Turtle

I like the turtle.  Unlike me, the turtle does not have to think about getting from where it is now, A, to its destination, B.  The turtle can just be in the now moment.  Why?  The turtle is always at home, because it carries its home on its back.  It can be in the moment, rather than focus on getting somewhere.  When I am on a journey, there is always the destination to which the journey is taking me.  For the mystic though, and the turtle, the journey is the destination.  The mystic is always at home in themselves.  Yes, the mystic and the turtle need to get to food and water, but not in some fearful sense of preoccupation.  They can seek some basic needs, while staying in the moment.  The turtle moves slowly, not frantic about what is missing in its life.  Its very nature is to not be a hurry.  Deep prayer takes stillness.  Maybe this blog will help you to gear down to turtle pace within your heart.

God's Failure

If Jesus is God, and he is hanging on a cross, what is the meaning of that?  To me, it means that God loves me in my pain and suffering, especially when it is pain I don't think I did anything to deserve.  Most of the time when any of us are in pain, physical, psychological, or emotional, we think that God has abandoned us or else does not care, or does not even exist.  We feel like victims of cruelty we cannot control.  The cross says God is with us and loving us in our pain.  But God fails.  Why? Because we do not believe God is there or here with our pain, loving us.  God loves but we don't know it.  OK. You are Jewish.  God's covenant people are wandering in the desert, or sent off to exile, their land desolate, destroyed.  God is loving them but they do not know it.  We humans think that pain and suffering means there is no God or no God who is loving us at that time.  Divorce? Job loss? Economic insecurity? Addiction miseries? Rejection? Death of child?  So God fails to reveal love in all these circumstances.  But God does not stop loving.  It seems to me that God would rather love and fail than not love at all.  How about you?  Will you love and fail?  You could just isolate, resent, put up walls to protect yourself.  But even there you will not be alone.  God will love you even if invisible to you.

San Francisco Rain

When I was a bachelor in San Francisco, I lived on Union Street, in the Cow Hollow section of the City.  One of my favorite days was when I was home and it rained, not poured, just a steady rain.  I used to go walking along my street.  On a bright tourist sunny, warm day, or any night, my street was crowded with visitors, shoppers, and fun searching people.  But Californians don't walk in the rain unless they have somewhere to go, like work or theatre.  My street was empty.  I put on my London Fog long coat, my water proof walking shoes, brimmed hat and meandered.  The shops were open, though all the front doors were closed, and they were empty of customers.  Like a nature forest, nothing was going on, unless you knew how to look.  The surprise moments happen that way in the City.  I stopped to look at one wood-framed store.  The wood was once a tree in the forest where it was born and grew up.  Then it was uprooted, handled by modern technology, and molded into the frame of this store, pained yellow. It now provides the store with warmth and dryness inside. But is it still a tree?  What about me?  I am uprooted too, from my Bronx home.  Technology, education, corporate America, relationships all have molded me in some way.  Some ways the tree and I have changed, at least in how we look and function.  But somethings don't change, if we know how to look.
                                          Woodiness makes a tree.
                                          Terryiness makes me.

Give yourself a hug.  Oops! Starting to cry.  Gotta go.

Time

Time began with creation.  Before creation, there was no time, right?  Well, if there was this "no time" does it still exist?  Did it just go away with creation?  I suspect maybe not.  An inkling of this can be seen in the way people talk about "what happens after we die."  Christians talk about purgatory, where my sister Maureen was until recently, when no one seems to know what happened to her.  Does purgatory have a "recent" or a time as a clock and calendar.  No.  I never hear of afterlife talked about  by those who believe in it, as having a calendar and clock.  So maybe this "no time" is how we exist after we die, no calendars, clocks, schedules with future appointments.  If so, Maureen is living in "no time."  But if "no time" was not cancelled out by creation, then time and no time exist together, intermingled.  God is in both maybe.  I think so.  Mystical prayer is living in the "no time" now and again in our prayer time, or just awareness of something that is timeless.  Could be my big sister is close to me yet.  And at large.  Yikes!  

Einstein

Albert Einstein said, "Science without religion is lame.  Religion without science is blind."  Some people think that they have nothing to do with one another.  Science cannot know everything completely.  That is why it is science.  It inquires.  It asks questions.  Beyond experiments, scientists need to be able to wonder, to muse, to live with the unknown.  A religious sense is what a scientist needs.  Maybe see it as spiritual, but religion embodies the spiritual, in spite of institutional flaws.  The world of religion mused, wondered, asked questions of "why."  Many of our best scientists have religious backgrounds, a spiritual searching background.  Religion on the other hand needs science.  Religion becomes blind when it thinks that it has the final answers, the definitive definition of "The Holy."  Theology is ongoing.  Creeds are our best thinking at the moment.  Religion developed as story, poetry, and the mystical.  We are all one world.  Keep the wonder.  Go look at the stars.

Avoiding Jesus

There are baptized parents who have decided not to raise their children with any talk about Jesus and Christianity.  Seems strange.  Why? Well, for one, Jesus did exist.  So did the Buddha.  They both were geniuses in the art of living.  Isn't that something worth knowing about?  Christianity founded hospitals, programs for helping the destitute, great schools of learning.  Christianity supported the arts, music, theatre and science.  Yes, science.  Why would you ignore all that.  Maybe what parents want to avoid is all the bad stuff about Christianity, the wars and hypocrisy, and power plays.  Welcome to history. You want to skip that too?  You think there is none of that in studying business, science and engineering?  That there are no charlatans and politics in all that?  Instead of ignoring the god that you don't like, and probably does not even exist, except in bad Sunday school teaching, why nog talk about creation, cosmos, unifying principles and what might be behind them? In other words, pose questions, the Socratic method.  Let the child think, wonder, read poetry.  I doubt you will find any of this in your STEM schools.

Awareness God

Whenever I have a thought about God, my thought is not God.  Thoughts are limited.  Thoughts are about duel thinking, which is how we think.  There is me who is thinking and there is the "other," whatever I am thinking about.  God and me are separate.  Meditation that pays no attention to thoughts, is an attempt to enter into non-duel thinking.  In meditation, I don't ask for anything from this "other" God.  I simply sit, ignore thoughts, and wait in the silence and solitude.  If I grab onto a thought I notice my breathing, for two or three breaths, so as to let go a bit of clinging onto the thought that is distracting me.  At time, I become aware of a simple presence, without images.  This presence is near, very near, and peaceful.  I sense this presence is all around and through me.  When I eventually open my eyes, I might sense that this presence is everywhere I go.  This insight can pass very quickly, in too brief a moment.  While in this awareness, I sense a lot of peace, love, trust and energy.  This is all much more beneficial to me than whatever my agenda or plans for God are.  I may not get what self-focused me wants, but I sense I get what I need.  Works for me.