2012.04.08 Eastering

Eastering is a simple spiritual practice. It may be connected to specific religious persuasions or not, even though Easter is an official Christian holy day celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ as recorded in the gospels of the New Testament.

It is important to note that Jesus did NOT raise himself. God raised him into new life. Resurrection is not a self-help program. It is a faith issue, and the opposite of faith is certitude not doubt.

Some experiences are just too true not to doubt.

The act of resurrection is not actually described. No one was there. Resurrection is assumed from post-resurrection accounts, sitings if you will. All report profound spiritual experiences, visions of Jesus as a spirit-person, that amazed and transformed them from the inside out—completely.

The resurrected Jesus was not a ghost and yet not quite a biologically alive person either. St. Paul tried to describe a resurrection body and became all tangled up in inadequate language.

Suffice it to say that Jesus made a snap appearance, bestowed the gift of his peace, a word of hope, maybe a meal, then gone. Poof. That is enough for me to hang my hat on.

My favorite siting is the one described in John’s gospel in which Mary Magdalene is grieving and weeping as she gazes into the dark emptiness of a tomb/grave looking for Jesus. Then she heard her name called, looked away from death and stared life in the face. Christ stood there and of course, when she heard the sound of her own name, she recognized him and rushed toward him and he stopped her, saying “Don’t touch me!” Go and tell the others.

She was sent away, on her own but with friends. But, but....wait! I need more.

You all know how difficult it is to try to describe to anyone else your spiritual experience—and we all have such experiences. And you all know how perfectly cherished it is to you and how true. You have finally to trust it yourself and tell it whenever you can to whomever will listen.

Someone once advised keeping expectation lower than a toad’s instep. You can’t push truth like an agenda. And for christ’s sake be humble and modest about it. You’re not unique and probably not any more of a mystic than many others with like experiences. Color yourself lucky, not special.

Resurrection is after all a bit of a disappointment. You can’t have it all back the way it was. Nothing will ever be the same. Death is certain. What now?

I suggest eastering. This can even be a self-help effort! for me it takes effort and energy an acceptance of failure. I try to look through things and people to see life within the apparent, surface life. I know when I find it because it will unexpectedly lift my spirits. And I always feel afraid to share it for fear I’m being spiritually gooey or found foolish. I bow to my ego more than I’d like.

Eastering means seeing the good within the evil without denying the evil. I get “eastered” more than I “easter.”

A few recent examples that “eastered” me..............
President Obama made a public statement of condolence to the family of the recently murdered young and innocent hoodied teen, Trayvon Martin. That’s pro forma politics. Easterish was that he said, “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon.”

A friend in an Episcopal parish told me she was upset about the “war on women” and the church that continued to use exclusive language, proclaiming an exclusively male deity. That wasn’t unusual. What was easterish was that she confronted her priest about the Easter service stationery logo that read, HE is risen. She told him it it should say CHRIST, or even the Lord. Just NOT HE.

A grand daughter Isabella, 12, visited recently and seemed as enthralled with reading as with mall shopping!! She was reading book two of the “Hunger Games” trilogy. I asked her about the violence and young people fighting each other to the death for no reason. “Oh Grammy, there is no point to dying unless it’s for something much more important.” Then she told me what that was, adding that the book was clearer about the vision than the movie. She eastered me.

The surprise arrival of an eastering note from a gracious woman letting me know that some words I’d said had transformed her heart. Not my words but God’s Word.

A conversation between two five year olds, one a beloved grandson, on their way to school this week. Thomas: "Ella, I will miss you this weekend because I am going to Connecticut to see my Nana for Easter." Ella: "Thomas, I will never, ever forget you and I will miss you too." (Easy to see why Jesus pointed to children as examples of what we must be like to enter the kingdom of God. Incidentally, even the tantrum-ish and difficult children are kingdom material. )

The cover of this week’s Newsweek the lead story headlined with “Forget the Church. Follow Jesus.” Andrew Sullivan has many wise insights. Easter for me is that he is a writer and commentator, a Roman Catholic who identifies himself as, yes, a conservative. The other side!!! Eeeek.............and Easter!

Easter yourself, your neighbors and, yes, God.

2012.04.07 Finding the Way: the Faith OF Jesus

Holy Week, safely— or unsafely— launched, is at least a good enough thing. It’s like finally getting a diagnosis for this spiritual ailment called longing and wondering, suspended between two gardens: Eden of paradise and Gethsemane of agony-knowing-death. Most of life is spent between these two gardens. I resist them both.

My religion tells me that I will go through hell and somehow I will last, no matter what. That was the faith OF Jesus, a far better way to live than trying to have faith IN Jesus, a treacherous path snarled up with a zillion contradictory interpretations.

If you’re a Christian—lapsed, relapsed or unlapsed— it’s best to buckle your seat belt for this wild ride following the Jesus story in his last week. (I hope my last week, whenever that is, won’t be as bad as his was.)

I want to get to Easter and new life, but I know there are painful steps along the way if I choose to follow the faith of Jesus.

Along the way I will get from scripture, once again, powerful reminders of this faith of Jesus:
Love one another: try the politics and policies of love, kindness, generosity, plain caring, and forgiveness.
Weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.
Be silent with God the Good Father; die with God the Beloved Son/Daughter; brood with God the Spirit.
Let yourself be raised up in whatever way that can happen for you, and easter forth.

I like little homilies that just flow forth like that. I also know I’m being preachy. And also know that something in that homiletic may be taken up by Spirit and deposited where it will bear fruit I will never see.

By my home altar I have the book of a pastor and preacher, the late Howard Thurman. He spoke and wrote wisdom all his life and when he died in 1981 he was Dean Emeritus of Marsh Chapel, Boston University. Thurman also served as professor of theology at Howard University in D.C. The book, “Deep Is the Hunger,” is old, 1951. It is also eternal. Here’s what I opened to today.

A night so wild with the
glory of the moon
that the earth covered its face
with
Silence.
On the pathway of my mind
long, long thoughts run riot.
They are quieted; not by the
beauty of the moon
On the covered face of the earth—
But by the passionate swelling
of awful harmony:
“De Old Sheep, they know the road.
Young lambs must find the way.”
My heart whispers to God:
“Let me always be the young lamb.”

2012.04.01 A Day of Fools and Palms

I feel as if I should be writing about Palm Sunday, the time Christians become re-enacters to the maximum!

It is, after all, Palm Sunday. And I can't muster the energy to heave myself out of my mood and follow the flock.

This Sunday we Christians remember the whole enchilada of Jesus as the New Testament story goes: riding into Jerusalem on a donkey thronged by cheering fans. Huge crowds, according to the embellishments of biblical-ese, were more likely small crowds, stragglers probably. They followed Jesus along the road, these hope-against-hopers waving palm pompoms.

Jesus, they hoped, would make it all come true —divine justice for the poor and desolate, a messianic social re-organization. PEACE.

It would be “thy kingdom come” come true, so they thought.

To me just now the triumvalism feels pointless, silly, utterly incongruent. Pitiful really: that we gather in tiny groups and make a tiny parade waving our shreds of palms and singing of glory, laud and honor—our every step shadowed by death.

I have never been present in any parish church Palm Sunday processional “crowd” where enough energy was marshaled to make us sound like a group of enthusiastic believers. Never. The joyful words turned to dust in our hosanna mouths.

We know what happened when Jesus spoke truth to power in Jerusalem. We know that power won, and keeps winning. We know the mission as planned failed.

It is psychologically impossible to move my heart even to imagine the promise of Easter on this messy day of fools and frenetic palm-waving, because I'm living surrounded by a parallel parable.

It’s deafening—the media and politicos each and all squawking and screeching positions. I even agree with some of them, but I can’t bear the cacophony. Its sound is shrill and its energy killing.

So why do we Christians, we Christ-hopers, keep up the charade as we stand on the lip edge of disaster?

I don’t know. I simply don’t know. So I cast my lot with Jesus and the fools and follow anyway, mouthing dry words and fighting back tears.

Where am I going? Tell me the truth, my God.

Please make me a pretty palm cross.

2012.03.28 Stand Out Moments Are Spiritual

Some things stand out.

I remember Tinker Bell. When I saw Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin as Peter “herself” in New York City, I loved all of it, however the moment that stood out—clunked my head and twanged my heart— was the moment when the audience was asked to save Tinker Bell’s life.

Tinker Bell was the guiding fairy, a beautiful tiny female fairy with wings and a magic wand. She was the tale’s version of a guardian angel. Tinker was omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent—most of the time. She flitted about the scene shedding her bright light on the best path, warning of dangers, and protecting Peter and the children he shepherded through the hazards of Never Never Land.

Tinker was so good at her vocation that she chose to risk her life for its integrity. She knew that the villain Captain Hook had put poison into a drink that Peter or one of his band would soon imbibe. To save him she drank it herself and soon the poison took its hold.

I watched breathless as Tink slowly, dramatically, lost her energy. The light of her life dimmed to near extinction.

A shudder and a collective gasp gripped the moment.

Tinker Bell was the real hero of the story— and could not die I thought. But she was dying.

The audience was told that if we clapped and hoped hard enough we could save Tink’s little life. I clapped my hands off and wished my whole heart into the scene.

The energy of love and hope worked to save Tinker Bell, I think. However I can honestly say I had to ask what the outcome was.

What remains etched into my flesh and bones is the moment in which I participated for all my worth with a whole community in trying to save one small life, keep a single light alive.

If Tinker Bell had died I’d have cried buckets, but I’d still remember and cherish the stand out moment.

2012.03.25 An Annunciation aka Big Fat Holy Announcement

Most days faith just plods along uninspired and rotely robotic. I’d be completely sincere if I could muster it at will, but most times I just do it—pray that is.

Two days ago I was writing a sticky note when an “annunciation” came. I considered this announcement holy because it shot through me uninvited but welcome and exhilarating.

I was penning a note to a friend who is in treatment for cancer. She is a writer too; I've been sending her a poem a week while she undergoes cancer treatment. She is suffering grand humiliations to female vanity. Vanity can be a virtue because it keeps you on your elegant toes. The chemotherapy is supposed to kill the bad and leave the good to thrive—by hope and love alone. Also prayer.

Dear Friend, I wrote. I’ve always thought that prayer, just talking and feeling to yourself and God (by whatever name) with naked honesty, was the common denominator of spirituality. Religion, important piece of the spiritual pie, is how you practice or what you do because you pray.

No one is unable to pray even if they are unconscious, because Godde prays in them anyway. And no one has never not prayed. (How’s that for a triple negative, dear writer friend?:)

love and spring…………..

2102.03.21 Roger Haight, a BOTH/AND Hero

Last year I heard a talk I'll never forget: “If God Can Be Found In the Soul, Who needs Church?” by Roger Haight, S.J., author and theologian.

Haight offered radically new views for a Church of the future, things like full equality of men and women in church, de-clericalization and collegial exercise of authority, getting modest, being ecumenical and open to other faiths, letting go of control from the center.

AND, scandal of scandals: spiritual truth and sanctification can happen outside the Church.

Such things could be sweet or toxic to Roman Catholic ears.

The lecture hall was packed, mostly with older people like me, most of them women like me, and most of them Roman Catholics, like I once thought I wanted to be but, because of moral politics unfriendly to women,changed my mind. Nevertheless we all were hungry to hear new ideas, new images of our shared God.

Can we be one for Christ’s sake?

(I read “one” to mean mutually respectful and deliciously diverse.)

Haight, a mild-mannered, bespectacled, not bombastic, let's say Wally Peepers type, is scholar in residence at Union Theological School in New York City. He has lost his mandatum (papal authorization) to teach theology in Roman Catholic institutions. Ya think he’s teaching theology?

But he hasn’t lost his voice. His theology is dangerous; for example he titles one of his books “Jesus Symbol of God.”

Symbol? OR Very God of Very God? True God from True God, as our Nicene creed states? Obviously Jesus Christ for Christians is BOTH /AND and to separate divine from human is the big temptation, impossible to avoid and impossible not to avoid.

I sat rapt and wrote lots of notes. What I took away and will never forget came from the Q & A time. One woman asked Haight, “What shall we do? The Church isn’t listening?”

A: “Spiritual nourishment is a higher value than institutional loyalty. If you’re not fed feel free to move. Talk back.”

Whoever heard of a Catholic authority figure suggesting such things—in public? But he did and he is preaching a religion of BOTH/AND.

Thank Godde.

20112.03.14 Roles to Real

Years ago I worked as a chaplain/counselor in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation center where I learned life lessons that allow me to be myself without judgment—well, most days.

I’m writing about this because, well, you keep writing about what matters.

I discovered that in very stressed families people took on roles to cope — and I was a “hero.” I wasn’t a hero for real, but by role. It was a relief to know that, because heroism was exhausting. It kept me striving at top speed, compulsively amassing achievement after achievement, all of them grand and applause worthy, but they never got me what I wanted: serenity and love.

Addictive systems are not about who drinks or drugs and who doesn’t, who sinned and who didn’t, though everyone will seek a culprit just as they did in Eden starting with Eve and ending up with the poor little snake. Lying, hiding and blaming behaviors arise from anxiety and keep everyone feeling just plain bad (guilty, afraid, anxious, angry, sad, and stupid) inside.

Addictive systems(family, community, religious congregation, culture) are ones that feel uncomfortable to everyone and no one knows quite why. It’s no one’s fault. Relationships just don’t work well. Emotional connections are absent or negative. Individuals feel emotionally glued together even when they also feel estranged. Most everyone pretends all is well.The system got dysfunctional over time and by habit.

Healing is possible and it begins with confessing true feelings. Something like HELP! How biblical.

I was at a workshop on family systems once in which the presenter said, “Any critical parent will do.” She meant: will do to make a whole family feel helpless. That sounded like passing the blame to me.

I’d say, any seriously chronic stress will do. Chronic.

That’s where roles come in. People in a misfunctioning system wonder: How can I help this group feel better? What can I do to make everyone truly happy?

So they fall into roles and after a while they forget who they are.

A natural leader, I took up the hero role to please and create proud feelings—attractive alternatives to shame and anger. I wanted my role to rub off so everyone would feel proud, not of me but of themselves.

A friend, by personality and temperament, took up the role of scapegoat. He tried to call attention away from the stress and uncertainty by being loud and boisterous, distracting others away from their bad feelings. It worked until the stress of the role got too much and he turned to destructive behavior—and in time got into trouble with the law.

One of the cutest roles people turn to is the comic. This person has a natural gift of humor and uses it to make others laugh and forget their troubles. In time the comic risks forgetting that there is anything sad or serious at all anymore.

Naturally caring people lie awake nights worrying about how to make things right; caring turns into caretaking for control.

And there’s always someone or ones who gets lost in the role confusion and can’t decide what’s real at all—if anything. They are quiet, obedient, intent on not making trouble, so intent that they get left out. Lonely.

It takes a long time and help from outside to move from role back to real, the way God created us. I needed everything: therapy, twelve step programs, prayer, friends and family, and Jesus. Healing was painful and involved grief. It made more trouble for me before it made less.

A young man I knew years back demeaned himself endlessly for being such a “stupid jerk” as a kid. He’d lost sleep waiting for his mother to fall asleep so he could make sure her cigarette didn’t fall from the ashtray and set the house on fire. Was that stupid or loving?

But just like the biblical folks you don’t heal without a whole helluva of a lot of commotion. It’s a process not a miracle. Hang in. There’s nothing more worthwhile.

Spiritual tips: 1) God loves you whether you’re playing a role or not; and 2) The motivation behind role-playing is spiritual. Look deep. You did it for love.

Simply so.