Convivial Dialogue (Psalming)

Guides throughout history have said the spirit journey is a dialogue with God/Thou/the Holy/spirit – that ever-present power by whatever name. I find myself talking with spirit these days, as I did as a boy and even a teenager. I’m finding I can dialogue as all psalmists before (e.g., Kazantzakis' St. Francis). Life becomes convivial (relational, good company, even celebrative). ~jpc

“Wherefore art Thou. Fear and trembling accompany my way. Answer me. Do not let the dark overtake me!” Then I hear, “What’s it going to take, little faith, for you to always remember I am never absent?” Namaste.

image: www.gallery464.co.nz/ Recent%20Work.html

My, My, My!

Wife is talking to near-hysterical husband at breakfast table, reading the newspaper and readying to blast out of his chair. Wife: “You know the doctor told you no more op-ed.” ~Donald Reiley cartoon in The New Yorker, 10/8/01

Do too many of us identify with him these days? Are those "op-ed’s" – reflections on the news – as sensational as the news? Reckon our culture is wound up tight enough? Will it all lead to personal happiness and universal peace? ~jpc

Before we lose it . . . Namaste.

Holy Connection

Where we exist, our connection with the infinite is made by a root metaphor or a name, a word. . . . We no longer have the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, but when we had [it] . . . , the holiest person on the holiest day at the holiest time in the holiest place would pronounce the holiest word – and this is the connection. ~Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi from Tying Rocks to Clouds, William Elliott, via Doris Conway

Think his kind believes there is infinite meaning in the moment? ~jpc

Holy, Holy, Holy . . . Heaven and Earth are full of Thy glory. Namaste.

The Impossible Dream

Life is a dynamic process, self-organizing to adapt and evolve. Just as it turned scales to feathers, gills to lungs, seawater to blood, so now, too, immense evolutionary pressures are at work. . . . Still, as Earth’s record attests [over 4.5 billion years], extinctions are at least as plentiful as successful adaptations. . . . The Great Turning, as a compass pointing to the possible, helps me live with radical uncertainty. It also causes me to believe that, whether we succeed or not, the risks we take on behalf of life will bring forth dimensions of human intelligence and solidarity beyond any we have known. ~Joanna Macy, “The Great Turning as Compass and Lens,” Yes! Summer 2006

. . . And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest. . . .

To dream the impossible dream. . . .* Namaste.

*“The Impossible Dream,” from Man of La Mancha (1972), lyrics by Joe Darion

Good Universe

Today at Lynda’s cool summer lunch, Thomas waxed eloquent as usual. He talked about identity and difference in the universe as the heart of most of the contradictions we experience. We concluded that each has its/her/his identity only within universal difference – “I” am who I am only in the “di-verse” – and all this in the “uni-verse.” Identity within diversity within unity. What a good universe, no matter how much it hurts at times. ~jpc

Good universe. No mistake. Precious. Glad to be here. Namaste.

image: graphical representation of a network, an example of identity and difference

Sunday Dialogue (VII)

Journer: Will all be saved in some next life?

Nez: All are saved now.

Journer: So why is there so much desolation?

Nez: Those who don’t know they’re saved need your help . . . now that you know.

_______

image: Mother Teresa's House of the Dying, Calcutta

Always At Hand

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?

~Drew Delinger, “hieroglyphic stairway,” Yes! Summer 2006

As good as Patton’s speech? This couplet by Delinger struck me:

the moment the universe turns transparent
and all the light shoots through the cosmos

Is this poetry of armageddon or the second coming? ~jpc

All I know is the kingdom is always at hand. Namaste.

New Metaphor

Final Reality does not have to be pictured as up; it can just as well be pictured as standing behind each ordinary reality and shining through it. . . . Today we are experiencing the passing of the up-there metaphor and learning to speak of the Eternal as like a brilliant light that shines through our ordinary experiences. . . . With this new metaphor we can speak once again of a dialogue between “I” and the “Thou”. . . . ~Gene Marshall, Realistic Living Journal, June 2006

This metaphor makes sense, that is, if we see that creation is good. And this is why it’s good, because Final Reality, or whatever you call it, is at its heart. ~jpc

The light of the world is always here. Namaste.

Blown By Its Wind

The Episcopalians continue to divide over leadership roles; the Southern Baptist Convention is further dividing over exiting public schools; Presbyterians are arguing about divestment of funds to Israel; most denominations are divided over sexuality and marriage, many over birth and death. Over such hot issues Christians, often hate-filled, continue to separate from each other. Meanwhile, issues of spirituality, theology, care of the earth, ministry of the laity, and consensual methods lag behind. This does not follow Jesus, Paul, Luther, Theresa, Wesley, Woolman, and John XXIII, who were after depth reformation. Spirit is moving in our time, absolutely, but the institutional church struggles to discern, consense on, and be blown by its wind. ~jpc

O to be who we are, one in spirit. Namaste.

image: wind-blown mountain hemlock on ridgeline

Stop and Look and Give Thanks

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~Eleanor Roosevelt via Megha Merani (last sentence used for last two January 1 reflections)

“Stop and look” means learn to reflect on the journey, especially at birthday, New Year, anniversary times – if not quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily. We’re all on a great journey and must not miss it. The journey itself cares for us when we let it. It offers whatever we need, thankfully. ~jpc

The journey guide is always present. Namaste.

image: shanetracey.com/gallery/pictures/journey

The Big Awareness

A theological discussion about whether God preordained certain people to salvation drew thousands of attendees to two identical breakout sessions Monday . . . [before] the Southern Baptist Convention. ~Nancy H. McLaughlin, “Baptists Debate Dueling Doctrines,” news-record.com, 6/13/06

AASAABITS: All are saved, always already, baptized in the spirit! The mission is to go to “the perishing” who are already saved and demonstrate it to them/us, a la Mother Teresa and Roots and Shoots. ~jpc

O for the big awareness. Namaste.

image: Roots & Shoots Program www.bay.org/.../denise/ marin_learning_center.htm

Together Again

Cracked Humpty Dumpty, with bow tie and short pants and striped socks up past his knees, is lying on the classical couch, with the psychiatrist sitting behind him out of view, jotting on his pad, when he says, “Eventually, I’d like to see you able to put yourself back together.” ~cartoon by Leo Cullum, The New Yorker, 5/22/06

I had three reactions: a big laugh; a “way to go” for Cullum for being so observant of our culture; and a spiritual reflection – “Mr. P., what’s wrong with the way I am, broken and cracked? I am together again, same as before, but different.” ~jpc

The word about life affirms the way I am, broken yet whole. Namaste.

___________

I remember a mentor on her birth date: Lyn Johnston Mathews Edwards (1917 – 1998)

Sunday Dialogue (VI)

Journer: Why all the change?

Nez: That’s life.

Journer: Is that an answer?

Nez: To quote a student* of mine, “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.”

________
*Bertholt Brecht
image: Mt. Merapi, Indonesia

Unite a Movement

[A] key figure behind Greensboro’s efforts to build an international civil rights museum inside the old Woolworth’s building . . . notes that “similar [sit-in] incidents” occurred earlier in Baltimore, Durham, Oklahoma City and Wichita. “You’re probably going to have . . . people . . . proclaiming, ‘No, I sat down in 1942,’” [he] said. “But did that unite a movement? That’s the question.” ~www.news-record.com, 6/2/06

Pictured are the four students (one barely visible) who started the Greensboro Sit-in at the downtown Woolworths counter in 1960. By the end of that year, about 70,000 black students had participated in a sit-in or marched in support of sit-in demonstrators (www.core-online.org/history/sit_ins.htm). Those four daring black students impacted my journey then and played a catalytic role in the movement that changed the law of the land five years later. ~jpc

What is the movement you want to unite now? Namaste.

Our Great War

Quote from General George Patton (movie): “Thirty years from now, when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you, ‘What did you do in the great . . . War. . . ?’ you won’t have to say, “Well . . . I . . . .”

Every time of evolutionary history has been a time of great war. Today it's a war of _____________________. ~jpc

“Granddaddy, what are you doing. . . ?” Namaste.

If Jesus Were Here

On Easter morning all over America
the peasants are frying potatoes in bacon grease.
We’re not supposed to have “peasants”
but there are tens of millions of them
frying potatoes on Easter morning,
cheap and delicious with catsup.
If Jesus were here this morning he might
be eating fried potatoes with my friend
who has a ‘51 Dodge and a ‘72 Pontiac. . . .

~Jim Harrison, from “Easter Morning,” Writer's Almanac, 5/18/06

Strange man, Jesus, hanging out with such. Namaste.

From Deep Inside

From time to time, as we were tempted to fall head over heels in love with arcane urban theories, we could almost hear [Jane] Jacobs clucking at us from deep inside: Heavy-sounding theories are fine, but they are meaningless unless citizen activists come together to help create thriving neighborhoods. ~Harry Wiland and Dale Bell, “Reclaiming the Heart of the City,” csmonitor.com, 5/23/06, via JPC II

What voices from deep inside have you heard lately? ~jpc

Do deep dialogue with your interior council. Namaste.

The Supreme Purpose

I’m sure everything that happens to me has a purpose, even if it cuts right across our own wishes. As I see it, I am here for some purpose, and I only hope I’m living up to it. In the light of our supreme purpose all our personal privations and disappointments are trivial. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, May 9, 1944 letter, p. 171

What is the “supreme purpose” [another translation: “great purpose”]? In light of it, what is “my purpose”? Bonhoeffer is right in putting the personal question of purpose in this context, as Jesus did. Both would have us understand “follow your bliss” in terms of our “great purpose” for being here. ~jpc

O to be about the great purpose. Namaste.

Bow Down, Look Around

You’re left with yourself all the time, whatever you do. . . . But you’ve got to get down to your own god and “your own temple. . . .” [I]t’s all down to you. . . . ~John Lennon, “Man of the Decade” interview, 12/2/69, via Megha Merani

You got to bow down
to your own god in your holy place
to find the meaning of life.
If that one won’t sustain you,
keep going, deeper. . . deeper.
Or start looking around you
till you see signs of the One
in all this hallowed space.

You got to bow down, look around.

~jpc

Bow down in either paradigm of spirituality. Namaste.

Sunday Dialogue (V)

Journer: Is there meaning?

Nez: How many meaningful experiences have you had?

Journer: Hundreds . . . thousands . . . I guess.

Nez: So, what’s your question?

______

image: granddaughter Lyndon's first ride on the merry-go-round; granddaughter Kaitlyn (10) read this today and told me 25-30 “meaningful moments” in her life, in maybe ten minutes – she knew she could go on and on recounting them

We Remember Brian

. . . as one delighted with the journey and one who asked the big questions as pedagogue and writer.

This is a good example:

Years ago, while teaching a course in Saskatoon, I stayed in an old hotel. On the day before the course started, I was poking round and found my way down to the basement. Lo and behold, there was a kind of carpenter’s workshop where coffins were being made. No one was around. There was one coffin, sitting on trestles, with the lid lying slantwise across the top. Driven by some whimsy, I clambered up into the coffin, lay down, then pulled the top over me. . . . I had no profound experience. Instead, lulled by the darkness and silence, I just fell asleep. I woke some time later when a colleague came to call me to supper. I answered from inside the coffin. His fright got quite a few laughs at the dinner table.

Putting ourselves in our coffin or inside the urn of ashes makes for an interesting reflective exercise. In the case of the grave site, we can picture the headstone, see our name carved with the date of our birth and death. And the epitaph. What words would be inscribed in the stone to sum up the whole purpose of our life?

~Brian Stanfield, The Courage to Lead, pp. 115-16

Which Image of Jesus Next?

I think a lot of people are looking at contemporary conflict around the world and seeing it as a kind of religious war. . . . And there is no kind of conflict that becomes more intractable than when people are convinced that they alone have access to God’s truth and the other side are the people of Satan. ~Elaine Pagels, from David D. Kirkpatrick’s “Wrath and Mercy; The Return of the Warrior Jesus,” nytimes.com, 4/4/04

I was raised on the Sallman’s “Head of Christ” (above, lower right), but I had to give that image up along the way. I still like the one from the Gospel According to St. Matthew movie the best, but finally I’'m operating out of a deeper image since no physical image is authentic. ~jpc

Divinity’s not in our own image. Namaste.

image: from www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/08/1081326877117.html

Strange Cosmos

Hurricane Katrina may actually benefit the gopher tortoise, a threatened species once common in southern Mississippi, which will also benefit hundreds of other species that rely on the gopher tortoise burrows. ~Willie Brown Preserve, Nature Conservancy Landmarks, Summer 2006, via LLC

The cosmos shows no partiality, that is except to all "creatures." Namaste.

image: www.portcanaveral.org/ multimedia/coloring.htm

Victims of the Darkness

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there’s a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become victims of the darkness. ~William O. Douglas, via Beth Engleman

This is true socially, as the quote was intended, but also ecologically and personally. ~jpc

O to be vigilant. Namaste.

image: www.psychicjournal.com/.../ 000724/000724f1.htm

Own 10 Commandments

Imagine writing your own 10 commandments. . . .

[human thou] Thou shalt treat all humans equally as members of one community of the children of God. . . . ~Dave Thomas

[creational thou] Thou shalt care for all of creation in a manner that sustains and nourishes our planet. ~Dick Kroeger

[eternal thou] “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. . . .” I would say it something like this: Thou shalt abide in the spirit. ~jpc

We all have our 10, so jot ’em down and check ’em out. Namaste.

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

I don’t recommend a lot of books, but get this one, a new book by David Korten. He dedicated it to Thomas, among others, and quotes several times from The Great Work. Korten speaks of the “Great Turning” as a time that will be looked back on when we “turned crisis into opportunity, embraced the higher-order potential, . . . learned to live in creative partnership with one another and the living Earth, and brought forth a new era of human possibility.” He talks of “the intrinsic, omnipresent living Spirit . . . that manifests itself in every aspect of Creation” (sounds like something you might have said). ~via Randy Williams

“An epic work. Exposes the myths that divide us and frames the stories that can bring us together.” ~Danny Glover, activist and actor

The message of possibility is everywhere. Namaste.

Sunday Dialogue (IV)

Journer: And heaven after death?

Nez: Don’t even think about it.

Journer: Isn’t heaven the message?

Nez: Eternity’s the message and is here and now forever. Namaste.

_____________
It is Pentecost. . . . Spirit was . . . hovering over chaos in the [beginning]. . . . We are waiting for a fire that has been burning incessantly within [eternally]. ~Richard Rohr, via Ida Forbis

"The Death of a Muse"

The great tree is toppled.

I did not know
the groaning I heard
was the death
of a muse,

this stranger to a landscape

who coaxed me
to look out the window
and see a moment
of colour and motion.

~John Forbis, from Exposures, his first book of poems

The word can be spoken through any part of creation, especially a tree. Namaste.

image: John, my nephew, my godson, and a monk at uMariya uMama weThemba Monastery in Grahamstown, South Africa

Myth, Fact, and Truth

Biblical scholarship no more supports the assumptions of “The Da Vinci Code” than it did either “The Passion of the Christ” or Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Command-ments.” ~J. S. Spong, via Dick Kroeger

We could add The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and the Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964). None re-presents the gospel unless of course it creatively changes our life perspective and style. All are art forms worth a good group dialogue afterwards. ~jpc

Let the truth have at us through any myth or fact. Namaste.

Smile Through It All

“In golf,” he [Tim Herron, winner of Bank of America Colonial golf championship] said, “it’s how you deal with the bad.” Which is, in part, why Lumpy always seems to smile through it all. ~Melanie Hauser, pgatour.com, 5/21/06

Wise Tim knows the ups and the downs are the way life is, and dealing with the “good” AND the “bad” is dealing with his good journey called life. ~jpc

Bring life on, the way it is. Namaste.