Bolder Boulder

Yesterday, in Boulder, Colorado, where I live and train with a running community, there was a 10K race, that is, 6.2 miles, at 5000 foot altitude, with hills.  50,000 people ran it from all over the area.  I did not run.  I am washed up, not physically.  I am not injured.  I simply embarrass myself when I try to race.  It is pitiful.  But instead of feeling sorry or pitying myself, I accept reality, and decide to do something positive with it.  I went to the race to be of service.  I was part of a team of volunteers that worked the last mile, crowd control, car traffic, helping the hobbled runner, encouraging runners for the last mile, picking up trash, and so on.  Being of service gets me out of myself.  Plus, I like the last mile because I get to see all the pain of the runners going up the long incline, and feel better that it is not me.  Even when I used to race, I hated the last mile.  I try to lie, and yell to people, "You look good.  Keep it up."  In fact they look terrible.  So if you are washed up in one area, try being of service for others.  A race requires more than the runners to make it a success.  In life we can all participate in one way or another.

Reach Out

I recently went back to a gathering of my Paulist community for ordinations and celebrations of ordination anniversaries.  Some years ago I had stopped going to these gatherings because I walked into a room of my brother Paulist priests and felt so alone.  No one came up to me to talk.  I was ignored, so I thought.  So I stopped going to these gatherings.  Now I don't think it was one of my times when I needed to "Be the center of the Universe."  I decided though that if I was going to feel alone or feel ignored, I could do this at home and save a lot of travel expense.  Then something changed...in me.  Over the subsequent years, I began to go to meetings and not wait for someone to talk to me.  I would walk up to someone, perfect strangers, or close to it, and introduce myself.  Then I would say something about them, something positive.  At first, I felt lame.  But the dreaded edge of walking into a room of people and feeling a stranger or outsider, began to lose its sharpness.  So when I walked into this recent gathering of a weekend with my Paulist community, I did just that.  I had no idea who the three guys were who were going to be ordained.  So I found them, introduced myself and thanked them for what they were doing.  Others seemed glad to see me, saying they had not seen me in years.  I felt I fit into my own skin and the skin of the Paulist community.  So if you feel uncomfortable walking into a room of people, instead of going for a drink, walk up to someone and introduce yourself.  It is not that you are trying to get a new best friend, but rather to overcome the myth that you are alone, unloved, a social failure, etc. We suffer enough from reality.  Why compound it by suffering from what is not real, except in your own head.  Do you ever get this crazy thinking, or is it only me?

Kill For God

Religion starts out quite brilliantly, with great wisdom, generally.  Then stuff happens.  What stuff?  Believers tend to kill people who don't agree with them.  The killers have their narrow faith stance.  It seems that fear is what happens and with fear comes killing.  These people get into a belief list of issues that they call faith.  Because it does not have to do much with love of others, or even connection with others beyond the tribe that agrees with them, fear seems to develop.  They don't like people who are different. Differences threaten these "list believers."  Over time, historical issues become matters for belief.  You can have schisms based upon who is pope or head Iman.  It is really a grab for power.  Power comes into focus over time as the "Way" gives way to "The Creed."  In my religion, the cross was a corrective to the inevitable grab for power and control.  It seems we wear crosses as jewelry, and put a cross in the center of our buildings, but then forget about it when we get into daily life.  So who are you trying to have power over or control today?

Deity Focus

At some point my religion moved away from the ethics and way of life that Jesus taught, and became focused on who Jesus is, Who God is, the noun, and what the church is.  Maybe this is the way it goes with spiritual paths.  Buddha became The Buddha.  He went from a person who taught a way of life, and how to live to overcome or endure obstacles, to someone who is to be practically worshiped. Hinduism moved from a wisdom to the worship or talking about the identity of various gods.  What is common in all this shift, in my limited opinion, is that people cannot live the teaching, so they simply move to worship and dogma, creed.  In my religion, it seems that Jesus hung out with the poor, or lower income people, the people with little political clout.  Nowadays, you can be Catholic and not care much about or judge the poor as less than you.  I think that religion tends to become influenced by culture.  My religion, as Jesus seemed to say, was supposed to be leaven in the culture. Each day, I have to ask myself if I am living as the gospel demands.  Or am I going to be a church attending person who believes a creed, but lives no differently than a nonbeliever.  It is embarrassing when I see a backslider, nonbeliever who lives the gospel better than me.  How about you?

The God Connect

Early on Christianity had a split.  It happens to all religions and spiritual paths.  For Christians it was circumcision versus relationship with Jesus.  Circumcision meant that you were in the club.  It was something done to you, like baptism or initiation rites.  It is a one time thing.  Throughout Christianity many people felt that was enough.  It seemed to include a belief in God as some entity separate from the believer, like a tree or a rock.  Relationship not necessary.  The other side of Christianity was John's Gospel, the vine and the branches.  You had to have an ongoing relationship, e.g. prayer and meditation.  Going to services did not guarantee much because many people do that and then don't give God much time until the next worship service.  You cannot be a once, now and again vine on a branch.  In Buddhism, it says that if you see the Buddha, kill him.  What?  If you see the Buddha as a separate entity from yourself, you are going in the wrong direction.  Buddhist meditation is  about connection, not with Buddha, but with other sentient being, people.  Why else would a Bodhisattva give up Nirvana to go and bring others onto the path?  Compassion, love, self-sacrifice are part of all spiritual ways.  I meet people who say the are Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Moslems and Christians, but there is no daily relational practice, much less connection with the suffering people around them. These paths are not clubs you join.  For Christians, God is either a relationship or there is no God.  That is why we have Trinity as central to us.  God is relational or else not God.

Shared Experience

Arriving is not the same as staying.  Yes, first you must arrive, but then you have to do something more or different to stay.  If you go on a trip to experience a place or culture or lifestyle, you first have to do all that is required just to get there.  But once there, you do some other things to stay there, such as daily housekeeping, food, shelter and all.  You might need a map to find a place but once there, you need a different brochure to find your way around.  It is the same with a spiritual journey.  Recovery from addiction is an example.  The steps are a way to get sober.  A guide helps you.  But once you arrive at sobriety, you need something more to stay there.  If you want to actually lodge in sobriety you need to show other addicted people what you have done to get where you are.  Otherwise, you will just be "dry" and you won't stay there very long.  You make this great effort to arrive at a destination, but then do nothing required to stay there.  Sharing your experience is like paying the bill.  It would be like going to a buddhist temple and not meditating, or joining a church and then doing nothing more.  The spiritual condition can be a grind, but it beats the misery you left behind.  Hey, that's a rhyme!

The Preakness

Recently, I was watching a horse race, named the Preakness.  I only watch three races a year and this is one of them.  The story line was that there were two really good horses that would go head to head. No one seemed to mention the rest of the field of horses in this race.  The two featured horses took off from the gate and raced one another, leaving a gap with the rest of the field of horses behind.  Eventually, focused only on one another the two horses ran out of gas, or energy.  One of those other horses, turned out to be the real problem and won the race.  I find this a metaphor for life.  If we too narrowly focus on one issue, we might miss the bigger problem looming in the background.  Example?  Alcoholism.  People who are alcoholics sometimes think the problem is alcohol.  They find a way to stop drinking.  They think they have won the battle.  But like a horse that leads after three quarters of the race, the race is not over till it is over.  After ons stops drinking they still have to deal with the lingering problems that will race up on them.  Like what? Character defects, shortcomings, bad habits, low social skills, low self-esteem, fear, resentments and wreckage from the past that hurt a lot of people.  Wow!  Lots of horses to trample you in this race for sobriety.  You non-addicts can look at it from the point of view of prayer/meditation.  You think if you just pray more, or pray better, everything will be fine.  I have not found it so, but then I might just be sicker than most of my readers.