Now and again I meet people who think of meditation or contemplative prayer as an isolated act -- an individual practice that might discipline the mind, foster equanimity, or deepen one's relationship with God, but still: basically navel-gazing.

But people who have become more seasoned with these practices -- staying the course and returning despite bouts of boredom or dark nights or myriad other challenges -- often come to realize that it is actually the opposite of navel-gazing. Rather than an isolated focusing, contemplation is an opening to, an offering up, and a flowing with. Instead of strengthening personal concentration, contemplatives empty themselves, creating an inner spaciousness that can, with their permission, serve as a conduit for Spirit.

My Centering Prayer group has lately been reading Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault -- I believe it's my third time through this wonderful book, yet it still seems to be striking new ground in me. In the chapter entitled "Centering Prayer and Christian Life," Bourgeault talks about Centering Prayer as being part and parcel of perichoresis: the divine dance of Love that is always relational --  never an isolated act. She writes:

I have spoken so far of Centering Prayer as being rooted and grounded in kenosis, the self-emptying love of Christ understood as the core gesture of his life and the source of his sacramental power. But in Christian mystical theology, the word kenosis is used in another context as well: to describe the internal life of the Trinity. It speaks of the self-emtying love with which the Father spills into (or gives himself fully into) the Son, the Son into the Spirit, the Spirit into the Father. This complete intercirculation in love is called perichoresis. It's sort of like the buckets on a watermill; as they empty one into the other, the mill turns and the energy of love becomes manifest and accessible.

The same analogy I believe holds true for our life in God. What we experience in Centering Prayer as kenosis, or personal self-emptying, is always part and parcel of a greater perichoresis, one self-emptying spilling into another in the great watermill of love, through which God shows us his innermost nature and bestows this vital energy upon the world in a cascade of divine creativity.

"I am the vine; you are the branches; abide in me as I in you" (John 15: 3-4). The most profoundly beautiful imagery in the New Testament is communal; it speaks of this great intercirculation of love. So often we think of Centering Prayer -- or any form of meditation -- as alone, withdrawn, or focused on one's own personal development or special relationship with God, not shared with others (because we're under the impression that the only way to share with others is to talk). But in point of fact, whenever we participate in that act of kenosis, it is always as part and parcel of perichoresis. That is the essential Mystery, the beauty that Jesus lived and died and through which he rose again. There is no gesture more ultimately communal than kenosis, for it is the ultimate act of self-transcendence. As we participate in this gesture, no matter how isolated it first may feel, how divided and cut off from others, the deep truth we will eventually come to know is that any act of kenosis reconnects us, inevitably and instantly, to that great vine of love.

Thomas Merton learned this lesson through a long and difficult journey, perhaps the only way that this lesson is ever fully learned. When he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in December 1941, the one thing he knew for certain was that he wanted out of "the world" and straight into God. As he took one last backward look before the monastery gate clanked shut behind him (he hoped forever), all he could see was a hopeless wasteland of sin, hypocrisy, noise, and illusion. Ahead lay a vast Himalayan silence ahd holiness. Or so he thought.

But the contemplative life is full of its own surprising plot twists. Once you give yourself fully to it, once you sign on the dotted line of kenosis, perichoresis is what you'll eventually get. Seventeen years later, that inexorable inner blueprint bore fruit in him in a completely unexpected way, when, on a routine shopping trip into town he was suddenly engulfed in a blinding epiphany of love. He describes the experience in an essay movingly entitled "A Member of the Human Race":

"In Louisville, at the Corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping  district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and that I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of a pure self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness."

Nor was this a fluke "mystical experience." What Merton saw in that moment stayed with him till the end of his life; it was a permanent transformation of his consciousness. This is the unitive seeing we are all called to: the secret of Jesus' great commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself." Not as much as yourself, as egoic consiousness always interprets, but as yourself: interchangeably One in that great vine of love which is the mystical body of Christ.

If you embrace a path that begins in kenosis, you will wind up in perichoresis; that's the wager. That's also the Church -- its vision and its path in a nutshell.

About two weeks before Valentine's day in 1990, I met Kirk, the man who was to become my husband. We were both washing clothes in our Friendly Neighborhood Laundromat.

I had maybe five loads of laundry to do, and the machines in my apartment complex weren't working. I also had a bunch of freshman English papers to grade, so had taken my five loads and pile of papers down the street, and settled in for an evening of work at the Fluff and Fold.

I ended up using a dryer next to a guy who seemed homeless to me - he was unshaven and wearing a jacket that looked like the remnants of a dog attack, funky brown polyester pants with the hem coming out of them ... (I wasn't looking so hot myself, adorned in shapeless dark pink sweatpants and faded alma mater T-shirt), and when he walked by me, trying to catch my eye to say hello, I was sure he was going to ask me for some change. I did have a dollar bill to spare and thought I would give that to him if he asked, as he had a woebegone and sweet vibe about him.

He asked me if I was in Amnesty International (which I was, and I still have no idea how he might have known) and we ended up talking about that for a bit. He turned out to be the local AI group's anti-death penalty coordinator. As we talked I noticed at one point that he was spending quarters to finish drying just one pair of socks. Man drying laundry, I laughed to myself.

He eventually finished with his socks and left.

Perhaps 15 minutes later, I had also finished and was hauling my clean laundry back to my car. Kirk had returned to the laundromat - I figured he had forgotten something - and he walked up to me with something in his hand. They were a pair of newly clean panties that had fallen out of my laundry basket onto the asphalt. "I think you dropped these," he said, holding them out to me. I was embarrassed because they were raggedy and skanky - so I shook my head, "No, those aren't mine," while wondering what kind of weird guy was this, picking up strange women's panties off the ground...

He asked me if we could meet again to talk. (I found out later that this was the reason he had returned to the laundromat). I was about to say no, because the panty thing was kind of freaking me out. So I looked into his eyes - and totally changed my mind. They radiated warmth and kindness.

So I agreed to meet him at a nearby restaurant the following week. We had a great time but I still wanted to meet him maybe once or twice more before I gave him my phone number. (And FYI: this was also before the time of widely-used internet and e-mail, etc.). A single girl's gotta protect that phone number, ya know ...

Valentine's Day, which was about a week after our restaurant date, was a busy day for me. I rushed out that morning, late to class, and found a dozen yellow roses propped up next to my car - the tire on the driver's side.

Kirk didn't have my phone number or address but he knew what my car looked like and that I lived a few blocks from the Fluff and Fold. So he had walked around the neighborhood with these roses until he found my car, and laid them there.

He was walking back to his place and was maybe a half block away when he turned around to see me picking up the roses. So he jogged back to my car, startling me as I stood there trying to figure out what to do with the roses. A part of me thought: you mean he put the roses there and waited for me to show up? I don't know about this guy.

Stalker? Or romantic warm-hearted dude?

I decided to give him my phone number.

                                               


(Originally posted in the Integral Pod)

In memorium for Odetta, who left this world last night, Dec. 2, at age 77. What a radiant presence, what a glorious voice! Sit here for a spell and lay your burden down in her song.

Glory Hallelujah,

Mary

 

People, I have to admit that for me this election feels personal. There are ways in which I cannot help but identify with Barack Obama - we are about the same age, both racial hybrids born of white Kansan mothers during a time when miscegenation was still illegal in many states. I know what it's like to have been one of a few students of color attending predominantly white schools, to be thought of as "not black enough," and to be perceived as either "elitist" or "special" because I speak the king's english and read and write well .... I too have attended work meetings with "domestic terrorists;" I too waited until my thirties to fully engage with a faith tradition. So when I see Obama out there seriously walking the walk, it's a little like seeing a version of myself .... Or what I might be if I were less timid, less slothful, less complacent, more diligent, more outgoing, more steadfast, more.... well, just mo' better.

And maybe you're having similar feelings, though the specifics may differ. As Mascha said so straightforwardly in one recent Integral Pod discussion: "he makes me want to be a better person." Think about that! How wild and how rare this is in postmodern USA - that a politician could inspire us to tease out our own greatness, whatever that may be.

Moreover, after eight years of deathly lies, incoherences, and grand incompetence from the Bush administration, the possibility that we may find ourselves with a genuinely diplomatic servant-leader who displays great intelligence, community-mindedness, and grace under pressure smells like manna from heaven. And okay
-- now that I've wandered into religious metaphorland I feel like I've got to qualify myself: I know he's not the messiah, already. Even he knows that - as Barack mentioned at that recent annual Al Smith dinner - he wasn't born in a manger in Bethlehem .... (his parents actually hark from the planet Crypton ...)

It's intriguing, though, how often I keep hearing such disclaimers about Obama: he's not the messiah, he's not perfect .... unflappable and smart and cool, yes, but really, he's flawed, he's got faults too .... I've heard such statements so often that now I think it's a case of protesting too much: in some ways we really do believe he's some kind of messiah or uberman, someone who will save us from this dangerous mess we're in. Thus we have to constantly remind ourselves to eschew these deifying tendencies - beyond the obvious dangers of expecting or unconsciously demanding perfection from anyone - especially a world leader -- there's the possibility that electing him will only reinforce our national tendency toward complacency, inaction, and procrastination when it comes to waking up and smelling the coffee. Well, woohoo: we got him elected! We done DONE our job. Now we can go back to sleep while the Obama administration fixes the world....

The problem with idealizing anyone is that it lets us off the hook. If the idealized person can do great things because they are special, set apart, abundantly gifted, then we normal folk can just sit back and let him/her do all the great things because, after all, they've really got what it takes and we have enough challenges just making it through each day with our ordinary old selves. I think our messiah-nizing of greatly admired people is in some ways a protective measure - it absolves us of responsibility for our world and our lives and our choices.

But might an election of Obama do .... just the opposite?

Though I've been feeling somewhat like a tired, poor, huddled mass lately, this is the question that's been lingering in me for the latter part of this year - something that I've not wanted to voice for fear of falling prey to my own naivete and idealism. But I'm enjoying the feeling that emerges when I ask this question: might an Obama presidency energize us, shake us from our sleep, and help get us up off our individual and collective asses?

If we can recognize the golden shadows that we've been projecting onto Obama and reclaim them as our own potentials, could "change" become more than the latest laudable political cliché?

I remember a grad-school moment in the 1980s, during the 25^th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Several rallies and memorials and teach-ins were organized for the event. Some far-right op-ed writer - don't recall who - pointed out that King really wasn't so great a man after all because, beyond the fact that he allegedly plagiarized snippets of sermons from other ministers, he had had extramarital affairs. This writer seemed to think that King's flaws undermined the foundations of the civil rights movement - and went so far as to suggest that the movement's goals were ill-advised since they were rooted in the dreams of such a hypocritical "sinner!" But the wider truth, as a wonderful professor of mine pointed out in class that day, is that MLK's personal faults are really a gift to us. If our martyrs and "messiahs" are actually flawed, souls with feet of clay, ordinary and broken people who have chosen to exercise their particular gifts, then it behooves us to get off our ordinary, flawed, stumbling butts, to stop putting off what we are to do, stay the course, share our gifts, to, as the previously posted song goes, finish what we started ....

And ponder this: messiahs offer salvation. Salvation is the noun form of to salve, i.e., to heal, to remedy, to reconnect what has been broken. It is also related to the word "salvage" - to rescue something from wreckage or ruin. If Obama's work and presence really makes us want to be better people, if we are able to look at what we project onto him and reclaim our own trashed or unrecognized potential - who knows what salvagings, what treasures are to come? No, Obama is not "the messiah." But with him we might discover that we are the messiahs we have been waiting for.

I was delighted to see Bush's former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, endorse Barack Obama on "Meet the Press" on October 19. And this morning, when a friend sent an e-mail containing this essay written by a self-described "founder of the Religious Right," I was doubly heartened. Check it out! --  M.W. 

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"Obama Will Be One of The Greatest (and Most Loved) American Presidents"

by Frank Schaeffer (Noted author and co-founder of the Christian Right)
Huffington Post, Posted October 8, 2008

Great presidents are made great by horrible circumstances combined with
character, temperament and intelligence. Like firemen, cops, doctors or
soldiers, presidents need a crisis to shine.

Obama is one of the most intelligent presidential aspirants to ever step
forward in American history. The likes of his intellectual capabilities have
not been surpassed in public life since the Founding Fathers put pen to
paper. His personal character is also solid gold. Take heart, America: we
have the leader for our times.

I say this as a white, former life-long Republican. I say this as the proud
father of a Marine. I say this as just another American watching his pension
evaporate along with the stock market! I speak as someone who knows it's
time to forget party loyalty, ideology and pride and put the country first.
I say this as someone happy to be called a fool for going out on a limb and
declaring that, 1) Obama will win, and 2) he is going to be amongst the
greatest of American presidents.

Obama is our last best chance. He's worth laying it all on the line for.

This is a man who in the age of greed took the high road of community
service. This is the good father and husband. This is the humble servant.
This is the patient teacher. This is the scholar statesman. This is the man
of deep Christian faith.

Good stories about Obama abound; from his personal relationship with his
Secret Service agents (he invites them into his home to watch sports, and
shoots hoops with them) to the story about how, more than twenty years ago,
while standing in the check-in line at an airport, Obama paid a $100 baggage
surcharge for a stranger who was broke and stuck. (Obama was virtually
penniless himself in those days.) Years later after he became a senator,
that stranger recognized Obama's picture and wrote to him to thank him. She
received a kindly note back from the senator. (The story only surfaced
because the person, who lives in Norway, told a local newspaper after Obama
ran for the presidency. The paper published a photograph of this lady
proudly displaying Senator Obama's letter.)

Where many leaders are two-faced; publicly kindly but privately feared
and/or hated by people closest to them, Obama is consistent in the way he
treats people, consistently kind and personally humble. He lives by the code
that those who lead must serve. He believes that. He lives it. He lived it
long before he was in the public eye.

Obama puts service ahead of ideology. He also knows that to win politically
you need to be tough. He can be. He has been. This is a man who does what
works, rather than scoring ideological points. In other words he is the
quintessential non-ideological pragmatic American. He will (thank God!)
disappoint ideologues and purists of the left and the right.

Obama has a reservoir of personal physical courage that is unmatched in
presidential history. Why unmatched? Because as the first black contender
for the presidency who will win, Obama, and all the rest of us, know that he
is in great physical danger from the seemingly unlimited reserve of unhinged
racial hatred, and just plain unhinged ignorant hatred, that swirls in the
bowels of our wounded and sinful country. By stepping forward to lead, Obama
has literally put his life on the line for all of us in a way no white
candidate ever has had to do. (And we all know how dangerous the presidency
has been even for white presidents.)

Nice stories or even unparalleled courage isn't the only point. The greater
point about Obama is that the midst of our worldwide financial meltdown, an
expanding (and losing) war in Afghanistan, trying to extricate our country
from a wrong and stupidly mistaken ruinously expensive war in Iraq, our
mounting and crushing national debt, awaiting the next (and inevitable) al
Qaeda attack on our homeland, watching our schools decline to Third World
levels of incompetence, facing a general loss of confidence in the
government that has been exacerbated by the Republicans doing all they can
to undermine our government's capabilities and programs... President Obama
will take on the leadership of our country at a make or break time of
historic proportions. He faces not one but dozens of crisis, each big enough
to define any presidency in better times.

As luck, fate or divine grace would have it (depending on one's personal
theology) Obama is blessedly, dare I say uniquely, well-suited to our dire
circumstances. Obama is a person with hands-on community service experience,
deep connections to top economic advisers from the renowned University of
Chicago where he taught law, and a middle-class background that gives him an
abiding knowledgeable empathy with the rest of us. As the son of a single
mother, who has worked his way up with merit and brains, recipient of
top-notch academic scholarships, the peer-selected editor of the Harvard Law
Review and, in three giant political steps to state office, national office
and now the presidency, Obama clearly has the wit and drive to lead.

Obama is the sober voice of reason at a time of unreason. He is the fellow
keeping his head while all around him are panicking. He is the healing
presence at a time of national division and strife. He is also new enough to
the political process so that he doesn't suffer from the terminally jaded
cynicism, the seen-it-all-before syndrome afflicting most politicians in
Washington. In that regard we Americans lucked out. It's as if having
despaired of our political process we picked a name from the phone book to
lead us and that person turned out to be a very man we needed.

Obama brings a healing and uplifting spiritual quality to our politics at
the very time when our worst enemy is fear. For eight years we've been ruled
by a stunted fear-filled mediocrity of a little liar who has expanded his
power on the basis of creating fear in others. Fearless Obama is the cure.
He speaks a litany of hope rather than a litany of terror.

As we have watched Obama respond in a quiet reasoned manner to crisis after
crisis, in both the way he has responded after being attacked and lied about
in the 2008 campaign season, to his reasoned response to our multiplying
national crises, what we see is the spirit of a trusted family doctor with a
great bedside manner. Obama is perfectly suited to hold our hand and lead us
through some very tough times. The word panic is not in the Obama
dictionary.

America is fighting its "Armageddon" in one fearful heart at a time. A
brilliant leader with the mild manner of an old-time matter-of-fact country
doctor soothing a frightened child is just what we need. The fact that our
"doctor" is a black man leading a hitherto white-ruled nation out of the
mess of its own making is all the sweeter and raises the Obama story to that
of moral allegory.

Obama brings a moral clarity to his leadership reserved for those who have
had to work for everything they've gotten and had to do twice as well as the
person standing next to them because of the color of their skin. His
experience of succeeding in spite of his color, social background and
prejudice could have been embittering or one that fostered a spiritual
rebirth of forgiveness and enlightenment. Obama radiates the calm inner
peace of the spirit of forgiveness.

Speaking as a believing Christian I see the hand of a merciful God in
Obama's candidacy. The biblical metaphors abound. The stone the builder
rejected is become the cornerstone... the last shall be first... he that
would gain his life must first lose it... the meek shall inherit the
earth...

For my secular friends I'll allow that we may have just been extraordinarily
lucky! Either way America wins.

Only a brilliant man, with the spirit of a preacher and the humble heart of
a kindly family doctor can lead us now. We are afraid, out of ideas, and
worst of all out of hope. Obama is the cure. And we Americans have it in us
to rise to the occasion. We will. We're about to enter one of the most
frightening periods of American history. Our country has rarely faced more
uncertainty. This is the time for greatness. We have a great leader. We must
be a great people backing him, fighting for him, sacrificing for a cause
greater than ourselves.

A hundred years from now Obama's portrait will be placed next to that of
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Long before that
we'll be telling our children and grandchildren that we stepped out in faith
and voted for a young black man who stood up and led our country back from
the brink of an abyss. We'll tell them about the power of love, faith and
hope. We'll tell them about the power of creativity combined with humility
and intellectual brilliance. We'll tell them that President Obama gave us
the gift of regaining our faith in our country. We'll tell them that we all
stood up and pitched in and won the day. We'll tell them that President
Obama restored our standing in the world. We'll tell them that by the time
he left office our schools were on the mend, our economy booming, that we'd
become a nation filled with green energy alternatives and were leading the
world away from dependence on carbon-based destruction. We'll tell them that
because of President Obama's example and leadership the integrity of the
family was restored, divorce rates went down, more fathers took
responsibility for their children, and abortion rates fell dramatically as
women, families and children were cared for through compassionate social
programs that worked. We'll tell them about how the gap closed between the
middle class and the super rich, how we won health care for all, how crime
rates fell, how bad wars were brought to an honorable conclusion. We'll tell
them that when we were attacked again by al Qaeda, how reason prevailed and
the response was smart, tough, measured and effective, and our civil rights
were protected even in times of crisis...

We'll tell them that we were part of the inexplicably blessed miracle that
happened to our country those many years ago in 2008 when a young black man
was sent by God, fate or luck to save our country. We'll tell them that it's
good to live in America where anything is possible. Yes we will.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD - How I Grew Up As One Of The
Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost
All) Of It Back. Now in paperback.

                            

From the Sep/Oct 08 Spirituality and Health magazine -- a few Q & A's with Rabbi Rami Shapiro -- worthy of a look-see as the premier of Bill Maher's movie Religulous approaches.

Q: My sister and I argue over which is the more violent: theism or atheism. I say theism and point to the Inquisition and Jihad; she says atheism and points to Hitler and Stalin. What do you think?

Rabbi Rami: I think you're both mistaken. The real problem isn't theism or atheism but the absence of freedom. Atheists can be as evil as theists, but the violence you're talking about -- from the Bible to this morning's headlines -- is nurtured in communities where freedom of thought and action is constricted and often outlawed. Such communities can be religious or secular.

That said, however, it is easier to exploit theism than atheism in the sanctioning of evil. Theism promotes belief in God, and some gods can be used to sanction violence. Atheism denies the existence of God, and the absence of something sanctions nothing. Bottom line: we don't need more theism or more atheism; we need more freedom.

Q: My mother was a devout Christian who never lost her sense of humor or her sense of compassion, yet she died an agonizing and prolonged death. What is the point of religion if this can happen to a true believer?

Rabbi Rami: You have answered your own question. Her faith could not protect her from suffering and pain -- nothing can do that. However, her faith did help her live her suffering with grace and humor. People often ask the wrong things of religion; they want truth, eternal life, safety, and surety, but the real gift of religion is learning how to live gloriously with impermanence, not knowing, danger, and uncertainty. I don't envy your mother her end, but I do envy her her faith.

Q: I get very confused regarding the terms "belief," "faith," and "religion." Can you sort these out for me?

Rabbi Rami: I can try. Beliefs are unprovable propositions about reality; faith is trusting that those beliefs are true; and religion is a system of communal behavior designed to enforce and reinforce faith in the correctness of those beliefs.

Beliefs should not be confused with facts or hypotheses. Facts and hypotheses are testable; beliefs are not. That is why you need to have faith in God but not in gravity. Because beliefs are not testable, they need not change. Beliefs only change when experience makes faith in them untenable.

This is why I never argue about beliefs; I focus on experience instead. The deeper my experience of reality (God, Tao, etc.), fueled by science and contemplative practice, the fewer beliefs I hold, the more generous my faith in life becomes, and the less I am constrained by religious rituals and creeds. This is the spiritual path set forth in Psalm 34:8: "Taste and see that God is good." Taste and see reality for yourself.

the empty tomb

Received in an e-mail from the Network of Spiritual Progressives, by Walter Wink:

Considering the weight the early church attached to the resurrection, it is curious that, subsequent to the empty-tomb stories, no two resurrection accounts in the four Gospels are alike. All of these narratives seem to be very late additions to the tradition. They answer a host of questions raised by the gospel of the resurrection. At the core of all these accounts is the simple testimony: we experienced Jesus as alive.

A later generation that did not witness a living Jesus needed more; for them the resurrection narratives answered that need. But what had those early disciples experienced? What does it mean to say that they experienced Jesus alive? The resurrection appearances did not, after all, take place in the temple before thousands of worshipers, but in the privacy of homes or cemeteries. They did not occur before religious authorities, but to the disciples hiding from those authorities. The resurrection was not a worldwide historic event that could have been filmed, but a privileged revelation reserved for the few.

Nevertheless, something "objective" did happen to God, to Jesus, and to the disciples. What happened was every bit as real as any other event, only it was not historically observable. It was an event in the history of the psyche. The ascension was the entry of Jesus into the archetypal realm. Though skeptics might interpret what the disciples experienced as a mass hallucination, the experience itself cannot be denied.

This is what may have happened: the very image of God was altered by the sheer force of Jesus being. God would never be the same. Jesus had indelibly imprinted the divine; God had everlastingly entered the human. In Jesus, God took on humanity, furthering the evolution revealed in Ezekiel's vision of Yahweh on the throne in "the likeness, as it were, of a human form" (Ezek. 1:26). Jesus, it seemed to his followers, had infiltrated the Godhead.

The ascension marks, on the divine side, the entry of Jesus into the son-of-the-man archetype; from then on Jesus' followers would experience God through the filter of Jesus. Incarnation means that not only is Jesus like God, but that God is now like Jesus. It is a prejudice of modern thought that events happen only in the outer world. What Christians regard as the most significant event in human history happened, according to the Gospels, in the psychic realm, and it altered external history irrevocably. Ascension was an "objective" event, if you will, but it took place in the imaginal realm, at the substratum of human existence, where the most fundamental changes in consciousness take place.

Something also happened to the disciples. They experienced the most essential aspect of Jesus as remaining with them after his death. They had seen him heal, preach, and cast out demons, but had localized these powers in him. Though the powers had always been in them as well, while Jesus was alive they tended to project these latent, God-given powers onto him. They had only known those powers in him. So it was natural, after his resurrection, to interpret the unleashing of those powers in themselves, as if Jesus himself had taken residence in their hearts. And it was true: the God at the center of their beings was now indistinguishable from the Jesus who had entered the Godhead. Jesus, in many of the post-Easter son-of-the-man sayings, seems to speak of the Human Being (the "son of man") as other than himself. Was Jesus stepping aside, as he seems to do in the Gospels, to let the Human Being become the inner entelechy (the regulating and directing force) of their souls?

The disciples also saw that the spirit that had worked within Jesus continued to work in and through them. In their preaching they extended his critique of domination. They continued his life by advancing his mission. They persisted in proclaiming the domination-free order of God inaugurated by Jesus.

The ascension was a "fact" on the imaginal plane, not just an assertion of faith. It irreversibly altered the nature of the disciples' consciousness. They would never again be able to think of God apart from Jesus. They sensed themselves accompanied by Jesus (Luke 24:13-35). They found in themselves a New Being that they had hitherto only experienced in Jesus. They knew themselves endowed with a spirit-power they had known only occasionally, such as when Jesus had sent them out to perform healings (Mark:7-13). In their struggles with the powers that be, they knew that whatever their doubts, losses, or sufferings, the final victory was God's, because Jesus had conquered death and the fear of death and led them out of captivity.

Jesus the man, the sage, the itinerant teacher, the prophet, even the lowly Human Being, while unique and profound, was not able to turn the world upside down. His attempt to do so was a decided failure. Rather, it was his ascension, his metamorphosis into the archetype of humanness that did so for his disciples. The Human Being constituted a remaking of the values that had undergirded the domination system for some 3,000 years before Jesus. The critique of domination continued to build on the Exodus and the prophets of Israel, to be sure. But Jesus' ascension to the right hand of the Power of God was a supernova in the archetypal sky. As the image of the truly Human One, Jesus became an exemplar of the utmost possibilities for living.

Could the son-of-the-man material have been lore that grew up to induce visions of the Human Being? Could it have been a way to activate altered states of consciousness based on meditation on the ascended Human Being enthroned upon the heart? It was not enough simply to know about the mystical path. One needed to take it.

The ascension was real. Something happened to God, to Jesus, and to the disciples. I am not suggesting that the ascension is nonhistorical, but rather that the historical is the wrong category for understanding ascension. The ascension is not a historical fact to be believed, but an imaginal experience to be undergone. It is not at datum of public record, but divine transformative power overcoming the powers of death. The religious task for us today is not to cling to dogma but to seek a personal experience of the living God in whatever mode is meaningful.

Walter Wink is professor emeritus of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City and author of 16 books. He is best known for his trilogy on "The Powers" and his fascinating interpretation of Jesus' teachings on nonviolence.

                                               

BY BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

There are many ways to tell the story of what happened on Good Friday. According to John, it involved a collusion between religion and politics. While Pilate and the chief priests conspired to solve their mutual problem while managing to remain enemies, Jesus stood at the center of the stage like a mirror in which all those around him saw themselves clearly for who they were. One way we Christians have avoided seeing our own reflections in the mirror is to pretend that this is a story about Romans and Jews. As long as they remain the villains, then we are off the hook -- or so we think. Unfortunately, this is not a story that happened a long time ago in a land far away.

Sons and daughters of God are killed in every generation. They have been killed in holy wars and inquisitions, concentration camps and prison cells. They have been killed in Cape Town, Memphis, El Salvador and Alabama. The charges against them have run the gamut, but treason and blasphemy have headed the list, just as they did for Jesus. He upset those in charge at the courthouse and the temple. He suggested they were not doing their jobs. He offered himself as a mirror they could see themselves in, and they were so appalled by what they saw that they smashed it. They smashed him every way they could.

One of the many things this story tells us is that Jesus was not brought down by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar.

This is a story that can happen anywhere at any time, and we are as likely to be the perpetrators as the victims. I doubt that many of us will end up playing Annas, Caiaphas or Pilate, however. They may have been the ones who gave Jesus the death sentence, but a large part of him had already died before they ever got to him -- the part Judas killed off, then Peter, the all those who fled. Those are the roles with our names on them -- not the enemies but the friends.

Whenever someone famous gets into trouble, that is one of the first things the press focuses on. What do his friends do? Do they support him or do they tell reporters that, unfortunately, they had seen trouble coming for some time? One of the worst things a friend can say is what Peter said. We weren't friends, exactly. Acquaintances might be a better word. Actually, we just worked together. For the same company, I mean. Not together, just near each other. My desk was near his. I didn't really know him at all.

No one knows what Judas said. In John's Gospel he does not say a word, but where he stands says it all. After he has led some 200 Roman soldiers and the temple police to the secret garden where Jesus is praying, Judas stands with the militia. Even when Jesus comes forward to identify himself, Judas does not budge. He is on the side with the weapons and the handcuffs, and he intends to stay there.

Or maybe it was not his own safety that motivated him. Maybe he just fell out of love with Jesus. That happens sometimes. One day you think someone is wonderful and the next day he says or does something that makes you think twice. He reminds you of the difference between the two of you and you start hating him for that -- for the difference -- enough to begin thinking of some way to hurt hm back.

I remember being at a retreat once where the leader asked us to think of someone who represented Christ in our lives. When it came time to share our answers, one woman stood up and said, "I had to think hard about that one. I kept thinking, Who is it who told me the truth about myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?" According to John, Jesus died because he told the truth to everyone he met. He was the truth, a perfect mirror in which people saw themselves in God's own light.

What happened then goes on happening now. In the presence of his integrity, our own pretense is exposed. In the presence of his constancy, our cowardice is brought to light. In the presence of his fierce love for God and for us, our own hardness of heart is revealed. Take him out of the room and all those things become relative. I am not that much worse than you are nor you than I, but leave him out of the room and there is no room to hide. He is the light of the world. In his presence, people either fall down to worship him or do everything they can to extinguish his light.

A cross and nails are not always necessary. There are a thousand ways to kill him, some of them as obvious as choosing where you will stand when the showdown between the weak and the strong comes along, others of them as subtle as keeping your mouth shut when someone asks you if you know him.

Today, while he dies, to not turn away. Make yourself look in the mirror. Today no one gets away without being shamed by his beauty. Today no one flees without being laid bare by his light.

--Barbara Brown Taylor, from the anthology Bread and Wine

Received in an e-mail yesterday . . .



"A Letter To Veterans"

There is a certain bond between those who have served in the military.
Veterans come in all sizes, shapes and persuasions and don't
necessarily always agree, but we cover each other's backs. Especially
among those who have trained for or seen the horrors of war directly
and are now committed to a peaceful world. When we hear a veteran speak
about combat it does something to us. Even among non-combat vets there
is empathy for the suffering we know will be expressed. There is guilt
about what more we could have done. Surviving veterans know each
other's pain.

Combat vets served during the very hardest of times. Vietnam and Iraq
are the nadir of empire, and we have seen the bloody entrails when
bullets and bombs go wrong and a country turns its back. Like the Light
Brigade, we were sent on missions we couldn't have won, and shouldn't
have won if we could. We ended up killing and being killed for the
wrong reasons or for no reason at all. These wars were fool's errands
that made the few rich and left the many with too much pain to
remember. As the war of occupation in Iraq nears completion of five
bloody years with 4,000 Americans and over a million Iraqi deaths,
Americans, especially veterans, have an increased awareness of how
occupation destroys the occupier as well as the occupied.

But who is there to tell? The people back home, misled by the Bush
administration and the media? The media waved flags and cheered the war
on, blinding America to the coming burdens, sufferings and deaths of
our own soldiers and of the Iraqi people as their country and lives
were destroyed. There are deep wounds, both of the body and spirit that
our veterans bring back home, if they come back at all, to the country
they served, not always proudly but with love.

Many now are sick of the so-called glory, sick of the lame excuses
that send young men and women to fight in a war for oil and empire to
make the few wealthy, gorged with their own power, while hundreds of
thousands are reduced to desperate, haunted lives because of lies.

That is why from March 13-March 16, U.S. veterans who served in Iraq
and Afghanistan will testify to what is really happening day in and day
out, on the ground in these occupations. It is called Winter Soldier
and is organized by IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War).

Iraq Veterans Against the War intends, by telling their stories, that
they begin to heal not only themselves but also our country. This is
the second version of Winter Soldier, the first being the testimony
given by Vietnam veterans in 1971, consequently made into a full-length
documentary of the same name.

But the name goes back even further to another time in history, a
period when Americans were the ones being occupied by a foreign power.
Tom Paine, then a foot soldier at Valley Forge in 1776 wrote, "These
are the times that try men's souls.

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis,
shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now,
deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Following Winter Soldier on Wednesday, March 19, and marking five
years of occupation in Iraq, national and local peace groups are
calling for a day of non violent civil resistance and direct action in
Washington D.C.

Veterans For Peace, a national organization of vets dedicated to
raising public awareness of the true costs and consequences of
militarism and war is inviting all veterans to join in a massive
Veterans March for Peace throughout the Capital on March 19.

Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans
Against the War and other veterans groups dedicated to peace do not
intend to desert the country in its time of need. Service men and women
take an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution (and the country)
against all enemies foreign and domestic. These days it is clear that
the real enemies are our own so called leaders. As veterans we look
forward to another chance to serve, this time, as citizens to free
America from the evils that imperil us and the world: an administration
spun out of control, wreaking our economy, polluting the earth, waging
preemptive wars of aggression and killing millions in our name. These
are the times that try men's (and women's) souls. Please join us.

To find out more about Winter Soldier and March 19 google Veterans for
Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War and/or 5 Years too Many. Actual
web sites are: http://www.veteransforpeace.org/;
http://www.5yearstoomany.org/; http://ivaw.org/

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The video below includes brief interviews with some Iraq Veterans Against the War as well as combat re-enactments staged during demonstrations in New York.