Toward Common Ground

Beautiful Explanation of Sikh Service

Dawn brought to my attention this beautiful music and this most insightful video. May it help us all to increase our breadth of understanding and to share in all blessings together.

After Newtown

The shortest verse in the Christian Bible is “Jesus wept.” He wept when his friend died, just as all of us, even our president, in the past few days have wept for the loss of life in Newtown, Connecticut.

After Jesus wept, though, the Bible tells us, he acted to change the circumstances concerning his friend’s death. We do not need to go deeply into that story, of course, for it is our own story that consumes us now, and our own need for action.

“What,” we cry out, “what is to be done?”

At the memorial service for those who died in the Newtown , Connecticut elementary school shooting we were called upon by the ministers of various religions to continue in the future to practice the compassion we feel right now. I hope that we are able to do that, of course, and I also hope that we translate that compassion into passion for change, for action.

My own hopes for change have to do with the roots of the problem in our society. Those roots are many and entangled. I know we cannot address all of them, certainly not immediately. But one strand, one cause of our on-going, recurring grief I would like to see us change.

I think today not only of the educators in that school, but also of the first responders, the crisis counselors, the mental health professionals that are so necessary in time of peril.

It occurs to me that we did not have a national memorial service for either the disturbed young man turned murderer nor for his mother, dead at his hand. And they both, I dare to say, are dead at the hands of a culture that does not place mental health on a par with other vital issues. Our cultures fails to give sufficient aid and assistance to the mental illness of the thousands like this young man who may suffer in obscurity until their condition festers to a point that they bring harm to themselves or others. We do not give sufficient concern and resources to the parents and teachers and care-givers of such disturbed youth.

We do not yet know if this young man who brought assault rifles and guns to kill six and seven year old children ever had professional psychological services. What we do know is that day after day all across this country for years now, mental health professionals’ resources have been whittled away. On any given day, the mental health practitioners whose services might change a disturbed young man from becoming a mass murderer face the bizarre fact that someone in an insurance office states away with spread sheet in hand, studying the “bottom line” for the insurance company, determines the amount and level of care the disturbed young man can receive—“No, not the amount of time you say he will need to be helped, but only this amount of time that we will pay for.”

But later, when the mass murderer strikes, we wring our hands and say, “How could this happen? Why did this happen?”

Well, we know how this can happen, why it happens, and one of the reasons is that we place our priorities, as a society, in the wrong places. It’s as simple as that. As one minister said, “No child is born a murderer.”

In our society’s times of peril, whether it be Hurricane Sandy or a mass shooting in an elementary school, it is a special group of people who become essential to us, people whom we then label, rightly, as heroes. But too soon we turn back to our lives, ignoring the fact that those heroes continue to be under assault every day, if not always by bullets or storm, instead by reductions and restrictions on the means with which they can accomplish the tasks we need them to do.

Teachers stood in the way of danger last week and lost their lives to save children. They stand in the front of the their classrooms every school day of the year, bravely attempting to do the job that is perhaps most important in our culture—shaping the lives of those who are our future.

And yet they are paid so minimally for what they do, and their salaries are going down, not up, as state and federal budgets are cut due to the mismanagement, not of educators, but of corporations and governments high and low. And not only that, but our educators’ self esteem and sense of high purpose is assaulted daily in the media whose pundits say repeatedly that our schools have failed, that the educational system is broken, etc. , without looking deeply into the culture’s reasons, our own reasons, why they might fail.

But on a day like last Friday, when every teacher, principal, and school counselor in Newtown, Connecticut did, at peril of their lives, what they do every other day—love, protect, console, and instruct their charges—we actually notice and praise them. We rush in to give them whatever they need in that moment of tragedy, but then we neglect to continue that priority in the following days and months and years, until another school shooting occurs.

If we hope not to see another Newtown or Aurora or any other such event, let us raise up our first responders, educators, counselors, and all the rest, not only with words of praise but with a whole new cultural mindset that puts these folks at the top of the list of priorities instead of near the bottom.

No matter what our budget has to be on a federal or state level, it is no longer acceptable for these professions to be cut and cut, even as they continue to sacrifice for us, not only in tragic circumstances, but daily, as they work long hours for less pay with less resources and less social status than they deserve.

I say, now, let us change. Our president said that we must, that we can. Let our compassion become action on behalf of children by uplifting the teachers, first responders, mental health professionals, seeing to it that they get every resource, support, and gratitude we can give them on an ongoing daily basis. Let us become their advocates and protect them as they protected those innocent children.

Each and All

The coldest night of the year. Awakened in the early morning by a red cardinal pecking on the window, I stir finally out of the warm nest of my bedcovers. When I look out the window, a glittering clear frost covers everything.

Wrapped in a thick red robe (that new fabric that is so deliciously soft), I venture out to greet the world. The crows protest my intrusion into the silence, my crackling footsteps on frozen leaves of grass. The dog, let out with me, wildly chases six deer from the garden path. The stiffness of my aging back as I bend, gathering up an armload of wood to carry back inside, reminds me how grateful I feel to be able still to do this ancient ritual, this tending of the hearth.

Then, back inside, the familiar creaking sound of the hinges, cast-iron on cast-iron, of the woodstove door, and the glass of the door darkened as always by the long, slow, overnight burn. But within the stove, amid the ashes, the embers remain, ready to flame back into life with the placing, carefully, of a stick of this dense red oak, wood from the big tree that died last year in the drought, its huge limbs cut and so recently split by some of the folks at the Thanksgiving gathering.

When the fire in the woodstove is blazing again, with its occasional sparks, settling shifts, and subtle murmurs, I sit with a cup of hot tea, reading from a book. The rambling of another mystic’s journal brings me welcome companionship in my own solitude.

This morning I take the time, unusual for me lately, for a sort of reinstatement of my paradoxical personal philosophy. Honed by a lifetime of attention to all the various Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Native American, Goddess affirming, Life affirming, Earth affirming, every other kind and sort of cross-cultural mythology, leaving nothing out, searching through the depth and breadth of spiritual enlightenment, in all its variety—from these I have been enriched beyond measure.

Yet, as always, as I turn from my book, I look around me. And then all philosophies, essential as they are, seem as nothing compared to the impact and value of just, say, the colors of one leaf of the oak-leaf hydrangea, a tall plant seen through the window, its leaves turning color—red, yellow, coral, pale green, a bit of bug-eaten brown even.

This seeing, this deep seeing, and sharing, and loving, loving it, each and all of it, this is the very living of my precious philosophy, I suppose.

Bless the leaf, bless the grain and splinters of the wood, bless the bite of the cold wind, bless the glistening ice, and bless the smart black crow. Bless, too, my own self, my waywardness, my sometimes numbness and foolishness, my stubborn everythingness, my nothingness, my “Yes, that! Not that!”

I acknowledge both the precious intimacy and beauty of each individual momentary manifestation (Grandmother) unfurling out of the never-ending possibilities of the (philosophical and actual) Void Itself (Grandfather) . The Each and the All.

Yes. Blessings be upon us this morning, each and all.

Make this world a better place

“Playing For Change” is indeed making this world a better place…Enjoy this new offering and support the message!

Giving Thanks

On this day, as on all days, I give thanks especially for you, each and all of you, whose lives, love, and good works mean so much in this needy world.

This Thanksgiving I am reminded, yet again, of how important it is to pause to give thanks. That pause in the hurley burley of life, when our attention is drawn this way and that, by this crisis or opportunity, by this demand or that creative impulse–that pause, that time-out, when we literally transcend time as well as space, when we in our gratitude remember the vast universe of connections that make our lives even possible–that is so essential.

So, even as Black Friday creeps into Turkey Thursday, as Christmas decorations appear in October, and some of us are still trying to sort out the deeper resonances of the Fourth of July, I hope each of you has an opportunity today to really pause, to give and receive thanks, and to experience the blessing that comes from awareness of the eternal gifts of Life itself.

Perception of Self, the One and the Many

“…It is common for humans to conceive of the world as a sum of complementary pairs, such as good and evil, light and dark, male and female, body and soul. The most fundamental of these oppositions is that between subject and object—the knower and the known. Most people perceive themselves as discrete, bounded entities, able to experience the world around them but ultimately separate from it. This area of demarcation is felt as an inviolable sense of self, and is given many names: consciousness, ego, mind, soul—or spirit…” Clifford Bishop

“…The Buddha asserted not only that there is no separate soul, but that there is no soul at all: the doctrine of anatta (non-soul). The Buddha taught that suffering (dukkha) is caused by misguided identification with the individual self or ego, which is not eternal but temporary…” Richard Waterstone

“…A lot of people have a hard time understanding native people and native patience…but I think to understand Indian people and the native mind you have to understand that we experience the world very differently. For us, there is not just this world, there’s also a layering of others. Time is not divided by minutes and hours, and everything has presence and meaning within this landscape of timelessness. For me the illusion is that we’re separate…I have a poem about the presence of those other worlds and the ways in which they interact. I have a sense of all those worlds as being very, very alive…” Joy Harjo

“…The mantra, ’Tat Tvam Asi’ (‘Thou art That’), is the central dictum of the Upanishads. It defines the relationship between Thou, the atman (soul in every being), and That, the transcendent Brahman (Absolute), which pervades the whole universe.” Richard Waterstone

“…In the first four words of the Creed are the two most important words that the human being uses: the word I by which he identifies himself, and the word God (for which we can substitute the word ‘Thou’ because it refers to God and our neighbor as well).

Each of us brings his own meanings to the use of these two words, meanings that he has learned in his relationship with the important people in his life. One man brings such egocentric meanings to them that we have to brace ourselves against him lest he suck us into his egocentric way of life. God becomes a minor satellite moving vaguely on the outer edge of his universe. Consequently, he uses the word Thou with the same self-centered meaning with which he uses the word I. The fact that he says the Creed once a week may have only contradictory rather than saving meaning.

Here is another person who brings more positive meaning to his use of the important words. The effect of his presence is to bring out, encourage, and strengthen the trust and capabilities of those around him. He brings to human encounter an outgoing, helpful, accepting, and self-disciplined relationship. We realize that this person’s center is outside himself. He is a religious man….” Reuel Howe

To the Contemporary Bunkshooters

Excerpts from a poem by Carl Sandburg

“You come along…tearing your shirt…yelling about Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher ups among the con men of Jeru-
salem everybody liked to have this Jesus around
because he never gave any fake passes and every-
thing he said went and he helped the sick and gave
the people hope.

You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist
and calling us all damn fools so fierce the froth slob-
bers over your lips…always blabbing we’re all
going to hell straight off and you know all about it.

I’ve read Jesus’ words. I know what he said. You don’t
throw any scare into me. I’ve got your number. I
know how much you know about Jesus.”

“…You tell poor people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up
all right with them by giving them mansions in the
skies after they’re dead and the worms have eaten
‘em.
You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is
Jesus…”
“…You tell poor people they don’t need any more money on
pay day…”
“…all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.”

“I’m telling you Jesus wouldn’t stand for the stuff you’re
handing out. Jesus played it different. The bankers
and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers
to go after Jesus just because Jesus wouldn’t play their game.
He didn’t sit in with the big thieves…”

“…I won’t take my religion from any man who never works
except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory
except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.

I ask you to come out and show me where you’re
pouring out the blood of your life…”

Open to the Infinite

This morning I read a poem by Kenneth Rexroth that echoed something I know. The poem is The Heart of Herakles.” Here is an excerpt:

Lying under the stars,
In the summer night…
…The stars stand around me
Like gold eyes. I can no longer
Tell where I begin and leave off.
The faint breeze in the dark pines,
And the invisible grass,
The tipping earth, swarming stars,
Have an eye that sees itself.

Sometimes Mother Nature…

Something I experienced and wrote about this summer.
Glenda Taylor

“Sometimes Mother Nature is a bitch,” she said.

She was replying to our text message telling her
that the mountain wilderness, once so loved—once
dense with stately spruce, shimmering aspen,
dark fir, pitch pine, and mystery, that same
mountain wilderness where a bear
once walked nearby us,
and deer and elk in herds
moved across meadows rank with green,
and once, too, an ancient owl,
happened upon suddenly,
sharp talons gripping the edge of a stump,
eye-level, stayed, sharp bright eyes piercing me,
equally transfixed, a few feet away, and
that owl stayed, for minutes or eternity,
we each stayed, perfectly still, owl and me,
as, pulsing between us, secret songs, imprinting awareness,
until that owl, while still firmly standing utterly still,
finally, majestically, slowly spread its wings,
a wingspan startlingly many times wider than its height,
and still it stayed yet longer, revealing to me its full incredible self,
before, finally, flying just over my head, into the darkening forest—

that owl-inhabited wilderness, visited yesterday,
after long absence, had, ten years ago,
we learned, been swept by massive fire,
fire covering many mountainsides, all now,
even years later, covered only, here and there,
with blackened trunks no longer trees,
fallen ruin everywhere, unhealed
all these years, not barren, really, but ravaged,
unrecognizable in its scars. A deep sadness filled our souls,
as we sent her a text message with such news.

“Yes,” she replied, and she knows,
having lost so much herself
in a hurricane, only a few years ago,
“Mother Nature can be a bitch.”

But, here’s the thing (and she knows this too,
though she didn’t say so in her text):

who can resist that shape-shifting bitch,
who, even yesterday, as we were sadly
coming down the mountain from
that charred remnant of wilderness,

threw across our way,
there in the rainy mist,
a shining double rainbow,
ground to ground,

and, as we watched from the roadside,
car suddenly parked in a ditch,
ourselves tumbled out to watch,
as one end of that radiant bow
actually moved closer and closer,
down the slope, toward us,

until it seemed we were standing at the very foot of that rainbow,
ourselves the pot of gold and the ancient promise remembered,
“I’ll not destroy everything again, ever.”

So we laughed and cried and sang together, hugging each other ,
my chosen song, “Over the Rainbow,” strongly, in the gathering mists,
for the sheer love, undiminished,
of that blessed bitch, Mother Nature, she
in all her changeable, inescapable, inscrutable
mystery and beauty.

Yes, fires rage elsewhere, even now, and fierce winds blow,
and drought and flood, and record-setting heat and freezing cold,
all that and more, bear’s hug crushing, owl’s talon tearing,
snake coiled to strike, humankind, unkind, at war, yes, all that…

And yet, and, always, the tender green shoot,
the rising mountain, the full moon, the quiet rain,
the delicate petal opening, the child’s laughter,
any sunlit meadow, full of glory,
the passionate love, swelling,
the burst of berry on the tongue…

always Mother Nature, emerging and re-emerging,
there she is again and yet again,
in some new, soul-capturing, breath-taking
beauty, wonder, and enchantment.

So, yes, to that too! Yes, but, once again, now,
remembering, contemplating, assessing, eyes open,
accepting, inside our hearts, as always,
we fall on our knees, again,
as again, we remember to say:

Though you consume me, yet will I love you.

Playing For Change at Folsom