A Spiritual Pill

Think of a spiritual path as taking a pill on a daily basis.  Now some pills you have to take with food. The pill works best in combination with something else, food in this case.  A spiritual path pill metaphor should be taken with an open mind and willingness to do the work.  If I simply read some Buddhist scripture to get information or to show how wrong it is, then I am not on that spiritual path. I have no open mindedness and am not willing to do any of the meditations.  So if I am going to read some spiritual path book, I first ask myself, “Am I open minded about what I am about to read?”  Fundamentalists generally are only opened minded to what already agrees with their view.  I call it tribal reading.  Read only what your like minded tribe subscribes as true.  I go into reading something quite different from what I know, believe, think with the attitude, “What can I learn from this wisdom that will help me to expand my horizons, and grow into a better person?”

Epipany

Remember the Three Kings from Christmas stories?  Well, today is their day in Christian circles, except in the United States.  In the USA and maybe in some other places, it got moved to Sunday. Why?  We don’t move Christmas?  Well, let’s face reality.  Many a Catholic is not so much in love with their God as wanting to stay on God’s good side for eternal insurance as well as to want current plans to go their way.  If you really loved God, you would go to mass on Epiphany Feast Day, January 6.  I always did growing up.  Now we could make it a Holy Day Of Obligation and that would get a bunch of people to go to church, but a whole lot more would skip it.  They are churched out from Christmas stuff. Mediocrity won’t change, so change the date of the feast.  We moved it to Sunday.  If you love someone then obligations transcend into gratitude for love.  If you don’t love, then obligations are just a chore, and we often skip our chores because we would rather be doing something else or we are just self-imploded.  

Whose Rules?

It seems strange that institutional Christianity is all caught up in rules and punishments.  The religion is based upon a person who was born into this world beyond any rule, scriptural interpretation or doctrine of his religion.  Which is why Jesus was so little accepted among his people.  He did not fit their way of seeing things.  God never fits into institutional, historical religion.  But we make up rules that don’t fit God.  Example, go to mass on Sunday or burn.  I thought that God wanted to be our friend and have a love relationship.  Would you want a friend who said, “I will do thus and so with you or for you so that you don’t zap me.”  That is neither friendship or love.  I think that manny rules simply fit the institution and its agenda rather than the God of which it speaks.  If my dogma is right, then God came into the world conceived of a woman who did not have a husband relations, born poor, into a carpenter home in a little out of the way village, and then did nothing spectacular for about 30 years.  God the unexpected.  So be open to the unexpected coming, presence of whoever this God is, who seems less about rules, and our expectations, and more about Love.  Love is so often a surprise. Think of your first falling in love when you saw that person across the room.  It has no rules.

Reading

In school you read for information.  You may memorize some things especially for a test.  You may like to widen your base of knowledge, thinking this makes you “smarter.”  But most of this information will do little to change you.  Information has its limitations.  Another way to read is for the purpose of transformation.  You read something slowly and then ponder it, let it work on your insides where change happens.  One might read scripture or a self-help book or a meditation guide in this manner.  You might read little but you ponder it.  You could read the Bible, the Vedanta, Buddhist text, as in a class of study and be changed not one bit.  You would not become a better person.  Formation is to change the heart.  The head helps, but the heart is where all change for the better happens.  Head reads.  Heart ponders.  Person changes.  I have found it so.

Rule Oriented

Why is institutional religion so rule oriented?  Christianity for instance is based upon God becoming a human person in Jesus of Nazareth.  As I recall his Dad, Joseph, found out that the wife, Mary, was pregnant and not by him.  Rule says, he could have her stoned to death and she along with baby would die.  Case solved.  But he decides to divorce her quietly, not quite the rule, but he is a nice guy, compassionate and caring for the pregnant girl.  Then he decides, from a dream, to take her into his home as wife, care for her and the baby when born.  He is breaking rules, so Jesus comes into world through rule breaking.  So I sometimes bend a few rules or don’t follow them very strictly.  I do pray to Saint Joseph!.

No Strangers

One of my hopes for 2020 is that I will talk to someone I don’t know who might be new to the event or gathering I am attending.  It is so easy for me to talk to people I know, with whom I am familiar and at ease.  But the newcomer, who might feel like an outsider might just stand around or sit by themselves not quite knowing how to fit.  So I will try to be on the lookout for someone who is sitting alone in a gathering.  And I will introduce myself with no expectations of anything in return.  I am not so much trying to make a new acquaintance, but rather trying to get out of myself.  Welcome the uncertain newcomer.  If I get out of myself then no matter how the encounter goes, I am a better person for the effort.

Happy New Year

Will it be a happy new year?  As long as I am open to preferences and not “musts” or expectations I think I have a chance for some peace and happiness.  So I try not to have hard and fast resolutions, such as “I will never do this or that again,” or “I will do this and that every day.”  I can have goals, and hopes and then do the work.  But stuff happens over which I have little or no control in 2020.  And what is so different about December 31 and January 1, as far as behavior and attitude is concerned?  Growth is not magic.  I will have to work on a daily basis to do what has helped me in the past.  My issues are not new, so my solutions need not be new.  Ah!  Discipline.  And grace is needed too.  I am so so on discipline but at least I know what I need to do from past experience.  Good stuff happens when I avoid bad stuff on a daily basis.  2020 is a lot like 2019.  One day at a time.