The last time I got lost was when I "lost it."

Lost my cool while driving, that is.

I currently live in southern California, land of hot, howling, horrific traffic. I know that there are places in the world where it is worse -- Tijuana, Mexico, for example, can be a frightening place just to be a pedestrian. I do visit there on occasion, but it's not where I live and drive.

I've actually become rather spoiled now because I work out of my home, with stores and grub and supplies nearby, and don't need to drive that much. Years ago, when I had to be at an office at eight in the morning five days a week, I could never tell how long it would take me to get to work. What was normally a twenty-minute drive (under relatively traffic-less conditions) could turn into a two-hour journey through hell if it had rained (southern Californians simply cannot handle rainy roads) or if there had been fender-benders. Eventually I took to listening to cassettes and CDs of good music, or lectures, and was able to savor the hours spent in the car that way. And sometimes I would practice a kind of "traffic tonglen," breathing in my own irritation as well as the frustration and anger of my fellow drivers, and "sending out" the warm sunlight on my forearms, the smell of good coffee, the remnants of the previous night's joyful dream, the radiant inner stillness that contemplative prayer had allowed me to touch.

I prided myself on how good a driver it made me: oh so calm and gentle, always giving people the benefit of the doubt, allowing access to my lane, not taking it personally if someone cut me off or tailed me. After all, we Cali drivers were really all in this together, and our frustrations were only temporary experiences, nothing to write home about, nothing we'd remember on our deathbeds ...

A couple of months ago, however -- after being spoiled by not having to drive daily, I was returning home from church (of all places) on a late Sunday morning. I was on the freeway, getting ready to pass an onramp. A line of cars was merging onto the freeway. Following the rules of polite traffic: each freeway driver was letting one person merge in front of them: freeway car, merger, freeway car, merger -- you, then me, then you, then me. It's what fair and right and decent.

And then a man in a pickup truck decided to break the rule. In front of me, on this pleasant Sunday morning.

I had done the right thing: let one car in front of me. This man in the truck decided he needed to be in front of me too. He wanted to break into the line, when what he was supposed to do was pull in behind me -- where there was actually plenty of space, because there were no cars directly behind me.

And the race was on.

I sped up and moved closer to the car in front of me to block him out. He also sped up, and actually started driving on the shoulder of the freeway, determined to get in front of me. He managed to edge over and so I had to let him in -- unless I planned on letting him sideswipe me. Okay asshole, go ahead, get in there if you goddammed have to.

And then he gave me the finger and did that thing that drivers do when they rarin' to seriously piss off the people behind them. He slowed down -- way, way down. I watched him as he kept checking his rearview mirror, wanting to get a reaction out of me. I wouldn't stoop to giving him the satisfaction of honking or flipping him a bird. Instead I drove with a smooth poker face, right up on his tail, as he continued his slow drive, trying his hardest to piss me off. And I certainly was pissed -- but beyond driving about three inches from his tailpipe, I wasn't going to let him see it in my face or in my gestures. Motherfucker, I am in the right, I am better than you and holier than you and cooler than you, and I am going to teach you a lesson. You don't deserve to be driving within a mile of me, you prick. Yeah, shithead, keep on looking in your rearview mirror and swearing. Make my day.

So we drove like this, me right up in his junky-truck ass at about fifty mph, for the next mile or so, until my exit came up.

What had happened to my traffic tonglen? What had happened to the Peaceful Driver? I really cannot say. She'd "gotten lost," somehow ...

But to honor those wonderful drivers out there who manage to not get lost in irritation over annoying but usually inconsequential actions by other drivers, I offer this 1996 praise song from Geggy Tah, entitled "Whoever You Are."

(You were still a jerk, though, Mr.Truckbutt who pushed in front of me. I'm sorry but it's true.)

Today is Ascension Sunday. Occurring (approximately) forty days after Easter's resurrection, it's a celebration of the transformation and redemption of Christ's humanity. Christian communities gather to rejoice in this life of the risen Christ, this transformative current flowing through the Eucharist. In Acts, we are given the story of the apostles who look on intently as Jesus is "lifted up," into the sky, with a "cloud [taking] him from their sight." Men in white garments then appear, asking the apostles, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?"

For Christ, the Annointed, is not really in the sky. Christ is here, broken and whole, wounded and healing, brightly hidden in the depths of our being.

As Father Thomas Keating notes in The Mystery of Christ, "The grace of the Ascension offers a still more incredible union, a more entrancing invitation to unbounded life and love. This is the invitation to enter into the cosmic Christ -- into his divine person, the Word of God, who has always been present in the world ... Christ is "the light that enlightens everyone," [John 1:9] -- the God who is secretly at work in the most unexpected and hidden ways. This is the Christ who disappeared in his Ascension beyond the clouds, not into some geographical location, but into the heart of all creation. In particular, he has penetrated the very depths of our being, our separate-self-sense has melted into his divine Person, and now we can act under the direct influence of his Spirit. Thus, even if we drink a cup of soup or walk down the street, it is Christ living and acting in us, transforming the world from within. This transformation appears in the guise of ordinary things --  [even] in the guise of our seemingly insignificant daily routine."

Check out "Christ Is Alive," (sweetly1975-ish), the recessional hymn I heard at Mass today:

Christ is alive! Let Christians sing.
The cross stands empty to the sky.
Let streets and homes with praises ring.
Love, drowned in death, shall never die.

Christ is alive! No longer bound
to distant years in Palestine,
But saving, healing, here and now,
and touching every place and time.

In every insult, rift, and war,
where color, scorn, or wealth divide,
Christ suffers still, yet loves the more,
and lives, where even hope has died.

Women and men, in age and youth,
can feel the Spirit, hear the call,
And find the way, the life, the truth,
revealed in Jesus, freed for all.

Christ is alive, and comes to bring
good news to this and ev'ry age,
till earth and sky and ocean ring
with joy, with justice, love and praise.

--Brian Wren

Small Moves:  Reflections From Your Friendly Neighborhood Contemplative

I love that scene near the end of the movie Contact, after astronomer Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) has been tesseracted through several wormholes to meet with an alien intelligence. This intelligence has "uploaded" her memories, appearing as her beloved father on a starlit beach - a wisely hospitable gesture that, the alien explains, makes such momentous meetings easier on the newbie, the one who is having her first close encounter. Ellie has many, many questions she wants to ask: who are you, what is the history of your species, how did you create this traveling machine, to which the alien answers -- using a well-worn phrase of her father's: "small moves, Ellie. Small moves." In other words: this is only the initial meeting, a first step of many. Let us take our time on this journey, foot by foot, bit by bit. There is no need to know everything, say everything, solve everything, at this particular moment. Answers and actions unfold in the by and by ... Even then, don't they usually lead to more questions, more uncertainties, more wild and woolly paradoxes...?  And though evolution and transformation does have its grand cataclysmic moments, much of it seems to occur through seemingly small, even hidden, moves tucked deep within the folds of time. Imagine the countless adaptations and mutations it took for humans to become what they are now. Or how a drop of water, which, joined with millions of other drops over the eons, carves great canyons into rock.

A few years ago the French Carmelite mystic Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) paid me a visit in one of my dreams. Therese, often referred to as the "Little Flower," is a kind of saint of "small moves." Fresh from an Air France flight, camouflaged in a wool cap and Nirvana T-shirt, Therese a la grunge, she wanted to take a tour of my life - touch all its tiny little details, the textures of my day to day existence. I was a little ashamed to let her see my messy home office, our sink full of gummy dishes, our backyard overgrown with half-dead weeds. What must this young nun, accustomed to a neat and orderly convent life, think of all this mess? But Therese seemed to enjoy the external disorder of my life. With a grin, she peered at one of my disheveled bookshelves as if it were a field of exotic wildflowers.

Therese's "mission" in her short life was to teach the "little way," that is: the way of spiritual childhood, the path of trust and surrender - a way that we find right where we are, day by day, in the messy sacredness of the small, the momentary, and the ordinary. Although there are New Testament references, in the gospels, about the necessity of "becoming as little children," Therese usually referred to texts from the Hebrew scriptures when explicitly teaching her little way: "Whoever is a little one, let him come to me" (Proverbs 9:4). "For to him that is little, mercy will be shown" (Wisdom 6:7). There is nothing cloyingly sentimental about spiritual childhood. It is a situating of oneself, with awe, reverence, and curiosity, before this wild Mystery that births us and surrounds us, with a trust that the Kosmos is quietly unfolding as it should, in us, through us, and with us. It is the delighted recognition that we arrived here through a Mother and Father, through forces beyond our grasp. From this perspective, then (referred to by integralistas as "the second face of God") humility is never a demeaning of oneself. It is an embracing of what is.

These days my life is characterized by small moves rather than grand cataclysmic shifts. (Though of course, that could change at any moment!) Living with dysthymia - an on-and-off mild depression that I currently manage with supplements, frequent walks in sunlight, talks with a spiritual director, laughter, and prayer - is teaching me to focus my limited energy into small projects and tiny disciplines: toothbrushing as a spiritual practice, writing as prayer, editing as cognitive workout and income, the yoga of napping with cats, small-group contemplative volunteer work, and - when ambition has got the better of me - dishwashing and pulling weeds.

And bathing. I really dig bathing: soaking in the sacrament of the present moment.

Lectio Divina

She would never have defined it as such, but back in the day my mom practiced Lectio Divina ("divine reading") in the bathtub - often with the bathroom door open, so that a passerby might catch a glimpse of her relaxing in the hot water, reading her leatherbound King James Bible and smoking Kent cigarettes. What long, luxurious, holy baths! She usually kept her bathing Bible on the shelf underneath the medicine cabinet. I'd open it sometimes while using the toilet. Its water-wrinkled pages were full of tiny little pencil marks - apparently she kept track of where she started and ended her readings. I saw that she would read just little bits at a time - from a few verses to a few paragraphs.

Long after she'd lost patience with churchrules, until the day she died, my mother maintained a downhome devotional life by sitting and smoking and soaking in the Word.

Lectio Divina is an ancient art - apparently practiced at one time by all Christians and kept alive in the monastic tradition - involving a slow, contemplative praying of the scriptures. Monastics divide Lectio in to four "movements": lectio (reading/listening), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation).

Lectio - the first movement in the prayer, requires us to quiet down and read slowly - usually just a few lines, perhaps a couple of paragraphs. Since the voice of Spirit often speaks very softly and intimately, one reads with an attitude of silence and reverence. In this receptive mode, we listen for one word or short phrase that attracts us, that speaks to us in a personal way. During meditatio - the second movement in the prayer, we take that chosen word or phrase and ruminate on it, ponder it. We turn it over in our minds, and allow it to interact with our inner world of memories, concerns, and ideas. Thirdly, during oratio, we inwardly speak to God, interacting honestly with the Spirit as you would with a deeply loving other. Depending on the selected word or the phrase, one might express yearning, gratitude, anger, desolation, love, sadness, joy, peace, etc. Finally, with contemplatio, one rests in silence with the chosen word, simply being present to Presence.

Lectio Divina has alternative forms, and can be adapted in a variety of ways for practice with small groups. Today practitioners see it as a way to open up and "pray with" a sacred book. "Sacred book" can be broadly defined -- the New Testament, a collection of Rumi's poetry, a non-scriptural text, the realms of nature, a painting, events in history, one's own life experience. . .

Most often I practice Lectio with the written word - and once in a while with song lyrics. On occasion I'll keep a notebook of the phrases I've chosen for pondering. I may spend several days or a week or more with a particular phrase, listening to various nuances, inquiring into its meaning, hearing its truths, responding or reacting to it, observing with interest when it synchronistically resonates with some event in my life, perhaps encouraging me to take some action, offering me a long-awaited answer to an inner dilemma, or even kicking me in the ass.

A few of my past lectio phrases include:

"Seek, and you will miss." (Anthony de Mello)

"Love one another as I have loved you" One-word version: "Love." (gospel of John)

"There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." (Rumi)

"How long must I climb?" (Coldplay)

"You came out of nothing, isn't that something?" (Fr. Thomas Keating)

"Faith is the bird that sings in the night" (Tagore)

"Persevere" (Hebrews 12:1)

"All I need is your extra time and your kiss." (Prince)

"Jesus wept." (one of the gospels)

The practice of Lectio can allow a single word or phrase to bloom and release its hidden fragrances into our lives. It can also liberate myth. As Beatrice Bruteau writes in Radical Optimism: "The [biblical] stories are about us. It is to us that the angel of the Anunciation proclaims that through the power of the Holy Spirit we will bring forth from our emptiness divine life...

            "It is to us that the baptismal voice is addressed, saying, ‘You are my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.' And if we really hear that, we will be driven into a wilderness wherein we will struggle with the question of what that means and what its implications are. And eventually we will find, as was foreshadowed at our birth, that we are lying in the manger as food for the world."

I most often use the Bible for both solo and group Lectio. Over the years, its wisdom has washed through me and through my Lectio comrades like a cool subterranean stream. Or perhaps we're... luxuriously soaking in it. I guess I really am my mother's daughter.

Centering in the Hood

For several years, I facilitated a centering prayer group at a Catholic church in a poor neighborhood near downtown San Diego. We would meet once a week to do a 20-30 minute centering sit together, followed up with group Lectio Divina, informal sharing, or one of Thomas Keating's Spiritual Journey videotapes. (An excellent series of videos, by the way, which elucidates the Christian journey in light of recent understandings about development, spiritual stages, psychology, etc. These videos are where I first heard about Ken Wilber).

It was a lively little group of diverse folks leading busy lives. And the church, situated just a few yards away from a busy trolley stop, was never a quiet place. We'd sometimes use electric fans to create white noise while we meditated, but usually the sounds of the city would come through - the trolley horn, police sirens, young men yelling and breaking out in fights. The Ballet Folklorico used the church's rec room to practice, so there would usually be Latin beats coming through the walls. Kids ran up and down the hall outside of the room where we met. So we often joked that we were getting in some very good centering practice - learning to sit still and let all those wild distractions come and go as we inhaled and exhaled ...

Centering prayer involves consistently consenting to the presence and action of the Spirit within. Consent is anchored through the use of a short "sacred word," (not the same as a mantra) which is silently repeated only when meditator becomes actively engaged with thoughts - including sense perceptions, feelings, images, memories, reflections, etc. The idea is to gently let the thoughts come and go while maintaining the intention. With practice, one eventually "falls into" contemplation, a state which, in Keating's words, involves "the opening of mind and heart - our whole being - to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions." It can be a deeply restful time; it also helps folks become more present to the present moment during their lives outside of the sit. As one practices nonattachment by letting the thoughts come and go, one can more readily offer their mind and their heart to whatever the moment requires.

Anyway, I just have to share this story. I know this is long already.

We had been listening to taped discussions on the relationship between contemplation and action. I think we had also recently done a group lectio on Matthew 25: 31-46: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you ... a stranger and make you welcome ... sick or in prison and go to see you?" ... "In so far as you did this to one of the least ... you did it to me."

Dennis, the attorney-saxophonist in our group, and our most steadfast contemplative, suggested that we needed to do something active together as a group. Our church was surrounded by the sick and the hungry: homeless people who slept on nearby sidewalks, not too far from the trolley tracks. Why not gather some items to hand out to them, and have this gesture become the "active" part of our group contemplative prayer?

I resisted. I already had my neat, tidy, and safe ways of serving the destitute - by donating to charities and giving old clothes to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. And since I was the facilitator of this group and all, I took it upon myself to explain that activity per se was not really the purpose of a centering prayer group. Although our contemplative practices should naturally weave themselves into our actions - into our lives outside of the two 20-minute sits a day - that "weaving" need not take form as a group activity in any explicit way. And I did my spiel of: "Ultimately contemplation is not personal and private, even though we usually practice the prayer solo. True contemplation is never ‘kept to one's self,' but instead charges all our interactions and becomes a part of everything we do, whether we are eating, changing a diaper, teaching, nursing a dying friend, playing, suffering through an illness, managing a business, fighting injustice ...." Etcetera., etcetera.  In other words: Um, let's not get that close to the homeless people.

But Dennis gently persisted. And when Rosie, everyone's favorite Mexican tia, felt persuaded toward this group action, I figured: well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with giving it a try, as long as we still do the centering prayer. Group members can choose whether or not they want to participate in these giveaways. We might solicit donations from friends and congregants, and pass out goods every other month or so.

Dennis had a very simple plan. (It turned out that this was kind of his thing, giving odds and ends to homeless people. He often kept extra blankets in his car, and on a cold night, if he was driving around and happened to see a street person who looked like he needed a blanket, he'd offer it to him. "They also like bottled water and new white socks," he told us.)

So we began gathering bottled water, crew socks, nutrition bars, and plastic grocery bags. On the day of the handout, we'd place two waters, two pairs of socks, and two food bars in each bag, pile them into the back of Dennis' van, and drive around to the variety of "street camps" nearby. (San Diego has a lot of them, comprised largely of the mentally ill, alcoholics and addicts - and the occasional family with children.)

As a group (generally it was just three of us who did the handouts), we would slowly approach people, and simply ask, "would you like some water and some new socks?"

Almost always, folks really, really wanted the water and the socks. (And only one time did a man ask for more. Reeking of alcohol, he slurred, "baby, what I want iz a hug!" Dennis and I simply grinned, but sweet aunt Rosie took him into her arms. She told us later than he licked her ear.) Especially, heartbreakingly, the street peeps rejoiced over the socks. I was completely undone during that first handout trek, to see the looks of sincere gratitude for a pair of new cotton socks. You would have thought we were giving away gold. I actually felt an odd, sad, shame - oh dear people, can these socks, these small things, make such a difference in your day? Oh please do not thank me so much for these few paltry items - I'm giving you nothing, really ...

I had not expected their gratitude to bring tears to my eyes. Socks! Such ordinary things. Such small moves.

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Link to the Blogopalooza Thread in the I-I Pod

Pelle's post
Jane's post
Ewan's post
Colin's post
Wolfspirit's post
Timelody's post

Pentecost, celebrated this Sunday (fifty days after Easter), commemorates the "descent" of the Holy Spirit into humankind and the beginning of the Christian church as a bearer of the divine breath. I have heard it described as a "reversal" of Genesis'  tower of Babel -- the story of the scattering and confusion of the earth's people who, suddenly many-tongued, could no longer understand one another.

There is a kind of confusion at Pentecost also -- but it is of a different variety, a kind of holy surprise, a great astonishment:

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they [the apostles] were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house ...

Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled wih the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, "Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his own native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphlia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, but Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God." They were all astonished and bewildered, and said to one another, "What does this mean?" ... (Acts 2: 1-13).

                                             

What does this mean?

I think it means that Spirit always seeks ways to "speak" to us (and through us), no matter our tribe, our station in life, level of intelligence, spiritual path or non-path, sense of worthiness ... Spirit communicates with us through the languages available to us. All that is required on our part is an open heart and receptive mind. (And -- I hasten to add -- wise and discerning guides, seasoned elders, lest we fall for the devils appearing as angels of light ...) But even the tiniest crack of an opening in the soul is all the Spirit needs for entry.

In his book The Mystic Heart, Wayne Teasdale spoke of an event that he termed "the second Pentecost" -- a gathering convened by the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, Illinois, in 1993. He suggests that the spirit worked through its atmosphere of cross-religious sharing to give birth to a sense of community among the religions:
 
Initially designed to commemorate the centennial of the first great Parliament, the founders quickly realized that they had an opportunity to contribute something more substantial -- to address the critical issues plaguing the planet: the environmental crisis, social injustice, poverty, malnutrition, disease, the plight of refugees -- 80 percent of whom are women and children -- the need for better education in developing nations, and numerous other threats to peace. . . . 

The Parliament represented the most diverse group of people ever to meet in one place in the history of humankind. Before the event's eight days, I assisted in the planning and served on four committees. During the Parliament itself, I participated in a number of forums, including the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue with the Dalai Lama and in the Assembly. I hoped, prayed, and even knew intuitively that it would represent a turning point. But it greatly exceeded everyone's expectations .... 

                                

Something extraordinary happened during the Parliament's days. The divine showed up and opened everyone, inspiring enthusiasm, mutual trust, receptivity, and a wonderful sense of joy, spontaneity, community, and urgency. We were not of one mind but of one heart. For me as a Christian, the word that best describes this historic moment is Pentecost: the birth of the Christian church, when the Holy Spirit opened the minds and hearts of Jesus' disciples, uniting them in a corporate mystical knowing that illumined their path during the fledgling years of the apostolic age. The Parliament represented a second Pentecost because the spirit was tangibly present, prying hearts and minds open to receive the impulse of new vision. Community was born among the religions. The spirit gave us a whole new paradigm of relationship in the existential experience of community, replacing the old model of separation, mistrust, competition, hostility, and conflict. By supplanting the approach responsible for thousands of wars throughout human history, this new paradigm has enormous meaning. The advent of community between and among members of differing faiths is without parallel; its opportunity is extremely precious, not to be squandered but carefully cultivated and applied to the tasks of building a universal civilization. 

Interspirituality and intermysticism are the terms I have coined to designate the increasingly familiar phenomenon of cross-religious sharing of interior resources, the spiritual treasures of each tradition. Of course everyone isn't participating; really it is only a minority, but its members are the more mystically developed in each tradition, and they each hold great influence. In the third millenium, interspirituality and intermysticism will become more and more the norm in humankind's inner evolution. Europeans often say a person isn't truly educated until they know more than one language. This can also be said of religions: a person is not really fully educated, or indeed "religious," unless they are intimately aware of more than their own faith and ways of prayer...

Here at Zaadz interspiritual journeyer Balder is presenting a wonderful integral exploration of this subject over on his blog -- check out Steps Toward Integral Deep Dialogue!

Welcome, Holy Spirit!