I get it now. . . Metaphors Be With You! = May the Force Be With You!
Duh!
Category: My Life
Vicarious Violence Weekend!
The last few days I’ve enjoyed some nice vicarious violence. On Thursday, I watched parts of Ong-Bak, Thai Warrior. On Friday and Saturday (and Sunday for that matter), Fight Club, and last night, Kung Fu Hustle.
All I can say about the last movie is it’s a riot. It doesn’t matter if you love martial arts films or hate them, you’ll like this one. Think Roadrunner cartoon meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Benedicta Benedictum, Domine
(Bless Benedict, O Lord.)
I’m emotionally exhausted tonight. And I have to confront my own hypocrisy about freedom, identifications, ego, universal love, and all the rest. How quickly it goes out the window when I’m riled! What is this “I” that got so threatened and angry at the news of Cardinal Ratzinger’s election? Simply a charade, that’s what. The same Spirit that gives “me” life gives “him” life–all that’s here is life, expressing life differently, in different bodies and different places. As the Oracle said in the Matrix Reloaded, “everyone is here to do what they’re here to do.”
I need to pray for and love this man. In a comment on a previous post, I wrote that no one could have brought more baggage with him into the papacy. The flip side is that no one enters the papacy with so many people feeling ill-will, anger, and frustration toward him. That atmosphere doesn’t make for healing, and it doesn’t make healers. If he is to give us the love and guidance that we need, he needs to be empowered by love as well. Karma is universal, Dharma is universal. Love needs to flow from me, and if it also does from my brother/Father Benedict, so much the better, although I have no control over that.
May the Church Catholic be the Church Symphonic.
Doubting and Faith
Today, I received an email from a reader in the Netherlands troubled by doubts. For me, I only began to believe after a time of doubting. I got the doubting out of the way in my youth, but I had to be an agnostic for long months before I became a believer.
Yet faith changes continue. My conception of God has changed from being “personal” (God has the attributes of a person) to being mostly impersonal (God is something far beyond personhood). I keep going back to the phrase “the Ground of Being,” used by Christian mystics for centuries, from The Book of Privy Counseling, to Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. *The Ground of Being* means that Beingness, Existence itself–with all that it contains–space, time, the Universe–springs from something that is so incredible it’s beyond the concepts of being or existence. Yet existence comes from it like the grass from the ground.
A friend of mine was shaken by a spiritual experience he had, because God didn’t seem to be there. Of course not. In these glimpses where the Matrix is dissolved, God can’t be seen because there is no separation. In One, there is no “you” and “God;” there is just One.
Yet, in the manifested world, It is personal, because It manifests persons, and all that is. Everything we use to describe this Ground of Being falls short. It is mystery. Nothing stops us from trying to explain and describe It, but we can only describe Its energies and actions, as we can only see the wind by the movement of the clouds and dust.
Children sense this intuitively:
What created the Universe?
The Big Bang.
What made the Big Bang bang?
Who made the world, Mommy?
God did, Honey.
Who made God?
So we use words: God, Tao, Brahman, the Unconditioned, Emptiness, and on and on, though all words and names are insufficient. The Mystery pervades everything. Explanations are only invitations to engage the Mystery at a deeper level. Why do living things grow? Because their cells divide. Why do cells divide? Because of DNA. How does DNA make cells divide? Silence.
I ended my email response to him with this:
My teacher once said “the Universe is a mystery. If you could explain it, there wouldn’t be a mystery anymore.” . . .
Move the consideration from being a question in your head to a wonder in your heart. Love the mystery, devote yourself to IT, not as a question or problem, but as your life. Because, well, it is your life, and all life. Everything comes from the mystery, and there is nothing which isn’t full of the mystery. The mystery will sustain you as nothing else can. It’s the only thing there is!
The Pope is Passing
Throughout the day, I’ve gone to Yahoo! and refreshed the page to see if there’s been any more news concerning the Pope.
I’m 44 years old, and I was raised Baptist. After a born-again experience that radically changed my life when I was 13, I devoted myself to apprehending as much as I could of what God had for me. The adventure took through every major expression of Protestantism, and 10 years ago, into the peace and turmoil of the Catholic Church (and beyond). I’ve never really known a Catholic Church that wasn’t headed by Karol Wojtyla, the pope known to the world as His Holiness, John Paul II.
By the time you read this, chances are that John Paul will be “dead,” a word that I have to put in quotes, because any mystic knows that there is no such thing as death. But his smile, wave, and sometimes-infuriating tenacity will be gone.
Most popes have been chiefly administrators of the Church. John Paul II was a maverick. He traveled to every continent and nearly every country of the world, praying for peace and preaching peace. Behind the scenes, he would meet with dictators and urge them to practice tolerance. He was instrumental in preventing the democratic movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from going the way of Tiananmen Square.
He lobbied consistently on behalf of the poor, against the exploitation of poor people by rich people, and poor countries by rich countries. He argued for dignity, fairness, and kindness to all, since all are created in the image of God. He fought against war and the death penalty; he had seen up close the horrors of war and killing, when the most terrible seizure of brutality that humanity has manifested enveloped his country.
He never wavered in proclaiming Christ as the Savior of the world. Yet he reached out with kindness and love to leaders of other religions, and invited the world to dialogue. He publicly asked God’s forgiveness for the Church’s past sins.
To many Catholics like myself, his weaknesses seemed to be in his official role of governing the Church. He resisted the reforms of Vatican II, and interpreted them as narrowly as possible. He scaled back the ministres of laity within the Church, as the priesthood continued to wither away. He often seemed unable to give the grace to more progessively-minded Catholics that he would give to the world in general. Proponents of change often found themselves silenced or censured, such as Matthew Fox OP, Anthony deMello SJ, Leonardo Boff OFM, Tissa Balasuriya OMI, not to mention dozens of lay teachers. The Church remains a largely pre-modern institution in a post-modern world, locked in Thomistic views about sex, birth control, and the capability of women to minister.
But whatever else can be said of him, he gave his all. He gave his heart, his hope, his health, and his life for his convictions and the world. He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and he loved his neighbor as himself. He will be missed, and he will be remembered.
Requiescat in pace, Papa Johannes Paulus.
Frontline has an excellent biography of John Paul II.
A little resurrection
It’s been a great Lent and Easter for me. Besides my ongoing study with my teacher, Kitabu Roshi, I’ve celebrated the presence of God in a Native American prayer lodge, in my parish, at Catholic Campus Ministries, and among new friends at Symphonic.
This is also an anniversary for me, at least by the church calendar. Ten years ago, on Holy Saturday, I joined the Catholic Church. A couple of hours before the Vigil Mass began, I broke my fast at Long John Silver’s in Kent, and had my picture taken outside with Harley, a tame mountain lion. (Kent is the kind of cool place that just happens to have mountain lions hanging around fast-food restaurants sometimes!) A frimmin’ mark for this transition in my life. (I’m having problems with my scanner. Hopefully, I’ll be able to include the picture soon.)
I thought I had been through faith changes before (and I had!), but I had no idea what lay ahead for me. When you open yourself to wanting to discover all God has for you, prepare to be changed. *A lot.* I didn’t know that I would discover a Christian teaching called “theosis” that would change my life, I didn’t know that I would try for a time to become a priest, I never dreamed that I would be studying Zen with an enlightened master, nor how difficult some of the path ahead would be.
At the Easter Vigil Mass last night, I felt something wonderful break in me. My ever-present “inner theologian” shut up. Suddenly, all the differences in concepts in all of the traditions became irrelevant. The only thing that mattered is the simply the divine presence of the One. I felt not only reconciled to my church, but also with the Evangelicalism of my youth. It’s a little resurrection.
What am I? I don’t know. All I know is God is alive here and everywhere, and I want to awaken to that fully and become one with that fully.
Prayer and Sweat
Of course, besides recharging throughout the day and practicing “city Zen,” those more intense and concentrated times of refreshment are also vital. I went to a “prayer lodge” meeting on Saturday, led by a Native American shaman, Rev. Lakotahasie Frazier.
Hasie, as she is known to her friends, has adapted the traditional sweat lodge ceremony slightly for Westerners, and so that men and women can participate together. That said, its substance is still the same: prayer and sweat. It strikes me, that we’re creatures of prayer and sweat, spirit and matter.
Catholic spirituality is built upon the principle of sacramentality, the awareness that God is within, and working through the material of the world. The idea behind the sweat lodge is to return the favor to God–to give substance to our prayers, to bind them up with tobacco in bundles, to breathe them in through a pipe, to sweat our prayers as a purification and offering to God.
I think something that makes contemporary city life so sick is the lack of earthiness and loss of contact with nature. During the course of a day, how many things do we see, really see that are not man-made? What is God-made is largely obscured by buildings, walls, floors and doors. But much more is obscured by our concepts and perceptions.
I don’t often see my co-workers as gods and goddesses, images of the One. Something about the lodge helps me see a bit more clearly when I return to work.
Poems without words
My teacher told me to enter meditation as though writing a poem without words. That delighted me, because I’ve often sensed that what I write is not the actual poem, the words are just markers for the indescribable feeling or thought.
The Singing Sings the Singer I sing songs of God or so it seems to me. Words and tunes and names have changed, or so it seems to you. Sunday-school rhymes, speaking in tongues, Gregorian chants, Buddhist mantras, and the words I string because I must. I take what words I find and use them though they're useless. It's building rafts of pebbles, and somehow sailing anyway. Don't listen to the words, Don't listen to the notes. Before the words-- This! Before the notes--each note-- This! Do you see it? Can you feel it? It's all I am, and all you are. When my bones have turned to dust, and the oceans sink in sand, still This! Just listen to the Singing from which we are sung.
Nevertheless, if you want to share, words become unavoidable!
Snapshot
Sometimes when I let days go by between posts, it’s because I don’t know what to write about. Often this isn’t because my spiritual life is dry (though sometimes it is), but sometimes it’s because I don’t know where to begin.
Here’s as close a snapshot as what I can give you what’s been going on in my life the last month or so, the stuff I usually don’t blog about.
* Since I began studying Zen, I haven’t gone to church nearly as much, but I still attend my parish » and Catholic Campus Ministry » at ODU.
* I’ve become *very* aware of God’s presence again.
* Kundalini effects have been very strong. It feels good for the most part, but there are more headaches.
* I’ve been hanging out with evangelicals for the first time in ages, at a fledging post-modern or “post-Protestant »” church called Symphonic.
* You’ve got to love a church that doesn’t have a noun in its name. In Minnesota, there’s a church named “Bluer. »” (Maybe they should buy a heater!)
* I like it, though I really don’t know why I’m there!
* Among other things, it’s a good place to see Korean horror films ».
* I’ve been corresponding with a seeker who came across my site last month.
* He’s much more “awake” than I am. Yet he’s asking me questions, when I feel I should be asking him.
* The last time he emailed me, I got the email while watching one of my favorite TV shows. His name is the same as that of the main character on that show.
* My teacher is telling me that nothing is coincidence.
* I giggle *a lot* in meetings with my teacher.
* Had a great weekend catching up with two of my friends, although if any of you is thinking of seeing “Son of the Mask,” **don’t.**
* Brewing ginger ale again, and this time, I’ve got *whey.* (Thanks, Katherine!)
* I’m starting to believe that nothing is coincidence.
* Spent a lot of time Web-surfing. God is doing some very interesting things in a lot of places. Impressed by the potential of the “post-modern” movement.
* I feel amazed and blessed and dizzy by just being alive here on Februrary 21, 2005.
Time Travel
I sometimes think of meditation / contemplative prayer as a kind of time travel–leaving the hustle and madness of the 21st century, and going back to the origin, back to when God walked with man in the Garden of the heart. But of course, it’s not going “back” at all, but rather stopping time in a sense–not in the external world of course, but as we listen to God in the deep silence at the center of the soul, time stops internally. In that freedom from time, we meet God, who is eternal, outside of time.
So from the noise of our minds we go back to stillness, and from the noise of our wants, anxieties and ideas, we sink into that stillness, and there, just rest and “be still, and know God.”
It’s strange that practicing this rest for our souls is so difficult. Our bodies demand this deep rest, without thought, emotion, or worry. Any more than a few days without sleep can kill.
Similarly, our spirits suffer just as much without consciously resting in this stillness in which God calls us to meet him. But we can survive (so it seems) without it, so we ignore it.