Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd. (Rumi)
At times I feel poetry with
no words. Feelings whitewater
through me with the scent of purpose.
Memories crash against the banks
of an unexplored river looking
for their level, promising to be
tamed by language if they can
get still.
Titanic movements swell inside
with a seaspray of hints at
profundity. My life will be
forever changed if this water
falls into vocabulary.
So I paddle on, still believing.
Still believing.
Still believing.
How much room should we give people who hold and express principles that violate our own?
This sounds like an easy question, but like most things worth discussing,it can be more abstract. What do we mean by “room”? Which people, exactly? How dramatic are the differences in principle? Do we have any hope in being a positive influence on one another?
What about the co-worker who holds political opinions you don’t care for? No biggie. Give a wide berth, don’t talk about that stuff at work, smile and nod. Easy peasy.
But what about the dear friend whose position wasn’t known to you while you were building what felt like a promising relationship, and then out of their mouth comes an intolerance that is at first stunning and then quickly evolves into a true conundrum? Where’s the deal-killer line? What are you willing to put up with? When does your presence become a silent approval? It’s hard to have a dear friend that you have to treat like an office co-worker with certain topics off-limits. That seems to inherently limit the friendship.
Everyone has to determine the line for themselves, but I believe some important considerations can be helpful guides.
The first consideration is around harm and safety. Obviously, if it feels unsafe, hightail it on outta there.
The second consideration concerns the capacity for dialogue. Are you able to have worthwhile and meaningful dialogue around this subject with your friend? If not, well, how delicately do you want to have to dance every time you see them?
The third consideration is your own energy. You have the right to protect it, and if the friendship is becoming energetically exhausting for you because of this conflict, then you might need to step back.
There is a fourth consideration I want to add that is especially important to me — if any of these would apply to a person not present, consider how important your advocacy role is to you. For me, the line has always been clear. If someone maintains a position steeped in bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, or racism, I don’t share space with them. Period.
James Baldwin once said, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” I would add that we can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in anyone’s oppression, the denial of anyone’s humanity, or the denial of anyone’s right to exist.
My approach may not work for everybody, and it’s probably a good thing it doesn’t. We need people who stay in the fray and have the argument. We need people who ease folks around to a new idea without being so absolute. I appreciate those folks. I need them because I can’t be them.
But I’m an Aries. We’re weird that way.
I posted a meme to social media recently quoting an influencer named Pastor Brandon. His quote, the one I liked so much that I stole it, is “When I stand before God, I’d rather answer for loving too freely than explain why my theology made people feel unwelcome at His table.”
It reminds me of another favorite quote by another minister, Rev. Eston Williams: “At the end of the day, I’d rather be excluded for who I include than be included for who I exclude.”
Though my personal spiritual journey may differ from these two Christian pastors, I welcome anyone into my energetic circle who maintains inclusive guiding principles such as these. Because, let’s face it, our world could use all the welcome-home, lemme-give-you-a-hug, soup’s-on kind of acceptance it can get these days.
Of COURSE, someone had to leap onto my post and make this comment: “Loving does not mean condoning. Compassion can coexist with strict adherence to God’s laws.”
But can it? Can it really? And what precisely does one mean by “God’s laws”?
Let’s deal with the laws first and get my response to the poster out of the way. My reply was: “Humans made all the laws. The closest thing we have to a divine law is when Yeshua said to love God and love our neighbor as ourself. Everything else is debatable through various lenses of interpretation and culture.”
But the far more important question here is the one about compassion and just what it can and can’t coexist with. Compassion and judgment don’t seem to be natural friends. Judgment comes from a place of moral superiority, a sense of rightness in the face of another’s wrongness. It comes from believing we have the ultimate definition of “God’s Laws.” The Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön said that “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” The delusion of moral superiority cannot exist in the same space as true compassion because it assumes inequality.
Another part of the commenter’s phrase that slips by almost undetected is “strict adherence — Compassion can coexist with strict adherence to God’s laws.”
I’m probably stepping into a deep pool here, but I’m a swimmer, so let’s do it. In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with “strict adherence.” I’d like to live a life that strictly adheres to love and joy and freedom and spiritual expansion. Yet I’ve found that doing so inherently leads me away from words like “strict” and “adherence.” Compassion, just like love and joy and freedom, requires suppleness, flexibility, an artistic walk with the sacred rather than a lockstep adherence to a prescribed set of dos and don’ts. Compassion requires an ever-present awareness of how my sacred urging can meet the needs of the one in front of me, not a creed or manual or how-to book. Compassion requires that I stay awake to the moment, not that I memorize ten commandments or twelve steps or eight beatitudes.
Mostly, I wonder what compels someone to rush judgment into a declaration of inclusion. Why the urgent need to counterbalance an expression of love?
So much in this life leans toward the other side of the scale. It just seems to me that unlimited compassion might be a good way to go.
Soup’s on. Get you a bowl.
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.
Deb Moore 