The Gift of the Ashes

The Gift of the Ashes

Walking the dog this morning in a neighborhood frosted by snow. My highly attuned yellow lab/squirrel dog is always a little freaked out by the change of pace, the stark quiet. Last night’s threatening ice has brought the school buses, harried drivers late for work and noise pollution from the interstate to a hush. Robins, cardinals, blue jays, mockingbirds, finches, crows and blackbirds pierce the air with song as they have all come out from their hiding places to find today’s crumbs of bread.

We all yearn for spring, for the thaw,  with its fluorescent green and goldenrod. In the doldrums of the long winter, we are oblivious to spring’s surprises, her thunderstorms and her turbulent tornadoes. We are not ready for what we love. We’re living in a new normal. More ice, more snow, more fire, more wind, less rain and more rain than ever before. More heat will come with summer, more than we think we can bear.

The world is a beautiful and terrifying place all the time and it is where I belong. I belong to the earth, to the rivers, lakes and oceans, to the wind and the air, to the fires that rage, they are all me and I am them. In this biosphere, space ship earth that we are living on, we all get recycled. We are reminded of this on Ash Wednesday, how very recyclable we are. I will say, as I take my finger and smudge it in some dust, push back the hair of those who have come from their precious brows and make the sign of a cross, “from ashes you came and to ashes you shall return.” It’s a sobering reminder that we are all connected through our very birth and death to one another, to creation, that all things capable of life are in fact, in one form or another, still living.

This comforts me.

Check out Sherry’s latest book: reflections from a pastor on homelessness, hidden women of the Bible and her spiritual journey.

I overheard two older men in a coffee shop this morning talking about “little deaths.” One of them was a Wise Old Man, I could tell, he was the one giving the advice to the man who was facing cancer. He talked about the “little deaths” in the form of all the things we lose, the car keys, the wallet, the life we once had, a loved one, our mobility, our freedom. He then said something about attunement. I became aware that I was eavesdropping and then stopped listening, though I could not help but smile. Attunement is simply the act of bringing all things into harmony. This WOM was trying to help the other find harmony in the act of living and dying. It was a beautiful thing to experience, the exchange of loving and caring in the act of comforting through truthfulness and wisdom.

Each day, we have something to give to someone along the way; a smile, a word of encouragement, an expression of hope. Think of all the things the world gives you without ever asking for anything in return. The sun shines, as does the moon, creating day and night, we love the contrast of light and dark and the beautiful moments as it changes. The earth brings food, creation brings rain and all the things that are needed for the conditions of life are provided for us for free. How much more we can offer the earth and one another when we live each day in the mindfulness that we belong to an order much greater than ourselves, and yet we have been invited to experience it, to become attuned to its natural rhythm, to rescue creation, each in our own small way, from the damages done.

This week, to those of us who receive the mark of the cross and follow the Christ on that journey of life and death and resurrection, let us meditate on that phrase, “From ashes you came and to ashes you shall return.” Let it be a reminder that though our bodies belong to the earth, our spirits were meant to soar and we belong to a greater gift than we  could ever give, made real to us in so many ways, every day.  The gift of life unending, the gift of the ashes.

 

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Celebrating Failure

Celebrating Failure

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We are not good at failure. We spend the first quarter of our lives in training to become winners in a world that rejects losers, learning how we can become successful, happy and wealthy beyond our wildest dreams by age twenty-five. We are taught to conquer whatever stands in our way and we generally spend the next portion of our lives trying to overcome hurdles, barriers, chasms, weaknesses, troublesome relationships or disadvantaged situations, scaling the great opportunities of the world with our bare hands. We define our self worth by categories such as successful, moderately successful, unsuccessful or apathetic. We invest in leaders who can guarantee success over and against all the odds, the promise of Trumping failure is a lure we cannot resist. But at some point along the way, though we seek to avoid it at all costs, we often experience a great fall from whatever heights of success we may have achieved, and this fall is known collectively in the modern world as failure. Failure, though we are not very good at accepting it, is, in fact, an inevitable consequence of living.

We do not want to be told while we are wallowing in the misery of our failure that failure is our greatest teacher. But it’s true. We want to hurriedly get back on our feet and be successful again as quickly as possible, because that is what feels good and proves to the world that we are valuable, worthy and can be trusted with responsibility. But what if we shifted our goal? What if we chose to celebrate our failures as much as our successes?

The story goes that whenever a patient of depth psychologist, C.G. Jung would report, after much treatment, a massive failure or break down, he would proclaim, “wonderful, let’s have a glass of wine and celebrate!” Failure was a cause for celebration, in his opinion, because he believed that breakdowns often precipitate breakthroughs. The great mission of human life, he concluded, was not necessarily success, though throughout the course of one’s life, there will be great successes and great failures, but the goal was being fully present on the journey of one’s individuation; coming to the realization that the mission of life is not defined by successes or failures, but by the ability to give birth to one’s very own soul. Success and failure are just methods through which we become. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says, “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Ancient religions view this as the core experience of a faithful life, becoming awakened to the spiritual journey within, as Jesus told his followers a long time ago, the kingdom of heaven is within, it lives in the heart. This journey of the soul’s life takes us beyond the paradigm of opposites such as success and failure, or winning and losing into a third way, the way of transcendence, of resurrection, of peace in the midst of struggle, joy in the center of chaos.

Living with the awareness that we are connected to a greater source of life that cannot fail, at last, because it is not defined by failure or success, is what it means to thrive. To live out of the awareness that we are connected to what is greater than us, creation itself. Creation does not fail, it recycles itself in ever renewed forms. Within us is a presence, a spirit, a created thing, as one of the Christian confessions states, created not made. Human life is part of the created world, and though our physical bodies will change, this spirit within remains connected to what is eternal being, world without end. In the Christian tradition we call it soul, our connection to the eternal. Once we become aware of our soul’s life in the world, we understand that we, in the very essence of who we are, simply cannot fail. It is the false self, not the true self, that convinces us otherwise. Once we encounter the true self, we begin to live out of the source of all being.

Often, becoming who we are created to be involves failing at who we thought we were. The spiritual life in us will continue to subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) try and get our attention to point us to a greater path, the story written upon the walls of our souls. Often this happens through failure. The path of one’s true life in the world does not promise success as we may conceive of it in our day and age, but wholeness.

A wise old man once told me that people do not fail, systems fail, people are not systems. He went on to say, “the Israelites roamed in the wilderness for forty years, did you ever notice that the story says Moses led them in a circular path? You see, they weren’t quite ready for their freedom.”

Sometimes it takes a very long time and many circular paths before we come to a place where we are at peace with failure. But when we get there, we realize we have entered the domain of joy. What failures can you celebrate today?

 

 

 

 

Celebrating Failure

From Chaos to Creation: Awakening To The Gift in You

“I met a man who showed me my life.”

This is what the Samaritan woman said after her life changing, five minute meeting with Jesus at the well where she had come to draw water. The woman with five husbands and one lover, the woman most people would consider disposable, he considered valuable.

I’ve always felt quite close to those dark women that hover in the gospel stories of Jesus’ encounters, always searching the planet for a safe place to call home and ending up trapped, on the wrong side of town; their personas seemed to function like magnets to the Christ Spirit. Perhaps it was the beauty of their wildness that brought out the compassion of the Divine.images

But it happened to me, too, not long ago, I met a person who showed me my life, the potential of all the gifts in me suddenly unfolded like a movie plot about the possibility of me. Some people in this life are seers, not in the superficial kind of psychic way, the ones who charge you a hefty fee for telling you what you might like to hear, that you are a reincarnated princess of some exotic, sunken city and you somehow accidentally fell into this realm where no one really understands your royal attitudes and dispositions. Not in the kind of televangelist or faith healer way, there was no exploitation or the laying on of hands. No, real seers will see you as you are, where you are and show you the beauty of your interior life for free because they understand they are passing on a gift that never belonged to them anyway and the more they channel this gift, the more it becomes real in their own hearts. A sacred, holy and reverent thing that often feels like the games of children. Serious play, that’s how real seeing works, it is an exchanging of the gift of wonder, often without the benefit of conscious reasoning.

If anyone would come into the kingdom of heaven, they must become like a little child, Jesus said.

We have a hard time seeing ourselves, who we really are, that is, the God light in us is often dimmed by our over functioning, technologically stimulated, caffeine driven, entertainment fixated, chemically enhanced, always performing, frantic, barely clinging to sanity self. There simply is little space for the wonder of us to enter into our lives and find space to live and breathe, or perhaps birth a new constellation.

We seem to be obsessed with all the ways in which we fail to see God in the world, or we go to the opposite end of the spectrum and claim that God’s judgment is one of wrath and violence visited upon all of those who refuse to follow a set of narrow rules. While we are consumed with the desire to see something sacred, to belong to something truly good, to get a read on God, we tighten our grip of control over our experience, and that tightness, we might call it uptightness, blocks the very experience we crave and need. We only begin to locate the wonder and mystery in ourselves when we open up and allow God to read us, when we become vulnerable to the Divine, opening our hearts like a storybook, to new possibility.

We read about God all the time, but being read by God is an entirely different experience. It often requires the presence of another, someone who is also seeking to be read by God, to be seen, to open up the heart and take a drink of living water. As a friend is fond of saying, “Our God may be One but it takes two to find Him/Her.” We need to be seen by those who are also on the soul’s journey, for it is in holy friendship that we begin to trust that there is something out there greater than our fear, an experience of Divine love, potential for creation.

In ancient times, there were many seers roaming the land, throughout the history of the people of God, in the Old Testament, we called them the prophets, those diviners who knew where the living water of Spirit was located. In the Old Testament, as Israel moved from loose, tribal affiliations to a more established and united monarchy, seers took on the title of Prophets, women and men who were mediators between the Divine and human realms; many were appointed by the royal court as official court prophets. By the time Jesus came along, these prophets were out of business, the written history (scrolls) had taken precedence over extemporaneous prophesying, as unpredictable as it was, a civilized society needed a more stable form of interpreting the Divine. The written canon (that became the Bible) could be interpreted and this process began to replace the ancient art of seeing.

But Jesus was from the old school; he was a seer, a healer, a Diviner in the larger sense. In the practice of the art of seeing, he broke down the barriers between the rigid, established religious order and the wild and holy Spirit that sought real change in the hearts of people, he brought the sacred back to life in everything he saw and touched, in him, the world was seen by God and was formed into a new creation. Those who opened their hearts to him were changed forever, they were seen, healed, seen through and through, by the Divine and it brought about real change in their lives, holy change, sacred change. Their souls were born into the world through being seen by the true Holy.

It feels a lot like chaos when you are seen by the Divine, when you begin to awaken to the gift in you, but chaos is the beginning of the new creation. It can be through another person, an event, a book, an encounter that points you toward your soul’s journey, to a Divine appointment with the Creator. This happened to the Samaritan woman, too, an explosion, a chaotic intervention in her life, a life in which she had become inescapably trapped, all with the suggestion that she might understand the gift that lived inside of her. “If only you knew the gift,” Jesus said to her, “if only you knew.” Embracing the potential of that gift in herself set her life on a new path.

Something goes off inside of you that feels like an explosion when you encounter the suggestion that you not only know the gift inside of you, but that you begin to act fully out of complete reliance upon the power of that gift, the gift that is connected to the eternal. It is a reorientation to a way of life that we are not accustomed to in our world, the soul’s journey. But the chaos subsides, stabilized by Divine love, and leads the way into new creation, in God we are a new creation, the old world passes away, the endless searching for a person or a place to call home, we have a new fullness, a new space, a holy comforter and companions for the journey.

The lure into the soul’s journey is something we all feel at one time or another. If we say yes to the soul, God will bring encounters and people into our lives that give us the courage to journey forward, more deeply, into the manifestation of the soul’s life in the world. As we do, we learn to navigate by a different system, the system of the Divine, the Holy Spirit, we become more stabilized in this system, the sacred in us and in the world. In the manifestation of the soul’s life in the world, we become part of a greater system of life creation, new possibility and hopeful imagination for the world. In Christianity, we call this the reign of love on earth, the kingdom come, the point at which we come to know love as the most powerful force in the universe and we learn to navigate the world, that is the new creation in us, by the stars of Divine love.

Who is showing you your life? Do you know the gift that you are?

Celebrating Failure

The Jesus Business: Hook or Gift?

Once upon a time, for about a decade or so, I made my living writing and singing songs and jingles. I became rather deft at pitching products like my own rock band, The Evinrudes, and major American brands such as Ford and McDonalds. With a well-honed voice, a quick turn of the phrase and catchy tune, I became quite the pro in the hook selling business. More than a few times, I experienced the power of a popular song to bring people together, performing for large crowds, singing hooks over and into the masses, there was a power there I couldn’t explain, often a rare feeling of oneness in those moments when everybody knows the words to the song and are all singing as one, it felt spiritual, but of course, when it was over, the moment was gone.

Christ Pantocrator - Mosaïque de la Déisis - Sainte-Sophie (Istambul, Turquie)

Christ Pantocrator – Mosaïque de la Déisis – Sainte-Sophie (Istambul, Turquie)

Jesus had once again performed a miraculous deed of healing and the “whole city” was gathered at the door, pressing in to meet him (Mark 1:29-39), they couldn’t say exactly why, drawn by that feeling of Oneness they seemed to feel whenever he was around. He was gaining quite a following, the crowds and masses began gathering wherever he was and everywhere, it felt as if the Spirit were alive again and among the people, that was such a rare feeling, after all, living, as they did, in a culture of fear. Perhaps they had also feared that this feeling would never come again, this spiritual feeling, this good feeling, and they wanted to collect as much of it as they could in the moment before it disappeared.

It was so strange how the word got out because he didn’t advertise anywhere, he didn’t have a three word slogan that you could easily hashtag or get out on twitter, a Youtube video gone viral, he had not appeared on American idol or had a number one hit record, yet, still the news spread somehow and the crowds came in droves.

The temptation must have been enormous. With this new kind of power he had, that even the demons obeyed, to set up shop and make a profit off of these vulnerable masses of people, they were so very desperate for a new solution, just like us, desperate for a cure, for peace, freedom, healing, purpose in life, for someone to relieve them of the great human wound, for that elusive spiritual feeling to come again, for power.

He could have easily built his own temple, his very own stage, he was a carpenter, after all, he knew how to do that sort of thing, and begun charging admission or perhaps, like our early American clergy, charged a pew tax for his services to cover his expenses. They would have paid like people pay for a lottery ticket even when they can’t afford food because hope is worth more than a half-full belly. He could have built a fine reputation and profited greatly off of a career as a charismatic preacher, the numbers would have been off the charts, the mega church of the ancient world. The good programs he could have started would have saved the world, with overflowing ministries for the homeless, children and youth; he could have built a wonderfully resourced Christian education wing and people would come from miles around and donate lots of money to his causes if only he would stay in one place long enough to build something special, it would have been spectacular. He could have become a superstar, this Jesus that would be the Christ.

The crowds, the masses, wanted what he had but they were frustrated because it was not for sale. They couldn’t buy him or his services and it was so agitating because he was always on the move, he was a hard person to get a read on, impossible to get your hooks into him, it always seemed as if he were coming from somewhere else. Instead of staying in one place and building accolades and a popular and effective ministry, he fled to the next town, everyone wanted him to stick around but he rarely gave in, he simply said, “it’s time to go to the neighboring town so that I can proclaim the message for that is what I came out to do.” (1:38)

Jesus was a marketing person’s dream, not only was he always on message, he had “it” whatever “it” is, the power to draw a crowd, to persuade an audience, with special powers and a magnetic persona. A personal manager would have already lined up a book deal and a speaking tour with a reality show in the works, perhaps some theme about surviving the wilderness with Bear Grylls (I would definitely watch that.) It’s just how we think. Fame and prestige equal importance and influence in our world and when someone rejects the opportunity to achieve such, it is unsettling, we don’t quite have a category for it.

In our culture, the Jesus brand is a multi-gazillion dollar industry, complete with a Jesus action figure doll. We clearly know how to buy and sell Jesus, but this story in Mark’s gospel challenges us to ask ourselves the question: do we know how to proclaim the Christ? Are we aware of the difference between marketing and proclaiming? Do we know the difference between a hook and a gift? Jesus speaks of “what he came to do” here in 1:38, that is to proclaim God’s love as the one thing that is flowing in the world that is not for sale; to offer love as a gift, not a product, no strings attached. The reason it is important to keep “proclaiming” this is that it is a really, really hard thing to believe, we have a hard time trusting what we cannot buy.

I find that this elusive Spirit of Christ is not something that can be easily put into nice, neat packages or sermons or dogmas. It’s sometimes difficult for us to separate the mysterious Jesus of the ancient world with the Jesus of our hyper sales, consumerist driven culture.

If we look closely, we understand that Jesus the Christ represents something very different than a brand. For one thing, the Jesus of the ancient world simply doesn’t have the same trappings we do. In Jesus’ ministry, he was not focused on his popularity, he didn’t seem to care much about his personal ratings, his celebrity, or his career, he didn’t focus on profit or even drawing big numbers into his core group, he only had 12 disciples; he didn’t seem to worry too much about funding either, he wasn’t concerned about buildings, or multi-level platforms, he didn’t even heal everyone who desired it, he simply said, “I must do what I came to do” which is to proclaim the message of God’s love as saving medicine for the world and he moved on quickly. He went about proclaiming and healing, proclaiming and healing….not much of a marketing plan, it wouldn’t quite fit into all of our schemes for the quick and easy slogans of brand loyal religion, it’s just what Jesus did.

He simply remained focused on the manifestation of the Spirit in the world, and it spread like wildfire. Everyone he healed went about proclaiming and in their proclaiming, others would find healing and it became a cycle. There really was no formula for this other than his continuous message that he could do nothing except through God, that he and God were One and so he prayed also, that we would participate in this Oneness as his final, earthly prayer.

It seems as if there is a lot of pressure on the church to have the answers to the world’s problems and yet all we really have to offer is a simple love that heals and makes whole. To quote N.T. Niles, “the gospel is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” If we offer this, it is enough.

If we embody Christ, the Christ that emerges from the ancient world, not the brand Jesus we’ve created here in America, but the humble One who refused prestige and glory, if we really have this Christ in us, then the answer to what we focus on becomes simple, it is love. Love that compels the sharing of the news that God heals and restores us to wholeness. This is full time work, by the way, in whatever occupation we are in, love undergirds our inspiration and creative instincts.

Jesus, in his work and mission, tells us a different story about ourselves, a story of how the Spirit works in us and in the world, it is the work of the soul’s life, the work of transformation that occurs primarily at the spiritual level, in the depths of soul. This is a gift that cannot be marketed, bought or sold, it is freely given in hearts that will embrace it, full of love and grace and compassion and truth. God does the rest, we simply give ourselves over to this path and become converted, transformed souls, willing to mine the depths within ourselves and give out of our souls that which God has placed there, pure love. Perhaps the soul that is born of the Spirit is the one, indestructible thing left in this world simply because it is connected to the eternal source of Divine love, God. This is not a message that can be marketed, only proclaimed, it cannot be sold, only given.

As you come to be embraced by this kind of love, you begin to feel the hooks coming out of you, no longer possessed by the frenetic forces that drive you to consume or be consumed. You begin to comprehend love as a gift, not a product, and you become more like love, less like a performer. As you come to know the true essence of your soul, which is love, you feel freer to let go of the other attachments, the ways of being you have learned to survive in a world that conditions you to believe you are a merely a performer, put here to produce goods and services for others and the marketplace. You begin to understand that your worth is connected to your soul, your true worth and true self belong to God’s love, it is not something that can be evaluated by measures such as performance or production. Buying and selling are not even categories in the soul’s realm. As you move closer to Christ in you, you begin to gain clarity about “what you came to do” and realize the source of your true identity is always love, calling you from this ancient story, calling from the center of your being, calling from your heart, “you must do what you came here to do,” giving your self over to the love that is freely given.

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Growing Hollow

Growing Hollow

ImageSanity and order still exist in this world in the realm known as nature.   I am not a nature worshipper, I am a nature lover. I am not a tree shaman, I am a tree hugger. I am not a woods fairy, (yes, I have been told I am a woods fairy) I am a pastor who  falls more deeply in love with nature the longer I spend on this earth. It is roaming through nature in its truest form that I will miss when I leave this world, both in the wild and the tame, and inside every person I meet who allows me to see a little piece of their soul.

There is a force in the world that moves through everything, the ancients had a word for it, ruach, in Hebrew, it means the breath or wind or spirit of God. If you listen to your own breath or listen to any screech, bellow, echo or song of any wild thing, you hear a music that is creation blowing through the hollow of living things. How can you not?

Of course, we don’t understand it fully, we have tried desperately to replace it with another force, that of a conquered wilderness (human souls included.) The wilderness has just simply been a barrier to progress. Now we are in an age where we are understanding that we must learn to somehow live in its balance which requires a deep level of respect for the created world and the ability to simply breathe deeply the air around us.

Now the scientific community seems to be in agreement that if we fail to figure this out, catastrophic consequences will occur, and some will occur anyway, regardless of how much we can reduce our co2 emissions, still it is clear, we have to act.

Though, we have a hard time becoming inspired to action.  Perhaps, what is mssing is a renewed sense of wonder and awe, making space in our busy lives for nature to infuse us with her rhythm, to be played by a divine breath like a flute or a valley, empty and hollow. Perhaps we have lost touch with the very force that sustains us, perhaps we have lost touch with ourselves.

I recently visited a few Redwood forest groves where new Redwoods are thriving beside ancient giants.  We could learn a great deal about how we adapt to changes from these magnificent trees, how to find a measure of order out of chaos. No one tree has been as depleted by deforestation as deeply as the Redwood, only 5% of Redwoods remain from the earth’s oldest trees. Still, if they are given the opportunity, they will renew again, over time, slowly and methodically and faithfully as a community of the ancient and the new.

How do they do it? These trees create clonal colonies around a mother tree. The mother tree can be completely burned out and hollow on the inside while other clone trees take on the growth around her, creating a circle of trees that many nature lovers refer to as a fairy ring. Not only do these trees continue the growth the mother tree began, but they form a circle of protection around her as she continues her growth. The Redwoods don’t need their insides to live, they continue to grow hollow, perhaps because they are surrounded by such a devoted community they can risk becoming empty.

We are all members of the earth, made from dust and breath and the evolving of life itself. As I say every Ash Wednesday when I make the sign of the cross on foreheads with palm ash, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return;” a nifty reminder of our temporal status in the whole scheme of things.

Perhaps it is time for us to circle up, remembering where we came from and where our horizons will eventually lead us. Earth work is soul work is spirit work. Perhaps it is time for us to circle around nature and those hollow spaces inside each one of us that just longs for home and help it all grow. As Albert Einstein said, “Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.” The time is always now to explore more deeply how our human nature is connected to the nature of creation itself. The wonder of nature is transformation.