Gaia Community: maryw's Blog

Catholics and Anglicans Talking About Equality and Justice

http://maryw.gaia.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:16:37 GMT

Received from the organization Call to Action via e-mail today -- MW

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An Open Letter to our Sisters and Brothers in Christ in the Anglican Tradition

We greet you in the name of the One who unites us all. We were disappointed with the Vatican's announcement of a stream-lined process for Anglican conversion to Roman Catholicism for individuals and dioceses who do not support women's and LGBT equality.

The Anglican tradition embodies a courageous history of seeking reform in the face of church injustice. In the last decades, you have built on that history and stood strongly in support of marginalized women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in your faith tradition. We have watched and supported your struggles over the years to welcome all God's people equally to ministerial leadership. You should stand proud.

The majority of Catholics in the United States also hope for a day when we might be able to say that we, too, have heeded the gospel call for justice within our own church leadership. Studies show that 83% of U.S. Catholics believe that it is morally wrong to discriminate against homosexuals (Contemporary Catholic Trends Survey) and 61% of U.S. Catholics believe that women should be priests (National Catholic Reporter Survey). We know the numbers are similar and growing in many other countries around the globe. The kin-dom is at hand.

So while a few church officials cast lots for the allegiance of a small remnant of Christians who continue to favor discrimination, we know the majority of the faithful will continue to support all God's people equally.

We pray for a time when our church officials will also come to know the blessings that come from living, not as a divided community, but as one people united with God.

With peace,

Jim FitzGerald, Executive Director of Call To Action

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Call To Action (CTA) is a Catholic movement working for equality and justice in the Church and society. An independent national organization of over 25,000 people and 50 local chapters, CTA believes that the Spirit of God is at work in the whole church, not just its appointed leaders.

Tags: women in the priesthood, LGBT community, equality, justics, Anglican, Catholic

Veni Creator Spiritus

http://maryw.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:19:47 GMT

Ahhhh, Eureka!

Today while wandering around YouTubeland, I stumbled across a treasure: a recording of the Taize chant-prayer-hymn, "Veni Creator Spiritus." It's a beautifully melodic prayer of need, yearning, and gratitude. Simply exquisite . . . it never fails to send chills down my spine. So here it is. Savor and enjoy.

More information on Taize, including podcasts and muscial selections, is available here.

VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS (Taiz

Tags: taize, prayer, chant, Veni Creator Spiritus

What did you want to be when you grew up?

http://maryw.gaia.com — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:09:13 GMT

Truth be told: I wanted to be a dog when I grew up.

I'm in the middle of writing a semi-autobiographical novel right now, and I've incorporated this early career choice of mine in one of the chapters. The central character in the novel is a young girl who has developed a fear of apparitions of the Virgin Mary. She seeks ways to prevent the Virgin Mary from making any appearances before her eyes, and for a time she believes that becoming a dog might just do the trick.

If you're curious, below I've posted an excerpt from that chapter, which is written in the second person.

Woof woof,
Mary

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Really: what were those beams of light streaming out from the hands of the Mother of God? Everyone seemed to think they were beams of grace, or love, or peace, or something else intangibly exquisite. You weren’t so sure. Something about them reminded you of the death rays that flashed out of those Martian spaceships in War of the Worlds. The Blessed Mother's frequent pronouncements that one would have much to suffer was pretty much the same thing as a death ray, in your opinion. Perhaps a slow-acting death-ray, but a death-ray nonetheless.

So it was that by age eight, you had already decided you wanted to grow up to be a dog. Certainly, you thought, the Mother of God would not be interested in making any Ethereal Appearances before dogs, or in beaming any death rays down on them. And you had grown quite close to Sally, the family dog who had become your guard and protector against Blessed Apparitions. Now she would also be your teacher and your mentor.

You began beckoning the metamorphosis by sticking a rope into the back of your pants to create a tail, and by wearing knee pads to facilitate movement on all fours. Your parents not only humored you, they encouraged you. They patted you on the head. They call to you just like they’d call to Sally – “Here, girl, here girl!” And, although you were expected to eat dinner at the table with the rest of the human beings, your mother Mildred occasionally placed a bowl of water on the floor for you to lap to your heart’s content.

Your big sister, Lara, was the only one in the family who was unhappy with your ambition to be a dog. Something had changed between you two when Lara began middle school that year. You sensed something was amiss when she started putting rollers in her hair at night, and when she began to wear dresses voluntarily. Whatever it was, it broke down the sisterly camaraderie you had both enjoyed. She did not smile at your canine whimpers, she ignored your howls, and sometimes when your parents weren’t looking, she’d angrily yank your tail out. You were unable to make Lara understand that dogs were the undercover saviors of the world, although it seemed so obvious to you. After all, they spoke a primordial language! They knew secret smells! They heard sounds no human could hear! They relished naps and backyards and red meat! But no amount of coaxing and nuzzling from you could get Lara to accept your desire to be a big, noisy dog -- a rangy mongrel with bushy black fur and eyes as bright as apples.

Despite Lara’s displeasure, you practiced your craft every day. You became an expert at lolling in the sun and scratching your ears with your hind legs. You learned to roll ferociously in the grass as a way to soothe itches on your back. Sometimes, when you felt sure no one was looking, you defecated in the back yard as you’d seen Sally and the other family dogs doing. And you always howled along with your mentors when police sirens screamed in the distance...

Tags: Q&R, childhood, purpose, meaning, calling, career

What's the best story you've heard recently?

http://maryw.gaia.com — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:27:23 GMT

Chapter 1: I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost..... I am helpless. It is not my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2: I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I do not see it. I fall in again. I cannot believe I am in the same place, but it is not my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3: I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in -- it is a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4: I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5: I walk down another street.

--Portia Nelson, "Autobiography in Five Short Chapters"

Tags: QaR, stories, story, tale

What makes you feel safe?

http://maryw.gaia.com — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:13:07 GMT

Often it was the small, barely noticeable details, the sights and smells and sounds of existence, that carried me forth from day to day with lightness and gratitude while growing up on Agnes Avenue. I recall a brief time of sleeping in my parents' bed - it helped to quell the nightmares I had had since they'd first brought me home from St. Anthony's Infant Home. I would fall asleep in the wide bed, between my mother and father, and at some point early in the evening, my father would carry me back to my own room and gently tuck me in to my own bed. It became a cherished childhood ritual. I always pretended to remain asleep while my father carried me, because if I'd managed to fool him well enough, he seemed to cradle me with a deeper tenderness, taking his time, walking extra slowly, being extra quiet so as not to wake me. He would lay me in my bed with great care and gentleness, place the blanket over me softly, plant a small kiss my forehead, and tiptoe away. The care that he took with this near-nightly routine seemed to chase some of my nightmares away.

Later, when I became convinced that it was all right for me to fall asleep alone in my own bed, I found the sound of water rushing through the pipes in the house to be uniquely soothing. The bathroom with the big tub was just down the hall from my bedroom, and sometimes my father would take a late evening soak if he had had an extra long day at work. The whooshing sound that filled my room as the tub filled with water - I suppose it was a kind of white noise - sent me into a dreamy, happy state in which I knew no lasting harm would come to me. There was a sense of flowing with life, with the rush of the water, with the enveloping warmth that I knew was filling the tub. Perhaps it was another way of being carried. And perhaps it was my first taste of what I would later come to know as contemplation.

(Excerpted from a writing assignment I penned while reading Elizabeth Andrews' book "Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir")

Tags: Q&R, safe, secure

A Letter from My Pastor to My Husband

http://maryw.gaia.com — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:45:45 GMT

Yesterday my husband, an agnostic, received this kindhearted letter from the pastor of my church. I'm touched by its graciousness. I admire the skillful way that Father Mike balances the demands of the institutional Church, the diversity of the congregants, the beckonings of the holy spirit, and his own conscience --

Dear Kirk:

Within our Faith Community of St. Thomas More, we are blessed to have a number of people whose spouse is not Catholic.

Some worship within their own Faith Tradition, others worship with their spouses and families here at St. Thomas More, and others, for a variety of reasons, may not be actively participating in any Faith Community.

This letter is simply meant to say that we are aware of your presence; and that we know, in varying degrees, you are in our midst and one with us. Know that we support you in your faith journey, and we are grateful for the support you extend to your spouse and your family.

This letter is also meant to be an invitation to you, if you so desire, to deepen your commitment to our Faith Community by becoming Catholic.

If you have an interest or desire to move in this direction, please contact .... our Faith Formation Director or me. We would be pleased to give you whatever information you may need in order to think about such a decision.

Please know that we love you as you are! In the spirit of Christian hospitality, though, we would be remiss if we did not, from time to time, extend a more formal invitation.

May these last days of summer be filled with great peace for you and yours!

Sincerely in Christ,
Rev. Michael Ratajczak
Pastor

Tags: hospitality, Christianity, Catholic Church

Solar Eclipse Meditation

http://maryw.gaia.com — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:26:35 GMT

A friend sent me a link to this video, which uses the opportunity of the July 21-22 solar eclipse for a guided meditation that embraces and balances masculine and feminine energies. I thought I'd share it here.

Worldwide Guided Meditation for July 21-22nd Solar Eclipse - Kath

Tags: solar eclipse, sacred masculine, divine feminine

Contemplation Is Communal

http://maryw.gaia.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:16:22 GMT

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, finding 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.

Tags: contemplation, meditation, Centering Prayer, Cynthia Bourgeault

How did you meet your partner?

http://maryw.gaia.com — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:01:23 GMT

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)

Tags: QaR, relationships, connections, partners, meeting

Rest in Peace, Dear Odetta

http://maryw.gaia.com — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:20:22 GMT

Odetta sings "Glory Halleluja" at Garrison Institute event

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

Tags: Odetta

barack like me

http://maryw.gaia.com — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:48:24 GMT

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.

Tags: Barack Obama, golden shadow, salvation, messiah

My American Prayer

http://maryw.gaia.com — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:26:09 GMT

American Prayer - Dave Stewart (Barack Obama Music Video)

Tags: Barack Obama, American Prayer

Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler

http://maryw.gaia.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:54:11 GMT

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.

Tags: spirituality, religion, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, faith, belief, atheism, theism

Easter: What Happened to Jesus?

http://maryw.gaia.com — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:21:27 GMT

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.

Tags: Easter, resurrection, ascension, archetype, mysticism

Truth to Tell: A Good Friday Reflection

http://maryw.gaia.com — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:31:17 GMT

crucifix

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

Tags: Good Friday

Winter Soldier

http://maryw.gaia.com — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:19:38 GMT

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/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

IVAW Takes Manhattan - Operation First Casualty

Tags: Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace

Super Tuesday

http://maryw.gaia.com — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:15:55 GMT

Happy big fat Super Tuesday.
Voting is sexy again.
Joyeux Mardi Gras.
Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

Tags: Voting, Obama, Mardi Gras

The Rhythm of Love: An Advent Reflection by Ronald Rolheiser

http://maryw.gaia.com — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:49:48 GMT

Saint John of the Cross, in The Living Flame of Love, compares our pre-Advent selves to green logs that have been thrown into a fire, the fire of love. Green logs, as we know, do not immediately burst into flame. Rather, being young and full of moisture, they sizzle for a long time before they reach kindling temperature and take into themselves the fire that is around them. So, too, the rhythm of love: only the really mature can burst into flame within community. The rest of us are still too green, too selfish, too damp.

What helps change this is precisely the tension in our lives. In carrying properly our unfulfilled desires, we sizzle and slowly let go of the dampness of selfishness. In carrying tension we come to kindling temperature and are made ready for love.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest and scientist, noticed that sometimes when you put two chemicals into a test tube they do not automatically unite. They only unite at a higher temperature. They must first be heated to bring about unity. There's an entire anthropology and psychology of love in that image. In order to love we must first be brought to a higher psychic temperature. What brings us there? Sizzling in tension: not resolving the tensions of our lives prematurely; not sleeping with the bride before the wedding.

Advent should not be confused with Lent. The crimson-purple of Advent is not the black-purple of Lent. The former symbolizes yearning and longing, the latter repentance. The spirituality of Advent is about carrying tension without prematurely resolving it so that we do not short-circuit the fullness that comes from respecting love's rhythms. Only when there is enough heat will there be unity. To give birth to what's divine requires the slow patience of gestation.

The sublime has to be waited for. In shorthand, that's Advent.

Father Ronald Rolheiser is a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He is an internationally recognized community-builder, retreat director, and author.

Tags: Advent, waiting, yearning, spirituality

Just This Day

http://maryw.gaia.com — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:11:39 GMT

Just this moment, I received this in an "e-connect" from La Casa de Maria, a Santa Barbara interfaith retreat center:

About Just This Day

Elizabeth Edmunds had an idea that has become a vision, which is to get people to stop together on one day: NOVEMBER 28th. She has invited organisations and faiths to open their doors to everyone who wishes to take part on November 28th by simply being still.

Her wider invitation to the entire world population is to ask everyone to switch their mobile phones to silent mode for some time on the day, and to just take 3 minutes to allow their minds to also fall quiet.

This is why:

Our world is busy and in the turmoil
we forget we all share the same space.
Families, communities
and countries live with conflict,
poverty and disease.
How can we make a difference?
STOP
For Just This Day
Go beyond nationality, religious difference or belief
and remember the still, silent presence
where everything is united.
That space is the same.
In cities or fields.
Up mountains or in valleys.
In work, study or play.
In fortune or adversity.
In peace or conflict.
In fact wherever YOU are.
It belongs to us all.

The idea of Sharing in Stillness is how Just This Day was born:

Just This Day was started by a mother, grandmother, teacher and student. Approaching her sixtieth year, Elizabeth found the divisions in families, societies, nations and even between religions and faiths, deeply sad. "Surely" she thought "this is not how we were designed to live?"

"If life has taught me anything, it is that fundamentally everybody is the same in wishing for happiness for themselves and those they love. If that circle is extended, the wish for happiness for others must expand with it."

The idea for Just This Day came to Elizabeth from two clear observations. First, that stillness exists. Second, when a person or a group of people are still, the power of that stillness has a tangible, palpable and positive effect.

To sit or be still knowing that the circle of well wishers of the world was your family, will she believes, be more powerful than any amount of political debate, more effective than any action.

Imagine what the effect of being still on Just This Day with thousands of other people could have? It is something anybody, whatever nationality, race, religion, age or gender can do.

The idea of joining together as a worldwide family on November 28th has already received a clear and positive response. This is something we CAN all do. We can allow ourselves to believe that there is a real possibility that by joining humanity in stillness we can make a difference.

SWITCH YOUR MOBILE PHONE AND MINDS TO SILENT FOR JUST THIS DAY

Tags: stillness, silence, world community

If you had to lose your vision, what would you look at today?

http://maryw.gaia.com — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:35:28 GMT

Honestly, the first answer that came to me:

I would look at Farland's exquisite blog!

A feast for more than just the eyes ...

Tags: QaR, vision, beauty, eyes, seeing, eyesight