Thursday, March 26, 2009

Much afoot

It is with great interest that we read of Episcopal priest Kevin Thew Forrester, who has been elected bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan and describes himself as “walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together.” He must receive “consent” first from a majority of Episcopal bishops and may encounter obstacles.... He does all kinds of bad things like use liturgical texts not approved by the national Episcopal Church. (it’s funny.... there’s also a national AA authority that has been given the right to approve or disapprove spiritual texts as appropriate reading for people in recovery. Bill Wilson would have turned over in his grave as it’s just the sort of “secular authority” with whom he took umbrage and wrote the AA Traditions to counter....)

According to a statement from the Diocese, Forrester was “drawn into the Christian-Zen Buddhist dialogue through centering prayer and his desire to assist persons in their own transformation in Christ.” He has also voiced unorthodox views, once writing in a diocesan newsletter: "Sin has little, if anything, to do with being bad. It has everything to do, as far as I can tell, with being blind to our own goodness." Yup, looks like centering prayer is doing its heretical thing again....

And then we learn of the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding who, in 2007 in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, Washington, “announced in the diocesan newspaper that she was both an Episcopalian and a Muslim. Redding is a former director of faith development at St. Mark's Cathedral.” Well they got rid of HER lickity split: “Redding was subsequently put on leave from her priestly duties by her ecclesiastical supervisor, the Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island.”

Here at St. Luke’s in our town, Rev. David Anderson took up centering prayer fairly recently via Cynthia B. and then Richard Rohr and now HE’s starting to say what some will deem pretty darn controversial things from the pulpit. Last week it was, “What Jesus exposes is the tendency of religion to take mystery and turn it into mastery, where you perform some required action, and that “saves” you. Bad religion is always about control. The people who run the churches, temples and mosques of the world (and the hierarchy that controls them) have a big need to control people. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but it’s well known so we might as well name it. Institutional religion mostly dismisses the real message of its founders—Moses or Jesus, Mohammad or Buddha. They brought a message of radical transformation of consciousness that quite literally passes a human from death to life. But institutional religions mostly dismisses these radical messages of freedom and life because, well... you can’t control people and make them good, clean, law-abiding citizens with this kind of message.”

Then, we read in Brian McLaren’s new book (and mind you, he’s a former evangelical....) that “Jews, Christians and Muslims share this ancient way and these ancient practices. The ancient way is the way we must learn by heart, and we will learn it best by hearts that have been softened, if not broken, by suffering.” Further, “If we do not discover in our three religions the ancient way of spiritual practice... then we will contribute to the destruction of the world.” He doesn’t go as far as using terms like “perennial wisdom” or “mystical streams” cause his book's reach is quite broad...but he alludes to them. Brian's good buddy Phyllis Tickle is another heart and mind on fire. Wouldn’t be surprised if they show up on the OOOW radar someday. Heck, Richard Rohr might even drift our way....

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Abrahamic Agenda

May you go out in joy,
And be led forth in peace.
Isaiah 55:12

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Thanks to Thee, Oh God

Thanks to Thee, O God, that I have risen today, To the rising of
this life itself; may it be to Thine own glory, O God of every
gift, and to the glory, aid Thou my soul. With the aiding of Thine
own mercy, even as I clothe my body with wool, cover Thou my soul
with the shadow of Thy wing. Help me to avoid every sin, and the
source of every sin to forsake, and as the mist scatters on the
crest of the hills, may each ill haze clear from my soul, O God.
- Gaelic Prayer

Monday, March 23, 2009

Divine Lightning

This excellent verse from Rumi comes as a gift from Ed Clifford.

When the kernel swells the walnut shell,
or the pistachio, or the almond, the husk diminishes.
As the kernel of knowledge grows,
the husk thins and disappears,
because the lover is consumed by the Beloved.
Since the quality of being sought is the opposite of seeking,
Revelation and Divine Lightning consume the prophet with fire.
When the attributes of the Eternal shine forth,
the cloak of temporality is burned away.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Beauty

This wonderful quote was sent by Rosemary Shirley to be posted to the blog.

That, beautiful-beyond-being, is said to be Beauty
for it gives beauty from itself in a manner appropriate to each.
It causes the consonance and splendor of all,
it flashes forth upon all, after the manner of light--
producing gifts of its flowing ray,
It calls to itself, when it is called beauty.

from
The Divine Names
Pseudo-Dionysius

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

What me Pray?

We can do nothing, we say sometimes, we can only pray. That, we feel, is a terribly precarious second-best. So long as we can fuss and work and rush about, so long as we can lend a hand, we have some hope; but if we have to fall back upon God -- ah, then things must be critical indeed!

Well, to begin with, you can pray. Pray!, you say scornfully, pray! I knew it would all fizzle out, and come to nothing. I could pray! Yes, you could pray, and, whatever you may think about it -- using it as a poor makeshift of a thing much lower than a second-best, not really a best at all, on which men fall back only when they can do nothing effectively, and are too fidgety to be able to do nothing at all -- Christ holds that prayer is a tremendous power which achieves what, without it, was a sheer impossibility. And this amazing thing you can set into operation. And the fact that you are not so using it, and simply don't believe in it and its efficiency and efficacy as our fathers did, and that so many nowadays agree with you, is certainly a major reason why the churches are so cold, and the promises seem so tardy of fulfillment.

A. J. Gossip (worldofquotes.com)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Collapse

As if often the case, several things at once have converged moving across my desk to highlight what must be understood at this very critical (and perhaps we should also say, precious) moment in our time on earth. The first is a poem from Mary Oliver's new book Red Bird, and the second is a link sent me by Diana Beardsley from NYT and Thomas Friedman's recent, insightful article, which I think is a "must read." Here they are:

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accomodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?em

Monday, March 09, 2009

Dreams

Often I have tried the frightening way of "reality,"
Where things that count are profession, law, fashion, finance,
But disillusioned and freed I fled away alone
To the other side, the place of dreams and blessed folly.

—Hermann Hesse

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Tugging the Fontanelle

Growing up in southern New Mexico, I would hear stories about curanderos, the shamanic healers of Mexico. For me, the most memorable of these stories is how they would treat infantile dysentery. As the infant would become more ill, dehydrated, and volume depleted, their fontanelles would collapse, creating a depression at the top of their heads. As treatment, the curanderos would create a special paste and place it on the skin over the soft spot. Then the shamans would try to elevate the skin by pulling and tugging on the paste and scalp, so that the fontanelle had a normal, full guise.

This practice is a striking metaphor for trying to give the appearance of health without addressing the root cause. In all the wisdom traditions, but especially in the teachings of Yeshua, the way to fullness and maturity is not through outward cosmetics or exclusively focusing on exoteric/outward gestures. Yeshua teaches us to "wash the inside of the cup" and to "give birth to that which is within yourself". His harshest criticisms were aimed at external religious efforts that are really nothing more than camouflaged attempts to keep the ego settled and undisturbed. The most unfortunate outcome of all our vain "tuggings" is not that they are just some quixotic pecadillos, but that they ossify the soft spots of our hearts that are in fact the access points to our humanity and our Divinity.

My face catches the wind
from the snow line
and flushes with a flush
that will never wholly settle.
Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,
wanting to look young forever, to pass.
I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty
and only pretty enough to be seen
with a man who wanted to be seen
with a passable woman.

But now that I am in love
with a place that doesn't care
how I look and if I am happy,
happy is how I look and that's all.
My hair will grow grey in any case,
my nails chip and flake,
my waist thicken, and the years
work all their usual changes.

If my face is to be weather beaten as well,
it's little enough lost
for a year among the lakes and vales
where simply to look out my window
at the high pass
makes me indifferent to mirrors
and to what my soul may wear
over its new complexion.
Fleur Adcock

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Walking past the Wall Street Journal

Are these not interesting times? Once again this morning the bold, black headlines clamor for attention-- but instead, our eyes (eyes of the heart, no doubt) are drawn to the bright, snow-covered landscape outside where, with any luck, a hawk might slowly circle into view at the edge of the window. “Ah,” we muse in tandem, “that is what we prefer to read, please.” Who can make sense of any of it?

But Wisdom tells us that it’s not actually our job to do so. Rather, as the Psalmist sings, “Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; .... for they shall soon wither like the grass, and like the green grass fade away. Put your trust in the Lord and do good..... Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.”

Hmm, so the task at hand is to show up, to wait and to do so lovingly. Although a tall order to this Mind struggling with personal losses, fears and the seemingly insurmountable problems of the planet, something in the Heart leaps at the thought. For just this day then, may I reorient myself towards God with complete abandon, please and be as Molly Bloom with “Yes, now yes, so we are flowers all... yes...”
----

I am standing naked in the marketplace
but no one turns their head to look at me,
for no one can see me as I am.

Still I offer my friendship to all,
still to each wing and fin and cell—I will be forever in obeisance.
Anyone who bows touches my feet;
anyone who sings helps me in my work.
All labor is because my sinew quivers.

I cover the divine flame in my heart,
for if I turned God loose from my house
the earth would reveal to your eyes what mine always see--
existence is a lamp and Kabir,
the oil it burns....
understand that kind of power, that is dormant in you....

I am standing naked in the world forever in homage
to all movement. I cherish every atom
that He moves in this
dance.
--- from “Love Poems from God.”

His students asked him,
When will you manifest yourself to us?
How long will it be before we see you as you truly are?
Yeshua replied,
"On the day you strip yourselves naked like those little children, and take your clothes and trample them on the ground under your feet without shame, then you will be able to look upon the son of the Living One without fear."
-- The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 37

Lynn on "the work of the Order" on 2-13-09.

The Problem of Money

...the problem of money dogs our steps throughout the whole of our lives, exerting a pressure that, in its way, is as powerful and insistent as any other problem of human existence. And it haunts the spiritual path as well.

...What is the role of money in the search for consciousness, in the pursuit of that transformation of the self spoken of by the great teachers and philosophers of all epochs and cultures?...

...In the world we now live in, money enters into everything human beings do, into every aspect and pocket of life. This is something new.

I do not mean to say that our culture is necessarily more materialistic than those that have prceded it. I am saying only that money, now plays an unprecedentedly powerful role in our inner and outer lives, and that any serious search for self-knowledge and self-development requires that we study the meaning that money actually has for us.

Jacob Needleman (Money and the Meaning of Life, p.2)