The Abbot's Blog

The trouble with bodies ...

2012-02-12T13:43:00.002-05:00

I punish my body and enslave it ...

Paul

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. "I do choose. Be clean." Immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.

Bodies have always been troublesome for the spiritually aware. In truth, bodies have been troublesome for everyone.
Burping, farting, dumping ... bodily functions are the source of acute embarrassment and much merriment. The earliest humor I remember was the sing-song rhyme that began, "In days of old, when knights were bold, and toilets weren't invented ..." Little boys humor! But it doesn't stop with little boys. We have never been quite sure what to make of bodies and what bodies do.
And then there's sex. Most enjoy it. Some loath it. Most talk about it abstractly. Most keep their deepest thoughts, desires, and fantasies to themselves. The sexual body seems to have a mind of it own, and causes trouble for the "other" mind. The body's sexuality pops up at the most inconvenient time (pun intended, at least for male readers!)
Still, we love our bodies and when they get sick we try all we can to get them well again. We keep them clean (most of us). We beautify them as far as we can (hair styles, makeup, body sculpting, dieting, and clothes).
We are conflicted about the body. Many of us have a love-hate relationship with our embodiedness.
Spiritual traditions share the conflictedness. All the great traditions lean toward the ascetic (with disciplines such as fasting). Some go to extremes of self-denial and physical punishment (helped along by Paul's view of the body quoted above). All the traditiions urge moderation of the body's sexual appetites. Some go to the extreme of decrying sexuality as impure and any sexual activity as getting in the way of true spirituality.
At their best, the spiritual traditions give us a balance—a true appreciation of the body's innate goodness, together with an awareness that the body, at times, does need to be controled, its excesses reined in. The Buddha rejected the more severe forms of asceticism to take the middle way. St. Benedict designed a Rule for his communities that was not arduous—disciplined and demanding to be sure, but not extreme. The Laozi gives us the balance of yin and yang, which laid the foundation for the complex and beneficial body practices of gigong. Jesus healed the sick bodies of those who came to him. And Jesus (God in a human body) rose bodily from death.
I'm a fan of the middle way.
+Ab. Andy
(Incidentally, I have an article coming out in the journal Social Philosophy Today later in the year, "Somaesthetics and Nonviolence," where I look at some of these issues in more detail.)

Why secular monasticism?

2012-01-22T17:25:00.001-05:00

Aldous Huxley, in his The Perennial Philosophy (1944) speaks of knowing God in two ways: the heights of the inner life, and the fullness of God in the world. He says:

Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusively—to realize the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental (pp. 61-62).

He calls this "spiritual Knowledge in its fullness ... in and through the world as well as in and through the soul" (p. 62). Yet, Huxley acknowledges the dangers of seeking God in the world. Without a disciplined spiritual practice life in the world either becomes antinomianistic (a kind of anything goes life) or else merely formally spiritual, with no depth (p. 70).

Secular monasticism, as we are trying to practice it in the Lindisfarne Community, is an embrace of both ways. We live fearlessly, fully and delightfully in the world, and seek to maintain our integrity in a disciplined and healthy spirituality.

Huxley says:

As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On the one side is the danger of mere rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things whihc should only be used as instruments or symbols" (p. 72).

Quite a challenging life. Enjoy the journey!

+Ab. Andy

The problem with people is ...

2012-01-17T09:53:00.001-05:00

I was reading the Daily Office this morning. Genesis 9, the myth of Noah and his sons.

The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.

It hit me like a ton of bricks! Here's the first problem with people. In a word: Domination.

Human beings spread fear and dread. Every animal. Every bird. Everything creepy crawly. Every fish. We dominate, kill, eat.

Here's the second problem.

Be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.

In four words: too many of us. The planet cannot long sustain life as we know it if we keep growing.

Bit of a mess.

+Ab. Andy

To work or not to work

2011-12-31T17:57:00.000-05:00

When the new year turned in 1517, few would guess that Martin Luther would cause a revolution in thought and practice in European Christendom. On October 31, 1517 Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. This was the formal beginning of the Protestant Reformation—some would even say the beginning of modernity, as the hegemonic grip of the church was challenged for the first time in several hundred years.

Luther's theological genius was in bringing to light a long forgotten idea—the idea of grace. Working for salvation would not, well, work. Salvation was about the action of God, not human striving. This remains a very important idea. In the spiritual life mere striving produces nothing of much value. Luther's emphasis is echoed in Daoism in the concept of Wu Wei—action through non-action—and the Buddhist practice of stillness. Of course, the ideas are not the same, but they share the same emphasis that mere activity is ineffectual. Luther's grace, Laozi's Wu Wei, and the Buddah's silence are necessary corrections to the incessant activity and busyness of contemporary life.

But, there is always another story to tell. A sad side effect of Luther's great insight was a religion that said that nothing at all was needed by the seeker. No effort required at all. One expression in the following centuries was revivalism, which promised the hearer that all is accomplished, simpy and easily by "walking to the altar," "raising a hand," or "signing a card." I am not doubting for a minute the sincerity of folk who respond that way. In time past I was one of them and the moment is often deeply and intensely spiritual. The problem is the packaging. The respondent is told that having walked forward everything is now changed. All is different. Nothing more needs to be done. Things are changed for a day or two, but the respondent soon realizes that nothing much has changed. Before too long the seeker needs to walk forward again, when all will be fixed once and for all. Again. For too many people the process leaves mere guilt, "There must be something wrong with me."

Truth is the spiritual life is both grace and work, stillness and practice. Being and doing.

In Ancient Chinese philosophy the twin ideas were expressed as Wu Wei and Gongfu. Wu Wei is action through no action. Gongfu is skill developed though long and consistent practice. Wu Wei is no effort. Gongfu is great effort. Which is the right path? Both. Take the way of Wu Wei and you will find a life of Gongfu. Walk the path of Gongfu and you will be led to Wu Wei.

I'm finishing this blog waiting for folk to come to our New Year's Eve party. We welcome 2012 with pundits on all sides predicting gloom. Some seriously fear the world's end. Economists fear the collapse of the European Union and global economic collapse (again). Many fear Iran's blustering about oil and nuclear power.

Just like the turn from 1516 to 1517 who knows what the year will bring. Perhaps another Luther to bring a paradigm change to the way we think. Likely not.

For me, I am looking forward to developing my Gongfu, deepening my practice through consistent hard work, while realizing that all I do is as nothing, content to rest in Wu Wei, to enjoy Grace upholding me through all.

May it be so for your too!

Ab.+Andy

Christmas Thoughts

2011-12-24T22:53:00.001-05:00

Yesterday morning (Christmas Eve) I enjoyed greatly listening to the service of nine lessons and carols broadcast live from King's College Cambridge. There was a comfortable familiarity about it. I knew the words to all the congregational carols. The choir pieces were mostly familiar to me, and the readers reassuringly somber enough. The readings from the King James Version have a magic of their own—wisdom from another age telling the story of human foolishness and sadness, followed by promise and fulfillment. The reassurance was in the changlessness of it all. It could have been the first service from 1918, in the aftermath of the First World War.

Comforting—that was the primary feeling. Nothing changes.

Perhaps that is why we like traditions and rituals. They perform a useful function of anchoring us in the constantly shifting tides of life. The Christmas story is a stable one. (Pun intended!)

Yet, as I listened with fondness and enjoyment I was struck also by the patriarchalism of it all—one female voice in the production, one male voice that was clearly none standard educated upper class-ish white male. The story itself, though with a woman in an almost central place, has the woman in subservient role. A story of the marginalized and poor being rehearsed by the privileged. Here was dissonance. This made me uncomfortable. I was a little shaken.

So, there I was ... Outside meditating in the first snow of the year, listening to the familiar service, comforted and disturbed. It was for me another experience of the ambiguity of life and faith and hope and doubt. Still, I was glad to hear again the story. I was glad to be disturbed. I am glad it is Christmas.

So next year I hope to listen in again to the Cambridge service. Doubtless I will again be comforted and again be shaken.

History of Nine lessons and carols from Wikipedia.

A Happy Christmas to all!

+Ab. Andy

New wordle for blog

2011-12-11T09:37:00.000-05:00

The Three Treasures

2011-12-11T09:23:00.000-05:00

I have been working for a while with the idea of basic ethical beliefs. These are ethical commitments so generally held (in all cultures, traditions, religions, philosophies etc) that they are unquestioned. Some philosophers call them "prima facie moral axioms." That is, we hold them to be true unless we can find very good reasons for not doing so. We can't find many of them, but notions like "not doing harm," and "doing good" are a couple of them. I came across a contender for the category as "self-improvement." The argument said that here is a basic ethical belief that we can all be better than we are, and we ought to try to be so. I am intrigued by the idea and will continue to ponder it.

The very last flowers in our garden.
Strangely in advent purple

A large part of self-improvement is self-reflection. In the Christian calendar we are encouraged to take two extended periods of serious reflection each year, in Lent and Advent. That's not to say that we ignore self-reflection at other times, but that at these times we make a special effort. With Christmas celebrations and indulgence around the corner, it's not a bad thing to do just now.
So, I have been wondering: what would be a good preparation? My partial answer is that preparation is an inner thing. About character. About who I am in my deepest self. It's the kind of person I am in process of becoming. Here are some characteristics to play with: Balance. Modesty. Humbleness. Quietness. Modesty. Returning to the fundamental issues of life.
However, self-improvement—with its sister self-refection—is not an end in itself. It is for the sake of the Other. I become a better person not for my sake, but for your sake. You engage in self-reflection not to boast of your achievement but to become your best self for others.
I change to love you better, more fully.
Here is wisdom from the Daodejing

I have three treasures
That I guard and hold dear:
The first is love;
The second is contentment;
The third is humbleness.
Only the loving are courageous;
Only the content are magnanimous;
Only the humble are capable of commanding.

Love, contentment, humbleness—certainly elements of the inner life to treasure.
Finally, wisdom from Confucius:

The benevolent person decreases what is excessive and increases what is scarce. She weighs things and makes them balance.

Reflect well!
+Ab. Andy

The irrationality of hope?

2011-11-20T08:56:00.002-05:00

By and large, we tend to believe that things are true based on evidence. We wake in the morning, the sun is already shining with not a cloud in the sky. This is the third day in a row. Every other day before the day has turned out to be warm and wonderful. There has been a trend of warm sunny days. Each has started the way this one has. We believe today will be the same, for we have some evidence. On another day, some months later, the alarm wakes us to a chill in the air. Peeking through the curtain it's clear the wind is blowing hard. The tall trees are bending. As you open the door to let the dogs out an icy chill grips you. The sky is gunmetal grey, full of snow. On this day to believe it will be warm and sunny is foolishness. It is irrational. Of course, based on the evidence of previous years, we can be pretty sure that there will be warm and sunny days to come, but not for a few months more. In winter to hope of spring is not irrational.
But, what of hope for a better world? For the last few hundred years, in the developed world, we have grown used to things getting better. Governments have based policy on it (borrow now for the better future will pay off our debts). Individual families have based their lives on it (borrow now, and future higher income will take care of the mortgage). In recent years we have encouraged our young people to take out large education loans (the job you are bound to get will take care of the loans). This way of living seemed rational based on past trends. But, as a culture we are wobbling—tottering on the brink of a steep and slippery slope. That the future will be better than the past is beginning to seem more irrational.
I am speaking of the "middle class." There has always been an "underclass"— a substratum of society we don't speak about in polite company. For them the future has never looked bright. More are joining this large group.

Data released a few weeks ago, for the USA, tells us that 49.1 million people are living in poverty. That's the highest number since the government began tracking the figures 52 years ago. (Huffington Post Article)

Still, I hope for a brighter future for the world. I am not thinking of evidence based beliefs, but rather an irrational hope with no evidential base. I make no argument for it. Like Goodness, Hope simply is. It is a deep intuition. Hopelessness gives way to despair and despair crushes the human spirit.

Hope arises deep in the human spirit and makes the unbearable bearable.

What would a better world look like? Jesus told a story in which he said:

For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.

That would be a better world. The hungry and thirsty, strangers, the unclothed, the sick, and the incarcerated all cared for. That is not the world we live in. It is not the "better world" that Wall Street seeks of mere increased materiality. It is a better world of justice and fairness, and love and kindness—a world of loving relationships.

But to hope is not to daydream. To hope is to intuit the future and work toward it. To hope is to choose to act.

+Ab. Andy

There's magic in the air

2011-11-06T09:31:00.001-05:00

I love this time of year. The smell of the fall, dry leaves rustling beneath my feet, a crispness to the blue of the sky, the first morning frost giving the green grass a white fringe, squirrels frantically collecting pine cones in preparation for the winter to come. Since being a kid I have always felt there's magic in the air a this time of the year.
There is a spiritual change in this season that is clear for those with eyes to see and sensitivity to feel.
The Celtic people knew it. The new year begins with Samhain, the eve of which we celebrate as All Hallows (Halloween—the Christianizing of pagan ways).

It's a new beginning. But, strangely the new beginning doesn't start with the coming of the light, but with the drawing in of the light, the "shutting down" of nature. The new begins with "it will get far worse before it gets any better."
I have been stacking wood. More will be delivered today. I will be stacking again. It's quite hard work! Constant bending and lifting. I enjoy the ritual of it. A Samhain ritual of getting ready. The winter is coming. Change is happening. Be ready! I am one with the squirrels as we work side by side.
The Church's calendar changes in a few weeks with the beginning of Advent. It's a month too late! In 1978 the Joint Liturgical Group —an ecumenical gathering of scholars in the UK—produced a revised Daily Office. It was the version of the Office I was introduced to in 1981 and was my daily practice for many years. I have the very beat up copy in front me, page edges darkened through thumbing through. This version of the Office begins the ninth week before Christmas. In other words, it begins roughly at Samhain. It starts with the Celtic New Year. In 1980, the Church of England published its Alternative Service Book and also began the year nine weeks before Christmas. In its 2000 revision of liturgy the C of E returned to the Advent beginning of the year. I preferred it the other way. Advent feels just a little late. The party begins on Halloween, replaced quickly with preparation.
In more recent years I have reflected more on the nature of change in traditional Chinese philosophy. The constant movement of yin and yang. Autumn is yang turning to yin. Winter is fully yin. This season is the beginning of withdrawal.
Spiritually, there is a drawing in, a contracting—the expansive openness of summer is giving way to a smallness, fewness, rareness, gentleness of approaching winter. Between the two we prepare. When we came to the USA we were introduced to a new phrase: "Winterize." Generally, I resist turning nouns into verbs with the addition of "ize," but this one is useful. It speaks of getting things ready for the cold to come.
Chinese philosophy reminds us that neither yang nor yin are bad. They complement each other and fulfill each other. The coming of the cold is not to be feared, but to be embraced. Of course, it's difficult to embrace if you are not prepared. There is a season for preparation. The season has begun.
There's magic in the air.
+Ad. Andy

A question of conscience

2011-10-16T08:55:00.002-04:00

Being a good citizen. Paying taxes. Serving the community. Being political. The Social Contract. Patriotism. Nationalism. When the state asks for something do we give it? How much do we give?
In the year 2000 my book, In the World But Not of the World: Christian Social Thinking at the End of the Twentieth Century, was published. It was the culmination of of fifteen years thinking that produced three advanced degrees along the way.

If you boil it down, what I was thinking about then was loyalty to a way of living—a life committed to loving nonviolent relationships (following the Christ, and other witnesses to the Realm of God)—in the midst of a culture that all too often pulls in a different direction. I am still thinking about it now.
You see, life is dandy when the culture and the Realm get along fine. Problems arise when they conflict. Then it becomes a matter of conscience.
H. Richard Niebuhr wrestled with this in his classic Christ and Culture. If you haven't read it, it will be worth your while. Niebuhr gives us five typical positions. When you read the book you will probably switch between the positions. Is there opposition between the Realm and culture, or perhaps similarity, is one above the other, is there an unsolvable paradox between them, should we seek to change culture to make it more closely resemble the Realm?
The issues are real. After September 11 2001, my thinking about war and violence did not change. But, it brought me into conflict with good friends who thought the only response should be a violent one. I lost quite a few friends who just couldn't understand a loving nonviolent response to terrorism. It was a matter of conscience.
How far do you take these matters of conscience? Well, that's a matter of conscience! I know folk who would be conscientious objectors to a draft into the military. This has not been tested for a long time. It is unlikely to be tested again anytime soon. I know others who are "tax resisters" and refuse to pay the percentage of taxes that is used for military purposes. I have never felt drawn to this step, but respect those who have been. It seems to me to be a symbolic stance as once the money is in government hands, it's all in the same pot.
I am watching the "Occupy Wall Street" movement with great interest. Here are citizens who have had enough of the status quo and are taking a step of conscience to resist. I am unclear what they are resisting or what change is to be effected. But, the social movement is fascinating.
In my book, I drew the tentative conclusion that small groups of loving support were the most hopeful structures to help us make sense of "being in, but not of the world." I have not changed that viewpoint, though I hold it even that more tentatively than before.
British philosopher and ethicist G.E. Moore came to the conclusion that a good life was one that enjoyed friendship and experienced beauty. I like the simplicity of it. When you read his work you realize that "friendship" is code for the ethical life as relationships characterized by love and goodness. If we can achieve that, that would be a happy achievement. It's a ll a matter of conscience.
+Ab. Andy

Other Regardingness

2011-09-25T08:15:00.001-04:00

Recently, after a few good games of squash, I was in the university sports center, absentmindedly glancing at a notice board. A recruiting poster for one of the teams read, "Don't be average, be the best!"
The sign echoes a much-repeated mantra of our culture that none of us should settle for average; that we all have the ability to be better than the others—to be number one. I find it disturbing.
Of course, I am all for doing one's best. But not at the expense of others. My dad's refrain, when I was growing up, was different. He would say, "Do your best son. That's all you can do." My best might be average, or less than average. I can't remember being "the best" at anything. But, that doesn't bother me. I followed dad's advice. If I fail to do my best, I am only letting myself down.
"Don't be average, be the best!" is an impossibly cruel mantra for most of us. "Do your best!" is a demanding, but realizable goal. I think that's why in my 20s I took up running. I wasn't trying to beat others to get into a team. I was simply doing my best.
"Don't be average, be the best!" has a worrying underlying rationale. Social theorists have pointed out a trend in our culture from a general "other-regardingness" to a "self-regardingness." The change is post Word War Two and is noticeable, along a spectrum of variables, from the mid-1950s. It's not to say that before then all was rosy in the garden. It is to say that we have become more self-centered and less mindful of the needs of others than before.
The apostle said, "Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too."
The apostle came to this conclusion by meditating on the life of Jesus.
Jesus is one of the world's exemplars of the "other-regarding" life.
The other-regarding life is as counter-cultural now as it has ever been. It is a demanding life. It can be a quite exhausting life! But it is life to aspire to. It is a Good life.
Perhaps one day I will be looking absentmindedly at a notice board and will see a recruiting poster announcing in large letters, "Think of others as better than yourself!" I wonder what team that would be!
+Ab. Andy

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Owe no one anything except to love one another

2011-09-04T09:37:00.002-04:00

"Owe no one anything except to love one another," so said the Apostle.
Yesterday was my birthday. it was not an auspicious one (18, 21, 30, 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, 75, or 80). Just a regular, common or garden birthday. I had a wonderful day from waking to sleeping. I felt very glad, warm and fuzzy, rambling through the day in a gentle cloud of well-being.
I was taken by surprise by the sheer amount of affection sent my way by so many people—old friends, new friends, former students, former foster kids, and family, of course.
Affection is an important way of loving, and perhaps the least noticed or appreciated. Books are legion on romantic love. Altruism, compassion, and charity have their champions. But, affection? C.S. Lewis said of affection that is like a favorite pair of old slippers! Comfortable. Hardly noticed. Yet, oh so welcome at the end of a hard day on your feet, or a cold morning when the floor feels a little icey.
Affection is not the love of grand gestures. It is not the over-heated love of new romance. You may "fall in" to that kind kind of love. Nor does affection have the intensity of compassionate acts when your heart feels like it is breaking becasue of the plight of some needy Other.
Affection, rather, creeps up on you when you are unaware. As I write I am looking at Jack the little pug we rescued a few months ago. My feelings? A warmth somewhere deep inside. A kindness toward. I can't help a little smile. When we rescued him we were motivated by compassion. He had been ill-treated. He had a few bad manners. As a pug, he's not up to "show standard." He's mishaped. We call him affectionately our little belly-flop (the name given to misshapen Jelly Bellies). We didn't know how he would fit in with the household, or whether we could manage his behavior. He was in bad shape and needed help. That was it as far as we were concerned. At the beginning we felt compassion, with no real relationship with this waif and stray. Of course, compassion too is a way of loving, but that's not my point at the moment. As time passed affection crept up on us as is its way. Jack grew on us as we got to know him.
Affection is the love that oils life. Things go more smoothly. A life without affection must be a poor life indeed.
Whe the Apostle said, "Owe no one anything except to love one another," I don't know whether he had affection in mind. If he hadn't, I wish he had. And whether he had nor not, I shall read it that way!
Today (54 years-old and one day) I feel immensely grateful to know so much affection. I'm glad I noticed it.
Notice the little things. All shall be well.
+Ab. Andy

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A new monasticism: what does it look like?

2011-08-15T17:57:00.001-04:00

For aspiring new monastics: what does a new monastic do? What does it look like? Here's a few ideas.

First, new monasticism begins with intention. This is most important. I make a commitment, I choose to be a new monastic. This is the basis of a vowed life. It's an intention to live a certain way; to be a certain kind of person. Formally, intention is renewed periodically in ritual, witnessed by others. Informally, intention is renewed daily.

Second. New monasticism is a practice of life: a complex social activity, a way of living. As such, there are certain disciplines engaged in, habits that make the practice what it is. In the Lindisfarne Community six disciplines make up the practice: Eucharist, Daily Office, Meditation, Mindfulness, Study and Service.

In traditional cloistered monasticism the whole of life was ordered by the rhythms of monastic routine. In a new monasticism, we live immersed in the world. It is a secular monasticism. There are many demands from many directions. If I want to be serious about new monasticism, what exactly am I making a commitment to? Practically, how much time does this take? Here's a very rough guide.

Eucharist: 1-2 hours each week.
Daily Office: 15 minutes-1 hour each day.
Meditation: 15 minutes to 2 hours a day.
Mindfulness: a discipline of the whole of life.
Study: a few hours each week.
Service: for many folk their full-time work will be service. For others a particular form of service for a few hours each week.

In some ways, this is quite demanding. But then, anything worthwhile is. Begin with intention.

+Ab. Andy

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Pondering social breakdown ...

2011-08-14T09:57:00.000-04:00

+Jane and I returned last week from a memorable and lovely time with our families in the UK and USA. It has been for us a great summer, including a delightful Disney themed wedding. It was marred, and that only slightly, by strange weather wherever we have been. (Being British, talk of the weather is a national pastime—"if you can't think of something more suitable to say, confine your remarks to the weather," somewhere in Austen.)
The summer has also given us a glimpse of social breakdown— mass murders in Norway shattering a determinedly peaceful nation; riots and looting in major British cities.
It has given pause for thought.
Pundits of all political stripes have been quick to point the finger. Most of it has been to repeat party slogans from already entrenched political positions, sniping over the parapet at the enemy.
Suggestions as to causes have been many. Solutions have been few and unimaginative.
It caused me to think again of the great tradition of love and nonviolence shared by Jesus, the Buddha, the Taoists. Surely, here is the solution? I think so, but not in any simplistic way.
When I teach nonviolence in philosophy classes, invariably someone raises a hypothetical case like: what about a killer attacking someone you love, or, what about the terrorist who has placed a bomb, has the information, and you have caught him? In such cases, violence is the solution. Kill the assailant. Torture the terrorist. This summer, the issue has been rather: the mass murderer in Norway, the thugs looting British cities ... Violence is the answer. Crack down hard. Arm the citizenry. The logic is compelling. Almost.
The problem with such cases is that by the time we get to thousands of youths rioting and looting, or a racists/fascist killing youngsters, as a society we have already "lost the plot." In those instances, there is no easy loving and nonviolent solution.
So in what ways can love and nonviolence help?
It helps in day to day simple and mundane caring and loving: living the example of Truth. In the Lindisfarne community we say, "To be as Christ to those I meet, to find Christ within them." This of course is time consuming, long-term. It is the work of youth-workers in Hackney and Manchester, of parents everywhere, of pastors and rabbis and imams. It is the work of new-monastics buried in the world as yeast in the flour.
Of course, there are no guarantees. As the truism says, "The good die young." (Jesus was in his early thirties.) Love is often rejected.
As I have pondered the social breakdown of this summer, my question has been, "What can I do?" For sure, I can't fix it. I can't bring back the Norwegian young people whose families grieve even as I write from the safety and beauty of our garden in Ithaca. I can't repair buildings burnt in rioting, or repair the trust broken in English communities.
But I can renew my commitment to love and nonviolence. I can set my face to the daily disciplines of the new monasticism. I can seek to be a different person, to live the life of the Realm of God. I can help to effect loving change in those areas where I have influence.
+Ab. Andy

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Without Buddha I Could Not Be A Christian

2011-07-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, on our annual retreat, Fr. Scott+, in his talk on Buddhist monasticism, mentioned Paul Knitter's book, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian. What an intriguing title! With the wonders of technology I had the book on its way before Scott+ reached his next point.
Without Buddha became my beach reading last week when we camped at the ocean (along with The Book of Chuang Tzu, and an oral history of the Dambuster's Raid in 1942.)
Knitter's books is very heartening. For me it is one of those books that has such resonance that page after page I was mentally saying, "Yes! I feel that too. Yes! I understand it that way!"
Now a professor at Union Seminary, NY—he came out of retirement to take the job—Paul was a Roman Catholic priest from 1966 to 1975. He left the priesthood, became a theology teacher and peace activist, married and had a family. In the early 80s he began to study Buddhism. Through a gradual process, it became his practice. In 2008 he became a card-carrying Buddhist by taking his Bodhisattva Vows. In his words, "In 1939 I was baptized. In 2008 I took refuge." He identifies himself now a "Buddhist Christian," something he realizes he has been for some decades. (Of course, Fr. Scott+ in the Lindisfarne Community also embodies this.)
In his journey Paul Knitter exemplifies an understanding dear to my heart, and which we try to practice in the Lindisfarne Community, that all truth is God's truth. What is helpful about this book is the way Paul examines his Christian understanding (and his worries about some of it), makes a journey into Buddhism, learns from it, and passes back to his Christian understanding. There is much in common between the two religions. There are disagreements—at times substantial ones—which he doesn't merely brush under the carpet, but lives with the tension. A living synthesis of Buddhism and Christianity is not neat and tidy. But, it is profoundly creative.
In this book there is much about mysticism, much about practice, much about silence, much about mindfulness, much about symbol and myth, much about being peace, much about what God might be and who Jesus is.
It is a very honest book and Paul Knitter wears his doubts about traditional Christian teachings on his sleeve. He voices worries that I suspect many people have, but can't quite bring themselves to admit it. That in itself is quite helpful. I learned a great deal.
Here's a couple of gems.
On love:

To love is to move out of self, to empty self, and connect with others. Love is this emptying, connecting energy that in its power originates new connections and new life.

On the Holy Trinity:

God's very being, or existing, or identity consists of relating, or inter-existing, or InterBeing ... It's the most basic, and the simplest, thing we can say about ourselves and about God: we exist through relationships of knowing and loving and giving because that's how God exists.

What I am not saying is that we all becomes Buddhist Christians, as Paul Knitter has. I am saying that we continue to seek truth, be fearlessly honest with what we find, practice courageously, and follow the Wild Goose wherever she leads.
+Ab. Andy

A reluctance to talk about G-d

2011-06-19T09:12:00.001-04:00

I have become reluctant to talk about G-d. It has been a gradual thing, but looking back over the last decade or so, a very clear development. I also talk much less to G-d. My prayers are more often than not silent—not even words in my head. Prayers for others are most often holding an image of them in the great mystery. (That's for another blog, another day.)
Today, in the church's calendar it is Trinity Sunday. Traditionally the day talk about G-d in the way Christians have understood G-d. So today I ponder my own reluctance.
Lest anyone think, "Oh dear! Andy's become an atheist," Or else, "Oh good! Andy's become an atheist," that's not the case. It's just that my understanding about G-d is different. How so?
It's mostly to do with the via negativa. Long ago theologians realized that G-d, in the very nature of what G-d is, is beyond any understanding or any description of what God is. You cannot say what G-d is, but you can say what G-d is not. It was this way of thinking that prompted the mystic Meister Ekhart to speak of the G-d beyond G-d. Even so, seriously religious folk often talk a great deal about G-d, as if they know about G-d, or that they truly do know G-d. I make no judgment about that. For me, I have been drawn to the apophatic (another way of saying via negativa). I seek enlightenment. I am becoming more reluctant to talk about what I do not know.
Still words are important. I am, after all, writing a blog. Words are helpful if we use them carefully. Bottom line: words are symbols—signs pointing beyond themselves. In religion folk often get caught up in words. Saying the right words. Judging those who use the wrong words. Thinking that the words are literally true. This causes all kinds of problems. As it is Trinity (and just happens to be Father's Day), I will mention the traditional use of Father to denote G-d. Such can be a useful denotation just as long as we remember that it is a symbol. Language about G-d has been termed analogous. G-d is a bit like this, but G-d is not this, for G-d is always beyond what we can say or think. Take Father language literally and we have masculinity built into what G-d is. Males bear a resemblance to G-d. Females do not. Males can represent G-d in a way that females cannot. Hence the patriarchy of traditional religions. That is one of the reasons why in the Lindisfarne Community we refer to G-d as Father-Mother. We have tried to remove sexism from our liturgies. But, here's the thing: G-d is no more literally a mother than she is a father. Words are symbols. It's a bit like this, but not literally this.
This is true also of the primary way Christians have referred to G-d: Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or as we say in Lindisfarne, Father-Mother, Child and Holy Spirit. This is deeply symbolic.
So, what does the symbol of Holy Trinity mean? I am tempted to end the blog here. For Trinity is mystery, if it is anything at all. Trinity is also none-sense. In logic it simply cannot be. Three persons who are not three but one, yet cannot be confused. Every attempt at explanation fails. It makes no sense. It's like trying to square the circle. Perhaps, that is the point. Whatever G-d is, is beyond any sense you might make of her. What is the symbol of Trinity? That G-d is ultimately mystery.
The symbol also speaks of relationality. Whatever G-d is, she is not aloof, alone, separate, unconcerned, disconnected, unempathic. The heart of G-d is relationship of love. There is nothing more profound than loving relationship, nothing more mysterious.
Here I do end the blog.
+Ab. Andy

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Show me God and I will be satisfied

2011-05-22T10:47:00.001-04:00

One day Jesus was teaching his disciples some deep stuff. One of them, a little exasperated, not really understanding, blurted out, "Just show me God and I will be satisfied!" Jesus replied, with a great deal of patience, "You've been with me for a while now, but you still don't get it! If you have seen me you have seen God. God is in me and I am in God."

Traditionally scholars have interpreted this in an exclusive way. Jesus is talking about his own uniqueness. "God is in me only. Only I am in God."

But, perhaps that is not what Jesus meant at all. Think differently for a while. What if Jesus was saying something revolutionary about God. God is not "out there," separate from all that is, in splendid isolation, "somewhere beyond the blue." God is rather right here, right now. In me. In you. In all that is. If so, Jesus was not making a claim for his own uniqueness, but saying something extraordinarily inclusive. God is in interbeing with all that is.

Interbeing is a word Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, uses to refer to the idea that everything is inter-connected. Nothing exists in any separate way. I am the food I eat. The food I eat came from the soil. The soil is made up of decaying vegetation. The process involves water and rain and clouds and wind and sun and moon. All is/are interconnected. You might say, "All things inter-are, therefore I inter-am."

This in not unlike the Christian idea of Panentheism. God is in all, all is in God. God is neither distant nor separate. "The kingdom (realm) of God is among you," Jesus said another time.

Two applications:

First, sometimes a friend will say something like, "I will believe in God if you prove to me God exists, but not until." But if God is in interbeing with all things, and all things are in interbeing with God, the question is wrongheaded. There could never be a proof for God. What is required is a different way of seeing.

Second, these ideas are wonderfully practical and profoundly nonviolent. That God is in all changes your relationship to non-human animals, to nature, to your enemies. For here we find God.

+Ab. Andy

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Breathe

2011-05-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

Ithaca NY, where we live, is a town for bumper stickers. (Let's call them BS for short.) All self-respecting Ithacans have a bevy of BS, mostly political. Reading BS passes the time when you are in a traffic jam. If you're lucky, you will be behind a Subaru wagon with more than a dozen. (It used to be a Volvo 240, but they don't make them anymore.) Besides being a political, activist sort of town, Ithaca is also a spiritual, new-agey kind of place. It's eclectic. It suits us.

One of my favorite BS is "Breathe." Of course, there is more than a grain of truth in many BS. In other words, not all BS is BS, so to speak.
"Breathe" is profoundly true.
Jesus, on the night of resurrection said so. "He breathed on the disciples and said 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" To breathe is to live. Breath is life. God comes to us as breath.
I have been learning to breathe. That sounds a bit silly. If we don't breathe we die.
Quickly.
I don't mean that. I mean breathe consciously, breathe deeply. Breathe like a baby breathes, from the abdomen. Next time you have the joy of seeing a baby, watch how it breathes. You will see its little belly goes in and out and not its chest. As we get older we begin to breathe inefficiently. We breather from the chest. We fill only the top part of our lungs. To breathe from the abdomen, sensing the rise and fall of the diaphragm, allows the lungs to fully expand and contract. For a baby, it all comes naturally. After years of breathing shallowly, it is not natural at all.
Belly breathing takes time and much practice. But, it is worth it. There are many physiological benefits. Healthier lungs. Improved oxygen circulation. Better blood flow. Lower blood pressure. More energy. (These have all been medically documented.)
There are deeply spiritual benefits too. Breath connects us with the divine. It is no accident that Hebrew ruach means breath and spirit, as does Greek pneuma, as does Chinese qi and Japanese ki. The ancients knew the mysterious connection of life, breath, spirit, God and all things.
Conscious breathing is mindfulness. Mindfulness is attention. Attention is being present. Being present is to touch eternity.
Breathe.
Ab. Andy

A Way of Living How To

2011-04-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

I have been asked a few times recently just how to use our community Way of Living.
The Way of Living is our Daily Office, liturgy resource. If we you are new to the idea, it can be a bit daunting. So I produced a short video to help folk make a beginning. I hope it helps.

Building a spiritual practice

2011-04-17T09:44:00.000-04:00

The Lindisfarne Community is part of nascent grassroots movement sometimes identified by the term "new monasticism." At our annual retreat in 2011, we will be exploring the idea more fully from a number of different aspects.
In the Christian context, monasticism (or something like monasticism) has usually been rooted in a desire for a deeper spirituality that goes beyond mere formality or theory—a deep connectedness with the Ultimately Real. Central to the monastic spirit is the formation and living of a spiritual practice.
As we developed the "Rule" of the community in the late 90s, we arrived at six habits that help form the practice of spirituality for our members.

Eucharist (the central rite of historical Christianity that roots us in the great tradition)
The Daily Office (prayers and reading of sacred writings, scriptures)
Meditation (quietness, stillness, contemplation, sitting, standing, walking meditation connecting body, mind and spirit)
Mindfulness (developing awareness with thankfulness in the whole of life)
Study (reflective and meditativeness development of understanding)
Service (the outworking of spirituality in loving concern for the Other—people, non-human sentient beings, the environment—focussed often on the marginalized)

To build a spiritual practice is to find balance in these daily habits. If you are from a different tradition, these habits are easily modified. For Eucharist, substitute the rites and rituals of your own tradition. For the Daily Office, substitute the prayers and sacred texts that are meaningful to you. The other habits easily translate across traditions.
But how to build a practice?
In traditional monasticism, you either became a cenobite (joined with others in full-time monastic life, separated from the world) or an anchorite (a solitary, living alone, given to full-time pursuit of prayer and contemplation). In the new monasticism we are trying to develop the spirit and habits of monasticism in daily lives lived in, and not apart from, the world (neither cenobitic or eremitic). This presents great challenges! It is why I like the term "secular monasticism" (a phrase coined by our good friend Fr. John Skinner in the 1980s). The term fuses two ideas that have been traditionally mutually exclusive (not unlike Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity."
In the Lindisfarne Community, we are monastics in the world. Hidden. Buried. Anonymous.
Building a spiritual practice is challenging.
Here's a few reflections:

a) Be realistic. To set yourself impossible goals will only end in defeat, frustration and guilt! The goal of "two hours in prayer a day" combined with a family, a full-time job and the sundry other commitments of everyday life is a stretch.
b) Be creative. Meditation does not have to happen always sitting on a cushion, with incense and soft music. Do you drive to work? Turn off the radio. Meditate. Do you walk? Meditate. Use every opportunity to become mindful.
c) Use technology. Smart phones, tablets, laptops, podcasts. Don't be enslaved by technology, but simply use it. There are versions of the Daily Office you can listen to. For example, you can have the Lindisfarne Way of Living on your phone and in snatched moments during the day read the office.
d) Start small. Baby steps. Little habits soon becomes bigger habits. You are less liable to fail in a meditation habit if you begin with just five minutes in the morning before work than an hour.
e) Build habits that you enjoy and find beneficial.It's much easier to do things you like doing.
f) Think long-term. A spiritual practice is a marathon not a sprint. You are building a life-practice. You don't need to do it all at once.
g) Recognize that over time your needs and interests will change. You may spend a year or two focussed mostly on meditation, with the other habits in the background. That's fine. Prayer and reading will have more relevance for some periods and less for others. That's fine.
h) Despite all the above, a spiritual practice requires discipline. It does not "just happen." It is conscious, intentional—living against the grain.
i) Be kind to yourself. When a well-intentioned plan doesn't work, don't beat yourself up. A spiritual practice is there to help you. It's a way to lead you toward flourishing in loving relationship with God, yourself, your family and friends and all that is.

+Ab. Andy

Appearance and reality

2011-04-03T09:10:00.000-04:00

This week Jane and I attended a presentation on what we might or might not know about the brain, and how experimenting on animals might or might not tell us something, and how what we might or might not know may possibly give us insight into child behavior, that might or might not help us find new interventions to help troubled children. The conclusion seemed to be that all is guesswork, but at least it is worth subjecting other sentient beings to pain in order to keep guessing.
We came away frustrated on a number of levels.
Here is one of my frustrations with the talk. The presenter had a particular view of knowledge: what it means to know something and how we get that knowledge. She was an unacknowledged positivist. A positivist is someone who thinks that we can only know something if we can perform an experiment and empirically verify the result by repeating the experiment a number of times and reaching the same conclusions. Only then do we have knowledge. (It is called the verification principle.) I have no problems with that kind of knowledge. It is the basis of our technological and scientific breakthroughs of the last few hundred years. (Though I do dissent from seeking that kind of knowledge by subjecting other sentient beings to great pain.) My frustration is when empirical knowledge is announced as the only knowledge; that all else is truly meaningless as a truth claim.
The empirical, by its nature, deals only with appearance: how things are perceived by us and not with the "thing-in-itself."
Philosophers have wrestled with the issue of appearance and reality since they began pondering about life. They have reached no firms conclusions. Immanuel Kant, an eighteenth century German philosopher, and very important as philosophers go, said that it is impossible to know a "thing-in-itself" (which he called the noumenon). We can only know how something appears to us, filtered through our own experience and limited thinking (which he called the phenomenon). The presenter of our talk this week seemed to think that appearance is reality; that noumenon collapses into phenomenon. At least Kant left room for the noumenon, even if he thought we could never know it.
The spiritual impulse is different. It is the search for the noumenon. It is to move beyond appearance to find reality. W. R. Inge said that "the only true mystic is one who sees realities and knows how to distinguish the from phantasies" (Mysticism in Religion, p. 142).

G-d said to the Jewish prophet Samuel: G-d does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but G-d looks on the heart.

In John Hick's phrase, God is the Ultimately Real. The Ultimately Real sees the "thing-in-itself." The goal of spirituality is to become one with the Ultimately Real. To become one with the Ultimately Real is to be enlightened—to see truly.
Things aren't what they appear to be. Anyone want to be a bodhisattva? Keep seeking! The mystics have told us that the fully real is fully knowable.

Becoming a certain kind of person

2011-03-27T08:44:00.001-04:00

Spirituality is located in four, directions: upward, outward, inward and downward. The upward direction is to come to terms with the experience of transcendence, the "oceanic feeling," (Freud), the divine, the Godhead. The outward direction is toward relationship with the Other: people, non-human animals, the environment. The inward direction is toward the self: to become a certain kind of person. The downward direction is against the un-Other: all that destroys relationship, injustice, hatred, the demonic, the "dark side" of life. The spacial analogy is helpful, but flawed. The four are deeply interconnected. We separate only to analyze, but realize that there is a more profound connectedness of the all in the One.
All the great traditions have much to say about the inward direction: becoming a certain kind of person. To become a certain kind of person is character. It is not something we are born with, but something we acquire through life. We are born with personality. We acquire character. With children you see very early on the differences in personality: quite, loud, shy, outgoing, quick, slow. It's much the same with puppies. All of our canine companions have had very different personalities. With Molly and Lucy (our pug friends), the personality they have now as two year olds was quite clear when they were eight weeks old.
Character is acquired depending on the way we respond to what life brings us. We can acquire good character or bad character.
The early Christian theologian Paul makes a connection between suffering, endurance, character, hope, and love. Each produces the other.
Paul, like Buddhism, begins with suffering, for in a profound way suffering, and the way we respond to suffering, defines life. Both traditions, though beginning with suffering, bring us something hopeful. Suffering is not the last word. Try as we might, we cannot escape the world and the physical, mental and emotional trials being embodied brings. The way we respond to life's trials is very much about character.
Paul says suffering produces endurance and endurance character. I don't think that is true for all. For some, suffering produces nothing good at all. Suffering may produce despair. Suffering may produce hopelessness. Suffering can be meaningless.
So, what makes the difference? Why does some suffering, through endurance, produce character and some not?
The difference is in Paul other two words: hope and love. I have arranged his five ideas in this way:

Character is central. But, the production of character requires both sides of the diagram. Love combined with hope transforms suffering through endurance into character. We can only endure when there is hope of something better. Suffering is not the last word. Love is the last word.
Where do we acquire love? Here is mystery, for love, like suffering, comes to us as gift. Christians have called it "the grace of God." It is the mystery of the Dao. Search for it. Long for it. Practice it. Do all you can to find it. You will not be disappointed.
+Ab. Andy

Nonviolence? Nonresistance?

2011-02-20T15:40:00.000-05:00

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer tantalizingly called for a new monasticism, he said it would have nothing in common with the old, save for a commitment to the teachings of Jesus we call the Sermon on the Mount. I am always impacted by these sayings of Jesus. Here is a part that has always been important to me.

"You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow."

Few have taken these sayings seriously. It is easy to "spiritualize" them—something like, "Of course Jesus didn't mean this literally. How could he? Things just wouldn't work if everyone took a nonresistant stance."
Clearly things wouldn't work the way they do now. We would live in a far less violent world!
It was through trying to live out these ideas that I became a nonviolentist over a quarter of a century ago. It is not an easy road, and I have not always lived up to my highest aspirations. Working out the practicalities is a challenge. The inner violence of the psyche is a major stumbling block.
One of the questions I have been asked often is, "Doesn't this mean you will allow the aggressor to walk all over you?" I have found this difficult to answer, and have usually resorted to the answer that regardless of the consequences, nonviolent is the right way to be. Historically, in some understandings of nonresistance this has been the case. It was true, for instance, for the early nonresistant anabaptists in the sixteenth century. It continues in the Amish and Mennonite traditions. It is a thoroughly deontological position. It is a simple duty to be nonviolent. None of us can foresee the consequences of our actions. Our responsibility begins and ends with our intentions to comply with duty.
Yet, it is difficult to ignore consequences, for consequences matter. To allow the aggressor to use violence is to collude with violence. It is not a nonviolent action.
How to resolve the dilemma?
It is often set up as: aggressor threatens violence, either a) be nonresistant and allow the aggressor to use violence; or b) resist the aggressor with force. Violence against violence. Perhaps, there is a third way.
I have received new insights from my practice of taijiquan. (if you are interested you can follow my musings on taiji in my other blog Way of Peace.) In taiji when the aggressor threatens violence, you neither resist violently nor simply give in to violence. In taiji nonresistance means to deflect the violence of the aggressor away from yourself in a way that causes no harm. In Chinese it is lu. In English "roll back." In this way you are not "walked all over," nor do you use violence. It is a nonviolent way of disarming the violent. The goal is to reduce the violence of the total situation, rather than merely not to use violence yourself.

+Ab. Andy

What's in a name?

2011-02-06T09:27:00.000-05:00

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet

Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

I have been struck many times of the confluence of the really important ideas in all the world's great traditions. If something is very important, it seems the idea arises in different places over time in different cultural guise.
This is so clearly with ethics. The "golden rule"—do to others what you would have them do to you—is everywhere present as a foundational, and practical, way of living. Love, too, as compassion, kindness, ahimsa (no harm), or benevolence is a common theme. Whatever it is called, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It is not the words we use about the rose, but the experience we have of the rose that counts. I think this is much the position that philosopher of religion John Hick suggests. There is the "Ultimately Real," known only by experience, that defies categories. Our wordy attempts are OK just so long as we realize that the Real is beyond our attempts at explanation. That is why we have so many different explanations of the Real in the different traditions.
At this point the cry usually aries, "Relativism! If all is relative, then nothing is absolute and we can know nothing about anything with any certainty!"
This is partly true. For myself, I have abandoned any search for absolute knowledge. But, that is not the only game in the playground. I prefer to play a pluralist game. If absolutism says "We have the truth and you don't!" and relativism proclaims "There is no such thing as truth!" pluralism says, "Let's see if by dialogue we can all approach the Real!" When plural positions make contact, though the words differ, the rose smells the same, if you have a nose for it. I am convinced (as convinced as a pluralist can be) that this is the case in ethics.
It is true also in other areas.
In the Lindisfarne Community we have a number of good bloggers. In a recent post to the blog Celtic Odyssey my good friend, and member of our community, Jack+ draws attention to "centering prayer." This is a form of contemplative inner silence, a "resting in God." In this iteration it was the genius of Fr. Thomas Keating from the 1960s onward, who, through his writings, gave this practice to the world. Of course, Keating was only one among many and there were other bright lights, notably Thomas Merton and Basil Pennington, who discovered the same.
Perhaps, I should more correctly have said "rediscovered," for the practice of inner silence is an ancient one and one shared by all the great spiritual traditions of the world. It has gone by the names "meditation," "contemplation," "silence," "stillness" and in practice has sitting, and standing and walking, and moving forms. It has Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Doaist and secular forms. There are different explanations of what goes on psychologically or metaphysically or physiologically. My suspicion is that all the traditions have discovered the same thing. There is a way to the Ultimately Real and the Way feels much the same. It's only a suspicion based on smelling the rose in different traditions. I confess to never having tried kabalistic meditation, or sufi dance, of tantric yoga. I have experienced Buddhist meditation (zazen sitting and walking), Doaist meditation (qigong, taiji) and Christian contemplation and centering prayer. Tentative conclusion? Smells like a rose to me.
You might like to read Jack's blog and get in touch with the literature, and through it get in touch with the Great Silence. Cheers Jack+!

+Ab. Andy

Refocus on what matters

2011-01-23T11:13:00.000-05:00

A great deal of life is spent in pettiness. It's not that the little things don't matter. It's that when we attach to the little things, in such a way that we block out the light, life is the poorer. This is particularly so when we focus on that which we can't change. And there is much in life we can't change! Often it is those very things that become the subject of our worries, frustrations, anger and disillusionment. One of the great secrets of a fulfilled and happy life is to know how to let go. Be in charge of those things you can change. Let the rest go by. I wish I had learned this many years ago. It would have saved so much energy wasted on the futile. (I wish I lived it more consistently now.)
Besides internal disturbance, focus on the things we can't do anything about prevents our own enlightenment. When we say, "The sun's not out today," we really mean that a cloud has hidden the precious rays of the sun from us. Our enlightenment is always there, just as the sun is always there. Our preoccupation with the petty forms the cloud.

Here's a little something from the philospher Epictetus in the lovely little piece the Enchiridion:

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.

It interests me that Epictetus has "the body" as one of those things outside our control. This is only partly true. For Epictetus, as for many in the western tradition, there is too firm a dualism between body and mind—the body is seen and experienced as something other, something alien. Much that happens to and in our bodies is truly beyond our control. Yet, a more helpful practice brings body, mind and spirit into holistic balance. But, that is for another day, another blog.

I find myself often having to refocus on what matters. Epictetus is a helpful friend.

+Ab. Andy

A disturbing sign ...

2011-01-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

Not this sign!

I have been teaching winter classes. On my way to the university I pass a little church with a prominent sign. The church diligently changes the sign to fit with the season (interspersed with "Friday Fish Fry," "Chicken Barbecue," and "Food Giveaway").
After Christmas the sign reads, "Jesus is born. Come and learn about him." I have found it profoundly disturbing, and each morning as I pass it causes me to ponder.
Why such a sign has disturbed me, I am not quite sure. But, I will try a little self-analysis. (I think my being disturbed is more about me than about this little church of faithful souls.) So here goes ...
When Christians announce at Christmas "Christ is born" they are making a spiritual rather than historical statement. Of course, it refers back to events two thousand years ago, but our record of those events is scant. If the announcement was of historical interest only it would be "Jesus was born."
"Christ is born" is a profound statement about spiritual realities and mystical union and inner divinity and discoveries of love. (Theologians among us notice the difference between "Jesus was born" and "Christ is born." There is something important here about the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.)
"Come and learn about him" disturbed me even more. I'm not sure that learning about Jesus is a very helpful idea. I can learn about weather patterns. I can learn about the habits of polar bears. I can learn about the development of mining in Pennsylvania. All very useful in its own way, I suppose. But, not exactly life changing! That Christ is born is a spiritual reality that calls us to follow, to experience, to know, to be, to become.
I have pondered what I would have rather seen on the sign. Here's a few contenders:
Christ is born! Be a follower!
Christ is born! Experience love!
Christ is born! Look inside.
That being said, I'm not big into church notice boards and probably would not have one!
+Ab. andy

The complexity of simplicity

2011-01-11T09:41:00.001-05:00

I have really enjoyed a discussion in the community on our understanding of simplicity. Between us we have demonstrated the complexity of seeking simplicity!

We are challenged by a call to simplicity. Our deepest need is to grow in our knowledge and love of God, not the accumulation of more material things. There is a beauty in space, in openness, in solitude. We seek to enjoy beauty without owning or possessing; to stay focused, single minded, with purity of desire.

A few thoughts sparked by our discussion:

a) It is not so much what we have (though when we have to excess while others lack, there is a moral issue) but our attitude to what we have. We can have much and be utterly attached to "things" (material and nonmaterial). We can have little to nothing and be equally attached to things. It is our attitude to the things, making them more than they ought to be, that gets in the way of a deeper, truer spirituality.

b) In the history of spirituality, folk have taken a wrong turn when they despise the material world. The material world is good, created by and infused with God, a world to explore and enjoy and respect. Despising the world, and hence the body, has had a devastating effect on nonhuman animals at the hands of humans. Animals are, of course, merely bodies with no souls and so can be as despised as much as the non-anmial material world—so we have been told. That's why the "Other," women, people of color, our enemies, any who differ, are compared to animals. There is a long tradition of despising the animalistic about humans. This is the "lower" side of being human. This is the connection to the material world. It is bad theology, bad philosophy. It has led to bad practice.

c) I confess that I am a bit of a technophile. Our technology amazes me and I keep up with it. (I'm waiting for the iPad2 before I take the plunge! I can already see the uses I will put this to.) Without technology we would not be able to have the Lindisfarne Community in its present form. The "virtual world," so called, is the real world as much as any other aspect of the world. Again, it is about attitude, attachment, use.

Simplicity is a winsome idea. Finding the simple in the complex, discovering the complex as simple ...

+Ab. Andy

Wordle for the Abbot's Blog

2010-12-15T22:21:00.000-05:00

Here is a wordle made from the blog. Rather neat!

Being and doing

2010-12-12T09:26:00.001-05:00

In the fourth understanding of the Lindisfarne community we say, "Our spirituality is at the level of being. It is who we are in our truest selves." Being and doing are intimately connected. There is no hard dualism here. Being and doing, contemplation and action, are inner and outer, yin and yang. Being is contained in doing. Doing is contained in being. As contemplation ends action begins. Action returns to contemplation. When action is at its height, contemplation is at its lowest, yet still being is contained in doing. When contemplation is strongest, action is weakest, yet is still there. You can read this in the yin yang symbol. White is action. Black is contemplation. When white if most full, there is still the small circle of black, and vice versa. Pure contemplation contains action. Complete action involves contemplation
However, when there is a general imbalance, balance needs to be restored. In our culture generally, we have lost the art of contemplation. We have forgotten how to be still. We focus on the outer. We excel at doing. We are afraid of being.
I was first introduced to stillness in the early eighties when a new faculty member joined our college. He was a bit of a mystic. He wandered around in a black cassock. This was unusual for a Baptist college, even though he was a Methodist by tradition. One of his early ventures was to institute a day of silence and contemplation. For me it was complete agony! By lunchtime I had to drive into Manchester city center simply to hear voices and noises, and to be surrounded by action. I think I was afraid of what I might find on the inside. Over time I persevered. I have gradually learned the art of stillness, with more still to learn.
At the university, before each class I practice zazen breathing meditation with my students. It is good to see students learn the art of stillness. My hope is that many will make it a life practice. Yet, I know many of them struggle with it, at least at the beginning. Fidgeting, easily distracted, legs joggling, hands nervous, eyes anxiously gazing at the cell phone hoping for a new text message. The body's unrest mirrors the restlessness inside. Students have told me that their little zazen at the beginning of class is the only time they are quiet during the whole week.
My early forays into contemplation in the 1980s, and the experience of my students are symptomatic of the general cultural unfamiliarity with being. Hence, in our community understandings there is more about being than doing. We have attempted to address the imbalance. Those who are familiar with our community know that we are as active as any small group of people! Yet, in our activities we are discovering the spirituality of being.
+Ab. Andy

Love came down at Christmas

2010-12-05T08:59:00.001-05:00

Our 2010 tree

We have decorated for Christmas early this year. It is a break with strict tradition that says "Don't put up the tree until Christmas Eve. Celebrate Advent properly. Advent is a more solemn season." This I know, and I do want to take Advent seriously and not let it get swallowed by Christmas. It may be that we have simply given in to cultural pressures. In our culture, Christmas ends on Christmas Day and the twelve days of Christmas have been lost to the pre-Christmas commercial binge. Advent means shopping not solemn reflection. Yet, I hope our early beginnings of celebration is more than that. If the Christmas season has been taken from us after Christmas Day, then we might as well enjoy Christmas before. I have made suitable adjustments to my iTunes play list! (Five hundred and four tracks and counting. Check out Bob Dylan's "Christmas in the Heart," Delightful!)
The last couple of days I have had in mind the words of Christina Rossetti's poem "Love came down at Christmas." She sees the meaning of Christmas as love, and the effect of Christmas to love God and all people. This for me, too, is the meaning of Christmas. Christmas is the sign and symbol of universal love. Love as practice. Love as hope. Love as aspiration. Love as longing.
Love is in the universal experience of nurture and care. None of us would be here without it. Love is in the universal ethical aspiration of all the world's great traditions and religions—Confucian benevolence, Buddhist lovingkindness, Jewish and Christian love, Muslim compassion, Kant's categorical imperative, feminist care ... the list goes on. As it says in the Tao Te Ching, "Thirty spokes share one hub" (XI, 27) Love is how we would like to see the world.
In our ongoing discussions as a community we have been pondering love. This is our understanding:

Love is to be at the heart of the Lindisfarne Community. “Love your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies.” The immensity of the task makes it naturally impossible! Yet we are called to be a community of love. We need to remember, it is God’s love, not ours; perfect, eternal, constant. With God’s love there are no strings attached, no conditions to be met, no favoritism. Yet it is not sentimental nor romantic, for love is not merely a feeling, it is an act of will; the “naked intent” of the heart to love God, neighbor and enemy. There is the deepest of all joy in the love of God. We seek to learn to love, to walk in love, to exult in love, to make love our highest aim, to let God’s love fill us completely. Our desire is to be free within the love of our heavenly Father-Mother — to know God’s passionate love for us and to live our lives from within God’s acceptance of us. This love of God is reflected in our love for all, even those who are considered our enemies. It is a reconciling love; a love that seeks peace. It is a love for the whole of creation.

Our written understanding is only the beginning, imperfectly expressed, but giving us a direction. To name love is not to know love. To know love is to experience love. The gateway to experience is the door of practice. The door of practice is found in the mundane. Love came down at Christmas. Love was found in a stable, in the profundity of birth and parental love, in everyday life.
+Ab. Andy

Illusions, disillusionment: disappointment or reality?

2010-11-28T09:45:00.000-05:00

These two statements seem to be true:

a) Illusions followed by disillusionment often leads to disappointment

b) Illusions followed by disillusionment sometimes leads to reality

In many endeavors it is easy to begin with grand illusions about where we are going and what the outcomes will be. In the end Illusions are always shattered, for illusions are false ideas. It may take a long time, and some illusions are very enduring. Yet, finally the rigors of life have a way of dispelling illusions.
This happens in very simple ways. "I think I'll take up golf," is a fine idea. But, if the notion is accompanied by illusions about your present abilities, the amount of time and practice it takes just to hit the ball straight, the number of "failures" you will face on the putting green, then the chances are you will give up after a few attempts at the game. Disappointment. Yet, this doesn't happen to everyone who has the idea "I think I'll take up golf." These folk bring with them a set of illusions, but when the illusions are shattered, they stick with the game. Reality sets in and they begin the long, difficult and enjoyable process of becoming a golfer.
Whether you take up golf or not is fairly inconsequential. In other areas the disappointment has more repercussions. Spirituality addresses us at a very deep level of our psyche. More than anything else it shapes who we are. Spiritual illusions are, therefore, more troublesome than other kinds of illusions. To realize I will never be a decent golfer is disappointing, but I can easily live with that. I'll learn the game of chess. More within my skill range! Illusions about spiritual matters in which I have made an investment to the depths of my being—well, that's a different matter! The world is populated with many disappointed former "seekers" who tried spirituality or religion, "got burned," and walked away with a new cynicism.
When illusions are shattered how do we make the move to reality and not to disappointment?
In the Lindisfarne Community understanding we say this:

We know too, that our community must be for “sinners” and not “saints.” We are ordinary people struggling with the realities of day to day life in an imperfect world. We are aware, therefore, that our way of living will always be incomplete. When people join the Lindisfarne Community, as any other intentional community, natural illusions and idealism about community will quickly be shattered. However, disillusionment leads towards reality. Discovering Christ among us is the beginning of true community.

A few reflections:
a) It helps to begin with a more realistic view of the way people are. Just because some folk seem to have a little "enlightenment" does not then mean they are perfect. If you project perfection onto people, you will be disappointed.
b) Give others space to make their mistakes, to grow and to change.
c) Focus on your own growth and development, not that of others. You can't change them. You have the possibility to change yourself. You change yourself through the daily disciplines of the spiritual life.
d) Look for Christ in all.

+Ab Andy

To be as Christ ...

2010-11-21T09:17:00.000-05:00

In the Lindisfarne Community we are currently looking at our common understandings. Our first understanding is

1. As a Christian community we seek above all else to be Christlike—to be as Christ to those we meet; to find Christ within them. Over the years we have deepened our understanding of what that means to us. Our understandings are those things we aspire toward as we follow Christ and seek to keep the community Rule. They are at the core of who we are and seek to become. They are not a list of do’s and don’ts; nor are they a list of self-congratulations, “look at us we’ve made it!” At their heart they are our prayer. We see these understandings in the life of Jesus; shining, precious gems, winsome, lovely, drawing us out of ourselves and towards Christ.

Much of our discussion has been about what it might mean to be Christlike, and the conversation has been very fruitful. I have learned much from community members.
To be as Christ to others. To find Christ in others.
I have pondered the twin ideas of doing and being. To be Christlike is to act in a certain way, and it is to be a certain kind of person. A few years ago it was popular, in some circles, to wear jewelry with the WWJD logo. "What would Jesus do?" The fad seems to have faded. Yet, the intent was a good one. The idea of the jewelry was to remind the wearer to try to act in the way Jesus would act. What would that be? Wearers of the jewelry were left to puzzle it out for themselves. My guess would be that WWJD is to read the life and teaching of Jesus, get a feeling for the way Jesus acted in different circumstances, and try to imitate the actions. The task is difficult in two ways.
The first difficulty is how do you get to the actual actions of Jesus. The documents about Jesus we have are short, selective and open to many interpretations. Take, for example, the story of Jesus driving the money-changes from the temple. Was he acting violently? Should we emulate that interpretation? But what about other ways of reading the story? Check out the commentaries and you will see the problem. WWJD? It's open to interpretation!
The second difficulty is this: when you have arrived at your best interpretation, how do you actually do it? Putting WWJD into practice is another matter altogether. It is here that we arrive at conclusions like: "This is too hard!" "I've failed again!" "It's impossible!" The WWJD jewelry becomes embarrassing to wear. It's like wearing a clerical collar and getting road rage. (Best to slip the little white insert off before you drive!) I wonder how many pieces of WWJD jewelry are languishing at the bottom of drawers under the socks or underwear?
To act in a certain way is a noble and necessary idea. It can only be done when you are a certain kind of person. That brings me from doing to being.
To "be as Christ" is an ambiguous phrase. You can read "doing" into it. You can also read "being" into it. Here it becomes a little more esoteric. To be as Christ is a form of Christ-mysticism. There are a number of ways folk have wrestled with this historically. Here is one way. There is a "spark of the divine" in all. This small beginning for many folk (most perhaps?) remains small and undeveloped. For others, the small beginning grows slowly through spiritual discipline. How we get to start on the Way is a mystery. For some, a life crisis will be the immediate cause. For others, it is a chance meeting, or reading a book that catches the imagination, or a thousand other gateways. In whatever way it begins it is always a gift. To fan the spark into a flame takes time, discipline, practice. This was the genius of monasticism and is still the heart of what we call the new monasticism.
This Christ-mysticism is to find the Christ within. When our Buddhist friends speak of the "Buddha nature" I think they are speaking of the same thing. Thich Nhat Hanh leads us this way in his wonderful "Living Buddha, Living Christ."
The point is that we can only begin to "do as Jesus did" when we "become as Christ is" though the disciplines of the spiritual life. It's a long term project. Don't confuse religious zeal with developed inner divinity.
To find Christ in others is to look for this small beginning in them. It is in all. In some it is very difficult to see, but it is there. It is most difficult to see when the actions of others are far from Christlike. The temptation is to write them off. A good friend of ours, Randy Vickers, had a wonderful (if time consuming) habit. He wanted to bring a little happiness to each person he met, and made a point of not leaving a conversation until the other person had smiled at least once. I recall one visit to J.C. Penney's that took a while. The dour shop assistant resisted Randy's kindness for the longest time. She did smile in the end, but it was a marathon! I think this was Randy finding Christ within, a connection of spirit to spirit.

+Ab. Andy

"Anyone unwilling to work should not eat" ... hmm

2010-11-14T09:24:00.000-05:00

This week, poverty has been on my mind. In an Introduction to Ethics class I have been discussing with students issues around poverty and a moral response to poverty. Whose responsibility are the poor? Are there any duties the rich owe to the poor? In a large and complex society how would we begin to maximize happiness with regard to poverty? What causes poverty and how can we address those causes?
It is an intractable problem. Over the eleven years that I have been teaching this, students inevitably fall into the divisions of the "culture war." Some students express a compassionate response that whatever the causes of poverty, poor folk ought to be helped. Other students are resolute that if you are poor it is your own fault. You made bad choices. Pull yourself together and get a job. I try to help students tease out the complexities, good and bad, in both responses. I rehearse the standard conservative, liberal and radical responses to poverty with them. I hope that those with harsh responses become softer; those with naive responses less so.
During this week I happened, in another context, to be thinking about the Communist Manifesto and its prescription for a just society: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Then again, in another context, the infamous words over the gates of Auschwitz: "Arbeit Macht Frei." Work sets you free. In yet another context, the purpose of education as the cultural construction of "docile bodies" (Michel Foucault's phrase) to produce compliant workers for industrial capitalism.
It was interesting then to read the lectionary passage and the deutero-Pauline aphorism: "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat." The context seemed to be an early Christian community enjoying a primitive form of communism where all was shared by all, but in which some were merely lazy, unwilling to work and thus becoming a burden to others.
It fascinates me the way in one week so many ideas converge in one's thinking. How to make sense of all this? Needless to say, I have no solution. here are a few not quite random thoughts:

Poverty is a terrible situation to be in and compassion for those who are poor is a much needed response. (To ponder: compassion)
There are times in our lives when all of us cannot meet our own needs and must rely on the kindness of others. (To ponder: humility)
We all have a contribution to make, and there are natural consequences for those who choose not to. (To ponder: diligence)
Meaningful work is a part of being human. Yet, work without meaning is a drudgery and crushes the human spirit. (To ponder: purpose)

+ Ab. Andy

Marketing yourself

2010-10-24T09:23:00.006-04:00

In the medieval period economics was a subset of ethics. In other words, economics came under the broad discipline of how we ought to live. Commerce—trade, production and sale of goods—was not an independent activity. Trade was regulated by moral considerations. It was, for example, considered wrong to charge interest on money lent to someone. Why should you get a return for doing nothing? That didn't seem fair.

The modern period changed all that. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776 presented to the world a new way of looking at economics. The notion of a free market was born. The market was free from moral considerations, and ought to be free from interference. Free markets would produce great good. Free markets are guided by an invisible hand. I am not going to provide here a critique of free market economics, though Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto is a very good place to start. (For interested readers I would recommend both Smith and Marx. In economics terms, everything written after them is merely a footnote.) Even after Smith's magnum opus economics was still a bounded discipline. The market was restrained by the moral considerations of workers (who formed unions) and by law as the worst excesses of markets were moderated by fair dealings. In the last 30 years we have begun to see something different. Workers are now more than ever simply cogs in the machine of the market. Did anyone notice the change from "personnel" to "human resources"? We all serve the market as it works its magic. Even more, the idea of the market has broken away from its moorings and has begun to encroach on every aspect of life. Every facet of life is now seen in terms of markets. People in hospitals are now consumers of products and not patients in need of help and care. Students have now become consumers of the product of education; teachers the deliverers of the product. The classroom is now a point of sales. It has become so pervasive that I suspect some readers of this blog will wonder why I am making a fuss. It is self-evident that everything is marketing. That is part of the problem. Our culture has been taken over to such a degree that we hardly notice it. All is now seen in terms of money, costs, profits, losses.

Why the fuss? In giving in to the market we are in danger of losing (perhaps already have lost) important values. The Beatles were right (as they often were): "Money can't buy me love ..." Money can't buy me goodness, or truth, or beauty. Money can't measure the value of a person. Money can't measure the change of the seasons; the consciousness of well-being; the "oceanic feeling" of wonder (Freud) at the greatness of reality. If money is truly "the bottom line" then as a culture we lose.

I was chatting recently with a couple of recent PhDs who are looking for jobs. It's a tough market for new professors. (See, the language is everywhere.) With a heavy heart I advised that in framing their CVs and "cover letters" and research agendas they needed to "market themselves." The dear friends I was talking to were repulsed by the idea. Their work and learning and commitments had led them to a place where, in true Socratic fashion, they think they know less now than ever. Yet, to get a job polish your image, make yourself marketable, and sell yourself.

Jesus told a parable about a self-satisfied religious man who marketed himself to God when he prayed. He displayed his achievements. Another man, a tax collector, simply looked down and asked for mercy. The punch-line was "Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

I wonder how far my younger colleagues would get if, instead of marketing themselves, they followed the way of humility? I could not advise them to take that way. It made me sad. The ancient wisdom is a higher truth. A deeper magic.

+Ab. Andy

Making Peace With Exile

2010-10-10T09:41:00.000-04:00

The ancient Jewish people were taken into exile to Babylon. The theme of exile and return is a prominent one in Jewish writing. The experience of exile if often close to the surface of Jewish longings for a better future. The most commonly expressed feeling of exiles is that "here" (the place of exile) is not where they want to be. They long to return home.
The ancient Celtic mystics, too, had a profound sense of exile. They often chose an exile peregrinatio pro amore Christi—wandering for the love of Christ. Yet, still they longed for the return home. The journey back was to the place of resurrection.
The experience of exile is existentially painful. "I don't belong here."
The exile may be quite literally from one's home. On one internet group I belong to (about kilt wearing) my signature reads, "Andy: exile from Northumberland." It is lighthearted, but holds a deeper truth. The place of exile never feels quite right.

http://weathersavvy.com/Q-Climate_
Deserts1.html

Yet, we need not be bound by a literal understanding of exile. Anywhere that we have the sense of "not-rightness" can become our place of exile. Listening to friends and colleagues, work often becomes a place of exile. Monday to Friday holds a certain "not-rightness." Friday evening is the homecoming. Watch people's facebook statuses as the weekend draws near.
Perhaps the most telling place of exile is life in the world itself. "This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through" went the old song. Sometimes (for some folk most of the time) life has the quality of "not-rightness" about it. There is a shadowy memory of being from somewhere better, even when the place cannot be remembered with any assurance. Some religious traditions (and Plato among the philosophers) respond, "Of course! That's because you have come from somewhere else. The shadowy memory you have is a true one." Early Christian theologians expressed the longing of return, "To be at home in the body is to be away from God. To leave the body is to return to God." In exile, there is always the agony of longing.
The prophet of exile, Jeremiah, expressed a different perspective. He announced to the exiles::

Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to God for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.

The prophet urged a making peace with the state of exile. Make the place of exile home. Learn to love it. Be at rest wherever you find yourself. This would be to find peace in the exile of the workplace. It would be to learn to be content in and with your body.
This may be easier said that done. As with all things it is most likely accomplished with small steps: a daily mindfulness. Finding yourself at peace in the present moment. Could you enjoy exile? Will the longing for home ever go away? Possibly not, but the exile might be made more bearable.

+Ab. Andy

Contentment ... an attitude against the stream

2010-09-26T10:54:00.000-04:00

An anonymous ancient adept said that "Deep spirituality, together with contentment, is where true wealth lies." (My own paraphrase.)

Contentment is an attitude antithetical to life in a consumer capitalist society. It swims against the stream. I recall that, only days after the events of September 11, 2001, President Bush addressed the US people (and through the media the rest of the world). He told us not to be deterred by acts of terrorism from that which really matters. What really matters is to shop. Consuming more and more stuff is what makes the world go round. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, back in the '80s, reminded us that consumer capitalism and Christianity were not compatible systems of thought and practice. Consumer capitalism, he said, is based on the stimulation of unremitting covetousness. And everyone knows being covetous is not a Christian virtue!

In the years before Bishop Newbigin returned from India to the United Kingdom to be appalled at British society, I studied marketing. (I have a degree in business studies and was for a time a member of the Market Research Society in London. Seems like another lifetime ago!) Marketing then, and I doubt that it has changed, was a social science devoted to: a) stimulating unrest with what you have; and b) provoking desire for what you don't have. In contemporary society we have become very good at this. It has been linked with industrial production we know as "built-in obsolescence." Good stuff is designed to last one season, to be replaced by equally good stuff, but slightly different good stuff next season. Seasons differ in length. Larger consumer stuff (refrigerators and washing machines) have a season of about four to five years. TVs nowadays even less. A season for a cell phone is just under the two year contract. Clothes change with spring, summer, winter and fall, and this year's fall colors are just sufficiently different to last year's that we all notice if you are out of sequence.

The stimulation of desire for stuff is psychologically shrewd. Maslow was right. We are a bundle of needs. By nature human beings consume based on needs. We consume air, water, food. We need relationships to survive. We need a certain sense of meaning or we pine away.

Consumer capitalism taps into this human neediness and nudges it along by creating new needs. And there is no end to the new needs that have been and will be created.

It's not so bad if you can keep up with the Joneses. Needs are created and satisfied with new purchases. But, none of us can keep up for very long. However much you have, and whatever your financial position, there is always the more. The system thrives on the human capacity for covetousness. The other side of the coin is that few of us are content with life, because we never have what our piqued desires tell us we need to be happy. As a culture we have more than any other in human history. I doubt that we are more content.

I don't want to be misunderstood. Nor do I want to be a hypocrite. I like my stuff. My gadgets. My clothes. My books. I don't mind shopping for things. But, I suspect that in our culture we are out of balance. Unremitting stimulation of desire for things does not lead to contentment

Recap the ancient wisdom: "Deep spirituality, together with contentment, is where true wealth lies." If this is close to truth, how wealthy are we truly?

Contentment seems to go hand in glove with a deep spirituality. That's where the work needs to be done. Deep spirituality does not come easily. Like a broken record (someone explain the metaphor to the under 30s) I return to practice. Deep spirituality grows in the fertile soil of the practices: meditation, mindfulness, ritual, and the rootedness of tradition.

+Ab. Andy

The Argument from Perfection

2010-09-12T11:10:00.000-04:00

British philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch makes an argument from perfection. To my knowledge, she doesn't use the phrase herself, but others have attributed the argument to her. It goes something like this

If we can imagine the perfect, that imagined perfection can help us make a practical different to our very imperfect life now. Our imperfect lives will reflect better the life of perfection through contemplation of the perfect.

It is not an argument unique to Murdoch. She was something of a neo-Platonist, and anything with "Plato" in its descriptor will likely have something to do with an ideal, a perfection, whether the ideal exists or not. Murdoch, for her own part, was agnostic about the perfect. Yet, the fact that we can imagine the perfect is very important. The perfect draws us toward itself. (It is quite possible that imagining the perfect, and knowing our own imperfection, may cause us to hate ourselves and drive us further from the perfect. But, that is another story for another day.)

In Christian theology the motif of the Realm of God (Kingdom of God in non-inclusive language or heaven in popular devotion) performs the function of the argument from perfection. Sometimes, the Realm of God discussion has been termed "realized eschatology." Eschatology relates to the End, the final state, the perfect. Realized eschatology says that it is possible to know in the present that which will be in the End. It cannot be realized in completion, but there can be at least glimpses of the perfect, and the present can be transformed to resemble more of the perfect than the imperfect.

The Realm of God is, then, an imagined perfection very different to the imperfections of the life we presently live. What is it like? An example. The imperfections of life include issues like sickness and grieving. In the realm of God, there is no sickness and those who grieve are comforted. Whenever there is a healing of sickness and wherever those who grieve are comforted, then that is a sign of the Realm of God. The perfect is realized to some degree in the imperfect. There is also a spur to folk to align themselves with what looks like the perfect. Another example. In the Realm of God, there is perfect knowledge and understanding. Education at its best—in the overcoming of ignorance and the many ills associated with ignorance—is a way of aligning with the Realm of God. Another example. In the perfect all are accepted, regardless of gender or class or race or sexual orientation or education level or ability. Whenever there is an inclusion, there is a glimpse of the perfect. When you side with inclusion, you are aligning yourself with the Realm of God.

The perfect is a happy state. Imagine away! Then look for signs of the perfect in the midst of the imperfect.

+Ab. Andy

Finding the grain of the universe

2010-08-29T09:48:00.000-04:00

In the East it has traditionally been called Dharma or Dao. In the West, natural law or God's law. The common idea is that there is a grain to the universe and the best way to live is to discover that grain and go with it.
When I was at grammar school in the late sixties most of our classes were academic: they were preparing us for university. But, just in case, they had made a mistake and we didn't have an aptitude for Latin and Greek and algebra they gave us two classes to test other aptitudes: metalwork and woodwork. I was not very good at metalwork. I was equally bad at woodwork. But a few years ago I decided to turn my hand to wood again. I started making seiza benches for meditation. A seiza bench is not a complicated affair. It is a top, roughly eighteen inches by six, and two legs. I make the portable kind and the legs are fixed to the top by hinges, so they fold for easy carrying and storage. I have made benches in oak, walnut, purpleheart, and zebrawood, amongst others. All these woods have their own characteristics. Some are hard and others soft. Some highly figured, others less so. In common for all wood is that if you are to work successfully, you work with the grain and not against it. If you work against the grain you get splinters, and if you are not careful you can split the wood. Having been successful with benches, I turned my hand to ukuleles. A different story! And the amount of wood I have made mistakes on is great. Incidentally, I still don't think I have any talent for woodwork. It is simply a matter of perseverance, patience and beginning to learn the "nature" of wood and how it is shaped, and moves and breathes.

Working with wood has helped me begin to learn that the best way to live is with the grain. Yet, finding the Way is not an easy affair. The ancients are agreed that the Way is often shrouded in mystery. The Way does not reveal its secrets easily. Perseverance, practice, and daily attention are required. In time the Way becomes clear. It often seems obvious in time, but at first counter-intuitive. This is because if you work against the grain for some time, working with the grain seems not quite right. Here's an example. The grain of the universe, the Dao, is very humble. The Way is not about seeking honor or power or greatness. Honor and power and greatness may come to you, but are not to be sought after. In the Dao, those with humility are honored not those with hubris. Take a quick look at history. Whenever nations and empires grow and glow with pride in their achievements, watch for the inevitable decline. Say a few times, "The sun never sets on the ..." and watch the sun sink quickly over the horizon! But, humility seems counterintuitive. If you want something you ought to get it. Push yourself forward. Fight for your rights. Get what you deserve.
"Those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Those who humble themselves will be exalted." That is the Dharma.

+Ab. Andy

Religion or Spirituality

2010-08-22T09:07:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine makes a distinction between religion and spirituality of this kind, "I'm not a religious person, but I am spiritual." It's a good distinction to make as it expresses a deep intuition. Whatever spirituality is, it is a good thing, something we ought to embrace as it speaks to us of something foundational about being human (and I suspect being animal). But religion ... religion is a very mixed bag! Dabble in religion and you may well get your fingers burnt!

My friend is happy to be associated with spirituality, but not with religion. I have some sympathy with my friend.

However, to make this distinction is quite tricky. In many contexts the words religion and spirituality are used interchangeably. A religious tradition is a spiritual tradition. A religious experience is a spiritual experience. In usage the words are often the same. So, William James' classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience is a book about spirituality. When we make a distinction, then, it is helpful to say, "When I say religion I mean this ... and when I say spirituality I mean this ..." It will help in communicating more clearly what you mean.

I suspect that my friend is saying something like:

This deeply important aspect of being human—let's call it p—has very helpful and beneficial elements for well-being and wholeness. I identify with those. But aspect p also has elements that are unhelpful and work against human thriving and wholeness. I do not identify with those.

Human aspect p—religion and/or spirituality—is that human grasping for, and seeking to understand and give meaning to, the experience of transcendence, Freud's "oceanic feeling."

Religion is both friend and enemy of spirituality.

As friend religion provides a framework in which spirituality can grow and blossom. It gives spirituality shape in texts to ponder and from which to gain wisdom. It provides a living tradition with a sense of belonging and community and accountability and order. Religion gives spirituality its rituals and practices—essential for healthy development. Anyone claiming to be spiritual who finds no use for text, tradition, ritual and practice deceives themselves.

Yet, when religion ossifies it becomes the enemy of spirituality. Then religion, rather than being the finger that points to the moon becomes merely a finger pointing—and usually pointing in a accusing way at someone else. It is a grave danger to mistake religion for spirituality. People fight each other over religion, but not spirituality. There is such a thing as religious hatred, but not spiritual hatred. There is religious intolerance, but not spiritual intolerance.

To finally separate religion and spirituality is impossible. As yin and yang spirituality and religion need each other, are contained in each other, mirror each other and balance each other. Spirituality needs the vehicle of religious text, tradition and ritual for healthy growth. But, when religious text, tradition and ritual lose the core of deep and lively spirituality, then religion becomes mere husk. A dry and hardened husk with no kernel may be—perhaps ought to be—discarded without worry or grief.

+Ab. Andy

Chasing after the wind

2010-08-01T10:15:00.000-04:00

I have often returned to the ancient Jewish wisdom book of Ecclesiastes. The book itself purports to be written by the great king Solomon, but scholars for a long time have thought the book merely uses Solomon's name. Nonetheless, it is a helpful element of the Jewish wisdom tradition.

Its content is quite simple—and quite disturbing. The great king, being very wealthy and very wise, has tried everything under the sun to find some meaning in life. Nothing has been denied him. His answer? Everything is meaningless. It is like chasing after the wind. You will never catch the wind so why bother? Life is quite literally a waste of time. (There are a few brighter passages in the book, like the poem about everything having its own time, but not much beyond that). I have found the book at once depressing, but also inspiring.

I think "the Teacher" (as the king calls himself) says things I have felt often. Life has a drudgery about it—the daily round of getting up, going to work, coming home, most days of most weeks of the year. The drudgery is interspersed with brighter weekends and occasional vacations. Holidays promise hope, but often don't deliver. Meaningless. According to the Teacher we tend to surround ourselves with pleasures that act like a drug that soon wears off.

Is the Teacher right?

It depends on the way you look at life. The great mystical traditions tell us that there is a deeper way of looking. A looking into rather than a looking at. It is a seeking the Tao, a way that is always there yet always hidden. The Tao does not reveal itself to the casual observer, but to the careful seeker. Glimpses of the Tao dispel the gloominess of the Teacher.

Philosopher Irving Singer wrote a trilogy called "Meaning in Life." He suggested that though a "meaning of life" is impossible to find, everyone can find "meaning in life." The trilogy is worth a look if you have time. Singer's point, that I want to emphasize, is that meaning can be found in the ordinary lives we lead. Meaning is found in the daily round of "work, rest and play" (as the old British Mars Bar ads have it).

Meaning is found in the Way that permeates all things. Look for it yourself. It will likely have something to do with value, and with love and with the Spirit.

+Ab Andy

Persistence

2010-07-25T09:49:00.000-04:00

persistence |pərˈsistəns|

noun

firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition: "companies must have patience and persistence, but the rewards are there."

the continued or prolonged existence of something: "the persistence of huge environmental problems."

(Apple Dictionary)

I read recently that to accomplish anything worthwhile (to learn the piano, to become proficient in a sport, to learn a new discipline) requires 10,000 hours. Seems a bit excessive. But, think about it. If you devote yourself to your chosen goal then at one hour a day it will take you just over 27 years. At two hours a day 13 years. At 8 hours a day, about three-and-a-half years. You get the picture. Though 10,000 hours seems excessive at first glance, it's probably about right. Undergraduate students take four years to complete their degree in the USA (though it's more like five or six for many). To really excel requires a great deal of work. Daily work. Not unlike 10,000 hours. And then you are ready to go on to graduate school. PhDs take at least five more years. So, to become proficient enough to teach your subject requires at least nine years of practice. Nine years of asking the questions, searching for answers, knocking on the door of your chosen field. Persistence required!

"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." Jesus

This saying of Jesus is very well known. I suspect that it is often used in a simplistic way to refer to getting what you want. Just ask for it and you will get it. In days gone by I heard sermons where earnest preachers pleaded with their congregations to just keep on praying and God would give you what you want. (Was I one of those earnest young preachers? My memory's not what it once was.) The better ones urged persistence as the key. The worst announced a quick fix way to get anything you want. The "health and wealth gospel" it was termed. (I do hope I was one of the better earnest young preachers!) Those who interpret the saying as a call to persistence in spiritual practice are closer to the spirit of the saying.

We can all accept that if you want to learn a trade, say becoming a skilled carpenter, it takes a long apprenticeship, with a lot of hard work—back to the 10,000 hours. Yet, in spiritual practice many assume an easy road, a swift attainment of spiritual accomplishment. This strikes me as odd. Meditation looks good. The benefits to body, mind and spirit seem proven. I'll give it a go. Ten minutes first day (that was a stretch!) Ten minutes second day. Five minutes third day. Day four a useful excuse arises. By week two more sporadic. By week four the benefits to body, mind and spirit and not that noticeable. Why not try something else? After a month, maybe a total practice time of three hours. Only 9,997 to go!

Clearly I am being overly simplistic and perhaps not very kind. But, I think the point is made. The drop-out rate of those who begin a spiritual practice is very high. In our culture, we have tried to address it by the over-production of books and CDs and DVDs, many proclaiming the new, sure way to the goal in the speediest possible way. Don't be taken in for a second. Listen to the saying of Jesus (and every other adept of the Way). Keep asking, searching and knocking. You'll get there. Eventually. Enjoy the journey!

+Ab. Andy

"So you think you're God?" and other cool delusions

2010-07-18T10:05:00.001-04:00

There is a common term for those who think they are above everybody else, not subject to the ordinary rules of social intercourse: "the God complex." It is not an illness in the DSM IV. Yet, we have all met this kind of person. By and large, they do not actually think they are God. It's just that to the rest of us they behave as if they have a kind of God-mandate to do as they wish. Not the kind of person you want to spend much time with.

But some people actually think they are becoming divine. Are they delusional?

The DSM IV can help us out, for here we find a reference to delusional disorder.

Diagnostic criteria for 297.1:Nonbizarre delusions (i.e., involving situations that occur in real life, such as being followed, poisoned, infected, loved at a distance, or deceived by spouse or lover, or having a disease) of at least 1 month's duration.

In its sub-sections the DSM IV includes this one:

Grandiose Type: delusions of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or special relationship to a deity or famous person.

So the person who does think they are God, or pretty close to being God has a delusional disorder of the grandiose type. This puts most of the great mystics, adepts, saints and religious icons as delusional. Most have been very aware of their closeness to the deity. Many have claimed that their closeness amounted to becoming divine. The best have showed the rest how to become divine too.

In the Christian tradition, the notion goes back to at least the end of the first century when the Pauline school of theology developed a Christ mysticism. It claimed a) that the Jewish teacher Jesus from Nazareth was so in touch with God that he "is the image of the invisible God ...For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell"; and b) that just about everybody could have the same kind of experience, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." If it was possible for a human being to be divine (Jesus showed the way) then it's possible for us all to become divine.

As the tradition developed, by the fourth century or so (that's 300 years of trying to sort out what the church should really think about Jesus) the theologians (the one's who won imperial favor, mostly in the West) had decided that Jesus was divine in a particular and unique way. The rest of us? Miserable sinners for the most part. By then, the church largely agreed with the DSM IV. "So, you think you're divine? You have a delusional disorder." The DSM IV suggests treatment with antipsychotic medications. The church threatened excommunication, tried a little torture and burned to death not a few. No more delusion.

But what if the delusional fringe are actually right? What if there is more than a "spark of the divine" in all of us? What if God is in all things, if we just had eyes to see?

Grace Jantzen wrote a helpful feminist philosophy of religion. She took the view that the masculinist corpus was beyond revision and so came up with a new philosophy of religion based on women's experience. She called her book, "Becoming Divine." Seems she too is delusional!

My own fumbling after the divine is best summed up in the word panentheism: all is in God, God is in all. I try to see glimpses of her in all. Often I find it, but it's not always easy. In some people (and not a few dogs and often in "nature") closeness to the divine is evident. Oh! to see more!

Becoming divine? Now that's a cool delusion.

+Ab. Andy

“Jerusalem,” our Mother/God our Mother

2010-07-04T08:57:00.000-04:00

In the lectionary readings today I was struck with the imagery of Jerusalem in the Isaiah passage. In the scriptures (both Jewish and Christian) Jerusalem is an often-repeated image representing something good (the highest good for humans on earth, perhaps).

Of course, Jerusalem as a literal, physical place, a piece of land has seen much violence through human history (ironic as the name contains the word for “peace.”) It has been fought over as a supreme holy place by Jews, Christians and Muslims. It continued to be daily in the news. When you hear “West Bank,” that is Jerusalem. Jerusalem is at the center of the West Bank controversy with the city literally divided between Israel and the Palestinians. So, the name has a great deal of pain associated with it. So much so, that I think the history of violence now associated with it can overshadow the very positive imagery of Jerusalem in the scriptures.

How to take what has become a symbol of the divisions and violence of humanity and re-think it as a symbol of goodness and hope?

A few thoughts:

First, look at the very powerful female imagery associated with Jerusalem. In this brief passage in Isaiah we are told that we may:

Rejoice with Jerusalem,

Mourn over Jerusalem,

Be nursed and satisfied at the breast of Jerusalem,

Drink deeply at the breast of Jerusalem

Be dandled on the knee of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is portrayed as our Mother.

Second, there is this little shift in the text and the very same things are predicated of God. God is not separable from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the symbol for God. Jerusalem is God encountered in a place. The invisible God come down to earth. The place where God chooses to dwell. The place of the temple of God. The place where the presence of God is found. And so, Jerusalem becomes a symbol of spiritual well being/prosperity/eudaimonia as human beings encounter God. (In this picture, the well being of the little child is at the mother’s breast.)

Third, what is Jerusalem for us? What does it signify? Can we still use the symbol meaningfully? Or given the now association with violence and division must we reject it?

a) It cannot for us be the literal place of Jerusalem. I think that is too problematic. I think the literalism of the physical land is too deeply associated with violence to be helpful.

b) But if the symbol is of that where God comes to us, God dwells with us (we might say God incarnate) then very clearly the person of Jesus is our Jerusalem. We have in our Way of Living a couple of very beautiful canticles of mother Julian that portray Jesus as our mother.

c) Derived from that, wherever we find a place special to us, where we more readily find God, God’s presence, where we find ourselves as little children at God’s breast, then that is our Jerusalem. It may be a room in our house, a special chair. A location we are used to praying in. A place in the countryside we drive to our walk to. Wherever it is, it will be the place where for us God most clearly dwells, is most clearly present. That place is a place to rejoice in. It is also a place to mourn over when we may temporarily lose it. In God’s goodness, God will provide such a place for each of us. “You shall be comforted in Jerusalem,” says the prophet.

+Ab. Andy

To love, to serve, to forgive

2010-07-04T08:52:00.000-04:00

When we were putting together the founding documents for the Lindisfarne Community (this would be in the 90s), we wanted a little motto that would summarize what we are about—a short mnemonic phrase, something easily memorable. It needed to catch the flavor of what we hoped to be and become as a community.

We came up with:

To love, to serve, to forgive

Recently I have been pondering our motto. I was wondering whether the motto was still adequate, whether it "worked" for us, whether we have outgrown it, whether it needs to be changed—that sort of thing.

I was as pleased with it now as when we came up with it! There is a certain order, meaning and movement in the phrase. It repays careful thought and contemplation. Love is at the center of what we are seeking to be—to move away from preoccupation with the self to focus on the the Other, to seek her best, to care for him. The movement of love is in service of the Other. I am glad that as the community has developed over the last decade, so has a spirit of service. At our annual retreat it was so good to hear of the many and excellent ways members of Lindisfarne serve others. Love and service are noble aspirations. Yet, we know that the human condition is very mixed! We often get things wrong, mixed up. Hurts and misunderstandings occur. There is a great need to forgive, to let go, to prevent bitterness, to heal, to move on without resentment. Forgiveness is essential for those who love and serve to prevent burnout.

To love, to serve, to forgive. Not a bad motto for life, I think.

+Ab. Andy

On demons and mental illness

2010-06-20T09:30:00.001-04:00

In the ancient world the unexplained was given expression by a world of spirits. There were good spirits and bad spirits, and then a Great Spirit. The great Spirit was in overall control of things. The lesser spirits were localized, bound to certain places, certain people, certain conditions. These lesser spirits caused the various problems that we have socially constructed as mental illnesses. How to be rid of the unclean spirit? Try magic (the manipulation of nature through spell, incantation or potion) or exorcism by a holy person (and the manipulation of the gods or God).

Enlightened humanity did away with the world of spirits. The religious settled on one spirit (God) and the non-religious found no more room for the spiritual world. All could be explained by what is seen. The inner pain of mental and emotional upset did not go away with the social exorcism of the spirit world. A different story needed to be told. Of course, "Enlightenment" is a narrative of a particular social class. Many (the majority?) have always held on to some invisible world of cause and effect. The Enlightened called it superstition. Enlightened and unenlightened alike still suffered emotional and mental breakdown.

In modern times, then, mental illnesses (as much a mystery now as in the ancient world, I venture to say) have been socialized or medicalized. In other words, interactions with the social world—the self with the Other—cause the internal imbalance and inner pain. Or else it is pure biology—the physical brain malfunctions in some way and it is experienced as mental and emotional turmoil. The new shaman or priest is the talk therapist or the dispenser of brain altering drugs (psychiatrist, medical doctor or licensed psychologist). If interactions with people causes the problem, through encountering and understanding the problem in talk therapy, it will hopefully go away. If a problem in the physical brain is the trouble, do something to the brain (through chemicals or electricity) and the problem will hopefully go away. I am amazed often by the folk who place utter trust in the ability of the new shamans to fix any kind of mental and emotional issue.

The world of spirits is plausible still to many. The rational world of talk and understanding is plausible to others. The physicality of biology to still others.

Whose story? Which remedy?

Still we all have our demons. Still we all face the inner struggles. Most of the time we manage to get through it. Some of the time we feel almost overwhelmed. Very sadly, for some of us, at some points in our lives it all becomes just too much and we face a breakdown. Thankfully, these are most often only temporary. Some dear folk, very sadly, face the inner agony on a more or less permanent basis. There seems to be no help other than an empathetic "bearing-with."

The stories we tell and the remedies we seek are ways we try to make sense of the intractable problems of living a decent life of well-being. Emotional turmoil, mental agony, the affliction of unclean spirits work against our flourishing. Find help, and provide help by all useful means. Inner demons at times are best faced by spiritual means—by prayer, meditation, fasting, the authority of a deeply spiritual Other. Inner demons, at times, are best exorcised by talking through issues, by facing unpleasant memories, by finding new perspectives provided by a wise Other. Inner demons at times flee before the gentle rearrangement of brain chemistry provide by a skillfully trained Other. There is wisdom is not facing demons alone.

A little blogging is always to oversimplify. Yet, perhaps the broad brush-strokes help us perceive a little more clearly.

+Ab. andy

A Divided Self?

2010-06-13T08:43:00.009-04:00

A few thoughts about the self divided against itself. This is an important idea found in much literature. It seems to refer to the existential experience of inner conflict—a kind of inner disintegration. The aim of spiritual experience is the reintegration of the self to produce a harmony within itself, harmony with the divine, and with all things.

But, what a complex idea! There is an assumption that the self exists and that we know what the self is; that there is a core "essence" of "who I am," and that this core continues throughout life (and beyond, and quite possibly before the life we now live).

The notion has been challenged by Buddhism that suggests there is "no self." Yet to say say the self does not exist is as much an error is to say the self exists ... hmm. It was also challenged by David Hume who suggested that the self does not exist but is merely an agglomeration of perceptions at any given time. There is nothing continuing about the self. The self is a present moment phenomenon.

The physical body reconstitutes itself every seven years or so. The body I now have is on its eighth regeneration and is different to the body I had at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, and 49. Molecularly different but recognizably the same. Is the self like that? Discontinuous yet continuous?
Then there is also memory. I remember things from the past. I married Jane in 1976. Was that "me" or some other self?

The narrative self also interests me. That is the way we construct our own self identity, and the way we tell our story changes over time and undergoes constant revision. Effectively, we reinvent ourselves in the construction of our life narrative.

All very interesting and no conceivable way of resolving it for sure.

It is the existential disintegration I want to think about. Whether the self is an enduring single essence or an agglomeration of perceptions changing from moment to moment, there is an all too common experience that this self is disconnected, fractured, divided. The phrase "divided self" was coined as far as I can tell by William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience. It was used as the tile of R.D. Laing's book looking at schizophrenia. Both James and Laing see health as the self reconnected, whole and not divided.

I have toyed with the idea that in some instances this experience of disintegration happens when difference aspects of our self-consciousness are out of line with each other. Here is one way of thinking about it:

The knowing self
The desiring self
The choosing self

The knowing self refers to our abilities to think things through, to come to understanding, to make distinctions. The desiring self refers to our needs and wants, desires and longings. The choosing self is that ability to act on our insights and to make meaningful decisions. Problems arise when the knowing self and the desiring self come into conflict. This is common in descriptions of sexuality, but crops up in all kinds of places. Here's an oversimplification. The knowing self has determined that to visit a friend in hospital would be a good thing; the desiring self really wants to go out to the party with other friends; the choosing self is paralyzed and a choice can't be made. The self is divided against itself. The person is miserable. The trick is to integrate thinking, feeling and choosing. In other places I have called that the formation of moral sense.

How do we move toward an integrated self? Healthy life practice. Simple, ordinary things. Healthy food, exercise, relaxation, meaningful work and activities, spiritual practices of meditation and mindfulness, rootedness in a tradition, friendship ... no guarantees but should help.

+Ab Andy

“Jesus had compassion for her …”

2010-06-06T16:44:00.004-04:00

The way of compassion is a way of living very close to what we are trying to live as a community. Compassion is a facet of love and is closely connected to other virtues: kindness, sympathy, empathy, and altruism. Each of these virtues has a different emphasis, yet each shares a core that is remarkably similar.

What is that core? I found this by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor:

... the sympathetic expansiveness linking self to other.

(Kindness, 6)

Jesus showed us that the way of true humanity is this linking of people through love.

In my work on love I suggest two ideas: 1) that love is rooted in desire for the well being of the other; and 2) love is movement from the self to the other. It is very different to selfishness, which stays locked-in to concerns no greater than “me and my own well being.”

There are always different ways of looking at life. A perennial question about life is: Are human beings basically selfish or basically cooperative? Let’s call these two positions the egoist and the connectivist. The egoist sees the self as the center. Everything resolves to the self. The connectivist sees relationships as the center, that there is something fundamental about being together.

Is the glass half full or half empty? There is no definitive answer, as both statements are true. You can provide justification for either answer. But the way you perceive the glass, your viewpoint is deeply psychologically affective: it affects your attitudes; it is a gauge for what matters to you; and what matters to us affects the kinds of decisions we take in life and the choices we make.

Whether the glass is half full or half empty is insignificant. But other issues are more significant. Take the question: Are human beings basically selfish or basically cooperative?

Philosophers have given different answers. Aristotle said we are social beings. He favored cooperation. Hobbes said that naturally all at war against all. Hobbes set the course of a very dismal view of human beings. Later, Rousseau favored cooperation. Hume said we have a hard-wired deep sympathetic nature. Nietzsche and Rand cared little for the cooperative view. Life is the brutal struggle of the individual for power, for self-aggrandizement. I fear Maslow also got it wrong in the middle of getting much right. The goal is not self-actualization, but self in loving relationship with others.

Must we choose one or the other? Egoism or connection? Logicians would have us believe the “law of the excluded middle.” It is either raining or it is not raining. It cannot be both raining and not raining at the same time. The truth of one statement proves the falsity of the other. You could say, “Well it is not raining very much.” But then it is still raining. You might wax very clever and say, “What is rain?” Is four drops a square foot of ground rain?” “What about one drop a square mile?” What about a certain percentage of precipitation in the air?” But still, when you have disambiguated the statement and have made a decision about what constitutes rain, it is still either raining or not.

Is the question, “Are human beings by nature selfish or cooperative” like that? Does one exclude the other? This becomes very complex because we have to disambiguate the words “nature,” “selfish,” and “cooperative” and in doing so we have to ask whether selfish and cooperative are opposites like raining and not raining.

You may end up by saying that people are in part selfish and in part cooperative, refusing to choose a side. The question then is, how large a part? Are people more selfish, or more cooperative? How much more, or how much less?

In a sense, it does not matter. When the conjuror says, “Pick a card … any card,” it doesn’t matter which you pick. The magician will always win anyway.

So whether people are selfish or cooperative by nature doesn’t matter. We can’t change that. Yet, in another sense it does matter. For it is a way of seeing life. It is a way of seeing whether the glass is half full or empty. It affects what matters to us. It affects what we prioritize. It affects our life choices and our actions. The egoist clings to the self; the egoist protects the self at all costs; the egoist sees compassionate impulses as sentimental, or childish, or annoying. The connectivist longs for relationship with the Other; wants the best for the Other; knows that the self is only found when the self is lost in love’s movement toward the Other.

“Jesus had compassion for her …” What draws us to Jesus? What makes us want to be like Jesus? It is not his supreme egoism. It is not his will to power. It is the vulnerability of compassionate love and kindness. Freud said:

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.

(Civilization and Its Discontents, 270)

Love is vulnerable and risks rejection.

Love risks all for love’s sake.

+Ab. Andy

God Beyond Words

2010-05-30T08:55:00.005-04:00

The mystics have this in common: they try to move us beyond words, and then beyond images into the great stillness—the cloud of unknowing. They do this because of a foundational understanding that God is beyond words and beyond images. It was the great insight of the ancient Jewish people that to create an image of God is idolatry. Of course, words are themselves symbols and when we substitute the symbol for the thing symbolized we have mistaken the use of language. The word “tree” is not the tree itself. The word “lake” is not the lake itself. Words are shorthand symbols for a greater reality. We regularly drive by Cayuga Lake. For those unfamiliar with where we live, Ithaca NY is at the southern end of a beautiful 40+ mile stretch of water. How can all that you see out there be captured in the word “lake”? The word has meaning for us only when we have truly experienced what it is like to be here, to see, to feel, to hear, to smell, to experience, to put you toes in the water, to kayak the lake. The word "lake" points us beyond words to the reality itself.

Today is Trinity Sunday when the church worships God for the wonderful revelation of Trinity in Unity, the One and the Many, the Three and the One. If the idea of Trinity teaches us anything it is that God is beyond words and beyond images. That three are one makes no linguistic sense. (Or should we say that three is one: we do not even have correct grammar for the idea). When well-meaning theologians have tried to popularize the idea of Trinity—St. Patrick’s three-leaf clover, for example, or water, ice and vapor—they distort the idea. By making it accessible they lose the mystery. They turn reality into error. When great artists represent Trinity, the image is invariably of the Three and we lose the One. The idea of the Holy Trinity is to confuse us, to make our brains ache, to have us throw our hands up in exasperation and say, “I can't understand it!” Our dear friends the Unitarians have missed the point. “The Trinity makes no sense,” they say, “so let’s lose the idea of Trinity.” Yet, that is the point. The Trinity makes no sense; the Trinity is, in fact, nonsense. Trinity is mystery. God is mystery. God is beyond words to formulate, God is beyond images to depict. If you can make sense of God, then you have reduced God to your understanding. The ancients insisted that “God is that than which nothing greater can be imagined.” If you can imagine God, then you have failed in your task. You have something less than God. God is beyond your ability to imagine. God is beyond your ability to describe in words.

Forget God for a moment. Let’s talk about a lime. We had delightful Mexican food last night where there was much evidence of limes, to which I am very partial! If you had never seen, touched, smelled or tasted a lime but wanted to know about limes, I could create an image of a lime to show you. Yet, it is not the lime itself. It may help. But it is like a finger pointing to the moon. If you remain with the finger pointing, you will miss the moon. If you say the image is the lime, you have missed it. You might be able to recognize a lime is you came across real one. But you have not experienced one.We could find a philosopher of all things citrus—erudite in the extreme, a true wordsmith—to help us. She describes the texture of the skin, the feel of a newly ripe lime. It is like a lemon, similar in shape but not quite, a little harder usually, the smell is tangy, but not as sharp, a somehow softer smell. Bite into the lime and it is tart, more so than the lemon, but not as much as vinegar. You will never mistake a lime for a lemon . . . and on it goes. A PhD in describing limes! All very good in its own way, but until you experience the lime for yourself, you have missed it.

Back to thoughts about God. If we cannot through words and images do justice to a simple fruit, how could we expect to do justice to the Ultimate Reality of the universe? I do not want to belittle religious art, iconography, theology or philosophy. I think they are all very important, and I am happy (and privileged) to give my life to reading, thinking, writing and teaching. But at best, it is all a signpost—it points the way. Religion or philosophy are not the truth. Both point in the direction of truth (at their best) and are a hindrance to truth (at their worst, and sadly we see so much of the worse).

So, we cannot remain with the words, with the image. We must move beyond to the experience of God directly. And in the words of the old Gloria Estefan song. “I’m trying to say I love you, but the words get in the way!”

It is for these and other reasons that I have tried to build the practice of silence and awareness: exercises that do not feature words or images, but sensations, awareness of breathing and bodies. Christ in you. Without concepts.

I write this on a beautiful Sunday morning, sitting on our deck in the sunshine. There is a deep silence in creation. It is not an auditory silence. It is very noisy! It is like a thousand birds all singing at the same time. Flies buzzing. The wind in the trees. A million leaves crashing into each other. A woodpecker banging the tree trunk. A chipmunk chirping not a yard from my foot. Yet, in it all is a deep silence. Awareness brings us to that. Beyond words, beyond images we find God.

+Ab. Andy

Three Unrelated Things to Ponder

2010-05-16T09:05:00.004-04:00

Here are three unrelated things to ponder.

A Slave Girl ... Reading Against the Grain

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling.While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.

Over the years, I have tried to learn from +Jane and from the feminist theologians who read the scriptures against the grain. To read against the grain is to find the women in the text (or the absence of women) and to ask questions of the text in the light of the women in or outside the text. +Jane is very creative, and most of the readings against the grain that she shares with the Lindisfarne Community are her own readings. I find them very insightful and I have tried to learn from her. I am not very good at it and I am often surprised when Jane brings her readings of the text. Today I have tried, and to read against the grain is to find in the Acts passage a slave girl.

As so many of the women in the scriptures, she is unnamed. To be unnamed is to be inconsequential, of no account. She is a mere prop in the story. And she is a prop for the main characters who are men.

She is used by:

a) The spirits who afflict her

b) The slave owner who profits from her gift of fortune telling

c) Paul who casts out the spirit, not for her sake, but because he is annoyed that the girl is disruptive.

Once the spirit is cast out we hear no more of the girl and the story returns to the main theme of men bickering over making money, civil disturbance issues and squabbles over religion.

What happens to her? Does she place trust in God? Does she become Paul’s friend? Is she still a slave? How does her owner treat her? How does she feel? All is passed by in silence.

To read against the grain is not to arrive at conclusions: it is to ask questions and so I leave you with the questions to ponder.

The Household and the Individual

The man said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul answered answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Paul and Silas spoke the word of God to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

This passage is a favorite for baptists and non-baptists alike. The debatable issues are “household salvation” and “infant baptism.” The text suggests that if the jailer believes then not only he will be saved but his household as well. It also suggests suggests that as a result of his new faith his entire family is baptized. Presumably, that included the children.

Many years ago, when I was animated about such things and thought they mattered, with other Baptists I argued that the text should be read as “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household [all of you believe on the Lord Jesus, if some of you do not you will not be saved.]” If it is read the other way, that because of the jailer’s belief the whole family is saved, oh my! It undermines the whole evangelical scheme of salvation! That would never do, so it could never be a correct reading.

The second part was even more difficult to deal with (if you are convinced that Christian baptism is for believers after a conversion experience). The baptist take is that the whole family must have become believers based on the jailer’s testimony. When it says “family” is does not mean children, only those who could make "a decision for Christ"! The infant baptizers at this point merely raise their eyebrows.

What do I make of it now? Well, I think the baptist reading is a fairly clear case of having a conclusion at hand before evidence is presented. On the evidence of the story it would seem reasonable to conclude that when the passage was written, when a household patriarch believed (changed religion) that all in the family changed religion. To become a Christian meant to be baptized, so everyone in the family was baptized.

It is difficult for us to grasp because of our understanding of autonomy (that each person has a right to make their own decisions about such things as religion), but less difficult in societies and cultures that have not been influenced by the Enlightenment of the west and its understanding of the individual. Of course, it is still there in our rights of passage, be they infant baptism or blessing, or male circumcision: the parents are introducing their child to religion without the child’s say so. When the child is “old enough” the child makes its own decisions about religion. Yet, based on the passage it would seem reasonable that should a father in a patriarchal family change religion, all in the family do, or even further that in a patriarchal village, when the chief changes faith, the village does too. When the leader of a nation changes faith, does the nation follow suit? Does a Christian king or president mean the country isChristian?

I think we would struggle with that. But perhaps the seeds of the western understanding of individualism were sown by early Christian theologians who struggled with the ideas of social solidarity and personal faith decisions.

Christ Mysticism

I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

My third unrelated thing to ponder is the Christ mysticism of the Johannine community. Here there is the interdwelling of divine and human and the encompassing of the believers into this divine oneness. “I in you, you in me, they in us.” The first part of this was taken up in the nascent understanding of Trinity. The passage has been used as a basis for a Holy Trinity of perfect interdwelling of Father and Son (the Spirit being added at a later date, an afterthought perhaps). In the discussion of Holy Trinity and what is orthodox and what is not the other side of the passage was lost: that all of us are to be taken into that mutual interdwelling of God and Christ.

Of course, the mystics were not slow to see this and you will find it becomes the bedrock of their understanding of the spiritual life: that human beings can be taken up into the life of the divine. But the mystics in their time were more often than not considered heterodox. Only after their deaths (like most great artists) were they revered for their creativity.

So what do we have here? A remembrance of Jesus who had such a relationship with the divine that it was perceived as a oneness. Yet, a oneness of divine and human that it was not for the one alone but for all. And the promise remains for us: “I in you, you in me, they in us” the interbeing of all that is.

+Ab. Andy

A new way of seeing—taking it step by step

2010-05-02T09:04:00.005-04:00

I am intrigued by the way the early Christian church discovered an expansive vision. I think there is a key phrase here in the Acts when it says that Peter began to explain it to them “step by step.” “Step by step” is a leitmotif for the way the church began, and continues to this day, to discover the broadness of God’s love for all.

It has been commented that in the New Testament you can see a revelation—a new seeing—and then a halting attempts to put the revelation into practice. In the first century, first Peter and later Paul began to see differently. We find it encapsulated in Paul’s phrase, “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.” The love of God in Christ embraced all. There was no difference. Those who had claimed privilege (the Jewish folk, the males, the free, the rich) needed to realize that in Christ all are privileged.

Paul worked very hard in his day on the ethnicity/race question between Jews and non-Jews and the very tricky question of circumcision. Also, Paul was quite decisive at first in allowing women to work alongside men as leaders in the churches he formed. Yet, his communities did not continue with the liberated position. By the time of the deutero-Pauline letters, the Pastoral Epistles, the door had begun to close for women. By the time of the didache in the second century, male only leadership was reasserted and framed most of the church for the best part of 2,000 years, with a few notable exceptions. Paul and the early church worked less hard on the privilege of the free and the enslavement of many. It may well be that both entrenched patriarchy and the economics of slavery were just too big to deal with. The Jewish religion was then as now, a very small affair. The debate between Jews and non-Jews was not as widespread a social phenomenon as patriarchy and slavery.

So the early Christians moved “step by step.” And, it has to be said, took a few steps backward as well! No blame needs to be cast. Step by step has been quite painful at times. It was not for some 1,800 years that slavery was abolished in lands dominated by Christian sensibilities. It was even later than that when women began to receive somewhat equal treatment in society. Of course, even today neither patriarchy nor slavery has been abolished from the planet. There are estimated to be 27 million slaves through human trafficking worldwide. Patriarchy still holds a grip in many countries overtly (Saudi Arabia, for example) and covertly (the USA, the glass ceiling etc.).

Still the new way of seeing remains: God’s love is comprehensive. It excludes none and includes all.

Moving from the global and historical to our little faith community of Lindisfarne we, too, have been moving step by step in our own attempts to make sense of the new way of seeing. What would it mean for us to be as embracing as God’s love in Christ is embracing?

We have taken baby steps in the four areas of Paul’s revelation:

a) The religious “in and out groups.” In Paul’s time Jewish and non-Jewish religions. In our time, openness to other faith traditions and understandings, refusing to call any “unclean.” We are trying to be ecumenical in its broadest sense.

b) The ambiguities of economics. In Paul’s day slavery, on which Roman economics was based. In ours the disparities between rich and poor. In Lindisfarne we are working with the marginalized in a number of different ways (with the poor and hungry, with abused children, with the elderly, with those in prison).

c) The inequalities of gender. In Paul’s day it was women and men. In our day we are continuing to wrestle with patriarchy, but now also with the injustices of prejudice against gays, lesbians and trans-gendered folk. This has meant, and will mean in the future, receiving all, without prejudice or judgment, as fully a part of Lindisfarne.

d) The non-human world. The new way of seeing is broader than the merely human. What would it mean to include all sentient beings in the scope of God's inclusive love? What of the whole world? Step by step.

All of this is challenging and, to be truthful, each step has been painful in different ways, with some misunderstandings and at each step there are some who cannot follow.

Yet, like Peter who saw the vision of the sheet and tried to work it out in practice, and then explained “step by step,” so must we. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And in Christ, God has made all clean, reconciling the whole world to Godself. A new way of seeing indeed!

+Ab. Andy

This I believe

2010-04-29T06:56:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I gave a very brief talk to a gathering of the Protestant community at my college. The talk was in a series called: "This I believe." It was an interesting experience preparing what I would say. It raised a number of questions: Actually, what do I believe? What is belief? Are my beliefs justified? Does it matter? I only a couple of minutes to say it, so I couldn't say much. I decided that I would try to work out what my core beliefs are. When I did, I realized that a few words cropped up a number of times and seem important to me. I have italicized them.

This is what I said (with a few brief comments on each in the telling):

That religion is a human attempt to make sense of the experience of transcendence.

That all religions, at their best, bear witness to the way of love, compassion and nonviolence.

That God is love, and wherever we find love, there we find God.

That Jesus—in his life practice, teaching and in the way he died—is an exemplar of the way of love.

That orthopraxy (right practice) is more important than orthodoxy (right belief).

That through our practice we can become more loving and so change the world for the better.

So, an interesting experience. Try it for yourself!

+Ab. Andy

The Ambiguity of Religious Passion

2010-04-18T09:36:00.003-04:00

This week I read an account from the UK of a tai chi group being told they could no longer practice on church premises. The teacher of the tai chi group practiced with patients in a local hospital as part of their wellness program. After one of her clients in the hospital read the story in the local newspaper, he refused to have any more tai chi therapy, believing it to be bad.

The minister of the church said, "Our understanding is that the basis of tai chi is an Eastern religion, and from the church's point of view that isn't something that we want to be involved in."

It is often the case that reasonable, highly religious people, full of religious zeal persecute others who follow a different way. In the New Testament, Saul of Tarsus was one such man. It says,

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Persecution is a strange word—it is not a part of our everyday language. It means to be hostile to someone, to subject him or her to ill treatment. Usually it is because of their religious or political beliefs, or because they happen to belong to the wrong race or ethnicity. It is often out of pure spite, prejudice or hatred. Yet, it is often because the one persecuting seeks the best for the other. Their beliefs or lifestyle are considered so wrong that they must suffer hostility in order to change their ways. In the long run, the persecution is for the person's own good. So the script reads!

My thoughts turn to the ambiguity of religious passion. In the world in which we live, I think it is hard to be a person of faith. Not because believing is in itself difficult to do (though belief has its issues now as it has always) but because the practitioners of religion in the contemporary world are so often violent, so often persecutors of others. Their religious passion leads them to do harm—harm now that good may come in the future. I do not want to pick on any one religion. In this regard all religions are the same: all have their religious zealots. It seems the world is more full of them now than at any time. If you thought the wars of religion ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 after the Thirty Years War, think again. Take a look at what is happening in Nigeria and a score of other sub-Saharan African nations. Listen to the rhetoric of the “clash of civilizations”—Islam against Christian western democracy. Even in Tibet, despite the pleas of the Dalai Lama, passionate Buddhists have turned to take up arms. Think, too, of the internecine religious struggles in Northern Ireland (where, thankfully, some change is beginning to be seen). And finally, since the death of Ghandi and Indian partition, Muslims and Hindus have been continually hostile to one another. It is often because of religious passion. They even threaten each other with nuclear weaponry. Truly, religious passion has no bounds!

Like religion itself, religious passion can be very good and very bad. It can also be very irrelevant (in terms of effect on others) when religious passion is a purely private affair, with no social outworking.

Religious passion is ambiguous. Without religious passion, would we have seen the end of the slave trade? Without religious passion, would Martin Luther King Jr. have pressed for integration? Without religious passion, would we have seen the advancement of medical care, the care for the poor?

Saul of Tarsus in the New Testament is just one example, on a small scale, of where religious passion often leads. Threats, murder, seeking the imprisonment of the offender. Can a leopard change its spots? Can the religiously inspired hurter become a religiously inspired lover?

I think so. Saul, in the story, is one example to give us hope. His is, perhaps, not the best example, but a good one. From a persecutor of others he becomes, in the words of F.F. Bruce “the apostle of the free spirit.” His passion turned from persecution to love, from law to grace, from religious conformity to the freedom of the spirit. He worked hard at breaking down religious and ethnic differences. He opened the way for women to lead in the communities he created. In a limited way, he presented a new way of looking at slavery—not yet a liberationist, but saw all as slaves of Christ. Of course, we can point to areas where Paul (new name for a new person) still adopted the old patterns. I suspect he would still have hostility to those he perceived as sexually aberrant. Yet, by and large, the change is amazing, the leopard changed its spots (or at least, quite a few of them).

Back to my story of the tai chi group being asked to leave a church. I am sobered to think that 30 years ago I would have agreed with the minister.

What then can we say about religious passion? Should we avoid it like the plague or embrace it in the hope that some good will come. I am tempted, to be brutally honest, to opt for the former. I have seen so much damage caused by religious passion. Aristotelian balance is quite appealing to me! Yet, here is a idea: religious passion can be a good thing when it is grounded in the kind of love that seeks only the well being of the other, seeks to do no harm and respects the personal integrity and autonomy of everyone. It needs to be rooted in nonviolence, both as an internal discipline and an outer practice. Without this, religious passion quickly becomes destructive and a travesty of love. Even when love is defined as, “to seek the neighbor’s good,” without a commitment to nonviolence, to no harm, “the neighbor’s good” can become an excuse to harm. “I torture you now, so you will go to heaven later,” says the Inquisitor.

My final thought is this. In the story of Saul the persecutor, in a vision the Christ says to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” The Christ is always the one persecuted, never the one persecuting. Wherever harm is done, the Christ is the one harmed, incarnate in the other. My desire is to be found as a person of nonviolence, of love, and not to be confronted as a persecutor of others.

+Ab. Andy

Choose life

2010-04-04T16:41:00.003-04:00

Today is Easter Sunday. Jane is in Arkansas visiting the family. (First time seeing our grandson Kieran.) I am home alone. Not quite. Two foster kids and two pugs. I have spent the day in quietness and reading, sitting on the deck enjoying a beautiful spring day. I am thankful for life and the signs of new life all around. The pugs and I took a slow walk around the yard. Lots of life breaking out, where there was deep snow only a couple of weeks ago.

I finished a Jonathan Saffron Foer’s recently published Eating Animals. It’s a book we are reading in my class “Animals and Ethics.” I did not learn much new information (I have been teaching animal rights for ten years), but I was profoundly moved again. Moved to tears, I have to admit. Foer’s book is less philosophical and more journalistic than the other books we read in my class. For that reason, it will have a much wider general readership. It deserves to be read. By everyone.

The enormity of animal cruelty and suffering at the hands of human beings is extravagant. Most of it is related to the food we eat and the way we produce it. Our culture sees our animal cousins as mere products to be consumed, and not as companions to share God’s good earth.

The Easter story is a retelling of the story that suffering, cruelty and death are not the final words. Life—beautiful, vibrant, fresh—springs forth from the hopelessness of devastation.

Easter reminds us to side with life. The way we eat sides with life or death. Choose life!

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox ... They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says God

- the prophet Isaiah

+Ab. Andy

Future Orientation

2010-03-21T11:07:00.004-04:00

Thus says God, Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Deutero Isaiah

Second Isaiah (Deutero Isaiah) is the unnamed prophet of the Jewish captivity in Babylon. He spoke of loss of the homeland, the place of promise. His words were addressed to exiles, far away from home. It's not that Babylon was a bad place. It was a land of good provision. Jewish exiles had done well, by and large. They had made a very positive contribution to Babylon and its culture. Yet, it was not home. The exiles longed for a return to their homeland.

This part of the biblical story has often been used as an allegory for the spiritual life. “This world is not our home.” There is that deep sense in the human spirit that there is something more. The world as we know it, is a world of suffering: a world of dukkha, the Buddha taught us. Birth, aging, death. We often miss the good things in life; too often we know the bad things in life. There is suffering in all things. In this sense, we are all in Babylon. This life is Babylon. Is there no way out, no way through?

Beloved, this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul

Here a spiritual longing is more clearly expressed: a longing for what Paul calls resurrection. It is helpful to think of resurrection as more than a mere bodily resuscitation. Resurrection is the completion of humanity. It is humanity in its fullness in the presence of the Ultimately Real. All the incapacities, and failings, and frustrations and sufferings of life as we know it now left behind.

Here is the future orientation. Deutero Isaiah and Paul look to the future and tell us that in God’s process all shall be well. In God there will be a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, mouths filled with laughter, tongues with songs of joy, restoration, shouts of joy, the prize of God in Christ.

How will it be so? Because that is the shape of the universe, shaped by God who will bring all to pass. For at the heart of the universe is not suffering but love. How did the prophets know this? They intuited it in the spirit. There can be no rational defense of God ‘s bright future. It is a matter of faith and faith itself is a gift.

Yet, one can orientate oneself to God’s future. One can side with the process. Paul did. Knowing that he had not attained the goal he made the choice of pressing toward it with his whole life. How might we do that?

Practice.

This is no quick fix. This is daily, reorientation of ourselves to God’s future. In our practice we are saying, “Yes!” to God’s process in the universe to end suffering, to bring all to resurrection.

+Ab. Andy

The Desert

2010-02-28T13:17:00.006-05:00

A few general Lenten thoughts and the image of the desert.

The desert is literally a place of deprivation, something left waste. Little grows in the desert. There is no civilization. The desert offers meager fare. Hence, the image of the desert has become a powerful metaphor for aspects of life when we find ourselves in a place of deprivation. There are times when the desert seeks us out . . . illness, life changes, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, and depression (the deprivation of meaning, of well-being) are all desert experiences.

The desert became a potent symbol in early Christianity. John the Baptizer chose the life of the desert.

Jesus sought the desert before beginning his ministry where he wrestled with his own inner demons. After around 250 CE there was a movement we now call the desert mothers and fathers. The desert mystics intentionally left society to find a physical desert to practice their spirituality. The early Irish monastics often sought out a barren island as their home, such as Skellig Michael where they lived in stone built huts.

When “desert experiences” are often so painful, why choose the image of desert as an image of spiritual life?

Human nature (as all animal nature) may be said to be a bundle of needs. Psychologist Abraham Maslow pointed this out in 1943, and his view is respected still. Those needs, when largely met, are not a problem to us. But needs are closely related to desires. Desires have often been termed “the passions.” A great deal of philosophy and spirituality over the centuries has tried to deal with the passions.” The passions left unruly dominate human life, and always bring suffering in their wake. The desert has been found to be a way to help deal with problematic passions.

There has been an unhealthy fear of the passions. Desires and passions have often been socially constructed as feminine, with rationality constructed as masculine. And everyone knows that reason is preferable to emotion. In patriarchal cultures this has been one more way of denigrated the feminine and women generally. I cannot conceive of an understanding of love without desire. In fact, desire is the beginning of love. To eradicate desire from human life would be to deny love. Not a happy solution! I am not convinced that all desires or all passions are a problem.

Yet, some are. The mystics entered the desert to conquer problematic desires.

Buddhism has a very useful insight. Suffering come from desire, desire can be conquered. The eightfold path is one way to do that. Here is the path:

Wisdom

1. Right view

2. Right intention

Ethical conduct

3. Right speech

4. Right action

5. Right livelihood

Mental discipline

6. Right effort

7. Right mindfulness

8. Right concentration

This noble eightfold path is said to be the way to deal with the troublesome desires that cause suffering. These all have their equivalents in Christianity, though there is no reason why Christians cannot simply follow the eightfold path. There is no incompatibility.

Historically, in the mystical tradition of spirituality, there are times when we seek the desert. Of course, Lent is such a time. It is the desert experience that helps us come to terms effectively with need, desire, passion. That is what the “what are you giving up for Lent?” question is all about. In Lent we have a deliberate time when we can take stock, see whether the needs, desires and passions of life have mastery over us or whether we have mastery over desire. How often we choose to fast (to deny ourselves something for a specific period) only to find an immediate and desperate craving for that thing?

A regular retreat is also helpful. Retreats are desert places. It need not be a long retreat. A period each day of quietness and emptying is a retreat. These are the little deserts that we enter each day, to remind us that the demands of need and desire do not have the final say.

+Ab. Andy

Love at the Heart of The Universe

2010-02-21T16:29:00.001-05:00

During our community chat this week one of the issues we were talking about was “plausibility structures.” This idea comes from the sociology of knowledge and is a concept from the 1960s. A plausibility structure is a foundation level belief (or set of beliefs) that we hold and which is largely unquestioned. We hold these base level beliefs about life in lots of different ways, about lots of different things. Often a plausibility structure is held at an unconscious level. We often only become aware of it when it is challenged or when something triggers it to the fore. Conscious self-awareness will do that. Talk therapy, in an attitude of open and honest dialogue, will also do it.

Someone in the chat asked me, “So, Andy, what is your plausibility structure?” I answered without much thought, “Love is at the heart of the universe.”

Someone else asked, “Andy, how can you say that when there is so much un-love?” We had a fruitful discussion. Here is a more thoughtful answer (without the typos of online chat!)

I can make a case (as others have done) that says all the world’s great traditions have a central ethical concept of compassion. Though it is a theme in all the great religious and philosophical streams, often it becomes overshadowed by dogma and the sheer weight of debate. Nonetheless, if you look for it you will find it. It is an optimistic foundation level belief about the universe. You see it, for instance, very prominently in the writings of both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Love is at the heart of things.

Profound ideas are often best expressed in the context of stories. In the telling, stories have depths and nuances that engage the hearer at multiple levels. Story-telling has been a primary human way of transmitting the most important and foundational ideas that make sense of life from one generation to the next. Our plausibility structures are expressed in narratives, even when we can’t give adequate conceptual voice to them.

In the Christian telling, there are two important stories that point to love at the heart of the universe. The first is the story of God as Holy Trinity. The second is the story of Christ crucified.

Let me tell the story of God as Holy Trinity in vaguely Augustinian ways. There is a lover, there is a beloved and there is the energy of love between them. At the heart of all that is there is a relationship of love. The mystics have long told us (Jesus of Nazareth chief among them) that conceptions of God as “out there somewhere,” “detached and distant,” “unmoved mover” are inadequate. God is here, now, everywhere. “The realm of God is within you.” God is in all things. All things are in God. If this insight is true, then in all things—at the heart of all—is relationality. At the heart of all things is/are a lover, a beloved and the energy of love that is between them. In the Neoplatonic tradition, that was very important to early Christianity, all is One. It happens that this One is a relationship of love. Love is the movement of one to the other for the other’s good.

The second Christian telling answers more directly my friend’s question, “How can you say that love is at the heart of the universe when there is so much un-love?” The Christian story tells of the unjust killing of one who spoke of love. In the telling, this one (who was so in tune with God that he was called the Child of God) shows us that God suffers with all those who suffer.

In situations where there is un-love, where is love? Love is suffering with. Love is present as suffering. In fact, that is the Latin root of what compassion is: to suffer with.

Love at the heart of the universe is a trustworthy guide. It leads us to seek, to build and to cherish loving relationships with all. Where there is suffering, love leads us as compassion to suffer with and to work toward loving resolutions to complex and hurtful situations.

What’s your plausibility structure?

+Ab. Andy

Ways of Enlightenment

2010-01-24T09:37:00.002-05:00

Epiphany is the season of light, enlightenment, the coming of God to us. I want to suggest there are four ways of enlightenment, each interconnected with the other and each, in its own way, sacramental. In the words of Ursula King, we are speaking of the:

Interpenetration of spirit and matter, where matter itself becomes a vehicle for Spirit, a sacrament.

It may be possible for a human being to have an unmediated experience of the divine presence. However, I think it is quite rare. There is a long tradition that for the human spirit to gaze unmediated on pure light, goodness, or beauty would be to die. The human frame is not presently equipped for the experience. There is the Jewish story of Moses who wanted to see divine glory, and who was given a glimpse of the “back parts” of God. The full view was too intense. It is a very beautiful little story. There are, of course, other stories where great saints and adepts have been given the glimpse of God (Mother Julia’s visions, come to mind). However, we know of them because they are rare and, therefore, worthy of recording and remembering over the centuries.

The route to enlightenment for you and me—the route to seeing—will most often be sacramental. It is a mediated experience of the transcendent through the immanent. God will show herself to us in tangential ways, not altogether clearly, in ways open to various interpretations. We hear the voice speak, and others ask if it thundered. We awake from a dream of heaven, and we wonder what we had for dinner the night before! There will always be ambiguity.

Through mindfulness. Here is opportunity to find God each moment of each day, for those with eyes to see. It requires the discipline of awareness. To be mindful at all times. To be present in each moment, not to be either locked into the past, with its troubled memories, and not anxious of the future with its uncertainties.
Through sacred texts. We are fortunate to have the record and wrestling of many good people who have been on the same quest toward enlightenment. Their quest is found in the sacred texts of many traditions. It is why we read the scriptures daily as part of the Daily Office. Yet, we take these holy texts as they are—a finite and very human (therefore, imperfect) reaching beyond. They are the wrestling of sometimes very troubled souls facing the same issues we face in our ordinary humdrum lives. The answers and insights they offer will not always satisfy us. Their inordinate outbursts will trouble us. That is to the good. There are no quick fixes. As they wrestled, we wrestle too
Through reasoned interpretation. Texts, of all kinds, need careful interpretation. There is no such thing as an uninterpreted text. This is magnified when the texts, through long use and untold benefit, have become sacred. The text cannot stand alone as a guide. This is quite a radical idea, for we have been used to thinking that all we need to do with people is give them a copy of our preferred holy book, and all will be well. Sacred texts need a framework of interpretation to make sense. Otherwise the text can make no sense, or even worse, bad sense. That is why in many traditions a high value is placed on the spiritual discipline of study. It is true for us in the Lindisfarne Community for those reading for holy orders.
Through the mediation of the Spirit of God, the divine energy, the chi. Spirit is what bishop theologian J.V. Taylor called the “go between God.” Spirit is not a completely unmediated experience of the “Godhead beyond God” (as Eckhart would have it). Yet, Spirit brings us closer. For Christians, Jesus is an archetype—a human being filled with divine Spirit. Spirit for Christians is God in the face of Jesus Christ. The mystery of spirit is also the experience of Spirit in people. Christians have become so familiar with the term “the body of Christ” that its power is often lost. Christ as light comes to us not only in an inner mystical way, but is embodied in people of flesh and blood. People become a sacrament of divine presence. Christ is in all. Spirit is in all. Divine energy is in all.

May we find the light.

+Ab. Andy

Water, Fire, Spirit

2010-01-10T17:38:00.002-05:00

I have been mulling over the idea of “language games” suggested by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is not altogether clear what he meant, and there have been many interpretations. In brief, a language game is the way language is used in a particular social context that gives sense to the users of the language in communicating their common experience. To those unschooled in any particular language game, the way language is used often makes little sense, if not nonsense.

Religious uses of language are particular language games. When you first read a religious text (or hear a conversation) from a tradition unfamiliar to you, it can be very difficult to understand. It is not what words mean,” but what words mean in a particular context of mutual experience and understanding. Early anthropologists worked this out in studying new cultures. It was necessary to “go native”—to immerse yourself in the new culture and shared experience before language begins to make sense.

Often, religious language gives us richness and mystery in its imagery.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

Isaiah 43:2

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” John the Baptizer

Luke 3:16

Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Acts 8:17

Water and fire are vivid images. In Isaiah, the promise is that though the floods of water come, God’s people will not be overwhelmed; when fire ravages, God’s people will not be burned. Clearly, water and fire and imaged as destructive, powerful elements that cause fear and from which we must be rescued.

Yet, John the Baptizer promises that when the Christ appears, there will be a baptism in fire—an unquenchable fire! And this baptism of fire is connected with both a baptism in water and the coming of the Spirit of God. So good is this to be that the apostle make extra sure that the people of Samaria who had accepted the message of Christ and been baptized had also experienced the coming of the Spirit.

New Testament scholar James Dunn makes the point that it is clear that the coming of the Spirit of God is something quite tangible, something felt, that could even be seen by others. Why? Because it was clear to the apostles who had and who had not had this extraordinary experience. Put simply, the coming of the Spirit of God to a person is not only something felt on the inside, but also has an outward, visible, physically embodied expression. Others can see it. Others know it to be the case or not.

The experience of God as Spirit is connected in the passages with material elements. Not only is the Spirit described by water, fire and embodied in a bird, but is passed on from person to person through the experience of bathing in water and by the touch of the hands of the apostles. In other words, these are very sacramental passages. The visible and the invisible are closely connected. The worlds of the natural and supernatural are united in water, fire, in the presence of a simple bird, and through human touch.

I think this shows us the interconnectedness of all things. W.R. Inge (Dean of St. Paul’s in London in the first part of the twentieth century) said that,

A mystery, for the ancients, is not something inexplicable; it is something revealed, truly though inadequately, in a lower medium.

Earth is the shadow of heaven.

For me, this suggests that we can arrive at no definitive interpretation of religious language. Religious language contains a richness to be savored. Is the imagery of water good or bad, destructive or comforting? Is fire the very essence, the verve of life or is it fearfully destructive? How was Spirit embodied in the physical form of a dove? What does Spirit look like when it is given by human touch from one to another?

All of this I think is to be pondered. Let’s take the language and meditate. Take the way of the Benedictine lectio divina. That is, to use language not as a source of things to know about, but as a way of divine knowledge; a growing into God as the Spirit does her work of slow change and transformation.

+Ab. Andy

Deepening Our Practice

2010-01-03T10:54:00.002-05:00

In 2010, my hope is that we can deepen our practice. At least, that is what I have decided for myself. I invite you to join with me.

The philosopher Aristotle thought that all things move toward a natural goal (telos in Greek). Acorns grow into oak trees. The oak tree is the telos of the acorn. He assumed that the world works like that. He applied it to human beings and asked the question, “What is the natural telos of being human?” His answer was happiness (eudaimonia in Greek). He meant not merely feeling happy, but a well-rounded life of well being. We might say, “flourishing.”

I think that is a noble goal to pursue. Yet, there is nothing “natural” about it. It is very difficult to move from “acorns and oak trees,” to “human beings and a eudemonic life.” Oak trees follow naturally from acorns, other things being equal. Flourishing does not flow from being human. Many people experience lives far from Aristotle’s telos.

The difference seems to be that human beings have choice. Admittedly our choices are often limited by circumstances, social structures, even our biological makeup. Yet, unlike the acorn, we can choose a telos. In my other writing I have called this an “elective telos.” We are not bound, as the acorn is, to become an oak tree. We can choose the goal we wish to pursue.

So what do we choose to become? What do we aim for?

Over the centuries Aristotle’s telos of happiness has been a firm favorite. Its main competitor has been pleasure. There is a difference—I’ll let you work it out. A third aim has been stability—a middle way, neither too high nor too low, or to be undisturbed.

The “elective telos” is important. What you choose for your aim largely determines the practice you engage in. One of the most ancient questions is, “How should we live?” Many philosophers have tried to find the answer in what Immanuel Kant called a “categorical” way. What would the way to live be in every single situation, for anyone in the world, at any point in time? Kant though you could find these “categorical imperatives.” Is seems to me that this is impossible!

The “should” depends on an “if.” I call this the “if-then-should” principle. If you want to run a marathon, then you should do a course of training. If you want to play chess, then you should learn the rules.” How should we live? It all depends on what you choose as your aim. If your aim is pleasure, then you should do those things that will bring you pleasure. If your aim is to maximize pleasure for everyone, then you should do those things that maximize pleasure and reduce pain for most concerned.

The practice you engage in is determined by the aim you choose.

This might seem a long way round to get to the idea of deepening our practice. Here’s the reason: To deepen our practice requires that we first determine what our aim is. Telos determines practice. Practice relies on telos for direction.

So what is your aim? Work it out for yourself.

It will be no surprise to those who know me that the aim I choose has something to do with love—actually has everything to do with love. To choose love as a telos determines the kind of practice I need to engage in.

I have been mulling over aspects of our understandings in the Lindisfarne Community. There are four ways of expressing who we aspire to be. Each of these four ways relates to practice.

The summary of our Rule: “To love, to serve, to forgive.”   
Our community prayer: “That I may be as Christ to those I meet; that I may find Christ within them.”   
Our commitment to a balanced life of prayer, study, work and rest.   
Our particular practices: Eucharist, daily office, meditation, mindfulness, study, and service.

To deepen our practice in 2010 would be to build the daily habits of spiritual life. It might mean to concentrate on just one aspect of the above—say, to build a more conscious meditation practice.

It might mean to adopt a new element of practice. For instance, over Advent-Christmas, I have reconnected with prayer bead meditation in a much deeper way than before.

It might mean to dust of the journal that has been languishing in the drawer. It might focus on internal thought practices: thinking the good of each person in each situation; or letting go of control; or extending love and goodness to each person you meet.

How will you know? Listen intently. You will hear. Then, deepen your practice.

+Ab. Andy

Listening … Silence

2010-01-01T16:49:00.005-05:00

What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

Wittgenstein

Be still and know that I am God
The Psalms

Today it snowed hard. The snow brought a profound silence. My morning dip in the hot tub was lovely. After it had finished its cycle I relaxed and listened. Occasional bird cries. The odd driver braving the roads. Mostly a heavy silence. Little pricks of ice as the snow touched my exposed skin. I listened.

It has been a day of listening. We walked the pugs. The new snow crunched deliciously under our boots. It was the only sound. Deer sheltering under a tree. Squirrels dashing from branch to branch sending showers of snow.

Meditation with beads.

Still listening now.

+Ab. Andy

The Birth Again of the Sun

2009-12-27T09:07:00.003-05:00

Today reminds me of almost every Christmas when I was a child in Manchester. It is overcast with a hint of cold drizzle in the air. The grass remains green. At 10:30 am it is still not really light, and I do not expect it will get light today. For the last three years we have had a “not white” Christmas.

Some time ago I had a conversation that went something like this (in the middle):

“Of course, Jesus was not actually born on Christmas Day,” I said with a smile.

“So, when was he born? my friend replied, clearly puzzled.

“I think most scholars think sometime March or April.”

“Really? Then why do we celebrate it on December 25?”

“The early Christians picked it because I was already a festival: the winter solstice. Christians have done that with just about every major feast. They took over a pre-Christian festival and Christianized it.”

“What a waste of time, then. We celebrate Jesus’ birthday on the wrong day, and it’s really pagan, not Christian!

My friend, I think was a little disappointed, but it set me thinking.

During the Christmas season we make much use of the canticle we call “the Song of the Messiah” from Isaiah 9. It is very familiar to us through Handel’s Messiah and there are allusions to it in many Christmas carols.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

Those who dwell in a land of great darkness, upon them the light has dawned . . .

For to us a child is born and to us a child is given . . .”

The great season of Advent-Christmas-Epiphany is about the light of God coming to a darkened world. Jesus the light of life, Jesus the light of the world. A light for our path. The one who makes sense for us. It is a story that tells us there is a way through the darkness. There will be light.

I think it is no coincidence, then, that the Church chose the darkest part of the year (for us in the Northern hemisphere) to celebrate the coming of Christ our light. It is, of course, much the same reason that the winter solstice is celebrated in other than Christian ways. At the very darkest time, when the sun rarely visits for more than a few hours, there is the promise of lighter days. The very darkest day gives way to a lighter day. And that day, in its turn, gives way to a lighter day still.

It is fitting to make this the time of great feasting, of food and drink, and families gathered. A great festival in the deepest darkness with a promise of the coming light.

My prayer for all of us in the Lindisfarne Community is to know again the rebirth of the sun, the rebirth of the light of Christ. Whatever has been dark to us, may God bring again the light of love.

A blessed Christmas to all.

+Ab. Andy

Purity and Preparation for the Coming of God

2009-12-06T08:33:00.002-05:00

I am grateful for Advent when the lectionary helps us to look forward to the coming of God. The world in which we live is open to God’s future. The universe is ultimately hopeful, despite what the news says, despite the way human beings are disrespectful and abusive to the planet.

Advent themes help us by the focus on the way our forebears looked forward, longingly and hopeful to the coming of God. The lectionary passages today remind us that there was a strand of Jewish thinking that looked for the coming again of the prophet Elijah. The early Christians picked up the theme and saw in John the baptist a messenger from God who was either Elijah come again (in parts of the tradition) or one who came in the spirit of Elijah (less literally). Either way does not matter much, for the content is the same: here was one who came as messenger to prepare the way for the coming of God. Because the future is open to God, God comes to us in many ways and at many times in our lives. A message of preparation helps us to see those comings and not to miss them. To miss them is easy for the unprepared.

Today, it was the image of purity that struck a note for me. It is there in Malachi as the refining process of metal; it is there in Philippians as purity and blamelessness; it is there in the Gospel in repentance for sin and in the image of making level and straight paths to walk on.

Unhelpful views about purity

Yet, I must express diffidence about purity for I think the idea has been much misused. What might purity mean for us as we prepare for the coming of God in our lives?

I can think of four ways in which the idea of purity has been used but which is less than helpful

a) Religious purity

I am thinking here of ritualistic purity, where what we do, what we wear, the outward things of religion, seem to matter a great deal. A great deal of religious zeal is directed here to getting religion “right.” Much denominationalism is about getting the form of religion right, more pure, closer to the Bible or closer to tradition.

b) Doctrinal purity

Here the direction is to get what we think or believe correct. It seems to me a great many Christian live in fear of this. Or rather, in fear of being found holding the wrong doctrines. In my earlier years the worst thing anyone could say of me was that I was unorthodox, or, God forbid, a heretic. I tried extremely hard to have all my little doctrinal ducks in a row! I know of Christians who when they think deeply about an issue, or look closely into their own hearts, do not hold to some of the orthodox ideas (things like eternal hell as a literal palce of flames for non-Christians), but who dare not say so for fear of being doctrinally impure.

c) Sexual purity

This is a difficult area and I cannot spend much time with it. In Christian history sexual purity has often been associated with the cult of virginity. The sexual ideal has been “no sex.” The virgin is the purest Christian of all (hence enforced celibacy for priests and monastics). My view is that it has given us an inherited tradition with a very distorted view of human sexuality that has brought untold inner misery to millions of people who have grappled with interminable guilt over something that is God given and, normal and quite healthy.

d) Racial and ethnic purity

Of all the purities this is the most pernicious. We have seen in recent history what happens when groups of people seek this kind of purity. It is invariably destructive.

I say all the above are unhelpful because they all have a tendency to become exclusive and divisive. Where there is an emphasis on purity of those kinds there is also a tendency to exclude and to hurt other people who do not fit the notion of purity.

A better understanding of purity as preparation for the coming of God?

a) With regard to our selves, I think we need to make it an inner matter. It is more to do with attitudes of heart and mind than conformity to a standard of purity derived from a social and religious context. It would be to seek something like Paul’s fruit of the Spirit in Galatians. “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” In other words, purity is a matter of inner disposition. It is about character.

b) With regard to others purity is not about exclusion. In the Philippians passage, Paul is a model of three things. 1) Prayer for others 2) holding others in his heart 3) compassion. Purity of the inner focused kind will bring with it these attitudes toward others that will initiate inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness; good toward others rather than harm.

+Ab. Andy

A Poem for the Beginning of Advent

2009-11-29T08:08:00.002-05:00

This is so like November in New York. A magical time of the year: full of mystery, a little sad, pregnant with expectation.

Scel Lem Duib

Here's a song —

stags give tongue

winter snows

summer goes

High cold blow

sun is low

brief his day

seas give spray

Fern clumps redden

shapes are hidden

wildgeese raise

wonted cries

Cold now girds

wings of birds

icy time —

that's my rime.

Ninth-century, version — Flann O'Brien

In Shirley Toulson. (1993) The Celtic Year: A Celebration of Celtic Christian Saints, Sites and Festivals.Rockport, MA: Element Books, p. 43.

A Realm of Love?

2009-11-22T10:18:00.003-05:00

It’s confession time! For quite a while I have found “kingdom of God” language difficult, if not alien. It may be that living in a republic makes talk of “kingdoms” awkward. It was easier living in the United Kingdom. At least in the name was reference to kingdom—though with a queen in charge since 1952 kingdom language is still a stretch! Perhaps it should become the United Realm.

Yet it would still have the idea of being united under a single sovereign. Most democracies have long since abandoned the idea. That Britain did not become a democratic republic in the seventeenth century has always been a mystery. Historian G. M. Trevelyan called it a “stop in the mind.” The slow development of a constitutional monarchy was an accident of history and was something of a compromise—a monarch as figurehead without any real power. Power to the people, then?

People power, too, is problematic. I have sympathized with Plato that the people on too many occasions make bad decisions. Give the people a chance and they will kill Socrates. The crowd bayed for Jesus to be crucified. Monarchs or people—not much to chose between them. Plato favored an aristocracy with philosophers in charge. But, then he probably hadn't attended a conference of philosophers who never agree about anything. (Philosophers, they say, are like manure: quite good if you spread them around the countryside. But, put them together in one place and they become a public nuisance! Of course this is not true of my favorite group of philosophers, Concerned Philosophers for Peace. We would make a decent job of running the world!)

I write these thoughts on the Sunday in the church's year called the Reign of Christ. In the liturgy of the Lindisfarne Community we changed all references to “kingdom” to “realm.” In the prayer of Jesus we petition, “Your realm come …” What would a realm without the domination, power and control look like? It would look like a realm of voluntarism where none are coerced and all are free to choose. It would look like a realm of kindness and compassion where all are cared for. It would look like a realm where wrongs are forgiven and punishment is abandoned, where all can reach their full potential. It would look like a realm of love.

+Ab. Andy

Love and Nonviolence

2009-11-16T07:24:00.002-05:00

Thoughts at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland, November 15 2009

I want to say a few words about love and nonviolence. But first, a few words about faith, for I want to situate love and nonviolence in faith. There is a popular idea about faith that faith is believing in something that is very hard to believe in, because it is most unlikely. If it is likely, you do not need faith. The tooth fairy comes to mind. That she exists is most unlikely. We might even say, it is unbelievable, so to believe in the tooth fairy you throw away any credibility or plausibility test and believe the impossible anyway. For many people, faith in God is like that.

Paul Tillich said something different about faith. He said, “Faith is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern.” Notice that faith is not something that you do. It is something that happens to you. Something grasps you. An ultimate concern gets a hold of you. You can’t shake it off. It becomes the most important thing for you. It defines you. It shapes you. It changes you. That is a very different view of faith to the popular “believing in the incredible and unlikely.” I like Tillich’s way of thinking about faith.

That brings me to love and nonviolence, for I have to say that I have been grasped by an ultimate concern and that ultimate concern is love. Love is closely connected to nonviolence. Let me explain what I mean.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said that human beings are social animals. The English mystical poet John Donne said, “Nobody is an island.” Philosopher and mystic alike tell us something important about human life: we are made for relationships. Where Aristotle says we are social, I prefer to say we are relational. Social is too humanistic for me. We are made for relationship not just with other human beings (the social aspect of life) but with non-human animals too, and with the environment we live in, and with the divine herself. We are relational animals. We are part of a great web of interconnectedness.

We relate to the Other. I have capitalized the word Other. When you capitalize a word where it would not normally be so, you indicate that you are speaking of a particularly rich concept. Other (with a capital “O”) stands for all those with who we are in relationship. So, from now on when I say Other, I want you to think of all those others (people, animals, fish, bugs, rivers, trees, all that is, the divine). We are made for relationship with the Other.

The tragedy of human life is that we have so often made a mess of that relationality. We have used and abused the Other. We have hurt and ignored the Other. We have focused on ourselves and our own needs at the expense of the Other.

It is how it might be otherwise that has grasped me. That is my ultimate concern. That is my state of faith. That which has grasped me is love and nonviolence. You might find it strange that I join those two words. But, love and nonviolence have been used interchangeably by adepts of spirituality, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. If you read their writings you will often find the two words used to mean the same thing. To love someone is to be nonviolent toward them. To be nonviolent is to love. Both words are very full words, like the Hebrew word shalom. Shalom means peace, but more than the mere absence of war. Shalom is the fullness of well being; life lived in all its goodness and glory. Shalom is life thriving in goodness, peace and well being. Love and nonviolence are words like that. More than the mere absence of hatred or violence. Love and nonviolence are very positive concepts that speak of life as it could be if only we achieved our potential as divine image bearers.

Love and nonviolence are relational words. They speak to us of the Other. The Other is everyone with whom we have a relationship, and we have a relationship with everyone and evrything. I grant it is not the same relationship with all that is, but, still, we do have a relationship. It is a universal requirement to love.

In my writing, I have been working a lot with the ideas of love and nonviolence and I can’t say much in the time we have today. I will share just one aspect of love and make some practical application of it.

The aspect I call the fourfold effect of love and nonviolence. The effect is how nonviolence looks in practice; how love looks in practice.

To do good for the Other (beneficence).
To do no harm to the Other (non-maleficence).
To respect the personhood and integrity of the Other (autonomy).
To work for the justice of the Other (justice).

How does this work out in our lives? Nonviolence, love becomes our guide. We relate to the Other in loving, nonviolent ways. We seek good and no harm, we respect the Other and where justice is lacking, we seek justice for the Other. So far, so good! But that is every general. It is important for each of us to find a sphere of influence where we can practice nonviolence. For me, I have found my sphere in leading, with +Jane, a small ecumenical religious order where we try to practice these things. It is in teaching where I seek to be a loving nonviolent mentor to students. It is in writing about these things in books and journals. It is also, for us, in the area of foster care. We have three grown children and we have cared, over the years, for over 70 children. These children have been mostly victims of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Most have known little love. Most have been socialized in violence. We have made it our task to create a nonviolent home where we demonstrate to these children a different way: a way of nonviolence and love.

Love is the work of a lifetime. Nonviolence is a life long practice. I hope that you have been grasped by such an ultimate concern. I hope that you have found or are finding a sphere of influence where you can be a nonviolent, loving presence to the Other.

+Ab. Andy

Samhain Thoughts

2009-11-01T08:50:00.006-05:00

Happy New Year!

The Celtic year begins with the coming of the dark. The day begins in the evening, not the morning. . Leaves are fallen. Days are getting shorter. We ready ourselves for winter. Samhain (pronounced SOW-when) was for the Celts the thinnest part of the year, when the veil between time and eternity is most easily traversed. The dead are closest to us.

In the Western church calandar we celebrate All Saints on November 1 and All Souls on November 2. Halloween is the eve of All Hallows. Those who have gone before us are with us now. Halloween, All Saints, All Souls and Samhain give us a wonderful merging of many traditions. All speak truth to us. All give us a glimpse of mystery.

That which is called the Christian religion existed among the Ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginning of the Human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time true religion, which already existeed began to be called Christainity.

St. Augustine[1]

I recommend Shirley Toulson’s book on the Celtic Year. It is a handy companion to use alongside the Daily Office. Much food for thought. IT may not still be in print, but used copies are easy to find.

For the ancients, Samhain was a season to feast before the austerities of winter. To my Christian and Pagan friends: Enjoy the feast!

+Ab. Andy

[1] Shirley Toulson. (1993) The Celtic Year: A Celebration of Celtic Christian Saints, Sites and Festivals. Rockport, MA: Element Books, p. 1.

Looking for God

2009-10-11T10:36:00.002-04:00

The story of ancient Job has intrigued readers for centuries. Job’s was a life of happiness with wealth, success, and a large and loving family. Then it all fell apart. Every conceivable bad thing happened to him. He lost his possessions, tragedy struck his family, and he became desperately ill. In his extremity Job loses any faith in God. His story is trying to make sense of it all.

Oh that I knew where I might find God,
That I might come to God’s dwelling!

God has made my heart feint;

The Almighty has terrified me;

If only I could vanish in darkness,

And thick darkness would cover my face!

Job

There are many levels of interpretation of the sad story. It seems that when life was smooth and successful, Job had no problems in having faith in God. After all, don’t wealth, success and possessions indicate that God is smiling on you? When you lose them, doesn’t that show God is displeased with you, or that God has disappeared, or that God was an illusion in the first place?

Perhaps Job’s existential angst was caused by a false belief that there is a connection between the purpose of God and the material circumstances of life. The wealthy and well know God’s kindness. The poor and sick know God’s displeasure.

Perhaps his mistake was to think that there is an overriding purpose in all that happens, an invisible guiding hand that would make all well. It’s easy to believe in when life is smooth. It’s harder to stomach when life falls apart.

The existentialists in the twentieth century suggested an answer. There is no overarching purpose. There is no point to the universe. There is only angst, only abandonment. The sooner we make peace with the randomness and indifference of the universe, the better for us. Yet, they did leave us with some hope: our radical, authentic choices. We can’t affect the universe, but we can be authentic in our choices. If Job had learned from Sartre, perhaps his life would have been bearable. The stoics had said something similar, “Be concerned only with those things you can affect or change. Be indifferent to the rest.” Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer has it too, “God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

Missing from Job, missing from most existentialists and missing from the stoics is love. Kierkegaard (the father of existentialism) left us with a happier existentialism than Sartre. Though human experience may be angst, our radical choice is to leap into the abyss, trusting that love will catch us. Paul Tillich said that, “Faith is being grasped by an ultimate concern.” There is no greater “ultimate concern” than love.

+Ab. Andy

A Delightful Little Gem!

2009-10-01T12:27:00.002-04:00

I have been enjoying a delightful little book by the stoic philosopher Epictetus. The book is the Enchiridion, or the Manual. It is a little guidebook for living. Epictetus was one of a handful of “pagan” writers who were approved reading in the early Christian church. Origen loved him and the Manual became an important resource for many monastic communities in the medieval period. It consists of 53 very short chapters full of wisdom. Here’s one little snippet from chapter five:

“It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them.”

Another from chapter nine:

“Sickness is a problem for the body, not the mind—unless the mind decides that it is a problem.”

The Enchiridion is available in many editions from Amazon.com for as little as $2.50. Find a copy and enjoy!

+Ab. Andy

Religion or Spirituality?

2009-09-13T10:11:00.002-04:00

This week I had opportunity to talk with students about the causes of war. A number of students came up with the answer: "Religion is the number one cause of war." One said, “Religion has caused more wars and deaths than any other human phenomenon.” His view is a fairly commonly held view. It is easy to create a long list of religious wars and wars that began or continued with a religious legitimation. Though that is true, I think it is an exaggeration, which through repetition has gained the power of truth. Recently, I reviewed a book for the Journal of Peace and Justice Studies, Villanova Univerity, The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion. Tina Baettie. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008.[1] The book is well worth a read. Among other things, Beattie challenges the assertion that religion has caused the most wars.

Nonetheless, I have great sympathy with my students. Religion may not have caused more wars than non-religious ideologies, but it has caused sufficient numbers for us all to be appalled at its track record . And not merely wars; religion has a bad record in human rights abuses, in intolerance, in bigotry, in ethnic cleansing and racism.

For those reasons many thinking people want to distance themselves from religion. At the same time, we human beings cannot get away from the essential spiritual nature we carry with us. We grapple with the sense of transcendence (Freud called it the “oceanic feeling”) and experience wonder, awe, and sometimes fear. “The idea of the holy” will not go away. On more than one occasion colleagues have said to me, “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” I have taken it to mean that they want to distance themselves from the dark side of religion and yet hold on to the essential spirituality of being human and our connection with transcendent reality.

I have great sympathy with those colleagues. At times, I have been ashamed to admit that I am a deeply religious person—or is that deeply spiritual? The problem is that though the desire to separate religion from spirituality is a strong one, sociologically, psychologically and philosophically it is impossible to do so. Unless we make a stipulative definition of the kind, “By spirituality I mean something like religion but without all the garbage that religion often has!” Of course, if folk want to make that move, that is fine too. But, it does seem the components of spirituality are clearly religious and religion is rooted in spirituality.

When I try to help future high school teachers think through what religion means (for future social studies classes) I suggest, “Religion is the human attempt to make sense of the experience of transcendence.” As we try to make sense we create the structures of religion. They can be for good or ill. Besides being the cause of much strife, religion is also the cause of much good. Daily countless millions of folk do good and kind things rooted in their religious/spiritual understanding and practice.

At times I find is psychologically painful to live with the tension of the good and the bad in our spiritual practice. My way forward is to try, with integrity, to live deeply in my spiritual practice, with kindness to all.

+Ab. Andy

[1] The review is in volume 19:1. http://www.villanova.edu/artsci/peaceandjustice/journal/

(You can get Beattie's book here.)

The Inner Journey

2009-08-30T10:05:00.002-04:00

For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come … and they defile a person. (Jesus)

A key to spiritual growth is the ability to look within, to take the inner journey. To examine life is profoundly important. It is also immensely challenging for when we look within we see all kinds of things we wish were not there. With age, looking in the bathroom mirror in the morning gets challenging. The wrinkles are obvious. There are various blotches and discolorations. The receding hairline is noticeable. The shadows under the eyes are more pronounced. It is often uncomfortable! The inner journey is more so.

In my younger days I was taken by the idea that the older I became the less would be the imperfections. I would have learned a few things. My character would improve. Now, when I look within I see pretty much the same little boy, with the same issues, the same fears, the same wonderments, the same defects of character, the same neuroses. Of course, like a skilled makeup artist I am better now at covering them up! But they are still there.

What we see is not always pleasant. To anyone with any sensitivity inner work is painful. What we see is a defilement of the spirit. It is a kind of death. Yet, death is not the issue. It is the fear of death that defiles, that incapacitates, that has us devising all kinds of strategies to avoid the pain that is fear.

As we grow older most of us work out strategies for avoiding the pain of fear. These are just a few: we run away; we pretend what we see is not there; we cover it up with perfume to make it smell differently; we manipulate. Each of these is a fighting against fear. Each is a foolish strategy. Among our foster kids have been those who, for whatever reason, dislike taking a shower. Yet, also they become sensitized to how bad they smell when they do not shower. They strategize that to cover up the smell they will use more deodorant and perfume. Does it work? Not for a moment. There is nothing more unpleasant than the smell of teenage kids who try to mask the unwashed smell with perfume! Bad strategy!

Most of us do the same with what we find when we take the inner journey. Rather than face the pain of the inner imperfection, we strive for ways to avoid it.

An alternative strategy. Face it: acknowledge what you see, relax, and let it go.

Some years ago, I had a friend that looked inside and found something he didn’t like. He was very happily married and loved his partner dearly. Yet, he realized that he had a crush on another person in his workplace. The discovery was agony for him. He wrestled and wrestled and tried all kinds of strategies to avoid the pain it was causing him. He was filled with fear. He felt like he was dying inside. In desperation he came to talk to me. In talking to me my friend faced what he found unpleasant inside himself. He no longer avoided it, fought against it, masked it, and pretended it wasn’t there. After an hour’s chat he found that in simply facing what he had seen, it robbed it of fear and he was able to let it go. My friend grew spiritually.

+Ab. Andy

Child of God

2009-07-16T09:02:00.002-04:00

When +Jane and I were preparing the liturgy for the Lindisfarne Community we were very conscious of exclusionary language. We had long concluded that women had been shut out from many areas of the church’s life. Male language reinforced the exclusion each time the liturgy was said or sung. At the highest level of Christianity (the understanding of the Holy Trinity) women were absent. Popular Catholicism had reduced the problem by exalting Mary to a virtual fourth place in the Godhead. A holy family (God, Mary, Jesus) was in the popular imagination as important as the theological Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).

Yet, our understanding was not Catholic and we had no Mary tradition to militate against the maleness of Protestantism.

God is neither male nor female. For many years we have called God the Father-Mother and have alternated the personal pronoun, sometimes calling God he and now more often she, as a counterbalance to centuries of exclusion. Some years ago we were challenged to refer to God solely in the feminine for three months. The reason, we were told, is that no matter how much we protested that “When we call God Father, we do not mean a male,” our imagery of God has been in male terms. It was quite a challenge to see God outside of the male box!

We changed the traditional motif of Trinity from “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” to “Father-Mother, Child and Holy Spirit.” Why “child” and not “son”? Firstly, for the obvious inclusive language issue. Secondly, for a more nuanced theological reason. There are two schools of thought that say Jesus was a male human being for good reasons. Males are more suited than females to be leaders. Males are more suited than females to be priests. Jesus is both the archetypal leader and the archetypal priest. As Jesus was male it is clear that only males can be leaders and and only males can be priests. However, it seemed to us that the maleness of Jesus was not the issue. The humanity of Jesus was the point. If you understand the notion of conditions, Jesus' humanity was an essential condition of his mission, but Jesus’ maleness was only a sufficient condition. Jesus’ femaleness would also have been sufficient. (Jesus as a transgendered person would also have been sufficient, though that understanding is new to us and would not have been available to folk in the first century.)

The point of the Christ event is that in incarnation—the heart of sacramental theology—the divine is found fully expressed in the human; the human is taken up into the divine. Maleness and femaleness is irrelevant for this foundational theological understanding. Jesus is both child of humanity and Child of God. As the “forerunner” as Hebrews suggests, Jesus is the one who leads all people to that telos. In Christ, all of us are children of God, female and male.

Further, in the liturgy we are concerned not so much with the historical Jesus (though that is part of the Eucharistic prayer) but with the risen Christ, the post-Easter Christ of faith. Theologically, this Christ is no longer bound by a temporal maleness or femaleness, but freed from those material restrictions. The risen Christ is neither male nor female as the father-Mother is neither male nor female.

Language is always problematical. All we can say about God is ever only analogy, “It is a bit like this.” Meister Eckhart had the profound sense that there is Godhead beyond God. That is, essentially God is truly beyond our language, or imagery or understanding. Yet, language is important and for us, there is a great need to remove unnecessary exclusions.

+Ab. Andy

Eucharist as Gratefulness

2009-07-12T13:03:00.002-04:00

Today was the third week that +Jane and I have celebrated Eucharist outdoors, in the back garden of the motherhouse. For two weeks Br. Larry+ was with us ( a great treat). Today we were alone. That is not quite true. Four pugs frolicked the whole time, weaving their way as a playful pack between the ferns and the flowers—rolling over again and again on the moist grass. For three weeks the sun has kindly shone upon us.

I am filled with gratefulness. Early this morning (like, 3:00 am) we drove Cadi and James to the airport. We have had a wonderful four days, not doing much at all. Conversing, walking, eating, drinking, a little exercise and eating and drinking again.

Eucharist is simple thanksgiving. It is the often reminder that life is good. ¡La vida es buena! Eucharist is close to mindfulness, awareness—an “in-tuneness” with creation, with the divine in all that is.

My social and political commitments make me what some people call a progressive. Progressive types tend toward guilt. It is often guilt for the many good things we enjoy while many in the world do not. Most of my progressive friends face a frequent inner conflict. We work on our conflicted Existenz through some kind of activism or social concern or worthy project—trying to put something back for all we have taken out. That is not a bad thing to do.

Yet, Eucharist recalls us to gratefulness. Simple, profound thanksgiving for life, for Goodness, for all.

+Ab. Andy

Relationality

2009-06-22T08:44:00.003-04:00

Something very basic about human beings is that we are needy.

“Our whole being by its very nature if one vast need.” C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves.

I think he was on the right track. Life is a bundle of needs to be fulfilled from the moment we are born. It is clear that for a life of well being our needs must be met. Theorists from Abraham Maslow to the Circle of Courage have recognized this and tried to make sense of it.

Maslow placed “self-actualizing needs” at the top on his hierarchy. He placed belonging needs mid-way. I think he was wrong! He was far too influenced by western ideas of individuality. Our greatest and highest need is that of relationship. Aristotle had said human beings are social animals. We are made for relationships with others: humans, non-humans, all that is and with the divine.

+Ab. Andy

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God, for God is love.

2009-05-10T08:31:00.002-04:00

This semester I taught a course called “The Ethics of Love.” It was an experimental course based around a book I am writing, Love as a Guide to Morals. According to the students, and my perception too, it turned out to be a very interesting course. One of the assignments was to write a critical philosophical book review of C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. One student, admitting that she is not religious, wrote that she has a greater appreciation for Christianity now because, according to Lewis, the Christian God is all the love in the world. I thought her understanding profound.

Love is an extraordinary expansive and non-exclusive idea. Religions often tend toward exclusion: who is in and who is out, and what you have to do be in and what things keep you out. Of course, we cannot live without making distinctions. It is important to know the distinctive features of apples and oranges; of water, vodka and bleach. If we don’t make such distinctions we could get ourselves into all kinds of trouble! Knowledge and understanding (in fact the whole of philosophy) is built on making distinctions. The education of little children is all about helping them understand the distinctions between what is good for them and what is bad for them.

However, in relational terms, a great human problem is when we use arbitrary distinctions to exclude. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, speciesism—all of the “isms” really—are based on the exclusion of the Other based on some distinguishing feature that makes us “in” and the Other “out.”

One such distinction made popular in the twentieth century was the idea of being “born again.” The idea originated in the writings of the Johannine community in the scriptures. It was variously called “born again,” “born from above,” “new birth,” and “born of God.” In usage it is very close to the idea of becoming enlightened. As an idea it has been present as one of the ways of talking about the human experience and knowledge of God since ancient times. Yet, in recent days it has become a catch phrase for exclusion. The “born-agains” and the “non-born-agains.” Its meaning has also narrowed to a particular form of Evangelical religion. For some it is, “Have you signed the response card?” For some, “Have you said the “sinner’s prayer”? For others, an intense religious experience, filtered through a particular interpretative framework. For others, the assent to a particular set of religions doctrines. Whichever way, it becomes a badge to indicate who is in and who is out

However, for the Johannine community everyone who loves is born of God. Love is expansive and non-exclusive. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Simply, yet ever so profoundly, to be born again is to love. To know God is to love. To live in God is to live in love. The implications of this are far-reaching, imaginative and controversial. Love cuts across religions lines of demarcation. Love cuts across dogmatic differences. The Muslim who loves is as born of God as the Christian who loves as the atheist who loves—for God is love.

I think my student had seen the great possibilities of love. I am grateful to her.

+Ab. Andy

A Finger Pointing at the Moon

2009-05-03T09:47:00.004-04:00

Recently, I came across someone who was very angry at religion. I do not know the details or the reason for his anger. But, it was intense and heartfelt. He said he wants nothing more do with religion of any form. Like many folk, this young man was seeking truth and had looked to religion to provide it. Religion had failed him. Religion had promised much, yet failed to deliver. It is not an uncommon experience.

Perhaps we expect too much from religion. After all, religion is merely a sign pointing away from itself toward a greater reality. Our trouble arises when we mistake the sign for the thing signified.

There is a beautiful little Zen story that many find helpful:

The nun Wu Jincang asked the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, “I have studied the Mahaparinirvana sutra for many years, yet there are many areas I do not quite understand. Please enlighten me.”
The patriarch responded, “I am illiterate. Please read out the characters to me and perhaps I will be able to explain the meaning.”
Said the nun, “You cannot even recognize the characters. How are you able then to understand the meaning?”
“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon's location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”∗

Religion, like words, is merely a finger. If I could talk to my young friend I would sympathize with him and tell him I have often shared his disappointment with religion. Yet, religion isn’t “it.” Religion will always disappoint if we mistake it for Reality. It doesn’t help that religion often makes a claim to be truth. It is an arrogant claim that has caused a great deal of suffering.

The mystics have told us that once we know Reality we can dispense with the sign. I long for the day. As it is, I suspect most of us still need the sign to point us in the right direction. But, let’s keep the sign in its place!

* Finger Pointing at the Moon

Reflections on the Lectionary Year B Easter 3

2009-04-26T08:51:00.003-04:00

Acts 3:12-19
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

Exegetical comments:

a. The Luke-Acts tradition is, like all the gospels a “making sense” of the Christ event . . . the coming of one who was life and love, who was killed and is now risen, present with those who confess the name.
b. However, the event needs some explanation, some framework to understand, some matrix within which to live.
c. There was great expectation and joy as one came from God, who seemed to make everything right, whom to know was life
d. Then, he was taken away and unjustly and brutally executed ... All the hope, expectation and longing were shattered in the events of a night and a day.
e. But then restoration as the one who was crucified comes to them alive. Death shattered. Hope renewed. A new power, as the presence is now within . . . the Spirit of Jesus no longer an external friend, but an internal presence. [In the Johannine tradition, there is no Pentecost. The risen Jesus breathes on the disciples on the night of resurrection, the Spirit is within from the day of resurrection. In the Lukan tradition, there is a period of waiting and preparation.]
f. In this first flush of astonishing presence and power, it is assumed that the coming reign of God will be soon. If Christ has come in the Spriit of Jesus, then surely the longed-for consummation of all things is near. But no. Time passes and the Messiah does not return. How are we to explain this?
g. In the lectionary today we have two streams of interpretation. In the Lukan stream, in the gospel the explanation is that when the inner empowering happens, it is for the purpose of taking the good news of God’s love in Christ to all the nations. It is implicit, that when this gospel has been heard and received by all that the consummation will come. In the Acts, the mission of Jesus continues in the healing of the lame with sign and symbol that the work continues. This will continue in the name of Jesus until the restoration of all things. This universal restoration is yet future, and Acts leaves us with the job only beginning as the gospel of Jesus is brought to Rome.
h. In the Johannine tradition, emphasis is on inner transformation from sin to life and love, knowing that one day as God’s children we will see God and be like God, though we do not know what that will be like. [There is some difficult to understand parts of John, like “those who have been born of God do not sin. It raises important and difficult questions such as what is sin, what is to be born of God, which we cannot now stay with.]

Reflections:

i. What are we to make of these passages put together in this way today?
j. Common to them all is a looking forward, a message of hope.
i. In Luke, the hope is that all nations will find the forgiveness of God in Jesus through a change of heart and mind.
ii. In Acts, the hope is one of universal restoration when all shall be made well.
iii. In I John, the hope is transformation into the image of God in Jesus.
k. Key words are: forgiveness, restoration and transformation and these are close to the heart of the message of Jesus.
l. We, and the entire world, are in process. The process is toward a fulfilment of goodness and love and justice, when all will be made well.

i. It takes trust to believe such. Trust that in God, all shall be well and that is given to us in the resurrection of Jesus.
ii. This side of death all is not made well. In the world there is so much injustice, suffering, wrong this is not well at the time of death. That is why death is such an enemy. Death seems to rob us of justice. Death seems to end love. Death interrupts goodness.
iii. The gospel of Jesus tells us that there is life through death. Death is part of the process through which life eventually triumphs. [Sitting in the garden in spring, look around you is a sign. Death is swallowed up in life.]
iv. It is sometimes hard to trust. In the midst of aging, illness, failing senses, can we trust that all shall be well? That is the message of Easter.

+Ab. Andy

Losing and Finding the Self

2009-03-29T11:42:00.001-04:00

“Those who grasp and clutch at self will lose it. Those who let go of self and follow me will find it.” Jesus

A key in spirituality is to come to some kind of understanding of who we are. Above the doorway to Plato’s academy was the inscription, “Know Yourself.” In that tradition, to know yourself was the quest of a lifetime. Recently, I had a student confidently tell the rest of the class that she really knew herself. Quite a feat at nineteen!

I am fascinated by what we call the self. In contemporary society we have a focus on the self like no other society before us. Yet, it is by no means clear what the self is or even if the self is. From Plato onward there has been a dominant tradition in the west that has held that there is a continuing entity we call the self. In its Christian version this idea became the idea of the immortal soul—a distinct individual consciousness with a past, present and future. The idea gels with our experience and memories. I have memories of being a little boy playing in the park behind our house in Moston, Manchester in the 1960s. It is the same “me” who married Jane in the mid-1970s. The same “me” became a minister in the early 1980s. The same “me” is now a professor of philosophy living in a different country. Much has changed: relationships, jobs, age, ideas, the body itself. Yet, there is a sense of undeniable continuity. It is this consciousness that lies behind the idea that the self must continue after death, and that, in some traditions the self continued before birth.

In the east and in a minority western tradition the existence of the self as a unitary, continuing entity has not been held. The Buddha suggested that what we call the self is illusory and is merely a bundle of: form, sensation, perception, predispositions, and consciousness. Nothing is fixed. Everything changes. Perception and consciousness combine for a while and then change. In the west, there is something of this in the mystical tradition that sees the goal of spirituality is to lose the self in God, the universal consciousness, as a drop of water would be swallowed in the ocean. David Hume—who I do not think had come across the Buddhist tradition and had no truck with the mystics—said something remarkably similar in the eighteenth century from a purely rationalist point of view. This tradition, too, gels with elements of our experience.

How to choose between these ideas? Perhaps, we don’t need to. Both views hold truth and speak truth to us at different time, in different contexts.

In our contemporary culture we have a view of the self that would be owned by neither historical tradition. It is found in the phrases self-interest and self-love. To over-simplify, self-interest is the foundation of our economic system where each pursues her own interest and an “invisible hand” makes it all work out for the good. Enlightened capitalism (that is, crude self-interest balanced by moral sentiment) has given way to unbridled consumerism. We have become self-regarding at the expense of being other-regarding. Self-love (again to oversimplify) is the mantra of popular psychology, with the often repeated idea that, “You have to love yourself before you can love others.” This is said so often that it is rarely challenged or analyzed as to what it might mean. Self-interest and self-love have opened wide the door to mere selfishness.

In the teaching of Jesus there is this: “Those who grasp and clutch at self will lose it. Those who let go of self and follow me will find it.” This comes form the Q tradition in Mathew and Luke. It is also there in a slightly different form in the Johannine tradition. It seems so counterintuitive to the popularized focus on the self. Lose the self and you will find the self. There is a very similar notion in eastern philosophy and non-attachment to self. Attachment to the self is the way of suffering. I think it is also clear that psychologically a preoccupation with the self is the road to neuroses.

In my work on the philosophy of love and morality I have been developing the idea of love as “movement from the self to the other.” (I have derived this in part from the work of Augustine of Hippo and Dame Iris Murdoch.) Love takes us from a preoccupation with the self to concern for the needs and well being of the other who we love. Love is a ceasing to grasp and clutch at the self and its own needs and interests in favor of those we love. It is a losing of the self. Yet, it is in the losing of the self that the self is found, not in splendid Cartesian isolation but in loving relationship. Know yourself? You begin to know yourself in the love of the Other.

+Ab. Andy

The Daily Office

2009-03-15T16:35:00.002-04:00

The Lindisfarne Community is part of a grass-root movement of renewal in the church. Renewal is an interesting word. T o renew is to repair something, to replace something worn-out or broken, to return something to its former state. In the new-monasticism we have looked again to ancient practices of Christians. Monastic practices have been instruments of renewal since the desert mothers and fathers. The six practices that we encourage in Lindisfarne are: Eucharist, the Daily Office, Meditation, Mindfulness, Study, and Service. If you examine monasticism in east and west you will find these kinds of practice—at times some more prominent than others. Yet, I think it is true that these are the essence of anything we might call monastic. Where the new-monasticism differs is that we seek to practice in our everyday lives, immersed in the world, rather than in separate, closed communities. It is for that reason that I have taken to calling the new-monasticism “secular monasticism.” It is spiritual practice in the saeculum. To be in the world is important. “To be lost in the world,” to summarize Bonhoeffer.

I have been thinking about he Daily Office and its importance in our spirituality—that is, the daily rhythm of prayers, Psalms and readings. Here is my journey with the office.

I was first introduced to it in 1981 when I became a student at Northern Baptist College, Manchester. The college was very ecumenical and had begun the practice of the office, morning and evening, based on a publication of the Daily Office by the Joint Liturgical Group in the UK (1978). That office book was itself based to some degree on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, though rather simplified. Of significance was that it was a product of representatives of all the main churches and all “churchmanships,”—Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Congregational. I used the Daily Office in that form for a number of years. I did not then know that its roots were monastic. My next Daily Office was “The Minister’s Prayer Book,” a Lutheran publication. It was again a simplified prayer book, based around the church calendar with a daily lectionary, and full of readings of particular interest to ministers. I continued with that book until the Northumbria Community produced its Daily Office in, I think, 1990. The first edition was a loose-leaf “Filofax” binder and new months were added as the community produced them. In 1994, Marshall Pickering picked up the book and it was published first in two volumes (Celtic Daily Prayer and Celtic Night Prayer) and then in one volume.

We made our first office for the Lindisfarne Community in 1998 with a flavor of our own to reflect our particular emphases (including Celtic emphases, and inclusivity). The basis of daily prayer in our Office is the Daily Prayer of the Church of England with our own emphases.

Other versions of the Office that I use are these:

Celebrating Common Prayer, the Society of St. Francis, 1992. This was the first major office book for Anglicans since the Book of Common Prayer. It became the basis for the Church of England’s Daily Prayer published in 2002.

The Book of Common Prayer 1979. This the version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer used in the Episcopal Church USA. We have based our ordination rites around services here.

Contemporary Office Book 1995. This contains in full the two-year daily lectionary found in our Way of Living. As such, it is the most useful addition to our office and complements it perfectly.

A New Zealand Prayer Book, 1989. The Anglican Church of New Zealand.

Liturgy of the Hours, 4 volumes, the official Offices of the Roman Catholic Church

Christian Prayer, the one volume official daily prayers of the Roman Catholic Church. This is the same material as the larger work but excludes a number of services. It contains, morning and evening prayers, daytime prayers, and night prayer. The great advantage of this volume over others is that all the texts are in full. There is no need to have a second book. It has 2070 pages! Yet, it is quite compact.

For the computer literate, there are online versions of the office to be found in a number of places (just “Google” it). For those with iPhones, there is a very fine reading of the Liturgy of the Hours, morning prayer, evening prayer and night prayer called the Divine Office. It is free for clergy (Search Apps).

There is a remarkable similarity in these office books. All have their roots in an ancient practice that goes back to sixth century Benedict. It is thought that the Christian office had its roots in Jewish prayer hours.

Besides shaping spirituality, there is a sense of connectedness in the saying of the office—connectedness with the long centuries of Christian practice, and connectedness with people all over the world today who have the office as bedrock of spiritual practice.

+Ab. Andy

God and all Living Things

2009-03-01T10:48:00.001-05:00

In the simplest telling of Jesus’ wilderness temptations we are told that Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit, and was tempted by Satan for forty days. During that time angels waited on him and he was with the wild beasts. We are told nothing more and all else is up to our imagination. In my imagination I was drawn to the wild beasts. What did it mean to be with them?

One of our delights in coming to upstate New York for us was an introduction to many new wild beasts. In the United Kingdom, human development means that the native animals have all been driven away. It was rare to see animals other than sheep and cows; perhaps the occasional fox. Now, in our own back yard we often have deer (a herd of nine is quite usual), opossums, woodchucks, squirrels, a whole colony of chipmunks, raccoons, and skunks. The bird life is amazing, too, with at least five kinds of woodpecker as regular visitors. I have often sat outside when the weather is warmer with a deer grazing no more than six feet away. On one occasion, I was in kneeling mediation and a chipmunk scampered over my toes and began washing herself not two feet away.

In the mystical tradition there are many stories of monastics (often in the wilderness or the forest) with companion animals—not merely dogs and cats but all manner of wild beasts. My thoughts below are from a forthcoming book chapter in a collection on religion and animals.

“Whilst seeking ultimate reality led many mystics to shun the company of other human beings, their search led them toward the friendship of nonhuman animals. Myths surrounding mystics often seem unlikely as history. It is not necessary to claim them as such. Their many animal narratives provide a strong tradition of care for nonhumans. Whether Saint Cuthbert’s feet were literally dried by his friends, the sea otters, on return from a night of prayer in the ice-cold sea, is beside the point. What matters is the conglomeration of stories about animals associated with mystics.

“Helen Waddell translated many of these animal narratives from Latin into English (Waddell and Gibbings 1934). She focused on legends from the desert fathers and mothers from the fourth century, and Celtic traditions from the sixth and seventh centuries. Both traditions sit broadly within the mystical corpus. Edward Sellner (1993) also compiled stories of Celtic mystics. In these stories, hermits, having chosen a life of solitude, encounter animals in delightful ways. Universally, the relationship between mystic and animal is positive. Though there is some sentimentalizing of animal behavior, animals continue to exhibit animal-like behavior. A few instances suffice to make the point.

“From Waddell (Waddell and Gibbings 1995):

• A desert monk whose sole friend is an ox and who feeds a lion dates by hand (3–5).
• A horse that mourns before Columba’s death. Columba calls the horse “this lover of mine” (42–45).
• A lion that is helped by abbot Gerasimus and then becomes the abbot’s disciple. On the abbot’s death the lion is distraught and lies on the old man’s grave, where he dies (23–26).
• A wolf shares a monk’s bread and then becomes penitent after stealing bread in the monk’s absence (6–7).
• Macarius who heals the eyes of a hyena’s whelp. The hyena brings a sheepskin to the saint, who refuses it: “As that which thou has brought to me comes of violence, I will not take it” (13). The saint rebukes the hyena and makes her promise that “I will not kill a creature alive” but from that day will only eat what is already dead. If the hyena can find no dead animals, then the monk promises to feed her on his own bread (12–14).

“From Sellner (1993):

• Ciaran befriends a fox, who carries Ciaran’s psalter. The mystic hides the fox under his cowl when hounds come hunting the fox (80–81).
• A stag visits Ciaran and allows the monk to use his horns as a reading stand (82–83).
• In the story of Kevin, “one Lent a blackbird came from the woods to his hut and hopped on the palm as he lay on the flagstone with his hand stretched out. Kevin kept his hand so the blackbird would have a place to build her nest. He remained there until she had hatched her brood” (161).

“Animals work alongside monks but are not called upon to do anything overly burdensome. Mystics, more often than not, show sympathy, kindness, and protection toward their animal friends.

“Perhaps, the mystic most well known for relationship with animals is Francis of Assisi. Again, we are dealing with hagiography, and many of the stories are historically suspect. Nonetheless, the Franciscan tradition of kindness toward animals is important. Thomas of Celano (died ca.1260) wrote three volumes about Francis shortly after his death. Thomas says of Francis, “He was a man of great fervor, feeling much sweetness and piety even toward lesser, irrational creatures” (Armstrong and Brady, 74). Francis talked regularly to animals and exhorted them to love God. The “irrational creatures” in their turn “sensed the sweetness of his love” (75). Francis’s concern included all creatures: “He had the same tender feeling toward fish. When he had the chance he threw back live fish that had been caught, and warned them not to be caught again” (75). And further on:

Even for worms he had a warm love, since he had read this text about the Savior: I am a worm and not a man. That is why Francis used to pick worms up from the road, and put them in a safe place, so that they would not be crushed. (90)

“Stories of Francis are stories of tenderness toward waterbirds, bees, pheasants, and a singing cricket whom Francis calls “my sister cricket!” (275).

“Besides animal narratives, the prayers and poems of mystics offer a glimpse of their relationship toward animals. Alexander Carmichael, in the late nineteenth century, traveled the highlands and islands of Scotland, listened to the old Gaelic prayers, poems, incantations, and charms, and translated them into English. Though it is unlikely that these delightful runes go back to the early Celtic church, it is clear that they are part of a long and unbroken tradition rooted in the premodern world. These poems reveal a world in which animals are greatly respected and loved, used by humans to be sure, but given a more intrinsic than instrumental value:

The charm placed of Brigit
About her neat, about her kine,
About her horses, about her goats,
About her sheep, about her lambs;

Each day and each night,
In heat and in cold,
Each early and late,
In Darkness and light;

To keep them from marsh,
To keep them from rock,
To keep them from pit,
To keep them from bank. (Carmichael 1992, 339–40)

“And further on,

Give the milk, my treasure,
Give quietly, with steady flow,
Give the milk, my treasure,
With steady flow and calmly. (346)

“It would be overly optimistic to expect to find, in the Western mystical tradition, a full-blown understanding of animal rights. Nonetheless, taken together, the theoria of the mystics (that all is/are One, that the divine is in all, an ethic of compassionate love for all) and their praxis (shown in tender stories about animals and in prayers, poems, and incantations) suggest a way of life deeply sympathetic to animal advocacy.”

This is a delightful tradition that encompasses all as cared for by God and in unity in God’s wonderful world.

Excerpts from: “Birds, Beasts, and Saints: Western Mysticism and the Love of Animals,” in Anthony Nocella (ed) Call to Compassion: Religion and Animal Advocay, New York: Lantern Books, forthcoming.

+Ab. Andy

A Different Commission

2009-02-15T11:57:00.001-05:00

When I became a Christian in the early 1970s, one of the first things I was told was that I had to become a witness. It was part of a strange new language that you very soon become used to. What does it mean to be a witness? Go and tell people what Jesus has done for you. Why? Because it is the “Great Commission,” taken from the end of Matthew’s gospel. We have to make as many people Christians as we possibly can.

There followed years of learning how to do it. Street witness. Frigid fingers on the frets of a guitar. Singing choruses to passers by. Embarrassing conversations. Failure. Guilt. Courses. Methods. “Evangelism Explosion.” (A disconcertingly violent metaphor.) As a minister, church growth was all the rage. Bigger churches. More people. More courses. More workshops. More seminars.

There is a story in the gospel of Mark where Jesus heals a leper and expressly tells him not to tell anyone. “See you say nothing to anyone,” said Jesus. Here is a different commission. It is the great commission of silence. This different kind of commission is repeated in Mark’s gospel a number of times—sufficiently so, scholars came up with the phrase “the Messianic Secret.”

The difference, if this were taken as a priority over the other commission, would be marked. “Ah, now you are a Christian,” I would have been told, “Don’t tell anyone. Keep it to yourself!” At least I would have been spared the pressure to witness and associated guilt when I kept my mouth shut!

I am reluctant, now, to talk about my faith. I tend to keep it to myself. When people ask me directly, I tentatively give them snippets, tasters—with lots of qualifications. I listen more to their stories. I look for Christ in them. I affirm their journey.

I have tried to analyze why, for me, this is the case. There are probably unconscious reasons. A psychologist might suggest that I am in reaction to the overzealousness of youth. A friend might say, “You just got burned by it all.” They both might be correct.

Consciously, I think it is that I see faith somewhat differently. Spirituality is no less important to me, but is different now than before. It is a whisper and not a shout. I am less certain about truth claims. I am more tentative about interpretation of experience. I am less willing to make judgments about others. I am more inward.

“To be as Christ to those we meet,” is an extraordinary calling. It is a life lived and not a religious view talked about. It is an aspiration and not a method. To be as Christ is to be silent, to be attentive, to welcome, to see the other as subject and not object, to build relationships of love.

“Do you follow Jesus? Shh! Don’t tell anyone!”

+Ab. Andy

Knowledge and Love

2009-02-01T11:37:00.001-05:00

Early Christianity was inextricably influenced by then current Greek and Roman ideas. What we have in the New Testament is a complex synthesis of ancient and contemporary Jewish ideas, Greek and Roman philosophy, and some genuine creativity—most clearly in the life of Jesus, but also in the first Christian teachers. The early Christians were particularly fond of Plato and of the Roman stoics. Scholars tell us, for instance, that the haustafeln, the household codes of Pauline communities are replicated in stoic writings. There are many similar allusions, borrowings and modifications of then current ideas.

When contemporary fundamentalists insist that we “get back to the Bible” and to the “pure word of God” it is not clear what they desire. I think such comments follow from an idea that the Bible, as inspired by God, was dictated to the writers by God, or that in some way the Spirit of God oversaw the writing in such a way that the writer’s personality and errors were extinguished. It is not only a strange view, but relatively recent. It was not the view of the writers of the scriptures, nor of the early Christians. Its provenance is the turn to modernity and scientism when knowledge, to be true, had to be empirically based in provable facts. The Bible, as inerrant word of God—for fundamentalists—became the deposit of such facts. Story, legend, myth, allegory and poetry were reduced to literal truths. Fundamentalists, like scientific positivists, can only see truth in literalism. Both worlds are all the poorer for it.

The early Christian movement saw no problems in a synthetic approach to truth seeking. All truth was God’s truth, whether spoken by Moses, Jesus, Socrates or Marcus Aurelius who was no friend to the Christian movement, yet whose meditations Christians have used for centuries. Second century theologian, Justin Martyr, believed Plato and Socrates were “Christians before Christ.” Like many, then and now, he saw that the similarities and connections were remarkable.

I detect a borrowing from Plato in Paul’s words to the Corinthian Christians when he speaks to them about knowledge and love, “Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by God.”

The Socratic dialogues, where Plato writes in the persona of Socrates, usually focuses on one issue—virtue, justice, friendship, love. In the dialogue Socrates and his conversation partners tease out possible meanings of the idea. They test it against lived experienced, modify their understanding and test it again. In the early dialogues, the closest to the “real” Socrates the dialogues end with no solution to the problem. For Socrates, to have knowledge is to know that you do not know. Paul echoes that idea, “Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge.” Knowledge as wisdom does not come easily and rarely to the young. When I was young, fresh and arrogant minister of 24, I knew everything. I was a voracious consumer of theology and doctrine. I had aligned myself with the Puritan/Calvinist School of theology—a vigorous and carefully worked-out system. In any argument and there were many, I had an answer for everything. I knew my stuff! Oh dear! Twenty-eight years later, I am prepared to confess my ignorance. Yes, I still “know” a lot of stuff, probably more stuff than is good for anyone—but what do I “know”? Knowledge puffs up.

The second idea in which I hear Plato is Paul’s contrast of knowledge with love. Love is that which builds human society. Love values the Other as a person in her own right. Love affirms freedom to be. “Amo: Volo ut sis.” I love you, I want you to be. The love of God, the love of the ultimate Good is the way of true knowledge, true wisdom.

In Plato, the love of the good is the ultimate goal of human life, though in the Socratic dialogues Plato uses the Greek word eros and not the agape or philia of the New Testament. Love is the desire for what we do not yet possess. In its lowest forms love takes on the guise of sexual desire, the desire for the Other who we do not possess—the Other who completes who we are. Yet, love does not remain there, for when the other is possessed there is the realization that we are not yet complete. Sexual desire is not bad in itself (as Christians later came to believe), merely incomplete, a step on the ladder to perfection. Sexual desire is desire for the divine Other, though at an early stage of its development. In Plato, desire moves beyond the physicality of sexual needs to the desire for eternity. “Our hearts are restless, till they find their rest in you,” said Augustine echoing again the Platonic thought.

I hear the same echoes in Paul’s words. If you think you have knowledge, you do not. Love the divine, love the eternal, and then you will know truly and be truly known.

+Ab. Andy

Finding Our Calling

2009-01-18T10:49:00.001-05:00

I have always found the idea of a calling intriguing—intriguing because important, yet elusive. For a long time in western history calling was associated with either the priesthood or the monastery. In other words, calling involved activities that were necessarily religious. At the beginning of the early modern period, calling was expanded to include all walks of life. Whatever your activity in life was to be perceived as a calling from God. God was involved in all, not just the religious life. More recently calling was narrowed again to include only pastors and missionaries. “Do you have a calling?” referred to “home mission” or “foreign mission.” There was still a shadow of the idea of a non-religious calling, but related to only a few professions. Medicine was a calling. Teaching was a calling, but few other professions were. I take the broader view: that God is involved in the whole of life and that each of us has a particular responsibility to find that which God wants us to be and do. I also take an egalitarian view: that each calling is necessary and that each contributes to the whole. It is a circle rather than a pyramid. It is about equality rather than hierarchy.

A calling amounts to a conviction that God wants you to be in a certain place in life. Finding your calling helps you to make sense of things. It is the calling that gives purpose and meaning. When difficulties and doubts arise, it is to the calling that you return. Callings may also be multiple. All of us in the Lindisfarne Community are “bi-vocational.” We are called to the new monasticism and its spiritual practice and called to some other place in life (in healthcare, in education, in industry, in full-time parenting and many others). Some of us are “tri-vocational.” We add to the other two the calling of priesthood: a particular sacramental calling as a sign of incarnation, Christ in us and for all.

But, how to find your calling?

In the scriptures there are many accounts of calling by God. One delightful story is that of Samuel. As a young boy he hears a voice calling his name. He is unsure who called and goes to Eli. Three times Eli tells the boy Samuel he did not call him. Then the penny drops! Eli realizes that it is God who is calling Samuel. When the voice is heard again Samuel is to say, “Speak for your servant is listening.” Little Samuel is compliant and the voice becomes clearer and God appears to him.

The story gives hints about being called. It presents us with a difficulty and a requirement. The difficulty is hearing correctly. How would I know if I am being called in a certain direction? How could I be sure it is God who is calling me and not merely my imagination? But then, perhaps my imagination is the way God calls me? Hearing the inner voice is not an easy exercise. It requires patience and practice.

It brings us to the requirement. The requirement is listening—listening to the inner voice. Being still before it. All dialogue begins with listening. There is silence before there is speech. The listening is also communal. Wisely, the boy Samuel checks out his hearing abilities with the older Eli. It is in conversation with Eli that Samuel learns how to listen to the inner voice. To discern a calling, wise counsel is required. A calling is not merely individualistic. Even then, with all the wise counsel in the world, hearing correctly and listening intently is not an exact science. There will always be ambiguity. To follow a calling is much like Kierkegaard’s existential “leap into the dark.”

Most callings require preparation. Over time, say, you increasingly feel that you ought to be a teacher of small children. You find your passion there. You try to forget it, yet it comes back to you again and again. You check out your sense with other folk. They agree with you: you’d make a great teacher. So you prepare. Depending on what you have already done, you will at least have return to school to spend two years getting a masters degree in education (in the US context), or perhaps go back to college to get a bachelors degree. It all takes time as you prepare to fulfill your calling. In the preparation time, the calling will be tested many times. When you begin to practice, the calling will not always be fulfilling and there will be arid times. There will be doubts, too, yet you return again and again to the call.

A final thought. Callings are not static. They change over a lifetime. This, too, adds complication for there is an element of provisionality about every calling. Part of the secret is to go on listening. Be often in silence. Discern the change of the season. Have wise friends. “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

+Ab. Andy