Wayside Pulpit

Awareness

I sat talking yesterday at lunch with a friend. In the midst of our conversation a medium sized bumble bee joined our table. The creature buzzed over the water glasses, the cup of lemon grass tea and then seemed to tread air between us. I watched my fear rise. I have nasty reactions to bee stings and when I see a bee, any bee, my mind latches on to the last bee sting, the last time I felt the pain and the swelling. Then last time becomes this time – what the bee might do, what the bee could do. Soon, all I see is the bee and what in fact it will most certainly do if I don’t swat it away or move myself to a different location.

I watched this all go on inside my head and did nothing, I just observed the process. Though it took a huge effort I turned my awareness, even with the bee floating in our midst, back to the friend, the conversation. In the turning I realized how much my anxiety is caused simply by the focus of my attention. It is not caused by the content; by the bee, the snotty waitress or the salad missing the sliced beets. Any experience that I have that is uncomfortable is only uncomfortable because I pay attention to that which is causing the state I call uncomfortable.

I’ve been meditating for about six years. Six years of sitting down on a meditation cushion twice a day. Six years giving an hour of time to silence and simply watching my breath. Honestly, in these six years not much has changed in my life except for the fact that I meditate. I am no less high-strung and no more relaxed. However, every once in awhile a flash of insight will hit the pages of my life and I’ll say, “Ah, hah!” It will be an insight that I know would not have found me without my mediation practice.

Meditation has both increased my awareness of the world and at the same time has taught me how to turn my attention. I knew the first part. Meditation has made me more aware, but I didn’t see the second part until the bee flew into lunch yesterday. I never realized that I could watch what was wanted rather than what was given to me. If I can watch the breath instead of the thoughts when I meditate, then I can turn my attention, even while not meditating, to anything I choose. The “Ah, hah!” was this: I can choose not to be a victim of my own mind.

Stagnant

I distract myself from things that I really want to do. If I was avoiding doing things I didn’t want to do, well, it would make more sense. But, these are things that I want to do, but seem to continually find reasons for not doing them.

I turn my attention, instead, to the internet, reading the newspaper, napping, going for walks, cooking elaborate recipes and doing “busy work.” These are tasks that are not moving me in the direction I wish to go, rather they are things, the minutiae that keep me in place. Still, I can’t seem to remove myself from their grasp, their hold on my life is stronger than I would like to admit. This all reminds me of Paul’s writing in Romans, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

What is it that runs much of what I do? I’m not exactly sure but I do know that when I start to push against “it,” with ideas of creativity and moving my life beyond the status quo, it pushes back. It makes dreams and desires seem unimportant, while the nap is the best I can do. It takes the fun out of most activities and labels them a waste of time. I sense it will do whatever it can to make sure that I do not carry out my creative ideas or even enjoy the life I am living.

What to do about all of this? I think, as in most things spiritual, the first step is awareness, knowing that this is how I have been conditioned to operate. I’ve been formed by society, by my upbringing and the structures in which I exist, to meet the norm, to stick with the way things “ought” to be, rather than moving toward a new kind of “could.” Seeing this is the first step to moving beyond it. Because it is hard to turn onto the road less traveled when all you see are the old sidewalk cracks beneath your feet.

The second step is walking beyond the conditioning. It is hearing the pleas for the naps, the extended surfing times, the myriad of distractions and simply letting them be. It is giving them no energy, no opposition, but also no agreement.

Paul asks, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” The answer for him was simply, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Center to Paul was Christ. Center for me is the breath. Center for some is god. Whatever you call it, it is your divinity that has the ability to transcend the limits that imprison you.

A proper God

God is a process, a phenomenon. Is the process natural? Is the process created by humankind? I really don’t know the answers to these questions. A part of me is perfectly okay with not knowing, because knowing isn’t all that important. In fact, as I’ve said before, true theology does not rejoice in knowing, it rejoices in seeking. Knowing may come, but it isn’t the goal.

However, I struggle with not capitalizing god. Yet I know as I go forward writing and reflecting on my faith, I want to stop capitalizing God. However, tradition runs hard, even for someone like me who is focused on recreating how a Christian life is understood and undertaken. Something looks wrong with that little “g,” it looses, it seems, its grandeur and magic. It becomes just another word in the sentence, rather than falling full force into the reading eye.

Yet, I also know that I cringe every time I capitalize God, because I know that god is not a proper noun. Making god a proper noun limits the meaning behind the symbol. It is like trapping all the mountains of the world into one single color snapshot. It takes your idea of god and my idea of god and assumes that they are exactly the same, that we are talking about the same proper God.

The argument I hear is that god must be capitalized to show respect and reverence. Do we capitalize the phenomenon of gravity? Do we turn the abstract notion of time into a proper noun? No. Yet, god is no more or less important than many improper nouns like these; nouns that have a direct bearing on how we carry out our daily living.

There is no proper God. There is only god.

Indefinitely Christian

Those speaking for Christianity, and those speaking against it, love to use the definite article. In fact, if I were to go back and reread many things I’ve written, I would suspect that I do the very same thing. It seems to come out something like this, “The Christian view of such and such….” I’m hear to tell you, and to remind myself, that there is no one Christian view.

It is often said, “Well, I don’t believe in the Christian God.” What is the Christian God? What defines it? What makes it so definite enough that it deserves a “the” before its capital G? If by “the” you mean the big white guy with the beard in the sky, then I’m sorry to say that many Christians I know don’t hold that view. If by “the” you mean a God that has a hand in how things come to play in our lives, I’d again have to tell you this view doesn’t fit all Christians. Simply, there is no one view that can sum up how God is understood from one end of Christendom to the other.

This same semantical play works for other theological and political statements as well. There is no one Christian view on Jesus, abortion, Christ, sex, communion, LGBT issues, afterlife, the death penalty, peace, war, evolution, marriage, guns…. It isn’t the monolithic structure that appears creeping out of newspapers, court cases, tomes decrying Christian faith and glossy television pulpits. It is infinitely multifaceted and to sum it up in a single “the” takes its beauty and turns it into a beast.

Past Three O'clock

I sung a song, as part of St. Olaf’s Manitou Singers, titled, “Past Three O’clock.” The song, an old English carole, is a Christmas piece about the birth of the christ child. Though I sung it nearly eighteen years ago, I still remember the melody and the strange winter magic that the composer captured in that particular arrangement. The song plays loud in my head this early morning as I look at the clock on my cell phone and see that it is just past three A.M..

Just past three A.M.. An hour when thieves seem to run my neighborhood streets stealing cars and breaking into homes. An hour that isn’t quite night, but isn’t quite morning. An hour that stretches long enough for murders to be undertaken, for cars to crash and babies to need feeding. An hour where the moon has set but the sun is far from rising. An hour, just like any hour, some would say. But it is for me, an hour that always seems to catch me off guard with how it holds my fears, my concerns and my deep desire to leave this life.

Am I talking about suicide? Not really. I am talking about the desire to leave the life I am living, Am I talking about packing up and changing towns, houses, jobs? Not really. I am talking about the quest for my soul, and how, somehow, I just can’t find it in this life. There is something tangible missing inside of me. This isn’t something I’ve lost, rather it is something that I have never had. This magical conglomeration of beauty, contentment, peace, groundedness has never been mine, rather it has been the grail that haunts my dreams.

My mind turns to, “Three O’clock Blues,” by B.B. King. It is nice to know that I am not alone in this hour. In fact, I am comforted to realize, through a quick search on iTunes, that the hour of three A.M. holds unlimited grief and longing within the hands of sixty minutes.

well now its three o' clock in the mornin’
and I can't even close my eyes
three o' clock in the mornin’
and I can't even close my eyes
can't find my baby
and I can't be satisfied

I think of the magi and their archetypal quest for the christ child. The myrrh, the incense, the golden nugget; everything is brought on the search. It all has to come because there is no other search like it and it takes everything to survive the journey. This isn’t the pursuit for just a swaddling clothed mewing human child. Rather, it is the all out expedition for the divinity within, the flash of creativity that started the world and the desire to know why your heart keeps beating.

A Science Project

My daughter choose the brachiosaurus for her second grade dinosaur science project. I helped her cut out the side out of a shoe box, bought her clay and paints and let her go to town doing whatever she would like to do. She had a bit of a snag getting the legs to stay on the body, so we pushed in paperclips to make it all stick together. She painted the sun with yellow glitter glue, made rocks out of clay and stuck tomato stems to the box for trees. All in all, when we left the house this morning I thought it was a pretty good second grade project.

That was until I saw the other projects that ended up in second grade. There were molded T-Rexs with ceramic fish in their mouths. Some boxes were filled with peat moss, real water and suns that were electric. I saw one mom set down a project that made roaring noises when you pushed a button. Very few of the projects looked like a kid actually did them, rather I could tell that their parents spent hours and hours building them.

I watch one mother gently carry in her son’s box and set it on the table. Her face had a glow about it, as she adjusted the fake little trees made with real plants and put the finishing touches on the spine of a triceratops. I heard her exclaim, “Wow, I’m so glad that is done, but it sure was fun!” Then I realized, for many of these parents this was a creative activity for THEM. They actually got to build something, do something artistic; something that other people might actually appreciate.

Once I realized this, my annoyance at the whole idea of a parent doing a kid’s science project evaporated. It was replaced with a sadness that for many people, living a creative life just isn’t something they’ve thought about. But I know there is a yearning for many people to be creative, to bring new things into existence, to express themselves. I believe that this creative drive comes from a spiritual place in each of us. In fact, I don’t know if one can be spiritual without also being creative; they are two sides of the same proverbial coin.

If all that expended energy that I saw today (the energy poured into dinosaur dioramas) was put into creative endeavors, this community would be a different place. Not only could new ideas be written, paintings created, political problems solved, but the people, the parents and the kids would be so much more fulfilled.

Bottom line, we are created to create. Figure out how to be creative in your life, in your own way and right there, in that space, you’ll find your salvation.

A Declaration

My practice of Zen has finally turned how I hear the ancient writings of Christianity. Many years ago my traditional interpretations of scripture were dismantled, but I wasn’t able to reformulate them. Rather, they were a jumbled mess of, “I don’t believe.” However, now, without really trying to see the texts in a new way, the new ways are revealing themselves.

Theology is not stagnant, it is something that must remain in flux, or it is not theology. I expect to be amazed at the new ways that I see the text, the symbols and even the rituals of Christianity. If I stop being amazed, I have stopped being Christian. See, as I walked through traditional Christianity (or rather slogged through it), there was so little that touched me and allowed me to see the magic that existed within the act of living. Yet, with a theology in motion, the magic never ceases.

As I’ve turned my practice toward a tradition that is not my own, I see the world differently. Not only are the cities different, the cars, the trees, the people eating pretzels in the mall, but Christianity is different. I’m beginning to not only see through the suppositions, the certainties and the beliefs, but I’m able to let them go to be owned by someone else. As they’ve floated away, like a released red balloon, I have been gifted incredible space in which to create something new.

The echo that hits me each time I speak into this space is that, “Christianity is not what you think. It is something completely different.” Yet, the strange thing, for me, is that there is relatively no anxiety within this newly found place. I see not only potential, but the absolute necessity that the time has come for me to add my voice to the New Reformation.