Commensality: The Open Table

SERMON, part 1

Some Unitarian Universalist ministers mention Jesus exactly twice a year: Christmas and Easter. I have typically mentioned either Jesus or something from the Christian ("New") Testament a little more often than that, but not a lot more. In any case, it is Easter, so let's talk about Jesus. He had some worthwhile things to teach us.

“Jesus talks a great deal about the kingdom of God, and what he means by that,” says theologian Walter Brueggemann, “is a public life reorganized toward neighborliness.” Neighborliness. Not exactly the first word that pops to mind when considering the current state of public life in this country.

And what does this neighborliness entail? We are told "The last will be first, and the first last." Children and the poor are highlighted as exemplars. Power and wealth make such neighborliness difficult or impossible.

In Luke, Jesus says the Kingdom of God is within or among you. The preposition in the original Greek is “entos” – which can mean both within and among. “Within you” suggests an internal, spiritual reality. “Among you” suggests the kingdom is present in the community. I like to see Jesus as meaning both: being among you helps it be within you, and being within you helps it be among you.

Jesus described the kingdom of God as a feast where everyone has a seat at the table. In the 1990s, Latina feminist theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz suggested calling it the “kin-dom of God,” which better expresses the emphasis on relationships over hierarchy, community and mutual care over patriarchal rule. The kin-dom of God is a radically inclusive community of equals. The kin-dom of God is what Martin Luther King called “beloved community” based on reconciliation and integration, nonviolence, economic justice, and radical love.

Today, I’ll draw on the work of John Dominic Crosson to describe the kin-dom of God as commensality – from “mensa,” Latin for table. Jesus’ vision for society is of an open table, where everyone has a seat at that table. Then, today being Easter, I’ll talk about how the Easter story, in particular, re-presents this basic social vision.

To understand what Jesus was really all about, argues scholar John Dominic Crossan, look at the way he took meals – the theology of food that he exemplified – the meaning of eating together. Anthropologists Peter Farb and George Armelagos write:

“In all societies, both simple and complex, eating is the primary way of initiating and maintaining human relationships.... Once the anthropologist finds out where, when, and with whom the food is eaten, just about everything else can be inferred about the relations among the society’s members.... To know what, where, how, when, and with whom the people eat is to know the character of their society.”

To bring home to our own experience the way that eating reflects social position, Crossan suggests:

“Think, for a moment, if beggars came to your door, of the difference between giving them some food to go, of inviting them into your kitchen for a meal, of bringing them into the dining room to eat in the evening with your family, or of having them back on Saturday night for supper with a group of your friends. Think, again, if you were a large company’s CEO, of the difference between a cocktail party in the office for all the employees, a restaurant lunch for all the middle managers, or a private dinner party for your vice presidents in your own home.”

The structure of our meals recapitulates the structure of power. And when Crossan examines the gospels, he finds Jesus teaching and exemplifying open commensality.

“The rules of tabling and eating [are] miniature models for the rules of association and socialization. Table fellowship [is] a map of economic discrimination, social hierarchy, and political differentiation.” (Crossan)

And for Jesus, the table was open.

While John the Baptist had fasted, feasting is more Jesus’ style – and the table was open. While John the Baptist had emphasized a coming future kingdom, for Jesus, “It is not enough to await a future kingdom; one must enter a present one here and now.” And that kingdom – that kin-dom – is one of abundance and equal sharing.

The gospels so closely associate Jesus with meal time that the Eucharist became Christianity’s sacrament. And the most famous painting of Jesus is DaVinci's "Last Supper." In the miracle story of the loaves and fishes, there are hundreds gathered – and all end up eating. Jesus takes the bread, blesses, breaks and gives. Those are the four basic moves of the life he represents: take, bless, break, and give: Take – receive. Open to take what experience and the world bring.
Bless – or, that is, be grateful. Pause for a moment of gratitude.
And then break into parts for giving back.

And consider this parable, from Luke 14:

“He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’
One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’
Then Jesus said to him, ‘Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come, for everything is ready now.”
But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.”
Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.”
Another said, “I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.”
So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”
And the slave said, “Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.”
Then the master said to the slave, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.”’”

Now that’s an open table.

And consider what a horrific mess that would be to the standard hierarchical values of the time.

“If one actually brought in anyone off the street, one could, in such a situation, have classes, sexes, and ranks all mixed up together. Anyone could be reclining next to anyone else, female next to male, free next to slave, socially high next to socially low, and ritually pure next to ritually impure." (Crossan)

What a social nightmare that would be! Crossan comments that:

“The social challenge of such equal or egalitarian commensality is the parable’s most fundamental danger and most radical threat. It is only a story, of course, but it is one that focuses its egalitarian challenge on society’s miniature mirror, the table, as the place where bodies meet to eat.”

And Jesus lived out his own parable. Open commensality is the model of the Kin-dom of God. The nondiscriminating table represents the nondiscriminating society.This was a great annoyance to those who regarded open and free association as a thing to be avoided. First century Mediterranean culture emphasized honor and shame – and Jesus’ open table was profoundly subversive.

Two messages are clear. One is the radical egalitarianism of the open table. The other is that it happens right here and now – among the people around us today. When the table is open, that is the kingdom, the kin-dom, of God -- and the kin-dom of God is, as Jesus says, within you and among you.

“It is not enough to await a future kingdom; one must enter a present one here and now.”

But that was all just too radical for Paul – the erstwhile Pharisee and persecutor of Christians who had a conversion experience. But Paul never broke bread with Jesus – didn’t really grasp the open commensality.

And here we come to the Easter story, for the emphasis on Jesus’ bodily resurrection is an invention of Paul. For Paul, the end of the world was not merely imminent, but had already begun – and Jesus’ resurrection was but prelude to a general resurrection. Thus, for Paul, the Sunday of which we are today celebrating the anniversary was the beginning of a religion of the end-times. But Paul’s form of Christianity was not, for some time, the only form of Christianity being practiced. As Crossan explains:

"What happened historically is that those who believed in Jesus before his execution continued to do so afterward. Easter is not about the start of a new faith, but about the continuation of an old one. That is the only miracle and the only mystery, and it is more than enough of both.... It is a terrible trivialization to imagine that all Jesus’ followers lost their faith on Good Friday and had it restored by apparitions on Easter Sunday. It is another trivialization to presume that even those who lost their nerve, fled, and hid also lost their faith, hope, and love.”

So let’s look now at the Easter story – or, rather, the four quite different Easter stories. Did Mary Magdalene visit the tomb by herself? Was it Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”? Was it Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome? Was Joanna with them? And also other women? Did they arrive before dawn, at dawn, or when the sun had already risen? Did they arrive to see an angel rolling back the stone, or was it already rolled back? Did they see guards? Angels? Both? Neither? Let us revisit the four variations in John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

READING (adapted from Mark 16, Matthew 28, Luke 24, and John 20)

JOHN: On Sunday morning Mary Magdalene went by herself.

MATTHEW: No. Two women, Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary,” went to the tomb.

MARK: No. Three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salomé went.

LUKE: It was at least four women: Mary Magdalene, who we all agree on; Mary the mother of James, as Mark said and maybe who Matthew means as “the other Mary.” There was also Joanna, and other women.

JOHN: She . . .

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: They . . .

JOHN: took spices to prepare the body for burial.

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: Yes, that’s right.

JOHN: Mary went in the pre-dawn darkness.

MATTHEW: The women went when the day was dawning.

MARK: No. The sun had already risen.

LUKE: I’m with Matthew. They went when the day was dawning.

JOHN: When Mary . . .

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: The women . . .

JOHN: Got there, she . . .

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE: They . . .

MATTHEW: They arrived just in time to see that “an angel of the lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.”

MARK: No, they found the stone already rolled back.

LUKE: I’m with Mark on this one. It was already rolled back.

JOHN: Me, too. It was already rolled back before Mary got there.

MATTHEW: The two women saw one angel, the one who rolled back and sat on the stone, and also some guards.

MARK: The three women entered the tomb and saw “a young man dressed in a white robe.” No mention of any guards.

LUKE: The group of four or more women entered the tomb, and did not find the body. “While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.” No guards.

MATTHEW: “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised.’”

MARK: It was the young man dressed in a white robe who said essentially those words.

LUKE: I’ve got that the two men in dazzling clothes said it.

MATTHEW: So the two women left the tomb and ran to tell the disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings! Go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

MARK: The three women “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Some indeterminate time later, Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, then to the disciples.

LUKE: The four or more women returned from the tomb and told the eleven disciples “and all the rest” what had happened. Later that day, Jesus appeared to two other women who weren’t in the group that went to the tomb, and these women didn’t recognize who he was at first.

JOHN: No, no. Mary Magdalene, alone, saw no one at all until after she returned from the tomb, and told two of the disciples that the body was missing. Mary and the two disciples returned again to the tomb. They still saw nothing but linen wrappings. The disciples left. Mary stayed, alone and crying. Only then did she look into the tomb and see "two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying." Then she turned around, and there was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. She supposed him to be the gardener until he called her name.

SERMON, part 2

The compilers of the New Testament surely noticed these discrepancies. The writers of the later gospels would have known they were diverging from the earlier gospels. But for the Early Christian community, the differences and contradictions were a strength, not a weakness. The differences indicated authenticity, indicated that these stories were not coordinated, edited accounts but independent testimonies. If the stories were perfectly aligned, they would have appeared suspiciously manufactured.

The culture of the time did not draw a line between history and fiction – there was no division of their storytellers into historians and novelists. A story was a story, and its value was not in whether it met scholarly standards of historical accuracy that wouldn’t be invented for centuries, or even in whether it would stand up in the law courts of the time, but whether it moved the listeners, filled them with a sense of awe, and lent meaning to their lives. They delighted in the story being told in different ways, just as we today might enjoy a book and also enjoy the movie made from the book, even though the filmmakers changed a number of plot points.

In these very different Easter stories of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, we have a feast of diverse perspectives – not only in the plot details, but the theological dimensions being emphasized. Mark, in its earliest manuscripts, has a very abrupt ending that emphasizes mystery and awe. Matthew’s story emphasizes Jesus's divine authority and commission. Luke highlights the continuity with Hebrew scriptures. The John gospel focuses on personal encounters and recognition. It’s an open table feast of narratives.

The early Christians embraced a theology of abundance and plurality — in food, in gifts of the Spirit, and in story and perspective as well. So inconsistency among the stories is not a bug; it’s a feature. The early Church was modeling a unity that didn’t require uniformity. They demonstrated that we can tell the story differently and still have a shared commitment to the values which the story’s variations highlight in different ways.

In fact, telling different, even contradictory, stories enhances the richness of our community. Recall that Walt Whitman, in his “Song of Myself,” said:

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

Whitman grasped that life has contradictory lessons for us, and that embracing the contradictions enriches life. Yes, sometimes we have to choose which one of competing claims we will believe, which one seems to have the stronger evidence in its favor. Other times, though, we don’t choose one over the other, but live in the tension between them. Doubt, divergence, and creative retelling are not threats but pathways to a more full truth.

Christian dogma would come later. The earliest Christians had a theology of abundance and diversity and openness to difference. They were not interested in propositional belief – which propositions and doctrines to hold true and which ones to brand as heresy. The purpose of Christian community was not to believe propositions, but to tell, in varying and even contradictory ways, stories about their lived experience as followers of Jesus – experience that was itself contradictory or paradoxical: absent presence. Easter is about the absent presence of their beloved teacher and friend: how he was present in their hearts, while also absent.

The diverse and inconsistent stories, then, are an extension of the open table – open to all kinds of people and all their stories without attempt to iron them into consistency. But for all the diversity, there are two points that all four of the gospel Easter stories agree on. The tomb was empty, and women are at the center of the story. Let’s look at that second point.

It’s striking that women would be so central. In Jewish Palestine women’s testimony was widely regarded as unreliable and untrustworthy. Women were not eligible to be witnesses in court. As theologian Richard Bauckham explains,

“in the Greco-Roman world in general women were thought by men to be gullible in religious matters and especially prone to superstitious fantasy and excessive in religious practices.”

Yet it is women who discover the tomb is empty and women who first tell about it.

I see here a deliberate subversion of social and religious expectations. It’s a radical inversion of hierarchy, of the structure of who counts, who’s credible, and who’s worthy. I just don’t think it’s possible that the Gospels were trying to establish the resurrection as factual. If they were, they’d never have told the story with women as the witnesses – yet that is one thing all four gospels agree on. Establishing factual resurrection wasn’t the point – couldn’t have been. The point, instead, is to resurrect, or simply continue, the kin-dom of God – a beloved community based on grace, presence, and radical inclusion. And if that’s the point, then of course it begins with those who are least expected — but most deeply attuned.

The women’s testimony is not speculative theology; it’s relational encounter — “I have seen him,” Mary says. It’s not a doctrine, not a propositional belief, but a presence to be lived into – a resurrection-in-the-heart of hope and community connection, not proven with objectively credible evidence, but witnessed by love.

So the Easter story, in its multiple variations, yet all of them centered on women, on the ones who normally wouldn’t have a place at the table, illustrates the open table and the kin-dom of God.

Here, then, is what, this Easter, I urge us to remember: that the meaning is the stories we share and the bread we break; that the kin-dom is our open tables and our brave and tender love, and the beloved community is where everyone has a place, and every story is part of the feast.

May it be so. Blessed be. AMEN.

Training in Compassion 14: Whatever You Meet Is the Path

Whatever happens, good or bad, make it part of your spiritual practice – because everything IS part of the path. Even straying from the path is part of the path – just see it that way.

If you've followed the earlier trainings, or even some of them, then you're beginning to see that whatever you meet is the path. In spiritual practice, which is our life, there are no breaks. We human beings are always doing spiritual practice, whether we know it or not.

Once you begin practice -- or even just begin thinking about your practice -- you always keep going, because everything is practice, even the days or the weeks or the months or decades or entire lifetimes when you forgot to meditate, forgot to pay attention to whatever intentional spiritual practice you have. Even then you're still practicing, because it's impossible to be lost. You are constantly being found whether you know it or not.

To practice the slogan, "Whatever You Meet is the Path," repeat it to yourself again and again. Know that no matter what is going on, no matter how distracted you think you are, no matter how much you feel like a terribly lazy individual who has completely lost track of her good intentions and is now hopelessly astray -- even then you are on the path and you have the responsibility and the ability to take all of that negative chatter and turn it into the path.

Whatever you meet is the path.

* * *
For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.

Conflict Is a Good Thing

I was once at a Zen gathering where the teacher's talk that day spoke to the somewhat unrealistic expectations that people showing up for Zen practice might harbor. Someone who undertakes a Zen practice is apt to imagine that if they are just diligent enough, and if they are focused enough, and if they sit zazen long enough, then something will happen to them called “becoming enlightened” – and after that, life is all rainbows and unicorns.

Zen, of course, does not make life all rainbows and unicorns. No spiritual practice will do that. Over time with a spiritual discipline, our problems bother us less. We get to where we don’t mind problems so much. But the problems themselves aren’t any less. And, really, that’s a good thing. Dealing with problems gives us something to live for – or, it can, if we relish the challenge.

Sometimes people expect congregational life to be all rainbows and unicorns. No one says it out loud, of course. “Hey, I joined this church. Where are my rainbows and unicorns?” No one says that. No one even consciously thinks it. But maybe some of us, unconsciously, were harboring a secret hope that this community was the end of all our problems. There’s something deeply human about that quiet hope. We don’t really expect magic, but there’s a part of us thinking maybe this church – or the right church somewhere – could somehow be the balm for everything — relational tension, grief, burnout, loneliness. When it isn’t, that can be disillusioning.

Faith communities do offer something beautiful: support, purpose, connection. But they’re also made up of people — real, messy, sometimes surprising, sometimes disappointing people. It’s at this point that you might expect me to say that we aren’t perfect, but as some of you have discerned about me, I like to take the opposite angle on that and say actually, we ARE perfect. We are perfect the way that newborn babes are perfect – delightful just the way they are while at the same time having a lot of growing to do.

And what better place to do your growing than surrounded by a hundred, or a few hundred, other people who have a lot of growing to do? Congregational life doesn’t solve all problems, but it’s a place to walk through them together. So, no rainbows and unicorns — unless maybe you’re doing an art project with the kids downstairs. Shared coffee and a cookie – hugs, maybe, if you’re game for that -- honest expressions of our hopes. Maybe some time when life is falling apart, a casserole. And the aforementioned support, purpose, and connection. It’s not rainbows and unicorns, but it’s nice. It can sometimes be more than nice. It can be life-saving – it really can. Plenty of us, I know, have stories of how this place held them together when everything was falling apart. And when things aren’t all falling apart, it’s still nice.

Until.

Until someone says something that rubs us the wrong way. Until a beloved program changes. Until one day we feel unseen. We see conflict. Maybe we’re embroiled in a conflict. We’re surprised. We’re disappointed. Maybe disillusioned. I get it.

It’s hard to see that conflict as a good thing. I know, some people love conflict. But most of the people who come to a church aren’t looking for a fight. People who are looking for a fight typically look somewhere else. Yet fights do happen here: personalities clash, expectations differ, my anxiety about there being too much of something meets your anxiety about there not being enough of that thing.

Conflict can, indeed, be beneficial. Conflict can be a catalyst for growth and change by forcing examination of our assumptions, creating pressure to move beyond comfortable but limiting patterns, and revealing blind spots we might not otherwise notice. Conflict deepens understanding as we gain clarity on what matters to each other, what our underlying needs are. Conflict strengthens relationships, for as we work through that conflict, the experience demonstrates our mutual commitment to an ongoing relationship and to this church, it exposes our vulnerability which makes the connection more intimate, and ends up building trust and resilience in our relationship.

A marriage that has weathered difficult fights is a stronger marriage, and the same goes for the relationship between you and this church. Conflict drives innovation as it challenges our complacencies and nudges us to a creative and novel synthesis of divergent ideas. Conflict helps establishes healthy boundaries as it clarifies our respective expectations, which reduces future misunderstandings. Better to air out and work through small misunderstandings so that that larger ones are avoided. Conflict builds democratic process as we collectively hear our different concerns.

Of course, conflict has to be done well. I remember many years ago, before I was a minister or even seriously considering the possibility of beginning the process toward becoming one, it was about 1990 or 1991, and I was in my early thirties, and a lay member in our congregation in Charlottesville, Virginia. I remember that a measure was up for congregational vote: a by-laws amendment that required a two-thirds majority to pass. I don’t remember what the proposed amendment was, just that I was in favor of it. It was just what our church needed. I spoke up at our congregational meeting, and marshalled my most cogent arguments – and remember, you are looking at the 1976 Georgia High School state debate champion.

Other people spoke against the measure, and several further others spoke also in support of what I supported. And when the 150 or so votes were cast, the tally came in at 57% in favor, 43% opposed. All these years later, I’ve long forgotten what the issue was, but I remember those vote percentages. My side had a clear majority, but not a two-thirds majority. The measure was defeated.

As the meeting adjourned, and the gathering slowly began thinning out, a feeling of remarkable joy came over me. It was the best I have ever felt after a congregational meeting. My side lost, but the process had been beautiful to behold, and inspiring to be part of. I loved how different we were, and how our different perspectives had been heard and weighed.

Did I still think the other side was mistaken? I’m sure I did, but I also recognized that it was possible I was mistaken, and, more important, that making mistakes is part of what makes us perfect: it’s how we grow and learn. My sense of bonding to a congregation has never been stronger.

That sense of joy in congregational life – in the possibility of human beings coming together and being different and disagreeing and building community not DESPITE the differences and disagreements, but community ON THE VERY BASIS OF differences and disagreements – that joy became part of why I so loved congregational life that I wanted to become a minister and help bring people into congregational life.

So become a minister I did. In that role, I served one congregation for seven years, and then served another congregation for ten years. They were strikingly different in how they processed conflict. The first congregation did not handle conflict well. The second congregation handled it pretty well. In fact, since I had just come to the second congregation from my experience with the first congregation, I found the way that the second congregation handled conflict astonishing. It was astonishingly healthy.

The second congregation had had a big fight just before I got there: voices had been raised, feelings had been hurt. But they kept talking it through, and they healed. They were able to let go of the past, settle into loving each other in the present. Their conflict had brought to them the benefits that conflict can bring: a catalyst for growth and change, re-examination of assumptions, deepened understanding of each other and strengthened relationships, vulnerability leading to greater resilience and greater trust.

The first congregation, on the other hand, did not have healthy conflict. The folks there were still seething from fights and divisions they’d had twenty years before I got there. They held grudges. Even when they tried not to, they were still holding them.

The leadership tried gamely to mitigate the bad feeling, and they promulgated a slogan they often repeated: Assume best possible motive. It’s a good slogan. Assume best possible motive. In a conflict situation, if you think the other side has nefarious motives, is operating from some hidden evil agenda, then the conflict isn’t just a comparison and weighing of diverse perspectives, it’s a battle of good versus evil. And there’s no reconciling with evil. To avoid that downward spiral of acrimony, the first congregation’s members reminded each other: assume best possible motive.

But this slogan didn’t make the grudges go away. The difficulty is, if conflict has gotten to the point where it feels like a battle of good versus evil, your brain at that point has locked in and locked down. You can tell yourself to assume the best possible motive, but the only motives that seem to you at all possible are all nefarious ones. You think you are assuming best possible motive, but even the best motive you can imagine still seems evil – because the conflict has so narrowed your imagination that you’re unable to imagine a truly good motive.

If it feels like a battle of good versus evil, then you don’t have the spaciousness, the imaginative capacity, to imagine motives on the other side that aren’t evil. Our imaginations fail, and against that failure of imagination, the slogan, “assume best possible motive” doesn’t stand a chance. Empathy, curiosity, and openness to complexity shut down. The lens flattens. People become caricatures, and motives become irredeemable. “Assume best possible motive” demands a level of imaginative and emotional flexibility that, in the midst of a good vs. evil conflict, we simply don’t have.

At that point the need is to create conditions for spaciousness to re-emerge. There are some intentional ways to facilitate that. Step back. Breathe. Sit silently and notice how your body feels when you picture the main other person with whom you’re disagreeing. Find someone you trust who is outside the conflict, who isn’t a member of the church, and talk it over with them. And name to yourself where you are – say to yourself, “Right now, I cannot imagine a good motive. That’s a signal to me that I need to pause, and not charge forward.”

This Des Moines congregation has had conflict. I heard a lot about it when I first got here. It undermined your confidence in yourselves as a truly good and wonderful congregation. My approach has been to say, “Eh. Let’s just do church for a while and see what shakes out – what settles down and what doesn’t. Will this turn out to be more like the first of those two congregations I was mentioning or more like the second?”

Turns out you are neither – you are your own thing. Of course. (Duh!) You are perfect, and you are learning. To continue that growth, let’s look at some examples of church conflict -- examples of conflicts we haven’t had here, but like those which some churches have.

Suppose a church finance committee is debating how to allocate a budget surplus. One member proposes investing in community outreach, while another insists on building maintenance. Voices rise. Someone mutters, “Some people just don’t care about the actual mission of the church.” In that moment, the disagreement has become moralized. It’s no longer about budget priorities — it’s a question of whether someone truly cares about the church.

The task is to recover spaciousness, which might happen if there’s someone to step in and say: “Can we each take a minute to name what we most hope for in this decision — not what we’re against, but what we’re trying to protect or nurture?” This reframes the discussion from attack/defend to values/vision, and invites people to see each other’s deeper motives, even if they still disagree.

I can easily imagine that, in this congregation, someone would step in to say something like that. There are a bunch of you, in fact, that I can see saying that.

Take another example. Suppose a church member posts an article on social media that others in the congregation find troubling. A few angry comments appear: “How could you share something so harmful?” The original poster feels attacked and responds defensively. Soon, both sides are questioning each other’s morality.

How might spaciousness be recovered? It might help for a third party, a mutual friend, to reach out to both parties to say: “I can see you both care deeply — would you be open to a conversation in person? I’d be willing to sit with you.” This small, human gesture introduces warmth and presence into a cold digital exchange. It creates space for nuance, tone, and shared humanity to re-enter.

Here’s a third case. During a small group discussion on a justice issue, someone shares a perspective rooted in personal experience. Another person, uncomfortable with what was said, doesn’t respond — but they don’t come back to the group the next week. They begin quietly avoiding the person who spoke up. The story in their head has already been written: “That person is pushing an agenda. I can’t trust them.”

The path toward recovering spaciousness might open if a facilitator notices the change and gently follows up. “I noticed you seemed uncomfortable last week. I care about your experience in the group. Can we talk about what’s coming up for you?” By inviting a conversation before assumptions calcify, the facilitator opens space for the withdrawn person to voice their fears — and maybe hear a fuller story.

One more. Something similar to this one might be on your horizon, because you’ll have a new minister next year, and they might make changes to the worship style that some folks might not like. It’s possible. I don’t know what that change would be, but in some congregations it’s a change in the music that can disorient longtime members. The sudden appearance of drums and electric guitar might make some long-timers think, “This new minister is trying to erase everything we’ve built.” Meanwhile, younger attendees feel energized and think, “Why are the older folks trying to kill the spirit?”

How to recover spaciousness? Rather than framing the situation as “traditionalists vs. progressives,” the celebrants team, with the minister, might host a listening circle where people are asked, “What kind of worship has helped move your spirit most deeply?” and “What do you grieve losing? What do you hope we can create together?” This allows pain and hope to coexist in the room — and helps everyone remember that everyone is seeking connection with the divine, just in different forms.

So I want to tell you today that we now have a new process in place to assist any of us in the recovery of spaciousness. We have a conflict reconciliation team – at today’s forum they and I will be discussing and describing how to make use of them. Let me go ahead and introduce them to you now – and you’ll see more of them in the forum. Sally B, Scott C, Jeremy G, John M, Ellen T. They are our spaciousness recovery team – though the official name is Conflict Reconciliation team.

In all of those examples, when spaciousness is recovered, then the benefits of conflict can emerge: growth and change, learning and new perspectives, deepened understanding of one another and deepened trust.

Sometimes it’s tough. But it’s so worth it. And, honestly, who really wanted rainbows and unicorns anyway?

Amen.

Training in Compassion 13: Do Good, Avoid Evil, Appreciate Your Lunacy, Pray for Help

For our Training in Compassion we have Four-in-one this time! Do good, avoid evil, appreciate your lunacy, and pray for help. These four reminders -- slogans to try to live by -- fit together, and bring us back down to earth.

If spiritual teachings are to really transform our lives, they need to oscillate between two levels, the profound and the mundane. If practice is too profound, it's no good: we are full of wonderful inspiring, lofty thought, insights and speculations but lack the ability to get through the day with any gracefulness or to relate to the issues and people in ordinary life. We may be soaringly metaphysical, movingly compassionate, and yet unable to relate to a normal human or a worldly problem.

On the other hand, if our spiritual practice is too mundane, if we become too interested in the details of how we and others feel and what we or they need or want, then the natural loftiness of our hearts will not be accessible to us, and we will sink under the weight of obligations, details, and daily-life concerns. We need both profound religious philosophy and practical tools for daily living. This double need, according to circumstances, seems to go with the territory of being human.

First, do good. Do positive things. Say hello to people, smile at them, tell them, "Happy birthday!" or "I am sorry for your loss, is there something I can do to help?" Normal social graces, but work a bit harder at actually meaning them. Cultivate a sense of caring. Try genuinely to be helpful and kind and thoughtful in as many small and large ways as we can every day.

Second, avoid evil. Pay close attention to our actions of body, speech, and mind, noticing when we do, say, or think things that are harmful of unkind.

Third, appreciate your lunacy. Give an inward respectful bow to your weakness, your own craziness, your own resistances. Truly it is a marvel, the extent to which we are selfish, confused, lazy, resentful, and so on. We come by these things honestly. So we make offerings to the demons inside us, we develop a sense of humorous appreciation for our own stupidity. We are in good company! We can laugh at ourselves and everyone else.

Fourth, pray for help. Pray to whatever forces you believe in -- or don't believe in -- for help. Whether you imagine a deity or God or not, you can reach out beyond yourself and beyond anything you can objectively depict and ask for assistance and strength for your spiritual work. Pretending to address something beyond yourself and asking for help and for strength to do what you know you must do helps you have that strength. Sometimes we forget this point and fall into the habit of imagining an illusory self-reliance.

Do good, avoid evil, appreciate your lunacy, and pray for help. Simple everyday instructions.

* * *
For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.

Rev. LoraKim Joyner: Nurturing Nature through Wonder

No matter where you are, no matter how lonely, the world calls to you, saying you are home no matter where you are. Or on a journey home, like the birds migrating through Iowa. They announce our place in the family of things as they broadcast their place on this earth. Last night there were 75,000, but that ain’t nothing. We can see up to 40 million crossing in one night here in May.

No matter the loneliness, the tragedy, or the harshness of the world, Iowa is full of wonders. I am talking about the kind of wonder that is a surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable. Wonders can be routine, or sometimes just over the top. This happened to me one day when I was visiting Kaieteur Falls in Guyana, a country in South America. The falls are the world's widest single drop waterfall, located on the Potaro River in the Amazon Forest. The falls were spectacular: the roar, the mist, the grandeur. Then I heard a large parrot call, and a pair of Red and Green Macaws flew out of the mist, as if the water had conjured them, and they flew right by us. After a short time, the birds returned, flying towards the fall, like they were going to enter the cascade, but instead, turned into the cliff face where they had a nest. I stood mesmerized, knowing I had seen one of the greatest wonders in the world, the colors of the parrots merging with the colors of the rainbows in the cascade thundering behind us.

There are wonders that stand out, and wonders also happen all around us, hundreds of them available to us in one week. People report having three awe experiences a week. How many do you have on average? Think back on this week. How many times did you drop your jaw or open your eyes, even slightly in amazement?

Do you wish you had more wonder? Whatever you answer, there are reasons why we lean into wonder. One reason is that we come by wonder naturally, for we wonder not alone upon this earth.

Jane Goodall was observing her chimpanzees in Gombe when she noticed a male chimp gesturing excitedly at a beautiful waterfall. He perched on a nearby rock and gaped at the flowing torrents of water for a good 10 minutes. Goodall and her team saw such responses on several occasions. She concluded that chimps have a sense of wonder, even speculating about a nascent form of spirituality in our simian cousins.

Maybe we wonder because it helps us connect to that which is good. Wonder, like other emotions, evolved as a motivator to help us move towards satisfaction or benefit, and away from discomfort or harm. It balances with the other emotions. The classic example is of a bear, at least classic for those of us who lived in Alaska where all life can be distilled down to bear stories or metaphors. Wonder draws us to the woods in hopes of seeing a bear, and fear keeps our distance. Too much fear and we never go out, too much wonder and we may get to close and trigger an aggressive action by a bear.

Wonder tempered with all our other emotional tools asks us to take a middle way - to get out and take some risks, but not overly so. With wonder we open, we connect, and life's possibilities open before us. Wonder helps us engage with the world to live in ways that integrate the reality that beauty is ever present. It also helps us face the also true, but harsher reality of harm, illness, death, disappointment, and massive suffering. Without wonder, we risk closing off to life, living more shallow lives, less intimacy and vibrancy.

One study showed how wonder opens us up. A group of researchers took teenagers and veterans rafting. A week later the participants reported being more engaged and curious about the world.

Wonder also lifts depression, and in one study showed people to have less inflammation as measured in saliva. It helps our prosocial behaviors - we become more empathetic, humble, and generous. When we have more empathy, others resonate with us better and we have improved relationships. Our self identity moves from a separate self to being part of a whole, or the whole itself. By merely writing about awe, we become kinder, more compassionate, and this can extend to other species and the biotic community as a whole.

I lead Bird Walks and Nurture Nature workshops and retreats where the goal is to see how we have choice in moving towards that which is good for us and others. How can we nurture human nature so that we can nurture all of nature? I believe this is an important question in this time of climate change, loss of biodiversity, extinction, polarized and dysfunctional politics – the list goes on but let’s just shorten it and call it the Polycrisis.

We need all the help we can get, and two primary aspects of human nature to help us nurture is to wonder about the beauty that connects all life. I’m going to invite us to consider specific practices that help us nurture wonder, and let us begin with music. Bruce – can you play something wondrous?

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

There are many ways to nurture wonder, as Rumi wrote:

Let the beauty we are be what we do,
there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Let me suggest four. The first way is to wonder out in nature. These are wow experiences.

I was leading a multigenerational bird tour once in New Mexico with one of our congregations there, and the children were out of their daily routine, and were perhaps a bit hesitant, especially Jimmy. His mother had a cocaine habit, and he was born addicted to cocaine and had issues with connecting and resonating with others. We had come across a field full or snow geese, bright white in the sun. Suddenly they all took to the air, their wings vibrating in the very depths of our body and ancestral knowing. The children transformed, they came alive, were pure joy and connection, especially Jimmy who jumped, danced, cried out, and ran to his grandparents to be close to them, to be held, to connect, and to share in that wonder together. Nature is full of unexpected and surprising events that we cannot foresee, and this is good for us.

James Austin, a neurologist, encourages us to have nature experiences because they help integrate our neurological processing and contribute to mindfulness and living in the present moment with attention and gratitude. He particularly suggests looking up, and gives many examples of how this can wire us for presence, including an event that happened to me years ago. I told this story last year when I preached last, but it bears repeating because of the impact of how looking up is good for us, whether it comes in a rush, or more slowly.

I was out walking in Guatemala studying parrot nests, and my guide was a local Guatemalan. We weren't seeing many birds so we began to talk. He wanted to tell me of his love of Jesus and Mary, and I put up my guard a little bit, unsure if he was proselytizing me or expecting something from me I could not give. I was disconnecting and distancing myself from him mentally, when we came up to the forest's edge where the sun was just rising over the tree tops in a shroud of misty fog. Suddenly a loud flock of parrots burst forth from the tree canopy. Before I knew what happened, I was on my knees in the grass, weeping. I had been so startled with awe and beauty, I just fell. Afterwards I was a little embarassed, but, more than anything, I had a sudden clarity and connection to humanity and the world. I knew that when people said words like Mary and Jesus, it was like when I said birds and trees. That experience was part of moving towards things spiritual, towards beauty, towards service, and towards an ease around religious differences, for I glimpsed the wonder moving beneath it all.

Dr. Austin says my experiences were not usual. Indeed, in another study the researchers asked students to gaze up at trees, a task known to evoke awe. The other half turned their back to the trees. Afterwards they approached each group of students with a questionnaire and pretended to trip and drop pens on the ground. The awe group picked up 10% more pens, and felt less entitlement to payment for their participation in the study.

So looking up is good for us, whether it is the stars and moon, the trees, migrating birds in the night, or the trees. Let's take a moment to look up at trees, shall we? Wonder in nature are wow experiences. Like other emotions, having facial expressions of it and even acting it out, helps evoke it, such as saying Wow! Would you say it with me now? WOW!

A second way to develop wonder is to consider that nature isn't just out there; it's everywhere. How do we wonder at the ordinary, and move towards the banal and boring? The uncomfortable even? It's one thing to wonder at the exploding green leafy trees and the flower colors around us, but how do we do it when the leaves are brown and gone? Where is the wonder in the slushy dark days of winter while scrolling through the news about disaster and death?

There is more to wonder at than the last audacious thing that crazy politician said that evokes in us a sense of disdain, anger, or really energy. Really? It takes practice to cultivate wonder in the daily things, so our wonder isn't a REALLY response, but a more gentle really response. Again, we lead with our bodies by saying Really. Say it with me, would you? REALLY?!

To grow wonder, we can slow down and ask what is wondrous in the of ordinary or routine objects in your day. How did that get to be here? Why is it here? If the object is being that is alive, what are they doing and thinking? How is it connected to me and the web of life? Let us practice some shall we? Pick something in this room that is boring. I hope you are not looking at me. Maybe pick the wood in this room. How did it get to be here? Woody trees only evolved in the late Devonian period about 360 million years ago. The appearance of trees and forests were one of the triggers for the two major extinction events in the Devonian when over 50% of the world's genera went extinct. Today there are 3 trillion trees, 400 for every human. There are more of them than us, and they caused terrible drastic climate change and extinction. We're not so bad, really?!

This leads us to the third way of nurturing nature - seeing wonder in our own kind. If we could tap into wonder of the miracle of our own existence, not just in babies and the geniuses, what might our lives look like to see beauty in all the faces around us all the time? When considering other humans we ask:
How are we here at all?
What are we thinking and feeling?
How can we build bridges and go into space?
Why is it that we can be kind given all the challenges of life?

From my experience as a minister and conservationist, one of the biggest spiritual challenges I see for us is to see wonder in our own kind. We need to leave behind the sense of being bored, or blaming others, which can be summed up with an attitude of Dude! Instead we move to a softer and more grateful expression of Dude! Such as with Fonzi we can give others an “okay” sign. Say it with me please and then look at those around you. DUDE!

Those around you are also you,-- their wonder and beauty is yours, as is the whole world’s. We need to own how awesome is our own thinking, feeling, actions, and presence in the world. If we do not wonder at ourselves, we shut down the possibility to marvel and connect with all of life.

Cultivating wonder with all life helps us not only connect and heal, but we become better nurtuers of other species and the planet ecosystems. Cultivating wonder takes practice. So let us practice now with me. Repeat after me, I'm good! I'M GOOD!

Now, let's put it all together.
WOW. REALLY? DUDE I'M GOOD!

It's in our nature to wonder, and to nurture nature: ours, theirs, the earth's. Let us do it for ourselves and for all life.

WONDERING MEDITATION

We are almost through here, and we return to own lives. What will you do to connect to wonder?

There are some things that we can do to help us connect. Looking at nature, walking in nature, even looking at pictures of nature helps. Body movement is an important part of this – our body can lead us into physical states where we are more open and more likely to connect and wonder.

Let me suggest a few we can do right now, and you ca npraticipate as you wish, save it for later, and certainly turn off you video if you like. We can do them and then I can explain.

• Breathe deep – stimulates the vagal nerve and helps you feel safe
• Hold hands out – says I’m not feeling vulnerable
• Look up – we talked about that in the service – integrates brain patterns and increases compassion
• Twirl around – off blanace – feel comfortable
• Touch the ground – physical sensation tells the body what is happening beyond the mental loops in which we can get trapped
• Bow – greater humility – I give myself to you

Who Cares?

"Who cares?" We all care about something – but we don’t all care about the same things – which is why we sometimes signal that we don’t care about something by saying, “who cares?” But there are some things we all care about.

Our theme of the month for April is Caring. There are two questions here: what to care for and about – and how to care effectively. Are there things we care about that we’d be better off being a bit more nonchalant about? Are there other things we should be paying more attention to? When is worrying a helpful way to keep us focused, and when is it simply useless and harmful anxiety?

Let’s look more closely at the premise I started with: we don’t all care about the same things – but there are some things we all care about. Marshall Rosenberg had a way of distinguishing between the sort of things we all care about and the sorts of things that some of us care about and others of us don’t. The things we all care about, he called, “needs.” Per Rosenberg, a need is not something we will die if we don’t get, it’s just something we all want – something we all care about getting – often in proportion to how long its been since we had some. So food and sleep are needs – increasingly so as the hours go by since we last ate or slept. Oxygen is a need – increasingly so as the seconds go by since our last breath. These are part of the sustenance need, which also includes shelter and exercise. We need to sustain ourselves.

The other eight universal needs are: Safety, love (which includes the need to love and the need to be loved), understanding or empathy, creativity, recreation, a sense of belonging, autonomy, and meaning. Everybody cares about those things. Where we differ is in our strategies for getting them.

Everything we do is in service of our needs – but some of our strategies work better than others. So if you’re thinking, “I need a new mobile phone,” that’s not really a need in this sense – it’s a strategy. Getting a new mobile phone is, you are thinking, a strategy for meeting needs of connection.

You probably grew up hearing a distinction between needs and wants. As a kid you might say you needed some toy or the latest cool gadget, and your parents would say no, you don’t need it, you just want it. You probably found that unsatisfying. So I’m saying, forget that. Forget the distinction between needs and wants. They’re all wants. Even just staying alive is a want. There is no helpful distinction between needs and wants.

Instead, the helpful distinction is between needs and strategies – between wants that everybody has, and the wants that are your particular means to an end, where the end is something everybody wants. So the parent, instead of saying, “you don’t need that toy, you only want that toy,” might say, “that toy isn’t a universal want, since not everybody wants the toy. So it’s a strategy. What is the universal need (or want) that you see this toy as a strategy for meeting?”

Then you can look at what’s behind the particular desire. Maybe there’s a sense of belonging. Or maybe its recreation, or creativity. Or a combination of several needs.

And once we put it that way, then we are positioned to think about whether there might be other ways to meet that need. Once you recognize your strategy as a strategy, and then identify what need it is a strategy for, then you’re less prone to getting attached to and stuck on that strategy. You are freed to explore alternative strategies for that need. It’s liberating.

Caring, of course, is what defines us, what makes us who we are. Yet caring can turn into cares – as in careworn, worn down by cares. And if we aren’t paying attention, then what we find ourselves caring about – as judged by the habits we live by – can be out of alignment with what is really conducive to a good life.

Yesterday morning, at the Zen meditation on Zoom that I lead starting at 6:00am, Tuesday through Saturday morning, I was sharing with the group some words from Charlotte Joko Beck saying that we honor and pay attention to “the god of comfort and pleasantness and security. In worshiping that god, we destroy our lives" (Joko Beck, Nothing Special). She pointed out that by caring too much about comfort, pleasantness, and security, we pick bad strategies. We can get drawn into “drugs, alcohol, high speeds, recklessness, anger” because these things seem to offer comfort, pleasantness, or security. They seem to assuage our “fear of encountering any kind of unpleasantness.”

Joko says:

“If we must have absolute order and control, it’s because we’re trying to avoid any unpleasantness. If we can have things our way, and get angry if they’re not, then we think we can survive and shut out our anxiety about death. If we can please everyone, then we imagine no unpleasantness will enter our life. We hope that if we can be the star of the show, shining and wonderful and efficient, we can have such an admiring audience that we won’t have to feel anything. If we can withdraw from the world and just entertain ourselves with our own dreams and fantasies and emotional upheavals, we think we can escape unpleasantness. If we can figure everything out, if we can be so smart that we can fit everything into some sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual understanding, then perhaps we won’t be threatened. If we can submit to an authority, have it tell us what to do, then we can give someone else the responsibility for our lives and we don’t’ have to carry it anymore.... If we pursue life madly, going after any pleasant sensation, any excitement, any entertainment, perhaps we won’t have to feel any pain. If we can tell others what to do, keep them well under control, maybe they can’t hurt us.”

Joko says that “every being on earth pursues” to some degree this “god of no discomfort and no unpleasantness.” And, “As we pursue it, we lose touch with what really is.” This pursuit inevitably fails. In the frenetic business of our pursuits to avoid pain, we lose touch with “the absolute wonder of what our life is.”

We begin to experience that wonder “only by contacting our own pain, which means no longer worshiping the god of comfort and pleasantness.” For Joko, experiencing our pain, paying attention to it, rather than “finding a place where we can shut the pain out,” is what leads to “surrender and opening into something fresh and new.”

Our biggest problem is the thought that we should have no problems. Problems and challenges are our life. We come more alive when we are with the pain than when we seek to avoid it. This is the practice of cultivating compassion. Passion, in its original sense, means suffering. We see that meaning in the Christian phrase, “the passion of Christ” – meaning the suffering and pain. So compassion is “com” – meaning “with” – and passion – meaning pain. Self-compassion is being with your own pain – compassion for others is being with others pain.

Sometimes there’s a fix. The pain of hunger just needs a little food. Sometimes there’s not – but rather than denial, just be with the pain.

David Brooks’ column this week was about people deliberately choosing what was uncomfortable. He talks about Haruki Murakami, who took up running. “By the late 2000s, [Murakami] was running six miles a day, six days a week every week of the year, and had run in 23 marathons, plus many other long-distance races, an ultramarathon and some triathlons,” Brooks writes. The thing is, running was often painful – miserable. Murakami’s memoir has lines like:

“As I ran this race, I felt I never, ever wanted to go through that again.”
And: “At around 23 miles I start to hate everything.”
And: “I finally reach the end. Strangely, I have no feeling of accomplishment. The only thing I feel is utter relief that I don’t have to run anymore.”
And: “It was draining physically, as you can imagine, and for a while afterward I swore I’d never run again.”
Yet he does run again. Brooks then says,

“All around us there are people who endure tedium to learn the violin, who repeatedly fall off stair railings learning to skateboard, who go through the arduous mental labor required to solve a scientific problem, who agree to take a job managing other people (which is truly hard) or who start a business (which is insanely hard).”

He goes on to say:

“When it comes to the things we really care about — vocation, family, identity, whatever gives our lives purpose — we are operating by a different logic [from the logic of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain], which is the logic of passionate desire and often painful effort.”

When he says “passionate desire” in this way, it seems to bring together the modern sense of passion and the original sense of passion as pain.

“People commit to great projects, they endure hard challenges,” not by anything remotely like a cost-benefit analysis, but “because they are entranced, enchanted. Some notion or activity has grabbed them, set its hooks inside them, aroused some possibility, fired the imagination.”

“The capacity to be seized” is an great talent.

“Some people go through life thick-skinned. School or career has given them a pragmatic, instrumental, efficiency-maximizing frame of mind. They live their life under pressure, so their head is down; they’re not open to delight, or open to that moment of rapture that can redirect a life.”

If all we care about is pleasantness and security, we aren’t open to wonder and delight – openness to which also means being open to discomfort and pain.

The wonders of life come from being open – broken open – to all of life – the full catastrophe. Close off a part of it – like the pain – and you also close off the real wonder. That phrase, “the full catastrophe,” I take from the title of a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Full Catastrophe Living,” – and he got it from “Zorba the Greek,” where Zorba says, "I'm a man who's got the full catastrophe" – meaning his life is full of joy, sorrow, love, loss, and everything in between. Kabat-Zinn uses this concept to highlight the idea of embracing life as it is – the full catastrophe that life is, with all its ups and downs. Embrace, rather than resist or avoid difficult experiences. Take in and pay attention to human experience in all its messy, imperfect glory.

Without the difficulties, without the pain, we wouldn’t cultivate resilience, and find our fulfillment and well-being. David Brooks’ column is interested in how that openness can lead us to be seized by what becomes our great life passion – in the sense of a great pain but also a great meaning and purpose in a life dedicated beyond reason to something: to running, or playing the violin, or scientific inquiry or writing. Kabat-Zinn is interested in how that openness can lead us to be seized by the simple wonder of a moment. Either way, that openness gets closed off when, as Joko Beck says, what we care about is comfort and pleasantness and security.

Consider Sisyphus, the figure in Greek Mythology condemned by the gods to Hades and eternal punishment. He had to roll a heavy boulder up hill. When he got it to the top, it would roll back down again, and he’d have to start over. He was condemned for all eternity to pushing a heavy boulder, and to an awareness of the futility of his labor.

The futility aspect is rather curious, isn’t it? We feel like if we get that boulder to the top of the hill, we’ve accomplished something – but if it doesn’t stay there for even a minute but rolls back down again – then it was all futile. But why is a boulder at the top of a hill an accomplishment anyway? Why is it any better to have it at the top than at the base of the hill? It’s really no more futile to have the boulder rolling down the hill than to have it staying perched for a while on the hilltop.

So if we forget about the futility part, then there’s just the pushing part. We are all Sisyphus, pushing our rock. It’s not a condemnation or punishment, it’s just each moment. Pushing the rock or watching it roll down. We’re all doing what we do, moment by moment. But then we add judgments and ideas. The hell isn’t in pushing the boulder but in creating ideas of hope and disappointment. It’s the idea that we shouldn’t have to be doing it that turns any activity into hell.

The French writer Albert Camus in his essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” offers an extended reflection on the lessons of this myth. Camus concludes, “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“If we are totally what we are, in every second, we begin to experience life as joy” (Joko Beck 20) – whatever boulder we may be pushing. Experiencing life as joy doesn’t mean there’s no sadness. It means we are experiencing that full catastrophe. Sadness might be the opposite of happiness, but it isn’t the opposite of joy – it’s part of the joy, because it’s part of life.

There are those universal needs: sustenance, safety, love, understanding or empathy, creativity, recreation, belonging, autonomy, and meaning. Those needs impel us to devise strategies to meet them. And that’s our boulder to keep pushing on. That’s what we care about.

What we don’t have to care about is whether the boulder will stay on the hilltop. Or whether we can get someone else to push it for us. Or whether we can distract ourselves from the pushing, or forget about it with substances. Just push on. Pay attention to your pushing, pay attention to observing the wonder of the boulder rolling down the hill again – how elegantly it rolls!

If we stop thinking life should be other than exactly what it is, we find the joy in it. No, the boulder won’t stay on the hilltop. Who cares?

Amen.

Training in Compassion 12: Put It In Context

Our Training in Compassion today is: Put it is context. Whatever difficulty you are experiencing, take a moment to put it in context.

What context? The context that the distinction between self and other is an empty illusion. The absolute context, that there is no self and other. There's only Being, and there's only Love, which is Being sharing itself with itself without impediment and with warmth. It just happens to look like you and me to us because this is how our minds and sensory apparatus works.

"Put it in context" means seeing your situation and what you are experiencing in the context of this love without boundary. All the disturbances of your life -- all your confusion, which is to say, your resistance, your pain, your fear, your grief, your frustrated desires, and so on – put all of this in the absolute context.

This means we look at the underlying reality of our disturbance. What is actually going on when we are upset or angry? If we unhook ourselves from the blaming and the wishing and the self-pitying, and look instead at the actual basis of what is in fact going on, what do we see? We see time passing. We see things changing. Moment by moment, time slips away and things transform. The present becomes the past -- or does it become the future? And yet as soon as we examine "now" it is gone.

Every moment of your life, all your moments of pain or despair or confusion – those, too, are moments of your own inherent wholeness, your inherent perfection. This is a fact, whether you see it or not. Learning to see it is the path of wisdom.

* * *
For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.