2021.10.10 Can Spirituality Trump Morality?

Sin, by one definition, happens when our own needs cause us to disregard, incorrectly assess, or fail to consider the needs of others. When this happens, individuals, as well as systems, fall into sin. Moral condemnations are made. What happens to Spirituality, that profound inner connection to Soul?

Even ancient biblical writers pondered this question. In the beginning God created everything in perfect order, hunky dory, with only one proviso, one moral restriction. Don’t mess with the tree that will give you both good and evil knowledge. You’ll fall into sin.and your life will be full of both good and evil. You will always be free to choose the good, the evil, or some mixture thereof. Oh, you won’t like the rules and the moral rectitude you think you need to live by, yet you will discover that when you get rigid about this moral effort, you risk losing your own soul’s health, your deep connection with the Love that created you and still re-creates you daily. So good luck. Take with you these clothes to protect you  from the elements, and remember that love triumphs over sin. 

All of us fall into sin, lose “Eden.”  All of us lament, all of us protest, and all of us struggle to re-create “Eden.” All of us hurt ourselves and others in this process.

My first husband and I struggled to be good spouses and good parents. We did what we thought was the right thing, the moral thing, according to the rules of the day and the promises we had made. We tried to stay married and to be good parents for twenty years. Over time we both broke promises, hurt the children, hurt each other. We grabbed for what I am calling our spirituality, our freedom-of-being. The “eden” of our whole loving family fell into sin.

While fulfilling my moral commitment to be a good mother, I’d neglected my own needs. Such imbalances may not be strictly immoral, but they are surely spiritual sin. The tremors from this loss of trust echoed for years. Over years I have been able to make amends, share tears, and make amends. Amends do not correct or re-create, but they can reconnect and heal. 

Institutions, too, fall into sin. The sin of the Institutional Church-Mama, all religions really, has always been the tendency to narrow access to God with rules and moral rigor. Spirituality, the soul-needs of the faithful, gets neglected. Worship does not entirely fill that need or heal that inner longing to know and trust God—Love itself. 

Spirituality can trump morality in the human heart. 

*  *  *  *

“There are as many paths to God as there are souls on earth.” Rumi. 

Rumi (1217-1273) was a Persian poet whose full Arabic name is too long to manage. He was Iranian, and identified as a Sufi Muslim—deeply, mystically committed to the Oneness of God and consequently the oneness of being:  

“On the seeker’s path, wise men and fools are one.”

“In that faith, Muslims and pagans are one.”   

A favorite Sufi parable tells about blind men washing an elephant, each one washing a different part, and each one concluding that the whole elephant can be described and defined by that one part.  We all know how misguided such narrow knowledge is, and yet Rumi compared it to the ways of institutional religions—each one posing as the best, each one too narrow. Rumi, a teacher, spiritual guru, poet, and theologian, did, nevertheless, give primacy to Islam and the Q’uran. A popular saying in Arabic apologizes: “Love, however, has its own many other dialects.” 

American religious scholar/philosopher and one-time professor of religious studies at UC Berkeley, Huston Smith (1919-2016), was born in China and raised in a Methodist missionary family. He devoted his study and life work to bringing the world’s religions together in order to promote understanding, justice, and peace. He said: 

“If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.” 

Although a Christian, Smith had no aversion to taking his “vitamins” from other religions. He wrote: 

“Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the AMA? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion. Religion is institutionalized spirituality.” 

This feels harsh, yet I can see how institutions, even small systems, become fearful and rigid. Families, societies, businesses, nations, religions get corseted by their need for moral rules and regulations, to such a degree that the beauty of personhood itself, not to mention Nature and her ways, gets stifled if not lost. Overbearing moral regulation stifles Love. Morality trumps spirituality. The system falls into sin. 

But do we not need organization? Even Yoga and Twelve Step Recovery are organized. The idea is to pay attention to the rigor, and by your own heart keep it from exploiting those, including yourself, seeking spiritual wholeness. 

  *  *  *  *  

Jesus is remembered as liberator and reformer of systems, both political and religious, that had fallen into sin. The love of God in and for all creation was gasping for air in stifling systems. When Jesus asks a rich young man, sincerely moral and devoted to his faith—upstanding and ambivalent—to give away his wealth to the poor and the hungry, he was calling for systemic change. He was asking for less morality and more spirituality—not chaos without organization, but living breathing space for all Creation.  

All we creatures, great and small

are the heirs of sacred wealth,

and we all, together, live

by the other’s Lasting Health.     (Michael Hudson. Songs for the Cycle, 2004)

2018.08.26 Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

You would be 107 today were you still alive. Happy Birthday wherever you are, Dad. I miss you. I’ve read that images of loved ones fade overtime, and that the face is the last to disappear from the mind's-eye memory. I still remember your face, Dad. I can see without a photo—lucky  because the scan of a very old photo didn't work. I also remember your personality and your influence on my life.

I wrote a lot about you in my memoir, especially the moments of spiritual understanding you gave me, times when you’d call me Lynda, the name you chose for me at birth. You chose the spelling, so you could call me Lyn, but then you and Mom called me Lynnie.

You called my Lynda when you were mad at me, like the night I tried, almost successfully, to sneak out to meet my teenage boyfriend, just to see if we could get away with it. We didn’t. You spotted my absence and hollered into the night from the front door of our suburban house: LYNDA!  It was louder than the blast of a train’s horn. I tore back home, feigning annoyance, but feeling secretly protected. Getting caught was less threatening than teenage sex in a car.

You called me Lynda when we had political fights, and then too when I told you I aspired to be ordained an Episcopal priest. I stammered to explain my sense of vocation. You stopped me and simply said: “I understand, Lynda.”  I was almost forty years old then, but I felt adult. I suppose a parent always feels like a parent even with a grown child and the reverse, but this time I felt truly dignified. Thanks, Dad.

Yes, I remember your  sarcasm. I’d been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. You said:  “There must be some mistake” then immediately said you were kidding, but it stung. I will say, however, that I didn’t give it much pain-time or credence, knowing that nasty humor was martini-generated. I also knew it was probably a critique you, the fifth child of a mother who abandoned her own aspirations to be an opera singer in order to have children, had heard about yourself. You and I, however were worthy of praise.

There was one time though when your silence, not your words, hurt me and shaped my self-image. I was five, a shy child, an introvert, like you. I wanted your praise and Mom was always in the way with excesses of adulation—compensatory for your silence, and mine I think. She complained to you about my refusal to greet the cheery doorman with cheer.“What’s wrong with that child?” she said.  You, Dad, said nothing.

You could be too quiet like me, but when you spoke you were honest. Do you remember the time you and Farmer Kurtie worked together with cattle prods to coax an angry bull onto a ramp and up into the truck that would take him home after the stud affair? You were a city guy. This was not your thing. I watched in horror, sure that ferocious bull would charge and kill you; instead he relented and ran onto the truck. I was so relieved and impressed. “Daddy,” I said, “”you were so brave! Were you scared?”  You said, “Scared as scared could be, Lynnie." I hugged you so hard, just for telling the truth.

So, Dad, on your natal anniversary, I will remember you in these ways:
    I will sit in your huge red leather chair and pound the arm with my fist, as you used to when you wanted to make some point. I love your chair, and I love that I have it.
    I will say your favorite phrase: “What’s the point?” during the day and in my prayers. It was the last thing you said to me when you were dying. I will resist trying to answer that question and assume you know the answer, and that you were wise to ask it over and over.
    I will re-read my memoir chapter:”The Old Sweater” about how I wore your old torn golf sweater around for a couple of years after you died. The sweater’s sleeves hung down to my thighs when I let them. You loved that old sweater, Dad, and I loved you.

Today I discovered the answer to “What’s the point?” Celebrating my 80th birthday with my four adult children with me in the middle (Robert William III, Jill Barlow, Beverley Ann, John Thomas) was a perfect day—good weather, good food, good conversation, good company, good laughter, good sharing, good love and Love. That’s the point, isn’t it, Dad?

Love,
Lynnie

2016.08.07 Adorbs!

My teenage granddaughter called me “adorbs.”

After I melted into a ball of grammy-goo, I faced the first challenge: to get my various spell checks NOT to alter it to “adorns” or “adores”! 

The second challenge was whether I should go public with this great compliment. Hell, yes! It’s my 78th birthday today, and this is my present to myself.

What’s better is that my granddaughter, who calls herself Izzy (from Isabella) and who can also be  adorbs, didn’t say this to my face but was heard to say it to her teenage BFF, Sophie. That indirection is what made it such a compliment, not said to flatter or to endear herself to me.
 
              Sophie: “Your Grammy’s pretty cool.”
              Izzy: “Oh yeah, Grammy’s adorbs.”

My daughter reported the conversation, making it all the more sweet. (Izzy and Sophie to her left, at lower right.)

Now why does such a small an goofy thing like this matter to me? It matters to me because it’s got heart and soul, and heart and soul are where Godde lives.  

Today, in fact, is also my beloved husband’s birthday—same day three years’ difference. I have seniority, which occasionally I attempt to assert. He gave me a funny birthday card. It was covered with red and pink squiggles and stars, a real alleluia creation.  It read:

              “Sassy, Classy . . .
           
                   Still kickin’ Assy! 
           
                                                         Now that’s adorbs!