Living and Being

How to come to terms with the daily, the ordinary, the things that get in the way of real faith?  Ah, that's the problem isn't it?  Or is it?

From Into Your Hands Father

Fr. Wilfrid Stinessen

I can speculate with Teilhard de Chardin about God's will for the world and humanity, about development toward the omega point, but I live much more in God's will when I do the little, ordinary work he gives me to do right now. Yes, the more consciously I live and the more concentrated I am in the moment, the more I am one with God's will. It is in the very smallest things that I meet the very greatest. . . . 

If only we could understand that we can only realize our dream by being totally present to the little and insignificant things we have to do at each moment. We encounter the infinity of God only in the present moment. The more we are recollected in the moment, the more clearly does the eternal now of God reveal itself.

The infinity of God comes to us through a funnel. It becomes so little and so narrow that it is difficult for us to recognize it.  It comes only drop by drop through the small opening.  The funnel is the present moment.  When I put my mouth to the funnel, I am nourished by inifinity. . . . The present moment is the incarnation of God's eternity.  Thos who live in the present moment drink unceasingly of eternity.

When we live--really live--in time then we live in the timeless.  When we can know and experience and be in the present moment--when we are aware, all boundaries fall away.  This happens sometimes in prayer--for me it often happens when I am deeply focused on the words as they trickle into my head.  The moment is reified by our service to it, by living in and through it, consciously--not merely walking through life, half-oblivious to everything around us, looking to move from one sensation to the next--but rather when we are aware of what is put before us second by second for us to attend to.  That is the work God has for us at that moment--and that work is always a work of compassion and loving-kindness.

On Doctrine, Dogma, and Losing Your Way

Doctrine and dogma are important and have a firm purpose in most religions--after one has come to believe, doctrine and dogma define the parameters of that belief--they codify and crystallize what it is that one must believe to be a member of that faith.  They define the community of faith--they tell the truths of the faith.

But too often it seems they become the end of the faith.  Rather than believing in God or Jesus one believes the doctrine of the Church.  One states a dogmatic creed that defines the contours of the story of the faith and sometimes the faith does not go below the surface of that creed.  Doctrine and dogma are important, but they can become stultifying.

It would seem that the approach one should take in these matters is strive to understand the doctrine and dogma that define the faith and then, let them go.  Don't worry about them--if you believe what is stated, then it seems best to turn your mind elsewhere and rather than worrying the details to death, arguing and apologizing, living your faith is the best exposition of it.  The faith, if true, needs no defense.  The errors of others are their errors and will either be remedied in time through deepening understanding, or will remain forever.  Either way, arguing the matter isn't likely to change most people's minds.

A focus on doctrine and dogma is the surest path to losing your way entirely.  It is the certain path of losing all compassion because one's obsession becomes being right rather than right action and right disposition. A good understanding of what one believes is essential, but a constant discussion of the fine points of the nature of that belief can be distracting from what we are called to in this life.  Living a faith of compassion, loving-kindness, and caring for others and for ourselves.

The Gifts of Buddhism

I am not now a Buddhist--were I to put it in the common vernacular, I might term myself a "recovering" Buddhist.  But I have enormous respect for the gifts, the emphases that Buddhism brings to life.  Chief among these gifts are the concept of practice and of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is nothing less than awareness--living in the present moment.  (This always strikes me as an odd thing to say--after all, when else can one live?  But somehow we seem to find a way.) Mindfulness is common to many faiths, many practices.  But few make it an actual centerpiece.  While it is clearly taught by Jesus in the Bible, it is not a very common strain of thought in Christianity after Christ--we see it in the teachings of a few saints and from time to time it is hearkened back to, but if one were to name the hallmarks of Christian teaching, this would not be one of them.  And so too with most major world faiths.  But Buddhism calls us up short and says--hey, wait a minute, how do you hope to get anywhere if you don't know where you are right now?  You can't move forward from yesterday or tomorrow--you're mired in what is not.  To move forward, you must be aware of what is.

Mindfulness is one of the gifts given by the teaching of the Buddha and elaborated upon by his followers so that we have not only the understanding, but another of the great gifts--a method.  Buddha and his followers clearly delineated a method for beginning to become aware, for waking up to the present moment.  It is neither easy nor short, but it starts with the intent to be awake.  Just as that drowsy period in the morning between waking and sleeping depends on a commitment one way or the other, so mindfulness begins with the intent to be mindful--with the desire to come awake and to experience the wonderful world as it is now.

A third gift of Buddhism is the rawness of their focus on compassion and loving-kindness. Again, a common element of all world faiths--Buddhism brings it front and center as part of the eight-fold path to enlightenment.  Compassion, loving-kindness, and all the rest of what is good are clearly indicated in Right Thinking and Right Practice.

Looking at Buddhism, there is so much to admire and so much to emulate.  And because it is a practice, a way of life without dogma, these practices can be so easily adapted for people in any walk of life.  There is no inherent contradiction in a Christian living a mindful life  (most of the Saints managed somehow to wake up--without help from the Buddha, one assumes--on the other hand, too few of them left a record as to how to go about it).  There is nothing to prevent any practitioner of any faith from moving compassion and loving-kindness to a central place.  Indeed, we are often told that it holds a central place in the Christian faith--though to see some supposedly Christian acts and displays one would have to wonder.

So, learn from where there is truth to be learned.  Use what is good and what leads you home, leave the rest behind.  A person can hold only so much in head and heart and still function like a living, loving human being.

The Buddhist-Christian Way

I am often astounded at the convergence of the ways:

from Against the Stream

Noah Levine

If your spiritual practice is all pleasant all of the time, you are probably not doing it right. And it may be that very few people have the kind of commitment to go through a heart-wrenching, dark-night-of-the-soul type of experience. Again, that's probably why the Buddha described this path as leading against the stream.

I believe that Soren Kierkegaard remarked that if you are comfortable with Christ then you probably don't know him.  And isn't it interesting to see Carmelite terminology in a Buddhist book?  Does it not suggest something about the truth being taught?  Shouldn't we be open to the truth wherever it comes from?  And when it comes from many different places at once, how much more so?

Thinking About God

By this title, I do not mean mystical contemplation, but I mean the equally hard work in another sphere--metaphysical analysis--real thought given to God, His place, our place, and meaning.  I have said elsewhere that I truly believe that we better serve God in ten minutes of carefully considered thought than we do in days of half-considered prayer.  God wants all of us--heart, soul, mind, and body.  He wants our love and our service and I have, at this point in my life come down on the side of first we know, then we love.  That is to say, we can love, admire, worship, from a distance, but there comes a time when the gap must be closed.  While God grants to some few the grace to close the gap through prayer--maybe to many--to others He poses the challenge of earnest thought.  Prayer alone will not seem to break through (though that is probably an illusion devised by the self to get in the way of actual progress--but then that self has been shaped and formed lovingly by God Himself--and so we're back into the question of why--which, for the purposes here, is irrelevant).

God wants us to think about Him--to pay attention and ask questions--even hard questions.  He does not want mindless obedience  (which is quite different from unquestioning obedience, which He grants as He wills as a gift to some few).  He is not interested in robots or auto-hypnotized subjects--people who have so long chanted their long litany of prayers that they no longer truly know who or what they serve in saying them.

God wants awareness.  He wants each of us to wake up.  And to each he grants the possibility of wakefulness--the possibility of being alive in Him.

The Effects of Judgment

Before I continue to discuss whom we should not (and all too often do) judge, it seems salutary to say a little something about judgment.  Perhaps an example from classical mythology would give us context to understand why judgment is, in general, a negative activity even when the judgment being made is a positive, affirmative judgment.

For a moment let us turn our eyes to that most famous of judgments--one that resulted in no end of calamity for two peoples--The Judgment of Paris.  We all know the story--in order to foment discord Eris, goddess of discord, threw a golden apple in amongst the gathering of the chief goddesses of Olympos.  They fought over it and it was determined that the prize should go to the one judged most beautiful.  It fell to Paris to make this judgment and the prize went to Aphrodite.  In return for his judgment, Aphrodite provided him with the wife of his dreams, who also happened to be the wife of another man.  And so the Trojan war is precipitated because of a judgment.

In so many ways, this wraps together the strands of what is wrong with judgment, even approbation, or a judgment to the good.  Judgment inextricably binds us to the one being judged. Jesus made it clear with a fundamental law of judgment--Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.(Matthew 7: 1-2).  The judgment we render on others will be rendered on us.

Now, this seems not to be too terrible a matter if the judgment we are giving is good; however, the act of judgment is, itself problematic, because it supposes some standing by which we have authority to make such a judgment.  The act of judgment in some way always assumes that the other is subject to judgment.  In a sense it objectifies a person. A person now has become the subject of a judgment.  In itself, this is an attitude that removes dignity.

Judgment inextricably binds the one judging and the one judged and binds them in a way that is always negative because the underlying assumption of judgment is this standing to judge.

But perhaps the strongest negative impact of judgment is that it robs us of joy.  Let's take a matter of much lesser importance--say the judgments that lead us to our taste in music.  By deciding that we do not care for something that is harmless in itself, we are depriving ourselves of an opportunity to enjoy some of life's good things.  Let's say I decide that country music is for the rubes and that one as sophisticated as myself can't have anything to do with it.  In so doing I bar myself from the pleasures of a Patsy Cline or a Hank Williams or a Willie Nelson.  When something that sounds vaguely country shows up on the radio i begin spinning the dial (or pressing buttons) to find something else.  I have excluded myself from something that could be a source of great joy.

Ultimately judgment reveals an enormous lack of humility.  It is in this respect that perhaps the greatest service and the greatest damage is done.  If we can realize that in making a judgment we are puffing ourselves up at the cost of others, then we can turn away from judgment and pick up compassion where we left off.  If, on the other hand, we confirm ourselves in our judgment and stand on our right to judge, then we once again condemn ourselves through making the judgment--we live in our arrogance and in our pride and we wall ourselves off from the needs of others.

Resolution One: Judge Not (2)

Perhaps the most difficult people not to judge are ourselves; after all, we live with ourselves all the time and can easily see all of the silly, stupid, dramatic, and insane things that transpire in the course of a day.  Length of time and proximity/intimacy are a good measure of whom we are more likely to judge, even while exonerating.

This leads us to the next two persons/groups we are most likely to judge--God and family.

Yes, God.  I don't know about you, but I know I have spent a lot of time judging God.  I didn't think of it in those terms, and I'm not certain I've come to understand it in the way I should.  However, I can't imagine that I'm all that unusual--judging God and His power and will seem to be a daily part of our lives.

This question is most prominent when we face the foundational question of the problem of pain.  How we choose to address it both in the abstract and in its more personal application is a good indicator of where we stand in judging God.  Many an atheist has looked at the problem of pain and has concluded that it is not possible to have a God of boundless compassion and a God who allows terrible things to happen--therefore, there is no God--perhaps the ultimate judgment on God.

C.S. Lewis produced a book of  essays titled God in the Dock.  As the title suggests, he makes the case for this kind of treatment of God at far greater length and with a great deal more eloquence than I can summon.  Suffice to say that a great many of us, even those of us who like to think of ourselves as profound and witnessing Christians, have the hubris to believe that we can and should stand in judgment on God.

Needless to say, the presumption is so overblown that it becomes almost a work of art--the most massive monument to human self-esteem that could be conceived.  And in all likelihood it is safe to guess that the self-esteem that it reflects is, perhaps, a little out of proportion to the cause.

One of the most serious problems with judgment is that it assumes a grounds, a basis for making any judgment.  That can be knowledge or authority or anything that gives one sufficient merit and status to make broad, general, evaluations.

Comparing human beings and God on all merit leaves one to wonder where one could find sufficient grounds for permitting judgment.  And yet, grounds or no, too often we presume to do so--and much to our own detriment.  The only thing that judging God is likely to do is alienate us from Him.  Not, mind you Him from us, because our follies and misconceived notions are of the moment and (in all likelihood) as amusing to him as are the dicta that emerge from the mouths of toddlers--filled with a kind of uncanny and situational wisdom, but hardly a light for all time.  And God, we must recall, uniate in substance, is boundless compassion and love--He knows what it is to be human and so bears with the pettiness that can be human judgment.

No Judgment: The Uncounted Sacrifice

from The Broken American Male: and How to Fix Him
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

The broken American male is doubly tragic. Tragic because he lives an uninspired life, seeing himself as a failure, and tragic because all along, for the most part, he is actually a hero. In reality he is a man of considerable unsung greatness. He is the only one who never sees it.

The average broken American male, who punishes himself for being a loser, goes out every day and kills himself to feed his children. He gets up at the crack of dawn, sits in traffic, takes abuse from bosses, works to tight deadlines, and travels on red-eyes, all in a effort to support his family. He compromises his dignity to sell his wares.  He will accept the abuse of customers in order to do his job and take home a paycheck. He struggles with temptation yet comes home to his wife and tries his best to remain faithful. He gives his hard-earned money to complete strangers in charitable gifts.  He thanks G-d for his blessing and prays and goes to church or synagogue.  By every meaningful definition of honor and nobility, he is a great man, sacrificing of himself so that others might profit. Only he can't see it, because he has absorbed the poisons lie that because none of this will end up in a newspaper, because none of it will give him the money for a palace in the Hamptons, because it won't earn him an invitation to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, it just doesn't matter.

p 63-64

Rabbi Boteach gives more support and reason to the idea that we should not judge ourselves.  We lack both the context and the distance from the subject that is necessary to any carefully reasoned judgment.  We have no perspective, no ability to evaluate the criteria by which judgment should occur--we know only the most basic black and white of the subject matter--enough to know whether what we've done constitutes sinful or moral behavior (most of the time).

Judgment belongs to God.  If we leave it to Him, we relieve ourselves of the myriad unnecessary burdens that often accompany it.

Resolution One: Judge Not

The beginning of compassion is to recognize the self in the other.  Limited creatures that we are, we lack the capacity for compassion if the other remains outside the circle.  Much of my life has been dedicated to narrowing that circle after the initial surge of expansion that occurs in childhood.  I have put in place the objects and thoughts that distinguish me from all others.  This distinction, while real and operational in physical reality, is too often an excuse for exclusion.  "He is not like me, and so I am not obliged to treat him as a brother, to treat him in the way I would wish to be treated--because after all he would not do so for me." 

And so the circle narrows. 

This is not something I can resolve to do and step out and accomplish myself.  It is only through grace that such an intention is even remotely possible.  But as a way of aligning myself to that grace, I can  begin to consider all of those who need for me to withhold this judgment.  I can consider the times and situations that most incline me judgmental attitude and ask for strength and help there most particularly.

Let us consider the people we are most incline to judge.

(1) First, and perhaps most difficult of all, one must not judge oneself.  The Lord God in His boundless compassion has brought each person to where he or she is right here and right now.  Each person includes the self, me,  with all the talents and all the blemishes God has seen fit to embue me with.  These have been permitted because they are perfect for me, the person who has them.  The cross we each are called to take up each day is the cross of all those blemishes--formed through our choices through time.  We are who we are both by how we were fearfully, wonderfully made, and how we have chosen to reshape ourselves in our daily interactions with the world.  But God has done the one and has allowed the other in order that we serve Him as individuals--perfect not in the sense of lacking faults, but in the sense of being precisely whom God would have us be.  We must start by accepting that person, faults and blemishes, talents and strengths.  We do not extoll what we lack, but accept, admit, and welcome it as a reminder that we, indeed, are not God Himself, nor may we ever aspire to be Him.  What we may aspire to be is the perfection of the image of God that He has blessed with our present state.

Can we abandon self-judgment?  Is it possible to lay aside our own concerns about who we are not and proceed to love the self that God has given each of us?  If we can grant that God knows exactly what He is doing, it is not beyond the realm of possibility.  If we desire to do so and ask for His help in doing so, what is merely possible becomes probable.  And as we begin to trust, to really believe that God knows what He is about, we can come to understand that we are the person we are meant to be.  All that we have has been given us to share--our perfections, our imperfections.  Every flaw is given us so that we can look in the mirror that is the people around us and see in them something to love--the same flawed nature, the same mixture of the gracious and the animal--see and not judge.

To not judge others, we must start with ourselves.  We can (and must) each, of course, recognize our flaws, our imperfections, our failings, our lack of action.  Recognition is not judgment, but it is the fodder for fruitful and ongoing prayer and healing by the Divine Physician.  This recognition can, with the grace of God form the foundation of our choices and our actions--actions and choices taken with full knowledge of how inadequate we are to the task.

The end of judgment begins with the self.  It begins with the fundamental understanding that God is in control and God Himself is boundless compassion and deep loving-kindness.  If this is the One that is in control what and where we are is meaningful in itself.  Who we are is the story of co-creation with a God who wants only what is very best for each one of us.

The end of judgment begins with the understanding that God loves each one of us as Abraham loved Isaac.  Each person is God's only child--the only one that God will ever have--there is no other like him or her. 

Is it possible then to take that first step and say, "Yes Lord, you know what you are doing."  Indeed, God speaks these words of Jeremiah to each of us:  "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. . . . (Jer. 1:5)"  It is up to each of us to accept them and to make them our own.  Judgment can stop when we accept that God knows what He is about.  Compassion begins when we understand that we are who we are, each of us, because God in His mercy has made each of us to be a unique child to Him. 

For myself, here and now, in the presence of such of my brothers and sisters who read this, I resolve with the help of God's grace to end myself and call for an end to the judgment that, in the words of Jesus himself, kills.  Not only may I not say unto my brother, "Thou fool," I may not allow myself to think it.  Neither may I make any of the myriad of judgments that serve to separate me from the human family.  I resolve, then, with the help of the God of Boundless Compassion, the God of loving-kindness, to put aside all judgment of persons--all that has kept me apart and has kept me from living the joyful life that God would have me live.  For judgment is perhaps one of the chief amongst the destroyers of our God-given joy.

I resolve to live as Jesus has commanded each of us--judge not lest ye be judged with the judgment ye have measured out.

Starting with myself as I am here and now, I will accept the gift of God--the good and the bad--and I will not presume to compare my own weak human comprehension with the understanding that comes from the God of all.

(More on judgment later)

Purpose--Simon, Son of John, Do You Love Me?

Those who know me from elsewhere will know me; to others, I remain for the time being a little anonymous in so much as blogger allows that anonymity.  This is neither from shame nor from pride, but rather so that others might better see themselves in some of the things I share.

As the description indicates, I have lately discovered that I have willingly, though largely unknowingly limited my life by the implicit freedom I have given myself to judge everyone and everything around me.  This is a terribly human and ordinary thing to do, but it is, as I have said, a limiting thing because all of one's choices become oriented toward these judgments and one tends in the direction one has started. It has only recently occurred to me that life of joy is comprised of a life of boundless compassion for one's fellow travelers.

Hence, this blog--a blog of resolutions and accountability--you who read will know my successes and my failures and this public confession of them will either strengthen the resolution or show that it has no validity to start with.

A most important point:  no resolution embarked upon by my will alone and through my own power will ever amount to much more than the life of a mayfly.  I might manage for a day or two to stick to what I have said I will do--but without grace and God's constant ongoing support of the effort, it will come to nothing.  Because I believe that God Himself, simple in nature, is the face of Boundless Compassion, there can be nothing He more desires that we join ourselves completely to that expression of Him.  He has taught this countless times, through countless prophets, and countless revelations--both those recognized by all major faiths and those that come to individuals in the stillness of their hearts.

In John 21, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"  Three times he asked this and each time Simon Peter answered, "Lord, you know I do."  What then does Jesus say about Simon Peter's love for Him?  "Feed my sheep."  As with Simon Peter, my love for Him is revealed in how I conduct my life here on Earth among His brothers and sisters--my brothers and sisters.  That is the instruction Jesus has given each of us about how to show our love for Him.  "Feed my sheep."

And so this will serve as a little record of my attempts to listen to this command.  As well as the prayers and the strengthening help that day by day will make God's grace known to me.

Simon, on of John, do you love me?

I am not Simon, but I have come to know that this question is asked of me.

And more importantly the response Jesus gives--"Feed my sheep."  That too is directed to me, for no one is free of the responsibility of being part of the family--we are all called to feed one another.