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.

Triangular Storytelling

In reading this resurrection appearance to the disciples (Lk. 24:13-35) we need first to orient ourselves to the Gospel of Luke. Last week we reflected upon a resurrection appearance account from the Gospel of John. This week we have moved into another account from a very different Gospel narrative. The resurrection events in John and Luke are not entirely parallel and the timelines differ. For instance, in Luke’s Gospel, all the resurrection appearances take place in a single day. Biblical commentator, John Shea, sees the disciples trek out of Jerusalem as theologically symbolic and quite significant. In his view, Cleopas and the other un-named disciple, are intentionally moving away, distancing, avoiding the traumatic events of recent days in Jerusalem. But, as Shea points out: “The whole Gospel is a journey toward Jerusalem, the revelation of the cross takes place in Jerusalem, and the story ends in Jerusalem. They are not travelers, but deserters, not a people on a mission, but people walking away from a cause….. If they walk through the gates of Emmaus…. [t]hen the real failure would not be the death of Jesus but [the disciples] inability to comprehend the spiritual truth hidden in his social and political suffering and dying.” (Shea, Matt. Yr A, p. 166-7) 

After spending the day with this man they perceive as a stranger Jesus’ identity is revealed only at the breaking and blessing of the bread. Upon this revelation, their eyes open, he departs from them. This wild revelation leads to a change of itinerary. They turn away from Emmaus and return to Jerusalem. There, when the eleven disciples were together, the risen Christ appears to them all, satisfies their disbelief, opens their eyes and minds to the scriptures, and names them as witnesses. Now they are a people with a story to tell. They are a small band, a remanent, but one with a Christ-centered identity. Communal identity that is borne from deep trauma is a powerful thing for shifting perspective and transforming whole cultures.

I thought about the effect deep trauma has on a community this week when I was reading Scott Momaday’s pulitzer prize winning book, House Made of Dawn. Momaday tells of the Bahkyula peoples who were saved from the brink of extinction by the generosity of a neighboring tribe. The story is almost biblical, certainly archetypal, in its telling. Though almost certainly fictional, it stands as a symbolic and important witness in its own right to the actual extinction of many hundreds of indigenous tribes as the one Momaday describes here.

“The Eagle Watchers Society was the sixth to go into the kiva [(a sacred place set apart for ceremony used by some indigenous tribes)] at the summer and autumn rain retreats. It was an important society, and it stood apart from the others in a certain way. This difference - this superiority - had come about a long time ago. Before the middle of the last century, there was received into the population of the town a small group of immigrants from the Tanoan city of Bahkyula, a distance of seventy or eighty miles to the east. These immigrants were a wretched people, for they had experienced great suffering. Their land bordered upon the Southern Plains, and for many years they had been an easy mark for marauding bands of buffalo hunters and thieves. They had endured every kind of persecution until one day they could stand no more and their spirit broke. They gave themselves up to despair and were then at the mercy of the first alien wind. But it was not a human enemy that overcame them at last; it was a plague. They were struck down by so deadly a disease that when the epidemic abated, there were fewer than twenty survivors in all. And this remainder, to, should surely have perished among the ruins of Bahkyula had it not been for these patrones, these distant relatives who took them in at the certain risk of their own lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. It is said that the cacique himself went out to welcome and escort the visitors in. The people of the town must have looked narrowly at those stricken souls who walked slowly toward them, wild in their eyes with grief and desperation. The Bahkyula immigrants brought with them little more than the clothes on their backs, but even in this moment of deep hurt and humiliation they thought of themselves as a people. They carried four things that should serve thereafter to signal who they were: a sacred flute, the bull and horse masks of Pecos; and the little wooden statue of their patroness Maria de los Angeles, whom they called Porcingula. Now, after the intervening years and generations, the ancient blood of this forgotten tribe still ran in the veins of men. [All of the [Eagle] society’s] members were direct descendants of those old men and women who had made that journey along the edge of oblivion. There was a look about these men, even now. It was as if, conscious of having come so close to extinction, they had got a keener sense of humility than their benefactors, and paradoxically a greater sense of pride…. In their uttermost peril long ago, the Bahkyula had been fashioned into seers and soothsayers. They had acquired a tragic sense, which gave to them as a race so much dignity and bearing. They were medicine men; they were rainmakers and eagle hunters.”

In my mind I created a triangle joining three stories: on one point, the traumatized disciples having lost the hope of the promised messiah wandering along the road to Emmaus; on another point, the Bahkyula victimized by war and plague to the point of extinction; and on the final point, the global trauma of millions in this present pandemic. Each of the three points of the triangle informs the other even though one point is a story still in the telling. The small band of disciples and Bahkyula people carried forward their stories of despair, survival and hope moved to a transformative identity embedded with divine knowledge and grace. They weren’t just transformed in terms of their beliefs they were transformed in terms of their substance. The disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, became powerful preachers, teachers, and healers. Through them, as recorded in Luke’s Book of Acts, a worldwide faith tradition would be born carrying Christ forward in the world in both word and deed, in symbol and in substance. As for the Bahkyula, they became powerful medicine men, rainmakers and eagle hunters.

On the third tip of the triangle our story is still unfolding. Using the stories on the other two points of the triangle as a ballast there come many questions and thoughtful ways to approach our situation. These questions provide a framework for being in and moving out of a global crisis that affects not just one tribe but all the peoples of the earth.

Will we take on a collective identity that is strong enough to propel us into a respectful way of co-existing with each other and all our relations?

Will a new collective identity draw from humility or from the hollow victory declared at a cease fire? 

How will social distancing affect how we view “our neighbor”?  What does it mean to be clean and unclean? 

Who are the people most open to victimization, stigmatization and brutalization? Who will shield them, protect them, shelter them? 

What will be the lasting effects of this traumatic cultural event that will mark this generation? What memories will inform the next generation? 

What symbols will carry us forward as a people? A video parody of “My Corona”? A t-shirt that says: “I survived Covid19”? or will some other symbols emerge that point to a deeper sense of transformation? 

Who are the heroes of this story and what heroic stories will be told?  How will those stories inform the history we are now making? 

What stories from our sacred texts will we, do we, as a global, multi-faith worldwide community tie to this event?  

Will our communal identity be symbolically relevant or are we undergoing a substantive change to our humanity? 

And, most importantly, Where is the guidance of the Spirit showing up in this story? Where is the Spirit showing up in your story?

The Peace of Unknowing

There really is no better reading we could have at this point in our common experience of a pandemic than the one appointed for this week on the second week of Eastertide. Like the disciples who were together behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, we know a bit about being shut up in our houses. We know a little about being afraid of what lies beyond the safety of our own homes. We are afraid of what could be.

And what is true for the disciples is also true for us: Peace cannot be found on either side of the door. Peace cannot come from being shut in for weeks on end. Peace cannot come from being worried about being sick. Peace cannot come from worrying about those who are sick or might become sick. Peace cannot come when we are worried about financial losses. Peace cannot come when we worry about what life will look like when the shutdown ends and we resume our everyday activities. Peace is not to be found in the world of forms; that is, in the physical world we call home: our bodies, our things, our relationships, our money and the things it can buy. Peace comes from somewhere else.

It is my pastoral instinct to want to reassure you that all will be well, that we will all get through this; that life will return to “normal.” I want you to have peace. But peace does not come from words, no matter how well-intended. Peace, as it turns out, isn’t rooted in beliefs either, which keep us tied to the temporal world, the world of forms. Rather, peace comes from faith, which requires far more courage. What is the difference between belief and faith. We shall see in a moment. 

When Jesus appeared to the disciples they were shut in behind locked doors and hemmed in by their fears. “[Jesus brought] peace in the midst of fear. His peace is the fulfillment of his promise. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (Jn. 14:27). Jesus leaves them peace, and this giving of peace is contrasted with how the world gives…. the world gives and takes away. The security of one moment is replaced by the anxiety of the next moment. The world cannot sustain an abiding peaceful presence. Yet that is precisely how Jesus sees himself, an abiding presence that transcends the vagaries of the world. Jesus does not stop the chaos of the world. Rather he is present within it, calming and untroubling the heart, bringing peace.” (John Shea, Matthew, Yr. A, p.155-56) 

The strange thing here is that the peace Jesus offers comes in the form of an abrupt disruption of belief. Jesus undoes the standing beliefs held by the disciples about the finality of death. Let us recall that the women who met the resurrected Jesus were commanded by him to tell the disciples of his rising, and we can assume that none of them believed the women. They are fearfully locked together in a room after all. Their lack of confidence gives them away. That Jesus should appear there in his body, wounds intact, despite the locked doors is in such conflict with physical laws, that Thomas, who did not see the appearance, makes clear that he will not believe the verbal account of the other disciples but must first see Jesus for himself.  Upon a third appearance, for the benefit of Thomas, not only the women but now all of the disciples experience faith beyond mere belief. 

In 1951 Alan Watts (d. 1973) wrote a little book called The Wisdom of Insecurity during a turning point in his personal life. He had just lost his wife and vocation as an Episcopal priest to a divorce. Here he makes a distinction between belief and faith that is helpful.

“…. belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open [their] mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with [their] preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.

Most of us believe in order to feel secure, in order to make our individual lives seem valuable and meaningful. Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one’s own. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To ‘have’ running water you must let go it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God.” (p.24)

What the disciples experienced in the appearances of Jesus was the dismantling of their deeply held beliefs replaced by an authentic faith. Paradoxically, there is far more peace in the unknowing of faith then the security of beliefs. Peace and faith, it would seem, are inextricably linked. The disciples, at peace and free from the preconceived ideas of religiosity and open to the leading of the Spirit emerged from their room to launch a new sect of Judaism which would morph into Christianity over the next 300 years and continues to this day, albeit in a great number of expressions and interpretations.

Watts continues: “To discover the ultimate Reality of Life – the Absolute, the eternal, God – you must cease to try to grasp it in the form of idols. These idols are not just crude images, such as the mental picture of God as an old gentleman on a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind and heart to reality…. The principle has not been unknown to Christians, for it was implicit in the whole story and teaching of Christ. His life was from the beginning a complete acceptance and embracing of insecurity…. For the basic theme of the Christ-story is that this “express image” of God becomes the source of life in the very act of being destroyed. To the disciples who tried to cling to his divinity in the form of his human individuality he explained, “Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.” In the same vein he warned them, “It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Holy Spirit cannot come unto you.”

Appearing in front of them, mortal wounds intact, Jesus bestowed upon them the Holy Spirit, the wellspring of Peace that passes all understanding. Then they understood. Then they traded the security of belief for the uncertainty of faith. Then they did not cower in a room behind locked doors but emerged into the world empowered not with the assurance of a safe and secure life but with an experience of the truth – the Absolute, the eternal, God.

When the time is right, may we too emerge from the doors that now hold us apart from the world with new imaginings about the possibilities for our human family, our spiritual selves and our community of faith, willfully plunging into the unknown. Let us use this precious time we have been given in this brief pause as a bridge between what was and what will be. Let us claim the promise of peace that comes not in holding fast to what was before but comes rather with an openness to what will be, whatever that might be. 

From the Cross of Then to the Pandemic of Now

I stumbled across this lovely poem by Mary Oliver this week. It seems to me to be the perfect expression of what we Christians are trying to get at when we try to unpack the resurrection.

Everything That Was Broken

Everything that was broken has

forgotten its brokenness. I live

now in a sky house, through every

window the sun. Also your presence.

Our touching, our stories. Earthy,

and holy both. How can this be, but

it is. Every day has something in 

it whose name is Forever.

This poem is from Oliver's book, Felicity, a collection of love poems. Which is exactly why it can explain the work of the cross far better and far beyond any theological treatise. Jesus was born from Love, lived by Love and died into Love. The resurrection can only be spoken of from a place of Love.  

Today, in the midst of a global pandemic, with thousands dead and thousands dying, millions filing for unemployment benefits, state budgets in collapse, and untold numbers of small businesses on the brink of bankruptcy, can we say that everything that was broken has forgotten its brokenness? How does the Christian celebration of a risen Christ translate to present conditions? If it cannot it is truly salt that has lost its flavor.

The focus of all longtime, credible religious bodies through the centuries is on the inner world, our spiritual nature. Certainly, this is true for Christianity as well, though the emphasis in the west has skewed toward moralistic; right behavior; that is, a right frame of mind and right living puts the soul right with God. This is decidedly outer world focused. But the resurrection goes far beyond the boundaries of the world of forms (the physical world). It speaks directly to our inner self, the soul, while confounding the physical laws of the outer, physical world. If the resurrection seems beyond comprehension and is simply unbelievable, then we are seeing it through our worldly senses. But because the spiritual realm includes far more then physical forms the laws of the physical world do not apply. Jesus demonstrated this again and again. Water becomes wine. Angels appear. Jesus becomes invisible to a crowd bent on stoning him to death. He walks on water and still a storm, restores the sight of the man born blind, the lame walk, the sick become well, and the dead are raised, again and again. He knows things about people’s lives though he has never met them. He appears alive and well in full physical form to the women at the empty tomb though he’s been dead for three days. The veil between the world we move about in and the entirety of the universe is thin indeed. The sanskrit phrase for what Jesus has done in the resurrection is Sat Chit Ananda. It is the full revelation of all Wisdom, all Truth, all Love. 

Throughout the ages the lovers of God (including those not the least bit religious) who spent their time in meditation or contemplation, writing poetry, prose and hymnody were experiencing Sat Chit Ananda and leaving us the love notes of that experience; Mary Oliver’s poem being one example. The mystics, poets and sages have long understood that exploring the depths of consciousness and awakening to the limitless power of the universal Love of God was the way to enlightenment. Christians call this salvation. Salvation is an act of surrender. It is not a doing as much as a letting be. We experience salvation, or union with God, when we surrender the ego, the mind, and let go of all the myths that pass as truth when we are still asleep. 

In a timely interview this week, Michael Singer, author of the Untethered Soul, reminded thousands of his followers that nothing can disturb the inner self, no matter what the outer conditions. He makes a clear distinction between the inner and outer worlds. Singer repeats what has been known by religious people for centuries, that it is only the outer self that experiences anxiety, fear and separateness. He recommended that the best work we can do in the present moment of this global pandemic is to use this situation to move closer to God; to move inward even while the outer world is screaming for our attention. 

Well within reach is the Balm of Gilead. Just close your eyes and breath.

Another hymn from the Christian community of Taize, France, situates our spiritual condition rightly in these lyrics:

Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those who seek God shall never go wanting. 

Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. God alone fills us.

Eckert Tolle, author of The Power of Now, has also responded to his millions of followers in several videos over the last couple of weeks. He begins his teaching during these turbulent times by reading a parable from the bible, the story of the houses built on sand and rock. The point of the parable, of course, is that we should build our spiritual lives on firm foundation in preparation for the winds and flood. He pointed out, that, of course, we usually go about this the other way round:  It usually takes heavy rain and gale force wind before we begin to think about the foundation we’ve chosen to build upon. Nonetheless, when we’ve spent our time exploring and expanding into our inner world it eventually and inevitably outgrows the outer world. The mind becomes the master and no longer its servant. From the place of Sat Chit Ananda we live in the physical world and engage with it fully but it no longer rules us. It has lost its power. There is no virus that can defeat the knowledge of all Wisdom, all Truth, all Love. Death has lost its sting. Earthy and holy both. How can this be, but it is.  Is that a line from Mary Oliver’s poem or perhaps the words spoken by the two Mary’s who first encountered the risen Jesus as they kissed his feet? 

Sometimes Jesus would tell his followers that they needed to become like children to understand the kingdom of God, or, as it described in other traditions, to find union with God (yoga), become enlightened or experience Sat Chit Ananda. Until a child is taught otherwise all things are possible and everything is an adventure. Easter is the revelation that, in fact, all things are possible and everything under the sun is just another adventure, or just another season, as the case may be. The only thing that separates us from God is us, though we create many reasons why this cannot be so. It has been said that we are so free, we are free to choose bondage. To confess an “untethered soul” (to borrow from Michael Singer) as the rock upon which we build our spiritual house we will need to learn to see the world with the eyes of the children we used to be. We will need to follow Jesus with our hearts and not our heads; not with the “mature” eyes of those who understand the world and how it works, but with the wild imaginings of a child.

The Sat Chit Ananda, that is, the knowing of all Wisdom, all Truth, and all Love of the Resurrection, can be summed up succinctly with the final line of Mary Oliver’s love poem as we move from the cross of then to the pandemic of now:  

Every day has something in it whose name is Forever.