who does finance not less (or more) spiritual than one who does art. Each person’s gift, nurtured and given with integrity, blesses us all.

Neither do I ever have to feel that grave concern that someone’s life has taken an unfortunate turn. I don’t have to become like my (perhaps faulty) memory of older church members, casting on myself and others the fear of some life courses and the people who take them. It says in Psalms, “Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them.” It is my great joy to challenge myself to not be offended by anyone, but to love the law of Love and how it guides us all in our right paths.

Here I am

Yesterday my teen-aged daughter participated in a Taekwon Do tournament, and my husband was there for part of it. When he was telling me about it afterwards, he said, “It was great – I was giving her advice, and she was actually hearing it.” He told me that the advice he was giving had nothing to do with the placement of hands and feet. Instead, it had to do with presence – feeling the purpose of each thing she was doing, feeling it deep in her belly, breathing. He told her to walk into the ring with a presence that would command the judges to look at her – one that said, even before the first move of her pattern, you’re looking at the winner. It wasn’t a matter of psyche-out or bravado. It wasn’t a matter of positioning herself as better than the other competitors. It was simply a matter of being fully there, of standing behind and within herself, of being a fair representation of everything that she is. Not one of many waiting to be judged, but one being of integrity, whole within herself.

I found this to be very good advice. I took it in, took it for myself, and considered how consonant it is with everything I’m learning about being. It doesn’t make sense that presence and poise be the exclusive purview of celebrities and a small percentage of people born to perform. If I am, in fact, the image and likeness of God, good, it doesn’t make sense that I would be missing the capacity to represent myself, to stand in myself, and to stand up with poise and confidence. These aren’t surface qualities. They’re not about polishing my image or developing a persona, however much popular culture would say they are. They aren’t contrary to humility, but are in fact an expression of it, an acknowledgment that God is the creator, that God does a good job, and that it’s not our place to say otherwise.

There’s a song I’ve sung a few times in other Christian churches. It says, Here I am, Lord – send me. It is in this willingness to be sent that I also find the presence and poise that will allow me to do the job required. It is interesting to consider that we are sent each day – that our being is the evidence of God’s being, and we don’t have any other purpose. So it is right to feel competent in every pursuit in which we find ourselves. It’s right to expect our actions to be effective.

My Purpose – Not for my Purposes

I was sitting in the sun today taking in the cosmic rhythm – the dance of the trees and grasses, the low tones of the bamboo wind chimes, the sweet songs of birds. I could feel a breathing that went through me, though it neither started nor ended with me. Breathing in the rhythm with everything around me, it was easy to feel the oneness. In oneness everything seems possible. If everyone can feel this peace and harmony, we will able to breathe the world we want into being. Just by who we are, we will bring it about.

This perception cast a new light on an old memory – that of the moment I fell in love with my daughter. She was two or three days old, and was sleeping upstairs. I went up to check on her. I remember thinking, on the way up the stairs, about how I would be able to tell she was fine – wondering how easily I would know if she was breathing. When I got to her, it was easy to tell, from farther away than I had expected. Her whole body was breathing. Even in sleep she exuded this tremendous aliveness, the expressiveness of something thriving. Before that moment I had felt maternal care for her, and a generalized happiness to have her, but in that moment I felt a leaping out of love for her, a love which stayed.

It occurs to me now that the aliveness she expressed was the same oneness, the same sense of a breathing much larger than oneself. It called to me to participate in a larger truth, a larger purpose. And though it was exactly the thing that I most wanted in the world, I could also say that the purpose was not my own. It wasn’t something I could have dreamed up and set as a goal for myself. Yes I had intensely wanted to be a mother; I had intuited that it was one role that would use all of me. I had a miscarriage shortly before we conceived her, and it was a time of deep grief. But the lesson I took from it, and the thought that I felt made me ready for motherhood, was, “not by will, but by willingness.”

I’ve been learning that lesson ever since. Most recently, I’ve been thinking about “firing the manager,” where the manager is the one who tries to figure out the direction for my life, and, while she’s at it, the direction for the life of everyone whose life path crosses mine. I find her to be stressful, anxious, and entirely incompetent. She forgets that she is not the center of the universe, and tries to make everything orbit around her. She tends not to remember that the divine Creator is giving every life form its perfect purpose, ideas, and course.

In firing the manager, I come upon a truth which is quite clear, but sometimes gets tangled in language so as to seem paradoxical. The greatest fulfillment, my greatest purpose, is not for my purposes. My purpose, which is found in oneness with everything living, is not something I (or the manager) can tweak or harness or use to enhance my place in society or my own designed sense of who I should be. It’s not something I can even know except in the context of oneness – something much greater than what I usually think of as me.

There is Christian language for this, as when Paul says “ye are the temple of the living God,” and “ye are not your own.” But it may also be one of those mysteries where the meaning is easy to misconstrue. We get told that we must not be selfish, and this is supposed to mean that we should suppress what we most desire and serve someone else’s purposes. But that is not an authentic meaning. I believe that it’s part of the law of Life and Love that everything is designed to want to be exactly what it is. We are designed to want what we want, and to fulfill the purpose that is our heart’s desire. And we are designed to be part of the oneness – to find our unique participation with all of the universe to be our ultimate fulfillment, the ultimate embodiment of our essential individuality. So our purpose is our own, and not to be suppressed for anyone else’s purposes. But it is not our own concoction. We find it in oneness, in the law of Love. We fulfill it in service, as do all living things. And we rejoice in it with the special high of being part of something bigger than anything the manager could grasp.

Standing for Peace

Yesterday afternoon, on Mother’s Day, I stood in a circle with about 12 other people in a park near our home, to observe a five-minute vigil with the Standing Women – standing for a better world. It wasn’t just women – we had asked the men in our lives to stand with us. Three of the people were my immediate family – we had walked the 10 blocks from our house to get there. Three were people I had never met, who had seen my posting on the Standing Women website saying where we’d be standing. The rest were members of our school community.

As I looked around at this small, beautiful group, it occurred to me that the vast majority of people in the world want this – a good life for our children and all children, our grandchildren and all grandchildren, the planet. We want to live in peace; we want to love each other. Since that is the case, I reflected, the only thing we need is to claim our individual sovereignty, our ability to manifest what we are in our lives.

I had the image the other day that I am perhaps more like coral than I had thought. Instead of my life being a collection of intentions, events, and material artifacts which I need to manage and come up with a way to make work for me to achieve my purposes, my life is something that grows naturally out of who I am. Just as the intricate and colorful structures of the coral form effortlessly from the animals’ own being, so all the visible attributes of my life can flow from mine. I don’t have to worry about whether they will fit, or do what I hoped they would do. I can leave that to the grand plan of God.

In this context, my sovereignty and my faith are one. Saying I have the ability to manifest what I want in life is saying that my Creator has designed me so that the artifacts of my life, like coral, grow to serve the needs of my life. It is natural that the life of a being who is the expression of Love should be lovely, full of love in every moment, bringing forth blessing and healing. I get to bring forth what I want by being what I am. I am designed so this happens naturally.

I was talking afterwards to a woman in the circle who’s been active in organizing for peace. I said, it must be a constant consideration how to stand up for peace without taking in any elements of war and violence – such as anger and resentment. She agreed, commenting that most peace work is internal, but that there’s also the need for outward work – that it calls for a balance. I think this is true, and is consonant with the law of Life, in which giving and receiving are always reciprocal. I want to practice this balance by letting my life grow like coral. I know that the Creator’s design is for exactly the kind of world we want the world’s children and grandchildren to have. My faith is that as I give the job of managing my life over to God, God will do a good job. God will help all of us grow lives that support life, bringing forth beautiful, sustaining structures that provide safe habitat for all.

No more silence

At a retreat I recently attended, we decided to spend a period of the afternoon in silence. While I was fine with the silence as I walked the beach and communed with the sunlight, I found it uncomfortable when I met another of our group and interacted with just a smile and a wave.

The nature of the discomfort was that it felt like I was shoving myself back into a box that I had been in for too long – it was a very familiar place that I had recently been finding my way out of, and I didn’t want to be stuck back in there again.

It’s not that I’ve been habitually silent. In fact, I’ve caused people discomfort too many times by dousing them with a torrent of thoughts with too little attention to the natural give and take of conversation. But these floods were perhaps induced by the paved over areas in my internal landscape, areas of enforced silence, the prohibitions to speaking in certain ways and situations.

Some of these silences were words that I wouldn’t say; some were things I wouldn’t talk about; some were situations in which I didn’t give myself permission to speak; some were people I didn’t give myself permission to speak to. These enforced silences didn’t keep me from thinking things – all kinds of things, which would get so thick that they would sometimes become another source of silence, as I knew or usually thought there was no way to fit them through the gates of communication.

What I want to say about this is that, although I didn’t even know before that it was a problem, I feel profoundly liberated to be out of that box. And I want to talk a bit about how I got out of it and why I think it’s a good thing.

The first step in liberation was starting to glimpse that I don’t need someone’s permission to be their friend. When I first glimpsed this, it was profound for me, and gave me a lot of courage to overcome shyness. But it has taken me many more years to fully realize this truth. I recounted my most recent revelations about this in the entry “Christ says yes II” in this blog. (Also in this blog, the entry “On being a Christian” touches on important parts of this realization.)

It’s been more recently that I’ve experienced a release from charged words and topics. It used to be that, in my internal landscape, there were certain words and topics where, if my mind would run over them, my voice would go silent. In some cases this was some sense of propriety, some sense of what kind of a person I am, which forbid me those words and topics. In some cases it was also that I had such a long habit of not speaking about these things that the words would come difficult. Then, if someone else began talking along those lines, while I might not actually have a problem with it, it would be impossible to convey that fact. My silence would shout judgment, whether I felt that way or not.

The release came about as I was working on finding my voice, and in conjunction with compassionate treatment of me by others. As it was coming about, I found some Biblical support for the direction I was going.

I was thinking about the third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And thinking about the name of the Lord, I thought of the passage in John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. These thoughts came together as – have only one God; have only one Word. Don’t have words be gods.

There were a few ways this was meaningful to me. First, because I realized it wasn’t right for any words to make me uncomfortable or make me judge someone else for using them. Second, I realized that also, in the area of persuasion and marketing, it’s not legitimate for words to make me or anyone want to do what is against our Godlike nature to do. It’s not legitimate for people to be brainwashed. The Word has the power to make itself heard. Finally, this corroborated what I wrote in this blog in “Love me; I love you, and the Hungarian Phrase Book” – that it doesn’t matter what words people are saying – only the Word can be communicated. Only love, and the deep value of each life form.

So I remain committed to staying outside of the box of silence. I remain committed to digging up the pavement in my internal landscape and exposing the soft earth to the penetration of rare seeds. I remain committed to keeping things light and moist so that new infrastructures of root and leaf may grow. Then my permeable surface will be able to take things in better, and give things out more appropriately, and the words I do speak will be of greater service.

Believe, and ye shall be saved?

“Don’t talk like that,” I said to him. “Don’t you know that saying you can’t do it makes it harder for you to get it?”
“People learn things differently,” he said darkly. In other words, mind your own business.

Thinking about it many months later, I realized the foolishness of my words. What I had voiced, in the name of some kind of faith, was only the degenerate set of it, the way that popular culture, without understanding the depth of faith, talks of the power of positive thinking. This kind of talk is considered acceptable, and people agree that it might have some vague result. But it’s similar to other things people toss around as “good for you,” like a diet or an exercise program. There are some adherents, but their example doesn’t offer overwhelming proof. In honesty, I can’t base my faith on such a platform. If I have faith in the power of Truth to establish harmonious conditions, it must be something much deeper than this.

A friend was talking last night about how evangelists are trained to make a two minute pitch and then close the deal like a sales person, asking for the decision: Are you ready to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior? - As if someone could choose that like deciding to buy a car. Jesus does say “believe, and ye shall be saved,” but that doesn’t answer the question of how we come to believe.

When I was in ninth grade, I had a few direct experiences of God, and I was hooked. A couple of instances of feeling my hand led in a math test to guide me to understanding when my mind was blank, a few instances of going directly to objects I had lost, and God was unshakably real to me. It wasn’t just the help but the exhilarating feeling of being held. I remember going down the halls to lunch after those math tests, and I felt like I was flying. Other signs of God’s presence followed – the understanding that gave me the courage to take resolute steps out of painful shyness; the healing of rifts in communication within my family, a sudden healing of tonsillitis, guidance in my choices about school and relationships.

There were other times, painful times, where I didn’t find the healing I was seeking. I came to dread getting sick, and having to try to pray for myself, and feeling some unnamed obstacle between my words and what I actually was thinking. I wanted to say, with the man whose son Jesus healed, “Lord, I believe – help thou mine unbelief!”

Some internal voices would ask me from time to time why I didn’t just give up. But my answer was always, where else would I go? Once having felt the divine presence, and having experienced it as something more real and satisfying than anything else, I simply couldn’t give it up. So I persevered at the practice of continuing to seek, growing to almost like the feeling of having the rug (of all my presuppositions) pulled out from under me, leaving me in an ignominious sprawl to rediscover my center in the resulting stillness. Through many, many of these experiences, I'm coming to have a clearer, more powerful faith.

There are only a few things I know to tell people about the process of coming to believe. One is illustrated in the fact that the Ten Commandments address the reader as “thou”, which is second person singular intimate. Singular – this is not addressing a group. It’s not offering rules for people to hold over each other’s heads to judge them. Intimate - it’s addressing the very inward thought of each individual, with intimate individual care for each unique case. So it is that the fundamental, foundational teachings about behavior, in relation to God and man, command a very individual search. They are not for others, even the others who reside, judging, in the rooms of consciousness. We find God not by being told what to believe and what to do, but by locating God within our very blueprint – finding God’s hand in the nature of what we are.

Another is that belief can’t be forced – that you can’t believe something by willing yourself to do so. Belief is not what you adopt because you like it and it sounds plausible (such as whether you believe there is life on other planets, or whether you believe in parallel universes.) Belief is what you walk on. You walk over the bridge because you believe it’s strong enough; you leave your children with their Grandma because you believe she will take good care of them. You believe in God as you feel God’s gentle presence in your life. If you haven’t felt it yet, you can consider what’s good in your life, and you can consider your marvelous fortitude in difficult times, and you may find some proof there. Being quiet within helps a lot. But God doesn’t need to be conjured up. God is able to make God’s self known.

And one more: coming to believe isn’t a process of choosing a God off the shelf based on a comparison of ingredients. Though some religious movements may try to sell you an off-the-shelf concept of God, this doesn’t have anything to do with what God is to you. Though you may not have heard anyone present a plausible concept of God, this doesn’t mean you can’t know God. Clearing your mind of preconceptions helps. But God doesn’t need to be pre-defined. God is able to make God’s self known.

Christ says yes II: loving one another

Last night my husband said, the message Jesus brought says love – love each other is the main thing he taught – yet the churches seem to say: but only within prescribed limits. Only within your marriage.

To elaborate on that, it is supposed that there is one kind of strong love that should occur only within the confines of the marriage bed, another kind of strong love for family and some close friends, and then a sort of a weak, diffused love for everyone else.

He and I are working out a different paradigm. We have identified two planes in which the thought of love plays out. One of them is the plane of pure energy exchange. The other is the plane of temporal negotiation. Both planes are valid in their own right. The shift from one plane to another can happen quickly and without being noticed. Confusion about what plane one is operating on causes all kinds of problems.

The plane of pure energy exchange is the one in which one life form recognizes another, sees the deep and shining soul within, and rejoices. This is the plane of the brilliant smile of a stranger on the street, and it is the plane of “namaste” – the divine in me salutes the divine in you. When such an exchange occurs freely, both participants go away enriched. They are affirmed in two ways: one, by sending out a shining signal, and two, by being recognized as shining. This kind of exchange can be a deep blessing, sending out ripples of joy through succeeding interactions. And I believe it’s fair to call such an exchange an act of love – of loving and being loved.

The plane of temporal negotiation is the one in which people ask, what am I to you? Will you be there for me? It is the one in which they seek to define what the relationship is in time, in the course of lives as they play out. This kind of understanding is important. It takes many loops of feedback to come to clear communication, to find the common language and an agreement of expectations. It can only happen successfully when both people are committed to making it happen.

Here are some examples of how these planes get confused: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she wonders, is he coming on to me? Would I be leading him on to smile back, would I be sending the wrong signal? Because she’s confusing the pure energy exchange with a temporal negotiation, she feels the need to mask her natural response of joy towards another life form. Thus the exchange doesn’t happen, and the world gets a little colder. Another example: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she thinks, he has no right to smile at me. He can’t follow through with a relationship, and I wouldn’t want him to do so. Men are so arrogant, thinking they have the right to have any relationship they want to. So she gives him a dirty look back, to make sure he knows that she will not be entering into relationship with him. Again, the energy exchange doesn’t happen, and life is not as delightful as it could have been. I use these examples because, as a woman, I have experienced both these states. I expect the examples told from a male perspective would sound a little different, but I’m not so intimately in tune with them to pull them up.

The planes can also get confused in the other direction, where someone thinks that, because there has been an energy exchange between the two of them, something is owed, obligation is incurred, an agreement for temporal relationship has been made. Or it can be confused when someone thinks they can do things that have consequences in the temporal plane without entering into relationship.

It has consequences in the temporal plane to say you’ll be there for someone. It has consequences in the temporal plane to make a baby with someone. It can have consequences in the temporal plane to get to a certain level of intimacy with someone, and that level may vary from person to person. This is why very deliberate communication is important in the negotiation of temporal relationships. An energy exchange does not signal a temporal relationship. It also doesn’t preclude one. Temporal relationships are built on the communication that explores these issues.

Meanwhile, I think it’s of crucial importance in the world that we not confine our love to temporal relationships. We must love in every way – in the way that treasures and holds up each life form, in the way that offers quick aid without obligation, in the way that allows us to be graceful and loving in our dealings with others.

It has been supposed that such exchanges should only be from the neck up – share a nice smile, but don’t get too involved. Feel it down to your heart maybe, but don’t feel it in your gut, don’t feel it to the core of your being. Don’t feel turned inside out, turned on, transformed. Save those deep feelings for your temporal relationships. But I believe that is not so. If it were, the love that Jesus tells us to do would be a dull duty, a tiresome obligation.

What distinguishes an energy exchange from a temporal relationship is not its depth, but simply its continuity through the plane of time. An energy exchange can be rockingly deep. It just incurs no obligations. It can be reciprocal, but the love is given unilaterally, with no expectation of a temporal relationship. It is given from the nature of who we are, because it’s what we are made of.

An energy exchange can also be practical and kind. It can help and bless someone (and when it does, it blesses both, by the law of balance.) It can be the stranger who changes your flat tire, the man who walks a mile with you to show you the way.

Does that sound familiar? Love one another, say yes to the core of each other, be rocked, transformed by each other. That’s how you’ll know that you’re his disciples, he says. I don’t think there are two kinds of love. There’s one kind of love, and if you do it, you’re going to feel it, and it’s going to feel fine. No temporal obligations, but deep aliveness and satisfaction. I don’t think it’s sacrilegious. Christ says yes.