The most unlikely teacher

In the last few weeks I have been enjoying Richard Rohr’s blog. (https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/#inbox/FMfcgxwHNVzNbBGVLVJHfcWLHQFzrCQf) Rohr is a Catholic monk who has authored several books and is nearly as well known in secular circles as in the religious world. In one of his blogs this week he includes the following quotes from environmentalist and author Bill McKibben to support his discussion regarding “restraint” as a spiritual practice.  McKibben writes:

“The most curious of all…lives are the human ones, because we can destroy, but also because we can decide not to destroy. The turtle does what she does, and magnificently. She can’t not do it, though, any more than the beaver can decide to take a break from building dams or the bee from making honey. But if the bird’s special gift is flight, ours is the possibility of restraint. We’re the only creature who can decide not to do something we’re capable of doing. That’s our superpower, even if we exercise it too rarely.”

The lock down period of the last two months has been an exercise of our “superpower,” restraint. There are many things we normally do in our day to day lives that we have chosen not to do, and in many cases were not permitted to do. We sacrificed some of our liberty, our coming and going in the world, to stay put, to stand still, to sit and wait. We limited our movements and our social activity, even with our families; some were quarantined for weeks within the same house. Mothers and fathers separated themselves from their children and from each other. Adult children were and still are separated from aged parents in convalescent care. Many worked from home or alone in empty offices. The well were restrained from the bedsides of the ill, even the dying. 

In exercising our restraint many of us have made some observations. In the NT clergy meeting this week with Bishop Audrey I tried to describe the vacuum I had been experiencing in my own life as the last few weeks have dragged on; the nearly indescribable interior hole that no amount of activity could fill; the constant feeling that something was missing - like you feel when you head to the grocery store and realize you’ve forgotten your list. Audrey remarked that not only could she relate but she was hearing a similar description by clergy all over the diocese. Bishop Jose’s (Diocese of Western NC) Youtube parody (https://www.diocesewnc.org/post/quarantine-with-bishop-jos%C3%A9-episode-1) of his quarantine experience, though humorous, points to this; to the void that can’t be filled, even with the pictures of the people you normally work with on the back of their chairs as you alone conduct a meeting as Bishop Jose attempted to do. During the book study group meeting on Wednesday night Nancy Dart shared this poem she had found on the Sage-ing website (https://www.sage-ing.org/covid19-resources/). For me it puts words, at least in part, to what I stammered to describe to my colleagues and to what Bishop Jose and every other humorous Coronavirus Youtube parody attempts to portray on a deeper level. 

The following poem was written by Sarah Bourns:

We’ve All Been Exposed

We’ve all been exposed.

Not necessarily to the virus

(maybe…who even knows).

We’ve all been exposed BY the virus.

Corona is exposing us.

Exposing our weak sides.

Exposing our dark sides.

Exposing what normally lays far beneath the surface of our souls,

hidden by the invisible masks we wear.

Now exposed by the paper masks we can’t hide far enough behind.

Corona is exposing our addiction to comfort.

Our obsession with control.

Our compulsion to hoard.

Our protection of self.

Corona is peeling back our layers.

Tearing down our walls.

Revealing our illusions.

Leveling our best-laid plans.

Corona is exposing the gods we worship:

Our health, Our hurry

Our sense of security

Our favorite lies, Our secret lusts

Our misplaced trust.

Corona is calling everything into question:

What is the church without a building?

What is my worth without an income?

How do we plan without certainty?

How do we love despite risk?

Corona is exposing me.

My mindless numbing

My endless scrolling

My careless words

My fragile nerves.

We’ve all been exposed.

Our junk laid bare.

Our fears made known.

The band-aid torn.

The masquerade done.

So what now? What’s left?

Clean hands,  Clear eyes

Tender hearts.

What Corona reveals, God can heal.

I know several people whose lives have not been really affected by the two month shut-down. They worked throughout in jobs that were not anymore stressful then before the pandemic and life was pretty much as it had been, except for their longer hair. I’m glad for them. But I’m also sorry for them in a way. And here’s why: In Chinese medicine everything has equal but opposite sides - left and right, top and bottom, front and back. So while the front of the virus is everything you are hearing on the news and the difficulty and inconvenience of exercising of our “superpower” of restraint, then the back side is all the learnings from having experienced it; the gifts of restraint, the gifts of discomfort, fear, anxiety, and from loss. A friend of mine refers to the virus as a teacher. That names the true nature of the back side. To know that everything that happens to us in this life has a front side and an opposite back side is a spiritual teaching. What has been the front side, the challenging side, of Covid19 for you, just you… not the country, not the economy, not your neighbor… but for you? And what is the back side of the virus - what is this teacher revealing to you about you? 

Sarah Bourn’s poem includes both the front and back sides. She ends it with, What Corona reveals, God can heal…., leaving us to focus on the back side. Is there anything that the restraint of the last two months has made visible? Is there anything that needs to be healed? Do you have a desire to grow beyond where you are? Do you want to see the world through the eyes of God; the eyes that see the perfection and balance in all things? Do you want to live out of the fullest and highest expression of yourself and not the same old patterns that run your life? Then pray for these things. There is a time for restraint and this is not it. This is the time for letting the unwanted revealed parts of us fall away and shift into the highest and best parts of ourselves. We have been given a small window of opportunity for spiritual growth and this unlikely teacher, Covid19, is showing us the way. 

The ego grieves while the spirit rejoices

I had just turned on the car radio. It was set to the dial of NPR. A story was being told. A young girl and her family went to visit her grandfather who is in the hospital. When the family surrounds the bed of the old man someone says, “Luna made you an apple pie.” The old man looked at the young girl and smiled. Luna, the young girl who is telling the story, says that in his smile came a flood of memories as she recalled all the times she had made apple pie with her grandfather. The hospital smelled like medicine and cleaners and felt sterile. But around the sickbed of her grandfather the smell of the freshly baked pie made it feel warm and familiar. 

I had not been intending to listen to NPR. I was listening to another story, a book on CD. I was at the end of the story, the last chapter of disc 38. I had been listening to this story in my car for three months. I was on a quick errand into town, 10 minutes there, 10 minutes back - just enough time to hear the last chapter of the last disc. It was a fictional story, "1Q84," in which the moon appeared differently in different dimensions indicating how thin the veil was between one world and the next. In each dimension most things were the same, but some things were not the same, like the number of moons in the night sky. But the point was that the characters were the same in every dimension. The outer forms of the world changed, sometimes there were two moons, sometimes the one, old familiar moon, but the characters remain unchanged. More importantly, as is the point of this 38 disc story, the bonds of love remained ever-strong in every dimension. 

It seemed an odd synchronicity that as I was trying to finish a story about two lovers moving through dimensions distinguished by the number of moons in the sky I would be interrupted by a short story about a girl named Luna, a name that means “moon.” Had her name not been Luna I would not have listened. But what are the chances? At the end of the 38th disc it had come down to a single moon hanging peacefully in the sky. But before I could learn that the end of that story was about the permanence of love, I was interrupted by a three minute story about the permanence of love, told by someone whose name was “moon.” The veil is very thin. 

However, for the disciples there is no thin veil. They only understand Jesus in his physical form. All they know is that Jesus is going to go away. His body will die and he will no longer be with them. They speak to him anticipating the loss of him. They grieve openly as they look to a future without him.  He has not left them yet. But he tells them that he will be leaving them in one form, the physical form, but will remain with them in another form, in spiritual form. 

Commentator John Shea makes an important distinction: “The scenario is not: Jesus is going to God and when they die, they will go to God and be reunited with him. The scenario is: once [Jesus] has died and is no longer physically with them, he will not be gone. He will be present to them, in and through the Spirit, in the depth of their own beings. They are not being encouraged to hope for life after death. They are being instructed in a consciousness change, to become aware of spiritual presence without physical manifestation.”  Each day, as we experiences loss in our world, personally and collectively, we are being instructed in a consciousness change. We are being taught to become aware of spiritual presence without physical manifestation. And even further, to see physical manifestations as extensions of the Holy Spirit.

“The ego grieves what it has lost while the spirit rejoices over what it has found.”  Eckart Tolle, who recited this saying in one of his lectures, apologized for not knowing the author but then said it didn’t really matter who said it because it all comes from the same source, the same consciousness regardless of the author. He was not dismissing the importance of citing authorship, but merely getting to a greater truth about collective consciousness. The disciples could no more fathom this level of understanding then go to the moon. The are consumed with grieving what they perceive they are losing. They have not yet become awakened. They do not yet understand that Love cannot cease to be. They can only see the physical world and its manifestations and its corresponding limitations. They cannot see beyond the temporal world of forms. They have been taught that when the physical life ends it is over, all ties are severed, all bonds broken. Jesus is instructing them now to go beyond the physical world they know and trust in the world of the Spirit - the kingdom of God - that concerns itself not with physical manifestations but rather the creative force behind the manifestations of form. When they know this their spirits will rejoice over what they have found. When we know this our spirits will rejoice also. 

Over the last several weeks it has become clear that our older cat, Blackie, will soon leave his body. Sometimes it feels very sad, especially when he appears to be uncomfortable. He eats little and sleeps most of the time. He has a strong bond with his long-time human companion. His companion cares lovingly for him to make his way out of this world as peaceful as possible. There are many prayers for assistance, as there is for any transition, any birth into new life, any transition from one manifestation of love into another; from the physical into the spiritual. As I watch this cat’s once strong and sleek body become thin and frail I recite to myself this verse from the Upanishads:

[The] caterpillar, having come to the end of one blade of grass, draws itself together and reaches out for the next…

The Spirit is always active and never at rest. It reaches out from one manifestation of itself to create another, from the physical to the spiritual. Life as we know it, in all its physical forms is a series of transforming manifestations or expressions of Love, expressions of the Divine. 

Shea continues: “On the spiritual level, the relational flow is a wild ride…. the Creator Spirit [is] continuously present in the created spirits - sustaining them in existence and filling them with its life. The reality of this communion is eternal, and therefore it is not subject to losses associated with time. It is a dance that survives death.”  

Jesus’s words, “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you,” makes no sense to the one who sees the manifestations of the world as all that there is. But to the one who sees the manifestations of the world as expressions of Love, the essence, the being of God, all in all, then physical death is, and can only be, the gateway to a continuance of life that is not the same, but eternal, nonetheless. Love cannot be separated from itself. Love, a perfect and holy manifestation that exists beyond the physical plane can be realized, recalled and brought into the present moment with just a simple thought, a memory, a smiling face, the smell of apple pie, or the sight of the moon situated in a tiny sector of a vast and incomprehensible universe. 

Called into Flight

There are two significant learnings from a weekly bible group studying the Gospel of Matthew that I lead which can and should be applied to John 14, verse 6, in particular.  

“Jesus said to [Thomas], ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

The first is that Matthew was not used apologetically, that is, as a proof of Jesus’ identity, a tool for evangelism -to grow the church, but rather was used by an existing worshipping community as a testimony as to what had been already experienced, both in the physical sense but also existentially. It is a collection of stories, events and sayings that attests to Jesus’ identity, life and mission meant to shape the worshipping community hearing it.

The second learning was that any study of the Gospels must first address the meaning of the text within the context of the first century church and not the one we know 2000 years later. The configuration of church as we know it would not be recognizable to the people of these first Christ-centered communities to which the Gospels are addressed.

Gail O’Day, who is considered a leading scholar on John’s Gospel, wrote on chapter 14, v. 6-7 (‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ in particular): “It is important to try to hear this joyous, world-changing theological affirmation in the first-century context of the Fourth Gospel. This is not, as is the case in the 20th century, the sweeping claim of a majority world religion, but it is the conviction of a religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world (emphasis mine). It is the conviction of a religious group who had discovered that its understanding of the truth of God carries with it a great price. This conviction has led them into conflict with the Judaism that previous had been their sole religious home, and so they have had to carve out a new religious home for themselves, a home grounded in the incarnation. It is possible to hear an element of defiance in the proclamation… a determination to hold to this experience and knowledge of God against all opposition and all pressure to believe otherwise.”

O’Day goes on to say: “It is a dangerous and destructive anachronism to cite John 14: 6-7 as the final arbiter in discussions of the relative merits of different religions’ experiences and understanding of God. The Fourth Gospel is not concerned with the fate, for example, of Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists, nor with the superiority or inferiority of Judaism and Christianity as they are configured in the modern world. These verses are the confessional celebration of a particular faith community, convinced of the truth and life it has received in the incarnation. The Fourth Evangelist’s primary concern was the clarification and celebration of what it means to believe in Jesus…. John 14:6 can thus be read as the core claim of Christian identity; what distinguishes Christians from people’s of other faiths is the conviction given expression [in Jesus’ saying …’I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’]. It is, indeed, through Jesus that Christians have access to their God.” (Gail O’Day, The New Interpreter’s Bible, p. 744-5)

The first century believers who had experienced God, who had seen the face of the beloved one in the face of Jesus could not un-see what they had seen, they could not go back to a way of life that was prescribed by the Judaism of their time. They knew too much, had seen too much, understood too much and there was no going back. Just like you. You have known too much. You have seen too much. You have understood too much and for you, and for me, there is no going back. Theologian John Shea says, “The more our minds entertain larger truths about God, the more we are personally and existentially in a relationship of trust.” (John Shea, Gospel of Matthew, p. 185.) 

Rumi, the renown Sufi poet and saint of the 12th century, expresses our individual and collective forward movement in relationship with God in this well known poem:

“The way of love is not a subtle argument.

The door there is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling, they're given wings.”

The verses of John 14 may be seen as the feathers on the new wings of a young bird separated from its mother, falling from its nest. Turning over and over again in a free-fall the new wings begin to catch air. Each feather extending out from the bone and skin of the bird and lying close and neatly together begin to form a sail, and eventually work to right the animal who can then glide on an air current. And from its lowest point having fallen so far it can then soar to the highest regions of the sky and look broadly at the world. This bird sees itself, not as a thing apart from the world, but simply a thing of the world. It is a creature with a viewpoint about the world that encompasses all that is below it.  The creatures on the ground also have a viewpoint. Instead of wings they have fins to swim, others have padded feet to walk upon the soft earth, or hairy, sticky appendages that adhere to things enabling them to walk up walls, still others have smooth, tough skin for slithering across the ground and hiding under rocks. And beyond these things there are all manner of expressions of life having every possible viewpoint and experience of the manifestations, the incarnations of the divine.

Each of us has a viewpoint of the incarnate Christ, each capturing the variations of the Spirit within the boundaries of our experience. And sometimes, like Thomas, when we are perplexed, when our hearts are troubled, we think we do not know the way forward.

In these unsettling times of the present pandemic it can feel as if the ground below our feet is shifting day to day. Many things we took for granted are no longer as they were. For many health concerns have given way to economic devastation. For others economic concerns have given way to catastrophic health crises. Jobs and money have evaporated. Thousands who lived a month ago are gone from us now. It is hard to know which way to turn, where to go from here.

Jesus, however, assures us that, in fact, we do know the way forward; to surrender to the fall. To be given wings. To find freedom through devastation. To die to death and to enter into a new life, with new sight, new knowledge, a new way of living - this is the way of Love. It has been said that no one ever awakened spiritually having never experiencing crisis. It is through crisis and insecurity that Jesus leads us - in and through and all the way to the other side. 

Reflecting of John 14:1-14, John Shea writes:

“[Jesus] is the way into the many dimensions of the house of love… when I ponder the combination of divine immanence that suffuses all creation and divine transcendence that stretches beyond it… to surrender to this reality is to let the wind carry me…and calm[s] the heart.” (Ibid., p. 185)

Those who fall are given wings to make great sky-circles of freedom. Jesus calls us into flight.

The Leaves Have Come

The leaves have come.

I woke up this morning and looked out the window
beyond my writing desk and the dull lighted lamp
in the early morning first light
   no sun
   thunder somewhere not far
   damp thick air.
The young leaves in their first day
are like neon green paint dabbles against a dull grey backdrop.
Lush. Fresh. Wet. Quiet. Still. Momentary. Like new love before
raindrops that were always there
appear in the space between us.