BEACH MEDITATIONS

I awoke in a fairly primitive private campground on Bahia de Los Angeles several hours south of Mexicali, Mexico. I spread my yoga mat right above the water mark on the beach to perform my morning meditations and yoga practice, breathing in on my mantra “I know your Greatness”, breathing out to “I feel your love.” This is my usual mantra when I want to quiet my very busy monkey mind before I begin my focused meditation, this morning on the nature of nature around me.

I use a convenient pattern for my meditations in beautiful places with abundant sounds of nature all around. I start with the most distracting – the shrill call of birds or the booming of the waterfall, bringing my meditation into thoughts of how I can interact with nature around me, how I can share the experience of this perfect state to improve my relationship with Tao.

This morning, the penetrating call of various shore birds did not disturb my meditation but morphed it into meditating on how it would feel if I were one of the very same shore birds, flying on the thermals above our small camp, struggling for shared space on an outcropping rock. I felt gratitude for the shore birds that they called my attention to their morning engagements, competing but not competing for the miserly space of the rocks. What must it be like to be of nature, in nature and in communion with nature like that?

My monkey mind feels my foot slip slightly in the sand, seeking a less tenuous foothold. I turn my attention away from being to doing for this moment. But my desire for deep meditation is stronger than my monkey mind and I wonder what it must feel like to be one grain of sand in that vast beach, being tossed around by the waves and the persistent wind? How does it feel supporting my body? Is it fulfilled by its nature? Of course, nature surely does not ‘feel’ as we feel but water must still pass across scruffy rocks and birds must still vie for footholds on mossy rocks and sand must still mold itself in order to support my foot.

My meditations turn to our own natures. Surely I ‘felt’ not only the slipping but also a human emotion when my foot slipped deeper into the sand – annoyance at the interruption? Concern for my stability here on the beach? I quieted my monkey mind, listening with my eyes closed, hearing the ‘beingness’ all around me – the surf, the birds, the sand and even two shore grasses rubbing against each other as the wind shifted their relative positions.

As a Taoist, I believe Chi is an equal-opportunity energy. Birds may have it more naturally, even, because they do not need to ‘think’ about how inconvenient the slippery moss on the rock makes their perch. The waves follow their ancient pattern of ebb and flow without wondering about the rightness or wrongness of their motions. The wind flows around obstacles in its path naturally. Nature exists in ‘being’.

We humans, however, have been gifted this thing that separates us from ‘being’. The Christian Bible says we have been given intelligence through our Foremother Eve for reasons which we may find through our Bible Studies. Perhaps, as some would posit, we have been given this gift in order to be better stewards of all that is nature (pretty much everything on Earth and beyond that is NOT us). My meditations lead me to thinking that Nature is in sync with the Tao at all times and does not need our help to ‘be’. My meditations cause me to think that perhaps it is this need to understand that creates the separation from God (or Tao), that causes lifelong searches for meaning and ‘goodness’ and unending confusion between ‘being’ and ‘doing’.

As a Taoist, I often think human life would be so much simpler and in sync with Tao if intelligence, this special ‘gift’, had never been given. To be one with the Earth in ways which we may never understand due to the ego attached to intelligence is the constant struggle of my meditations. How do I become so humble so that I can properly recognize the contribution of the warm sand under my body? The call of the shore bird losing its foothold on an outcrop reminds me that I am so privileged in my meditation seat on my nice blue yoga mat with the reminder “Breathe” written in blue at the end.

I sit in lotus, my hands outstretched in an attitude of receiving and yet my monkey mind still races to divert my attention from my meditations. I hear the boat cruising by; the bang of the morning skillet in the campground behind me. I let these noises float through my consciousness thanking them for their lesson in proper meditation. I bow to the inevitability of the superior ability of my monkey mind to divert back to ‘busyness’. Yet, I yearn to be one with the shore bird. I wrestle with my monkey mind, finally, finally dipping into that River of Serenity I crave, achieving a deeply relaxed state of 'being'. For just a moment, I am one. And then that moment is gone and my monkey mind triumphs once again.

THE TAO OR THE TABLE?

Another book; another discussion. I have a feeling this is the pattern of the rest of our lives. I have now been given If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World by Quakers Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. I’m just a few pages into the first chapter but I already know I often find Tao in the peacefulness of the Quakers. My grandma was a Quaker and the peace that surrounded her felt like that cool blast of air in your house when you walk in after a really hot day.

I freely admit, as Dan grows in his faith, I am forced to grow in mine. He is a sharer; he wants to explore his faith actively, by sharing what he thinks and discussing the conclusions to which he has come. Practically every night we have conversations about the nature of grace, whether evil really exists, whether the HP (Higher Power) really keeps watch on every single thing that goes on in the cosmos. We talk about books, the Bible, the craziness of the world and whether Donald Trump is really a brilliant actor performing an elaborate piece of performance art as his boredom in a slow economy deepens.

Sometimes I am exhausted by my son’s active mind. Other times I feel the loss of his companionship, which occurred just a few days ago. I have no doubt my son has made me a better person, albeit an exhausted one. Since he accepted his call, I have witnessed him grow in ways I never anticipated. He is wiser, more compassionate and more thoughtful. He is also more likely to question and requestion his responses to everyday challenges. Most of the time, his spiritual lens is getting clearer but still, quite often, it is murkier than before his Call. I’m guessing as he begins his spiritual study, his questioning will be more commonplace than his answering. Doubt is implicit in faith.

It must be an occupational hazard. Questioning as part of the journey is replete in If God is Love. The authors tell of their early years as newly ordained clergymen with answers fresh out of the Bible and their seminary textbooks. They acknowledge the power of a punishing God but argue that this punishing God does not reflect Jesus’ teachings of unconditional love. This is a conundrum of the Christian Church.

The authors also argue that grace, as they describe as God's "unfailing commitment to love all persons regardless of belief,” does not work as a life raft thrown to the repentant by a loving God as so typically portrayed but as a life raft already waiting for you if you trip along the way. The authors propose that Grace is not relational to sin but to love.

As a Taoist, the idea of grace as Gulley and Mulholland describe it is certainly intrinsic to the Tao but an unnecessary explanation of the river of peace the Tao offers. Tao and grace may be similar – they both rely on an interconnected web (The Way in Taoism and God's unending love in Christianity). A believer in the power of the Tao tries always to incorporate in life a constant understanding that every single action and even lack of action affects the Tao, moving the Taoist closer or further away from it. On the other hand, Christians are motivated to be morally appropriate and loving in order to be deserving of God's infinite love.

For me, Tao is somewhat like the brass ring on a carousel. It is always there; you pass it many times as the music of life plays and the carousel turns. Your forward trajectory moves you closer until it begins to move you further away. That is the contradictory nature of Tao. But unless you actively reach for it, by listening to the way Tao is working within you, fully realizing the Tao inevitably remains out of grasp. When faith emanates from within, it is the spiritual practice of listening to the voice within that becomes paramount, not the rules and regulations that early tribes and Christians have proposed for the faithful in order to be 'judged' by God as acceptable for God's love.

I agree that Grace, defined as deeply relative to love rather than redemption, is a far more powerful attraction to the Christ than Judge God. Gulley and Mulholland admit that an unconditionally loving God may be more difficult to ‘sell’ than hell fire and damnation and certainly more difficult to raise funds for but a powerful, vengeful god, looking to separate rather than include, completely misses the point of Spirit, leaving the faithful afraid and paranoid of God’s wrath.

To be afraid of God? What a horrible misuse of God’s love as it is expressed through Grace. If all three Abrahamic faiths always promoted a loving, inclusive God what a wonderful world this would be. And I must admit, perhaps if God’s love had always been the main course of the spiritual meals meted out in my young life, I might still be drawn to the Table rather than the Tao.

READING ECCLESIASTES

For a Taoist, I am reading a lot of the Christian Bible this summer. Most of the time it is entirely my son’s fault. He reads the Bible regularly; he even reads the same chapters in more than one version of the Bible. He’s just that kind of student of the Bible.

The other day, my son asked me to read Ecclesiastes. He told me he found Ecclesiastes to be very confusing to read but he thought I might like it. He cinched it by telling me he would like my ‘take’ on it. When a child asks a parent’s opinion or advice, it’s almost a sure bet the parent is gladly going to give it.

For me, I found reading Ecclesiastes time-consuming and a bit annoying. The writer, who I will call Teacher, offers tale after tale of how he has accomplished everything under the sun and has been left completely unsatisfied. He does everything the various prophets have suggested and he still feels he has not achieved God’s attention. ‘I did good works and found it didn’t get God’s attention.’ ‘I gave away everything and it didn’t get God’s attention.’  ‘I became rich beyond imagination and found it didn’t get God’s attention.’ Teacher whines his way through the first four chapters but by Chapter 5, he seems to have concluded that God doesn’t sweat the details and neither should he. In other words, there is a bigger picture here.

I think I would like to invite Teacher for dinner some night so we could toss this idea around over a glass of good wine. From my perspective as a Taoist, Teacher gets one thing absolutely right. All his efforts are vain attempts to get attention from a God who just doesn’t work that way. “All is vanity,” Teacher cries. For me, the word ‘vanity’[1], repeated over and over in Ecclesiastes, is a word in which motivation is implicit. In our culture, vanity compels people to act in a certain way in order to achieve a reward, in Teacher’s case God’s attention. Going through all the appropriate motions, and all their opposite motions, Teacher never once feels like he has become rewarded for his efforts by getting closer to his God.

This attention-getting motivation, present in so much of the Bible, has been one of my major difficulties with Christianity since I was very small. Christians pray for forgiveness, for intercession on their troubles, to stop war, to end hunger or poverty, or for Lazarus to be raised from the dead. At a very tender age, I prayed that God would grant my father the strength to overcome alcoholism.  But God does not stop wars; God is not going to keep innocent people from dying from hunger, disease, or war nor is God going to help parents overcome their addictions unless that parent is good and ready to do the work.

The Christian God simply does not intervene to keep every human on Earth safe, happy and healthy. And this kind of thinking, the idea that God will solve all the world's problems if we just pray hard enough or do enough good works, shackles Christians in their hopes for a better world. For a Taoist, it is already clear that any attempt at attention-getting is futile (the word used by the NJS). If you want to change the world or at least YOUR world, you have to start with yourself.

As I see it, in addition to relying on the "Big Guy" to solve problems if you just pray hard enough, the largest impediment not only to my belief in the Christian God but to Christianity itself is that Christian humans, more so than the other Abrahamic faiths, fashioned their understanding of God after themselves. This is completely understandable and fashioning concepts of the gods after the known has quite a long tradition in religion.

The Aztec decided their gods lived in volcanoes because they experienced volcanoes as so very much mightier than they and absolutely unconquerable. Volcanology was an infant science just about the time the Aztec culture waned into history and the Aztecs , without the words to think of this enormous natural force in any other way, had to fashion their god thought by examining the mightiest and inexplicable forces around them directing their fear and admiration on those.

The Hebrew people were nomads in an unfriendly desert and many of them came from different god traditions, syncretizing these beliefs into a mostly avenging god who was eventually, after enough years of penance in the desert, going to save them (mostly from themselves) and deliver them to a Promised Land. Once the Christians got hold of the idea of one true God who fashioned humans and especially the Messiah after God’s own image, it became necessary to imbue the Christian God with human emotions and motivations so they could better understand their own motivations for worshipping or fearing something bigger than them. We humans are quite an arrogant bunch.

Humans’ understanding of God pretty much implies a reactive and interactive relationship – give and take. In my point of view, forming the idea of god as humanlike, much the way a potter would form a figurine out of clay, also has seriously limited the Christian God to a very small dominion, a Dominion which is comprehensible by ‘His’ people and imminently controllable by God.

So a loop is established. If one prays with the right intentions and worships and does the things required in the Bible, God will love him or her and give her or him good things – a good life, hope, riches, perhaps a hereafter in a place with angels and harps and rainbows. Sometimes this works if only to give someone a feeing that they have done SOMETHING. I freely admit that I pray this way, too, sometimes forgetting the bigger picture especially in the agony of loss. That is the tradition of my childhood and it is a habit really hard to break.

However, even though I know of no HP that directs the traffic here on Earth, I try to pray all the time, which in Taoist terms means I try to remember to regularly send a steady stream of love and acceptance, checking with my ‘conscience’, that inner voice, to see if my actions are bringing me closer to or further away from Tao. I try to remain in constant contact, broadcasting to whichever HP is listening, propagating the idea of a Humanity so emotionally mature it no longer needs ‘rules’ because it has found ‘love’. I freely admit that this is most, most difficult when I hear someone else spout very unloving things against my black, Mormon, Muslim, gay, Jew, Southern, Northern, Canadian or any other culture or stereotype of human beings that someone needs to put down in order to secure their fleeting feelings of superiority.

As a Taoist, my HP (Higher Power) has no shape, no form, no possibility of description. Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way), the Taoist book of verses that guides thinking about the Way, starts out with the verse:

              The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;

              The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

If you can wrap your head around that one, it’s just possible you might be a Taoist. I feel frustrated even trying to explain the Tao to people but I guess one of the ways I make it knowable in my heart is to think of it as a constant stream of love I can tap into at any time, at any moment. And this is the intersection that sends me to my very mainstream Progressive Christian church every Sunday morning I can get there. If I think of the Christian God (or the Muslim Allah or the Jewish Yahweh) as a stream of love and light, I always get something from worshipping with my fellow church members because in that sanctuary, love is all around. I literally feel the Tao moving on Sunday morning in that place.

Even if it is indescribable, I am human nonetheless, searching for ways to understand my Cosmos and yearning to put my faith into words in order to explore and share it. I truly believe there is Tao in every ‘good book’, whether it is the Bhagavad Vita, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or whatever other text there is that maps how to treat each other gently and kindly and guides our way of thinking about the One. That has been my experience because I have dear friends who are Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Secular Humanist, Mormon, 'Spiritual' and no religion at all. When I am with these people or even passing messages back and forth to them on Facebook, I feel the Tao moving.

The Tao is real but not real, knowable only by not knowing. But for me the Tao is the great force in my existence calling me to the river of peace it offers. It is a river I long to be immersed in forever.

 

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[1][1] The version I read came from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). The Message uses the word “smoke”, the New Jerusalem Bible “futility” the New International Version uses “meaningless” and the Catholic Bible goes along with the NSRV. I like to think of The Message’s ‘smoke’ to mean something like ‘smoke and mirrors’.

A WONDER AND A WORRY

Last night, in South Carolina, a well-know and well-loved Pastor was assassinated in his own church along with eight of his brethren, four of them also pastors. Last night here in Tucson, at about the same time, my son, anxious to jumpstart his ministry by starting to preach his truths, in my living room, with just me listening, practiced his first sermon to be given at his childhood Methodist church this coming Sunday.

Listening to my son’s passion roar off the page, I could not help wondering, for the bazillionth time, exactly why my son has received what the Christian world names a Call, why he is one who has to carry the burden of so many others’ inability to see poverty for the collective sin that it is, who are complacent about institutional injustice, who live to exclude others from their private, safe little clubs of Christianity or Islam or just about any other organized religion I could name.

As a Taoist, I’ve always had a struggle with the whole notion of a ‘Call’. My spiritual world is not one of a god that looks like us imperfect humans and issues commands to do this or do that from a fluffy white cloud somewhere ‘up there’. Taoists are pretty safe from Calls. How can one be ‘called’ by a force that exists mainly as a way of living in concert with the cosmos? Living in concert with the cosmos is sufficient (and very, very difficult for me) in my spiritual world. But my son’s need to become a minister is so strong, to do anything else is obviously the WRONG CHOICE. So how to reconcile my son’s obvious Call with my world? Even using the filter of my Taoism, I can see that doing anything else is moving away from rather into the Way.

I’ve struggled with that but I think I resolved that one a few Sundays ago at the very early contemplative service I attend whenever I’m in town. Pastor Jim’s message was about what we are called to do as Christians (any time he says Christians, I just insert Taoist in my head), about living our faith. It started me thinking about the notion that one might not be called so much by but called to. That made so much more sense to me.

But unfortunately, when it comes to how this works for my son, this is really bad news. I never really believed a Higher Power would swoop down and shame my son into becoming a minister. It was comforting to believe that this whole becoming a minister thing would have its natural life and he would go on to become a history teacher or the mayor of some pleasant mountain town in Montana. But if this whole thing is about being drawn TO something rather than being dictated to do so from outside self, the direction of Force and the response to the Way is vastly different. Being called TO is much, much more imperative than being called BY. If someone feels deeply moved from within themselves to do everything they can to bring people to the well of peace some people call God, I just don’t think it is as easy to say “Yeah, about that. Yeah, maybe tomorrow.”

So back to the events of last night in South Carolina. Since Dan announced he needs to become a minister, I have paid more attention to news about leaders of faith being threatened or worse. I’m somewhat familiar with what happens to most prophets; they don’t live easy lives and are sometimes tortured or killed by the powers that don’t want to be reminded that power generally moves them away from the Way. Jesus is a prime example of a prophet tried and killed for the sin of standing up for justice and truth rather than the status quo and really nice temples.

I don’t know if the Pastor in Charleston was killed because the white supremacist blamed him as a Christian or a Minister or a Black man. I do know that Pastor Pinckney felt called to ministry at a very young age. And I just know in my heart that Pastor Pinckney was professing his truths right up the moment the bullets pierced his flesh. That’s what people who are called TO ministry do. And that sometimes keeps me awake long into the night.

THE CHRISTIAN AND THE TAOIST

I have to find time to report to the Missoula police that aliens have abducted my son and put one of their own in his body. Not really but sometimes I kind of would like this to be true. His posts on Facebook have become more imbued with Biblical references as he reads his way through the Old and New Testament. He calls me at 10 pm (a time that I am most likely either asleep or trying to get there) to ask me if I know about Deborah of the Bible. He phones me to relay new influences for possible sermons in the not so distant future. He sees Biblical references in movies and TV shows. Meanwhile, the references that most help me accept that it really MIGHT be MY Dan peeking out through all the Biblical references, are the ones he constantly finds of the completely imperfect prophets and messengers of Spirit that were the perfect prophet or messenger at the exactly right time.

The other night, after a very long week of politicking for the continuation of his advocacy organization’s money stream, he posted this on Facebook:                                                                                   

Super long day, with more to come tomorrow. Time to curl up with some jazz, some red wine, my Bible, and my bed.

It’s times like these that I get greater insight into Peter being a real jackass as his best friend was dying on the Cross and Moses using his disability to try to weasel out of being a spokesperson for the Hebrews. It’s true that many, if not most, of Spirit’s best messengers have been deeply flawed. But in my universe the Bible wasn’t exactly the best compliment to wine (unless Jesus was pouring) and jazz just may have been Satan’s favorite music because it made you want to writhe in very unholy ways.

A very, very long time ago I gave up being a Christian. I, like Ghandi, basically don’t like Christianity very much because it so often is not much like its Christ. I have been truly averse to naming myself Christian even though I had been a good Catholic girl until I discovered serious sin my freshman year of college. I was averse for all the right reasons – the Inquisition, the Crusades, Manifest Destiny….my litany of Christian crimes stretched across my progressive-minded playbook. But I have never been able to ignore the pull of Spirit. So what was I to do?

I originally learned about Taoism from my father.  If my father was anything, he was a Taoist. We talked about that a bit when I was in college and I started reading Lao Tse and the Tao Te Ching (the Way to Virtue). As I read, I felt like I was falling into a warm familiar stream and I realized that this was a way of being that had meaning – maybe not to everyone but certainly to my father – and to me.  

Later, while I was caring for him as he lay dying, my father and I had long conversations about why he kept the Way and basically tossed the Christian God out on His ear. In these discussions, I realized that I, like him, just could not stand the hypocrisy of a religion that evangelized the separation of those who did not believe exactly what the Religion of the month wanted their believers to believe. The litmus test for heaven was not in being a good, kind and compassionate soul but one that would stand up in front of one’s peers to proclaim that Jesus was his or her personal savior. Hogwash. What was the point of Jesus’ time of earth if it wasn’t to proclaim to all that such exclusivity was completely misguided and that we are all cells of the same tree?

Personally, I think Jesus really got the whole Taoism thing. That’s how I cope with my son becoming an advocate for Jesus’ way of thinking. Not all of us are going to respond to something as ambiguous as The Way. It is very personal and offers very little concrete guidance for navigating sin in the modern world. Of course, it doesn’t really talk about sin at all – just being in the river of the Way… or not. The not is one’s own business since not being with the Way means nothing more than a diversion. It’s basically impossible to be hypocritical as a Taoist. Taoism offers a path (call it the River we all long to be a drop of) but if you decide you don’t want to get familiar with the Way, that’s okay. We all get there on our own time. It’s kind of hard to rebel against something that teaches rebellion is just one step on the path. And Taoists are patient sons of a gun.

So back to the juxtaposition of wine and the Bible. Lots of reference to wine in the Bible. So maybe wine and the Bible go together like Huckleberry and Finn and I am just letting the memory of the sour smell of the Knights of Columbus Hall on a Saturday morning cloud my thoughts about whether these two go hand-in-hand. I get that wine is symbolic of Christ’s blood spilled on the Cross for us but then I don’t relate to that either. I think Christ didn’t die FOR our sins but BECAUSE of them. He didn’t sacrifice himself for us; we sacrificed him because we were and continue to be naughty and haughty children who resist the very idea that we are all part of a cosmological ONE. It’s just too damn hard to love the unlovable. To invite the ‘other’ into our home and our hearts.

But I am beginning to realize that my son wants to live Christianity the way Christ lived it. That’s pretty Wayish to me. So we continue to be the Taoist and the Christian, finding ways in which our theologies coincide and sharing the stories of the Bible and hopefully someday he will want to know the beautiful language of the Tao Te Ching. I continue to acknowledge my role in introducing him to the very religion I eschewed as a college student but ultimately relied upon to help my son maneuver through this often difficult, out of sync world. Ultimately, perhaps it was the Way that led me to the uber progressive Methodist church that provided a safe place for a wild and weird kid to learn about Christ’s mandate to love. After all, all things are possible with the Way.

 

 

 

THE CROSS AND THE CALL

I’m trying to figure out whether I believe in Prophets. You know, the Biblical kind, those rare, enlightened individuals that get away with telling things like they are – at least for a little while. A really good preacher (or rabbi or priest or imam) can talk for a solid half-hour telling you things you may already know but need to revisit without you feeling like you’d rather be reading the financial section of the newspaper. There he or she stands, usually above you as a subliminal message of hierarchy, telling you how you can get closer to God, or Allah or Spirit and you don’t even resent it.

I have noticed some of their messages are incredibly hard. Love your enemies, give more to the poor, shelter the homeless. Not activities we give a whole lot of priority in our post-colonial, neo-capitalist world. Generally, I’m one of those who believe each of us come to Spirit, God, the Creator in our own time and in our own ways. Even though I pretty regularly attend church, sometimes it gets my knickers in a twist that this person, who obviously has the same failings as me, can presume to tell ME how to get closer to my God.

Something must be off about us – something that compels us to attend Sunday service to hear the ‘good news’ that we are doing everything wrong from people that may be no more ‘faithful’ than we are – or at least most of the time. I guess the point of faith is like trying to hit the target with an arrow. Unless you are a really, really good archer, you are going to miss the bulls-eye more often than you hit it. 

Maybe that’s why we come to hear pastors (or prophets) speak to us in parables. We WANT to hit the target and just maybe we’ll hear something that improves our aim. Perhaps we justify attending our places of worship by knowing shepherds of flocks of faith are paid to think about this stuff so maybe they might have a teensy bit more enlightenment than we do.

Imagine my surprise back during Christmas when my minister-in-training’s pastor provided my son a chance to help his congregation ‘improve their aim’ and give the sermon at his home church. I was wondering how that would turn out; this boy used to have some serious stage fright at times. What would happen when he looked out at all those people waiting for HIM to tell THEM how to be better Christians? This was going to be interesting. Not exactly like the fox guarding the chickens in my son’s case, but more like the rooster (the loud, noisy one) trying to wake up the whole chicken coop.

I flew up to provide my support and to catch the show when the "Sermon Sunday" arrived. My son practiced his sermon in front of me and it seemed that he had a good message he wanted to deliver well. A message about ridding oneself of things like fear, greed, hate and taking up the cross which would ultimately let you die to new life. Really? These words were coming out of MY CHILD’S mouth? Redemption, resurrection? Long ago, I decided I believe in redemption (but not too many of them) but resurrection? Come on.

The bible passage was the Lenten one where Peter is getting cold feet about the radical nature of Jesus’s ministry. Jesus knew he was just about ready to take up the cross and he was a bit testy with Peter. Well, I guess I can feel for Peter here more than I can feel for Jesus. What happens if my son preaches news that makes people seriously uncomfortable? I know that’s kind of the point but what happens if someone takes offense, so deeply in denial about his or her own spirit that he or she needs to hurt the messenger? 

These thoughts do cross my mind. It’s easy for a mother to want to shield her child from hurt. But when the child is running around telling people about a better way but they might have to give up their Mercedes and their pedicures (being autobiographical here) because there are hungry people on the streets? Honestly, even I know that sometimes a mother just has to let the consequences fall where they may.

Here ‘s the thing I’m learning about ‘the Call’. Someone who is truly ‘called’ can’t help themselves. It’s like a force is pushing them forward, causing them to witness to something amazing that CAN happen only if….. And that only if part is the hardest part of the message. And there is no medication for those ‘called’ to do God’s work except the work itself.

Men and women who get that tap from whatever we call God are as attracted to the ‘good news’ as an addict is attracted to crack. Somewhere in the core of their being, they believe the world-nay the cosmos-can be a better place if we all die to our old lives to make room for our new life. And this message of the perfect love of God fuels their engines, speeding them forward.

In the past few weeks, I have wondered about this Call business. I wonder if all persons of the cloth are OCD like mine. It seems like this call thing borders on obsession. Like the need to scratch an itch. I think possibly the call IS obsessive, more like a burning desire.  I wonder if Coretta Scott King ever thought of Martin as obsessed. I wonder if Mary was more than a little worried about Jesus’s passion for his ministry. Frankly, I suspect all persons of the cloth, who truly are called (and I think some of them are not but take it up like Johnny got a law degree because it looks good on paper) are pretty much a half a bubble off.

Maybe they have to be a bit crazy to continue to believe in redemption and resurrection among a species with such poorly designed ‘free will’. I'm kind of upset that God gave us a really good tool with absolutely no directions. Well, except for those we can find in our spiritual books, in our churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. So I was thinking that maybe if I look at  pastors, priests and prophets more as research librarians, I’d be more comfortable when my wild child climbed his way to the pulpit and started telling people about the ‘good news’.

So what happened when Dan spoke his truth to his congregation? Well, I was needlessly worried. Even I would have to admit he ‘hit it out of the park’. And by his actions alone, he continues to convince me about this ‘Call’ business. And here’s the real deal. Whatever God is serving, Dan is absolutely going back for refills.

PRAYER SHAWL

Growing up, my son had a hard time being away from home. He didn’t usually attend sleepovers and when he did he would often call me up around 4 in the morning asking me to come get him because he ‘couldn’t sleep’. Because he had trouble sleeping anywhere besides his own home, his own bed, his weaning process might have been just a bit longer than most cubs.

When he was about 11, I made him attend church camp for the first time. I knew he would have a hard time adjusting to living in a cabin in the woods with a bunch of other boys he didn’t know so I prepared the camp dean and educated the camp nurse on how best to handle his anxieties. And before he left, I secretly mailed him the first of a long series of  ‘hugs’, long letters detailing how much I loved him and letting him know I had faith that he could get through whatever he was going through.

The ‘hug’ was constructed from several sheets of plain paper taped or glued end-to-end and then laid out on the floor under my outstretched arms. A friend or colleague would then draw the silhouette of my arms on to the page into which I would write whatever was in my heart. When he received my letter, he could read the letter and then ‘wrap’ himself up in my love. My way of bringing the comfort and safety of my arms when he was far away from home. I really didn’t know it at the time, but this was my version of a prayer shawl for my child.

Last week, one of my son’s friends began the long recovery from a trauma suffered several years before. In the middle of a long night of distress that accompanies such healing, she called my son asking him to come over to stay with her through her dark night. My son, as he had with so many other friends before, responded immediately and stayed to provide what comfort he could. He was very worried and touched by her turmoil and wanted desperately to help but knew, through his own struggles, that in the end there was no quick cure or easy path through the pain.

As he left church that next Sunday, he passed by his church’s prayer shawl ministry table as he had many times before. This time, however, for the first time, one of the ladies called out to him “Do you know of anyone who might need a prayer shawl?” Coincidence or intervention?

The prayer shawls his church ladies create not only have their loving prayers but also little Christian sayings embedded into and onto them. He knew his friend is an atheist. He wondered how she would take such a spiritual gesture but he felt the prayer shawl, just like the hug, might have powers beyond its material existence. He knows ‘things’ can be imbued with special powers when they have been gifted from someone you care about or created with intention and love. He decided a prayer shawl might be helpful to her healing and asked the prayer shawl ladies if they would make a slightly less ‘religious’ one for his friend, the atheist. Responding with love, the ladies happily agreed.

A few days later, he picked up her prayer shawl and nervously delivered it to his friend, worried that such a gesture might be unwanted but firm in his belief of its power. As he handed it to her, he explained what it was and how it was supposed to work. She held it close and cried. The prayer shawl had already begun working its special brand of magic.

Perhaps there is a good reason prayer shawls have survived as a symbol of comfort and solace over the centuries. Perhaps we humans are just superstitious. But in the books on Jesus’s ministry there are many stories that detail his followers and others hopeful of being ‘cured’ by touching his cloak. His actual garment was thought to have healing powers.

I imagine that Jesus, an observant Jew, would have worn a garment, called a Tallit, ‘thrown over his shoulders’ as God had commanded male Israelites wear during their long journey in the desert (Numbers 15:38-40). These garments, with requisite tassels on each corner, came to become known as prayer shawls. You may have seen these often white and blue cloths worn over the shoulders of Jewish men if you have ever visited a Synagogue or perhaps you have seen them in a painting or a movie. The shawls were commanded in order for the Israelites to be reminded of God’s commandments and, by extension, God’s favor.

Prayer Shawls are a perfect example of the syncretic nature of religion. Although very much a Jewish tradition, prayer shawls have become symbols of the security and comfort found in God’s love in the Christian tradition as well. In 1998, two women, alumni of the Hartford Women's Leadership Institute, seeking to apply their Feminist Spirituality founded a ministry based on Prayer Shawls. They promoted a program which encouraged women of spirit to knit, crochet or sew warm shawls for those needing comfort or solace or even joy and celebration. And with each stitch, with each loop a small prayer for the wearer would be imbedded.

There is magic not only in the intent and prayers placed into the shawl by its maker but in the idea of someone else spending so much time and effort to create such a thing – especially for a complete stranger who does not share the same beliefs. What we do for others benefits the doer and the receiver. From my perspective, gestures like this bring us closer to the Way. They remain a reminder that even perfect strangers care about us. One doesn’t need to be a person of faith to ‘get’ the love that is delivered with the Prayer Shawl.

GENESIS

“Dan, you left your Bible in my backpack.” NEVER the words I would have expected to come from my mouth as they pertained to my wild child son. I’m not sure my backpack (any of them) had ever even SEEN a bible much less held one. But my son Dan had been working hard but was stressed about money so I had invited him to fly back home on my dime for a camping weekend with a bunch of my outdoor adventure cronies.

By then, Dan had already told me that he felt the One we name God had called him to champion justice and that he felt he could do that best as a minister – a man of the cloth – a preacher man – a pastor– Clergy – the shepherd of some flock. Honestly, I had begun to see some tell-tale signs before he called me that Saturday morning to break the news he would not be entering law school or become a history teacher. I had already suspected he might want to follow some path that let him work for social justice – after all, he was already doing that and had done so for quite a few years already.

I had become used to him being a ‘community organizer’, a usually poorly paid position helping others realize not only their potential but their basic human rights. I could see him as a lobbyist for progressive causes or even as an elected official. But never, I mean never in a million years, would I have believed he would be tapped by the One to be a ‘fisher of men’.

That Saturday morning is burned into my brain. He called me early – much earlier than usual for a Saturday. He sounded like he had slept little and thought a lot. “Mom, I decided I am going to apply to Divinity School.” I asked him if he was sure. Yes, he was. Or at least he thought he was. I reminded him pastoring is not all babies and baptisms. He told me he knew that but he still wanted to pursue this. He asked me to be happy for him and I honestly told him I would support him but couldn’t be happy about him being a magnet for the sick and the homeless and the lost and the dis/spirited. “Dan, there are a lot of really sick and hurting people out there who will be looking for you to fix things.” I told him.

Still, he said it just ‘felt right’. And the days have turned into months, I realize that Saturday was the opening of Dan’s Chrysalis – his morphing from concerned activist to spiritual advisor. I remember I kept suggesting to Spirit that someone else’s child might be better suited. But as Dan grew in faith and certitude, I felt my own spirit open to the very idea that someone is ‘called.’

I’m not a very good Christian. I’m a pretty good Taoist. Taoism is about always trying to be in sync with The Way and knowing that this is quite difficult at times. It’s an easy philosophy to explain and believe and an extremely hard one to live. Because it doesn’t have rules. You are either interested in being in the Way or are just not in the Way.

To me, Christianity has always been very much about rules. Only certain people are going to get to heaven. Only certain people deserve to sit on the side of God. Moses delivered the Ten Commandments to a Nomadic people who had to have social order and we humans thought that meant it was a mandate forever. I’m not particularly good with rules.

And here is my wayward wild child ready to step up to the pulpit and tell people how they should live their lives. Honestly, the thought made me more than a little uncomfortable. My love of Spirit is very meaningful and personal to me. I don’t expect or want to tell other people how to greet Spirit. I was a bit appalled my son thought he had something to tell everyone about how to find/follow/love Spirit. Really? This is the same kid that drove the after-school care program Director to seriously consider retirement. Why in the heck did Spirit choose him anyway?

But I can’t deny the growing glow around him. I can’t deny the reaction of his friends who have enthusiastically endorsed his decision. He is becoming more confident that he made the right choice. Of course, he is human and wanting at least sometimes to push this off until his next lifetime but I have witnessed an increasing assurance that he finally listened to an urge way bigger than him to seek the credentials that would put him in front of crowds of people to help them figure out their way to Spirit. God to him is as addictive as crack to an addict. He just can’t get enough.

Today, Dan received his first letter of acceptance to one of the four schools to which he applied. He is both very gratified and scared at the same time. No doubt being a minister is a huge responsibility. And this path was given to a kid who couldn’t be bothered to pick up after himself without a prod.

World, I can completely tell you with confidence that this messenger is flawed. But as he is quick to point out, most of God’s messengers were. Moses stuttered. Peter had a serious breakdown of confidence. Jonah had to sit in the body of a whale for three days before he was ready to listen. Martin was a Southern black man at a time being black was not an easy path to power. Mother Theresa constantly wrote of her lack of faith in her private journals. The history of faith is full of people who feel like they weren’t ready or didn’t deserve to be called. I’ve often wondered if this is somehow God’s little joke on the rest of us.

So am I finally ready to accept this whole notion of being called? Hell if I know. But I am prepared to acknowledge (barely) that my son is very different than he was before he opened his heart and mind to ministry. I just hope he remembers that although as willing as I was to go toe-to-toe with even the school district Superintendent to protect my wild child, even I can’t beat up an entire congregation. For that, he’s going to have to rely on the One who called him there in the first place.

NUMBERS

My son Daniel is in the candidacy process for the United Methodist Church. This kid was the prototype for Dennis the Menace. He wasn't a bad kid at all; he could just think of more creative ways to get in trouble than the adults around him could make rules for. So when he called me one Saturday morning and told me he had definitely decided NOT to apply to Law School or become a high school history teacher because he felt he had a 'calling', I cried for three hours.

It's not that he wouldn't make a good one but my son has always had a very soft spot for the downtrodden, the hurt, the sick, the homeless, the disabled.....he is an empathetic kind of kid (he's 25 now) who will inevitably reach out to those who others have forgotten. But I'm getting used to it and have started recording our conversations that I never in my wildest dreams thought would occur.

My son called me this morning and I answered with a cheerful "Hello Son" even though I was very busy with stuff.

In his usual just-needing-to-share way he said "Did you read my (FP) post yet?"

Me: "No, I've been busy."

Dan: "Well I couldn't sleep so I read Numbers."...
 
Me: "is Numbers the name of a book? Like from the TV show?"
 
Dan: "No Mom, Numbers - the book in the Bible."
 
Me: "There's a book in the Bible called Numbers?"
 
Dan: "Yeah, it's right after Deuteronomy."
 
Me: "Is that about stars or something?"
 
Dan: "No. Numbers is all about how Moses gets all pissed off at the Israelites because they were tired of Manna and wanted to go back to Egypt so they could have meat. Moses gets really 'why do I have to put up with this sh!?' and asks God to just shoot him now."
 
Me: "Was that around the part about the golden idol?"
 
Dan: "No Mom that's another book. But God did send them all the meat they could eat but they still complained so God smites them."
 
Me: "Doesn't God do that a lot in the Old Testament? That smiting thing?"

Dan: "Yeah."
 
Me: "You could use that for a sermon like 'Aren't you glad you don't live in Old Testament times? You could be dead."
 
Dan: "The whole thing makes me laugh."

I'm a little unclear how Numbers makes my son laugh and a little uncomfortable that the reason might not be a good one for a minister.