Tag: faith

Oh, To Have Been ‘Round the Moon

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

How jealous we all were of the crew of Artemis II. To leave this third rock for even an abbreviated fortnight, to see the world without borders, to be pleasantly news-less.

We think we live in unprecedented times. On one hand, we do, and on the other, these times are grossly precedented. We still fight over religion and land and power and politics, like the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians did. Like the Britons and Vikings did. Like the Muslims and Christians did. Oops . . . do.

The only path to peace I know in the midst of it all is to regularly and meaningfully transcend. Exit the gravitational pull. Step away. The Buddhist Heart Sutra gave us the perfectly concise mantra Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha. The meaning is simple: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. Oh, what an enlightenment.

The most consistent question I receive as an interfaith minister is the question of how we live in this world, how we juggle politics and family, how we maintain bliss in the face of chaos. SHOULD we maintain bliss in the face of chaos. Honestly, I don’t have one go-to answer. I often respond based on how the day feels, what has been shown to me, and/or how the inquiry is couched. I do think we have to be artful with this question — what works one day may not be the next day’s answer.

I do know, however, that the way to be ready for what each day holds is to remember who we are, go into the silence, enter the inner spaciousness where Divine Presence lives in us as us. Succumb to the stillness. Sit still and listen with ears of the heart.

The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote a poem that serves as a good reminder of what is real in the beyond. Here it is translated into English by Stephen Mitchell:

BUDDHA IN GLORY

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet—
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

The Modern Mantra

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” 

I’ve been hearing this phrase more often lately.  I’m not talking about a literal determination to end one’s life*, but rather a whale-size disillusionment with the world.

When my spouse hears or reads yet another instance of overt and grotesque racism in our society, for instance.  I’ve tried to be understanding of her position, one I will never fully understand, no matter how hard I want to or try, but it still makes me wince to hear it come from her mouth.  

When she first said it a couple years back, I didn’t know what to do with it.  At first, I took it personally.  How could she possibly desire to leave this life, i.e., ME? After I surgically excised my ego’s narcissistic belief that everything in the world was about me, I was a little better at just letting it be, even while still not completely comfortable with the statement.  Sometimes this world is too much.  I understand that. 

Just this past week, though, I heard a friend relaying a conversation he had wherein the other person said, “I don’t want to be here anymore.”  My friend said, “I told her, ‘Honey, none of us want to be here!’” And then he laughed, and the group laughed, and the moment passed, but I sat there trying to take it in. 

What was I to make of this apparent upward trend in general dismay about existence?  

I get it, of course.  We live in times I never thought I’d see.  We seem to be revisiting ideologies and demagoguery so unevolved and outdated that their return is a sad surprise. The marginalized are more marginalized every day.  The vulnerable, more vulnerable. How can happiness, contentment, peace, and self-actualization live in the midst of all the crapitude around us?

We’re tired of the cage of this era and ready for any freedom escaping it might provide.

A 1997 Italian film called Life is Beautiful tells the story of a Jewish man and his son who are imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II. To protect his son from the horrors of the Nazis, the man pretends it’s all a game. They are simply playing, and there is still reason to laugh. 

The movie is not really about the Holocaust, despite the setting.  It’s about the strength of the human spirit to overcome obstacles to peace.  It’s about salvaging whatever hope and joy can be found in the midst of trauma and war.  It’s about hope, the hope every generation has held, that we have the power to build a better world for our children.

And, historically, we’ve been right to hope.  The moral arc of the universe really does bend toward justice in the long run. Despots often reach their demise in bombed-out bunkers and international tribunals. The goodness of the human heart ultimately does prevail. 

I can almost hear you say . . . “but in the meantime . . .”  I know.  I know. In the meantime, lots of shit goes down. 

The times are tough, and people are suffering.  More may suffer before this season passes. A lot is required of those who choose to stand in solidarity with democracy and hold the high watch for immigrants and women and the LGBTQ community.  It takes equal doses of courage and compassion to do this work. 

But we are up to the challenge. Just as generations before have answered the call, we have what it takes to meet the moment and direct it back toward justice. We have the strength of will and the strength of heart to make our world safe for democracy again.  We have the fortitude and determination to return our society to one that values its diversity and is proud of its inclusion.

And I, for one, want to be around to see that day.   

*(Note: If you need emotional support, call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or online at 988lifeline.org)  

Be Your Own Guru

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

Sometime back in the early 2000s, I had that sentence flash through my brain – be your own guru. I thought it was deeply profound and a unique insight. It had arisen in my spirit in an organic fashion, and it seemed to spring from Source itself. Surely, I was a prophet. 

I briefly considered buying the domain name, writing a book, starting a movement, and being the guru that brought “be your own guru” to the people. Briefly. Very briefly.

Come to find out, a person named Betty Bethards wrote a book by that title way back in 1982 (a book I haven’t read, by the way, so this is not a plug, but it could be awesome for all I know). Then I found another book with the same title. And then several books with almost the same title — How to Be Your Own Guru, Be Your Own Change Guru, Find Your Inner Guru. It seems I wasn’t all that special.

Or, perhaps, we were evolving together and a bunch of us were getting the same message: It’s time to take ownership of our spiritual journey.

Evolutionary shifts are often messy, and the leap to being our own guru seems to have its own share of fits and starts. One of the byproducts seems to be some disenchantment with spiritual teachers. I’ve seen several instances lately of people turning away from gurus they once revered. And I’ve noticed that when people reject teachers I don’t resonate with, that is fine with me, but when they turn against those I respect, I feel an internal pushback. I want to parse the ways in which the teacher’s message must have been misunderstood. I want to bring the person back into harmony with the teacher. 

But when I move beyond that initial moment, I start to accept that everyone’s journey is valid, and their rejection of a teacher is what they need in this moment, and learning to listen to our intuition, learning to be our own guru, is often a herky-jerky affair.

On my journey to self-guided spirituality, I’ve learned to hold loosely to those I revere. We’re on this journey to begin with because we’re seeking answers, and when we find someone who seems to have them, we tend to clutch their teachings with a tight grip. We become a disciple, and we want to spread the gospel of our guru. But every single time I believe I’ve found a guru who has transcended this life and the ego completely, I’ve soon been given the opportunity to witness their humanness.  If I hold them loosely, though, I leave room for what rings true to wiggle into my spirit, and I stop wasting the energy of holding them hostage to my delusion of their perfection. 

If we don’t hold them loosely, then when we see their humanness, we tend to reject them, call them a false prophet, and even wage our own little smear campaign. We call them narcissists and money-grubbers. We sneer when someone mentions their name. Our newfound insight into “truth” might even cause us to judge someone else’s journey just because they are currently listening to that teacher. 

Please note, I’m not talking about the true charlatans. Those who have put on a spiritual disguise to collect wealth and power are their own special kind of repulsive. Preying on a person’s desire for spiritual growth is the lowest of all cons in my book. 

No, I’m simply talking about the many, the increasing many, who have had an insight and felt called to share it with the world. Some might even suggest that I am in that number, and in my very small way, I suppose I am. I’ve learned some important lessons on my journey, and for whatever reason, I feel so led to make them public. So, for those who are listening, and I’m glad that you are, I urge you to hold anything I say loosely. Let it roll around in your spirit. See how it feels. Take it for a test drive. If it feels like truth, you are welcome to it, free of charge. If it doesn’t, well, I’m only human.

Everything Happens for a Reason . . .

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

. . . at least that’s what folks say.  But, is it true?  Like many matters of faith, and this is indeed a matter of faith, it’s impossible to prove. If you could prove it, then it wouldn’t be faith.  

Not being provable, however, does not negate the value of a belief. It’s impossible to prove, for example, that Jesus was an actual person who lived, you know, right around the same time someone was inventing the calendar.  There are some theologians who contend that Jesus or Yeshua or Joshua, as he might more accurately be called, was a creation of the early Gnostic Christians, a kind of avatar of perfection, a character specifically developed to be a model and a cornerstone for this new religious belief.  But even if they are right, even if Jesus was a fictional character and not a real person at all, that doesn’t necessarily devalue his role in shaping world thought. Provability is not always the standard by which we can measure value. 

So, what value is there in believing that everything happens for a reason, regardless of whether it’s true or not? 

We tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason because we’re trying to make sense out of things that make no sense.  Sometimes life is a mystery. Sometimes it’s even a tragedy. For people of faith — whether that’s a traditional faith running as a thread through a particular religious tradition or whether it’s a private tendency toward hope — it’s important and even vital for this existence to fit into some grand scheme. We want to see a design, at first invisible, become gradually clearer, like those magic eye pictures that look like nothing more than busy wallpaper until we shift our focus, look through the picture somehow, and then, as if it should have been obvious the entire time, an image pushes through the chaos and becomes clear.

Believing that everything happens for a reason can be the reason we even start the practice of looking for patterns in our lives.  And those patterns are there. Of that, I have no doubt. I’ve seen patterns play out in my own life, and sometimes patterns within patterns, the events of my life acting as so many interconnected cogs in a giant machine. 

Believing that everything happens for a reason can also comfort us when nothing else will.  When we can’t understand anything about a situation, resting in the faith of believing there is a rhyme and reason to it can bring a kind of peace. But, the comfort of “everything happens for a reason” is a personal comfort. It can be a reminder we use for ourselves that everything will turn out okay, but it doesn’t always land quite right when it comes from someone else. 

I overheard someone at a funeral a few years back as they grasped the hands of the newly widowed woman struggling to make it through the unimaginable.  They said, “Well, everything happens for a reason,” and you could almost hear the internal cringe of several of us standing nearby.  Here’s a small piece of advice; do with it what you will. In that situation, the situation where someone has experienced tremendous loss, say that you feel for them, say you’re praying for them, say you’re carrying them in your heart — say just about anything except everything happens for a reason.  Even if you believe it’s true. Even if you know THEY believe it’s true.  Just don’t say it.  Not then. Not ever. Keep it for yourself.  

Actually, I might suggest that when people are really hurting we should set our “spiritual-ness” down and just be with them.  The hurt they are feeling isn’t in their divine nature anyway; it’s in the very human, fragile person they are, and the hurt they are experiencing is real for that person.  Any spiritual attempt to explain it, suppress it, redirect it, or enlighten it is often, in reality, acting to negate it, belittle it, and self-righteously sweep real pain away as if it was insignificant dust on an otherwise shiny life. 

Sometimes people need comfort, true and gentle comfort, not an aphorism or a spiritual sound bite.  “Everything happens for a reason” may be true, but “I’m so sorry this happened to you” is far more comforting.  And human. And real. 

And if our heart is right when we say it, no one will need faith to believe it’s true.