The first commandment is:
Love Life with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.
I know what this looks like, and what it feels like. I know how it feels to love life, and to be around people who love life.
It doesn’t have anything to do with their belief systems, or their occupations, or their circumstances, or their activities. It is a saying-yes, open-hearted embrace of everything that’s here. It’s a habit of paying attention to the needs of the moment, of taking the time to care.
There may be many directions on how to live a good life, many different interpretations of what that means. But they shouldn’t even be looked at first.
The first commandment comes from Life itself, not from anyone else’s instructions. So I have resolved to not ask any other source about it first. I might ask second, to hone and clarify my loving of Life. But first I will pay attention to Life, and to keeping the first commandment.
Showing posts with label The Word. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Word. Show all posts
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Hearing the Word
Yesterday at the jail, Bill (not his real name) and I continued our conversation about the Scriptures. I said, you have to just interpret the Scripture for yourself - you can’t try to apply it to what anyone else should do at any given moment. And you can listen to what other people say it means to them, but you have to go by what it means to you. And you have to be really honest with yourself about it. You can’t do it for show - to seem better to others or even to yourself.
This all was woven in to specific discussion of passages of Scripture, such as Paul’s injunctions in I Corinthians regarding whether to marry or not and how to make judgement in the case of disputes between people (these were what he was bringing up). I also brought in parts like Jesus’ instruction not to judge, and his definition of Christians as people who love each other - people who see others while standing in the place of love towards them.
Eventually he was ready to have me read him two sections of the Bible Lesson, which I did, with him interjecting, with enthusiasm, things that he knew about some of the passages. And we talked more about what things meant - but he tended to think the stuff in Science and Health just made sense as it stood. At a certain point he said, I really like to study the Scripture myself, but sometimes it really helps to hear someone else’s perspective on it. And he said, “you’re good!” I didn’t take this personally, as I hadn’t really cherished the things I was saying as my own view, nor was looking for a way to convince him of anything, but was just sharing the inspiration of the Word as it came to me.
The whole experience is teaching me how it is that the Word speaks to each of us - and that we all need to be encouraged to look for ourselves and see what it means to us right now. It may mean something different at a different time. It may mean something completely different to someone else. It is never God’s plan to put me in the position of someone enlightened to pass the knowledge of God through my filter of wisdom so some lesser person is able to receive from me what they couldn’t directly receive from God. God’s plan for me is much simpler than that, much more flexible, much more beautiful. God allows me to see His wonderful creation - all His amazing children - and to be, as my role, one of them. That is enough.
This all was woven in to specific discussion of passages of Scripture, such as Paul’s injunctions in I Corinthians regarding whether to marry or not and how to make judgement in the case of disputes between people (these were what he was bringing up). I also brought in parts like Jesus’ instruction not to judge, and his definition of Christians as people who love each other - people who see others while standing in the place of love towards them.
Eventually he was ready to have me read him two sections of the Bible Lesson, which I did, with him interjecting, with enthusiasm, things that he knew about some of the passages. And we talked more about what things meant - but he tended to think the stuff in Science and Health just made sense as it stood. At a certain point he said, I really like to study the Scripture myself, but sometimes it really helps to hear someone else’s perspective on it. And he said, “you’re good!” I didn’t take this personally, as I hadn’t really cherished the things I was saying as my own view, nor was looking for a way to convince him of anything, but was just sharing the inspiration of the Word as it came to me.
The whole experience is teaching me how it is that the Word speaks to each of us - and that we all need to be encouraged to look for ourselves and see what it means to us right now. It may mean something different at a different time. It may mean something completely different to someone else. It is never God’s plan to put me in the position of someone enlightened to pass the knowledge of God through my filter of wisdom so some lesser person is able to receive from me what they couldn’t directly receive from God. God’s plan for me is much simpler than that, much more flexible, much more beautiful. God allows me to see His wonderful creation - all His amazing children - and to be, as my role, one of them. That is enough.
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