Review: Lila by Marilynne Robinson

I have just finished reading Marilynne Robinson's last novel, Lila, and as with each of her previous novels, I am freshly and thoroughly gobsmacked.

It's a stupendously ambitious novel, wrestling with the great questions of existence - as in, Why?  What possible meaning does any of this have?  What is the point of all this?  And of course, what kind of God allows such withering suffering?

Poignantly, and with breathtaking assurance, Robinson answers these questions by telling a story about what happens when guilt meets love, grace meets dread, shame meets mercy, and a natural atheism meets a faith that precedes words or thought.  

Brilliantly, Robinson takes on these questions not from the perspective of a theologian or a preacher, but from the barely literate perspective of Lila - a neglected and abused child who manages to survive the Depression as a homeless migrant laborer, a prostitute, and finally, as the unlikely young wife of an elderly preacher.  

Robinson's genius is her ability to communicate abstract and nuanced theological ideas by eschewing abstraction almost entirely.  Her vivid poetic imagery communicates the truth beneath all words or conscious knowing.  Her Lila is not educated, but she is devastatingly insightful.  The reader is swept into her wondering world, and finally, into her understanding, with just the right amount of interpretive help given by John Calvin and her "old man" preacher/husband, John Ames - Robinson's worthy stand-in for God.

Robinson has studied Calvin deeply, and has become his modern-day apologist.  At a writer's conference I attended a few years ago, she addressed the many ways in which Calvin had been misunderstood, and argued for a fresh reading of his astonishing mystical depth.  I, and many of my companions at the conference, were surprised by her direct and unabashed apologetics.  I never studied Calvin deeply, having swallowed the liberal "party line" on him - that he was severely judgmental and rigidly dogmatic.  (I mean, after all, his most famous work was called Church Dogmatics!  Nuf said!)  But Robinson may be one of the few beings on the planet intelligent enough to drill through Calvin's abstractions to mine his great mystical treasures - and in her fiction, she communicates, through astonishing poetic imagery, not only the experience of God's grace, but a sensible representation of exactly how it all makes sense.  This is a literary and theological achievement of a very high order. I can think of no one, short of John Updike, who has translated dry theology into such powerful literature.

Students of Zen, like me, will also be moved by passages like this, which sound like nothing short of Awakening. Robinson's depth of insight suggests that, when you follow authentic spiritual experiences to their ground, great traditions merge:

"Most of the time [Lila] thought she understood things better when she didn’t try. Things happen the way they do. Why was a foolish question. In a song a note follows the one before because it is that song and not another one. Once, she and Mellie tried to count up all the songs they knew. How could there be so many? Because every one was just itself. It was eternity that let her think this way. In eternity people’s lives could be altogether what they were and had been, not just the worst things they ever did, or the best things either. So she decided that she should believe in it, or that she believed in it already."

Passages like this give us delicious material to ponder for a lifetime. I've read and re-read Robinson's two other Gilead novels, and almost like Scripture, they have returned rich meaning with every return. I'm sure that will be the case for Lila as well.

Parable of the Sower: a Zen perspective

This is a beautiful meditation on the parable of the sower, from the perspective of a Zen teacher and a Christian pastor in Santa Rosa, David Parks-Ramage.  Very nicely done, David!

A Sower, Seeds and Soil
Meditation, Wednesday, June 10, 6:30 pm

“Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.8 Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and  yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” 9 And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”


One of the great joys I have as a Christian and a Zen teacher is stumbling on parables of Jesus that read like koans.Such is the case today with Jesus’ parable of a Sower, Seeds and the Soil. Whenever Jesus spoke a parable, he was teaching folks about the realm of God or we could say he was pointing to the fullness of life, to  the way things are.  The secret to understanding this parable is hidden in plain sight.  It is this:


The crop yields that Jesus mentions in this parable, 30, 60, 100-fold, are usual, they are ordinary. They are what a farmer in Palestine in the first century might expect from her work. Nothing special. No miracle here.


Given the form of this parable, you might expect something different. The form, akin to that which you might find in a fairy tale, or proverb goes like this:  1, 2, 3, miracle. That is, there are three negative outcomes and the form of the parable begs for redemption, for something like a miracle, a supernatural happenstance, And what Jesus presents to us is ordinary.  In fact, everything about this parable is ordinary, the whole thing. Some seeds sprout and grow and for a variety of reasons others don’t.  As Jesus is showing us the realm of God he is showing us the realm of God as it appears in our everyday, real lives. How is that?


Well, s___t happens. And whenever, s__t happens, I want to discount it, downplay it as somehow not real in my life. I am really alive only through the good bits. When I am downhearted, disappointed, perhaps when an illness overcomes me or a loved one dies, I want to think that this is not what life is really all about -- that the universe/God is choosing not to smile on me. My life becomes divided -- good and bad -- right and wrong -- and I end up liking some of my life, but not all of it. But, when we look at the whole of our lives this just does not work. What we get in life is all the joy...and all the sorrow. Guaranteed.


What this parable, this teaching story of Jesus, suggests to me is that I can make friends with my life. In the course of things there will be outcomes that will be disappointing; my heart will be broken, dreams squashed. AND then quite the opposite. In the course of life, I will know joy in my relationships, I will see the beauty of the sun setting over the Sonoma coast. All this is quite ordinary, to be expected, just as some of seeds perish and others grow.   Rather than 1, 2, 3, miracle, life is like this: 1, 2, 3, 4. Sometimes like this, other times like that. No need even to compare. I can be friends with it all. And as I discover this kinship with what is, something far more wonderful than good and bad, right or wrong reveals itself.

Center of the Universe?

“You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you."  - Thomas Traherne 

"I think life is a brief, meaningless event in a random universe that doesn't care." - Dilbert

Are we, each of us, centers of our universe, as the 17th Century metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne maintained?  Or are we, as Dilbert believes, simply meaningless life forms spinning through an uncaring and random universe?  I have spent much of my life vacillating between these camps, sometimes so quickly that it seems I occupy both of them simultaneously.

The other day I was walking along a street in Manhattan with Alex, my son's girlfriend, as she fought back tears and questioned the Meaning Of It All.  She had been dealing with a series of disappointments: turned down from her "dream job"; struggling, along with my son, under a mountain of debt, their precarious financial situation growing more alarming by the day; watching her boyfriend graduate from one of the top law schools in the country without a job; and to top it off, a beautiful and affordable apartment they had fallen in love with had just gone to another couple.  

She said, "I keep thinking I'm getting a sign that things are going to get better - you know?  And then it doesn't work out. Like that apartment - it was so nice, it would have been so perfect for us; and I knew I shouldn't get my hopes up but it just felt like maybe, finally something was going to go our way, you know? I couldn't help it - I just saw us living there, so clearly." She stopped talking and wiped away the tears. "I just really need something to go right, for once."

On a basic level, she was wondering: Is the universe on my side, or not?  Does God have my back at all? Or are we just floating in a random, meaningless universe that doesn't care? Can I trust that this will get better - or is this just the beginning of the shit-storm?

I've been struggling with the same question for the past several months, as I've gone from the near-top of my profession, to being unemployed and watching my savings slowly evaporate. On the one hand, I've never felt closer to God - and yet, so far, nothing is breaking my way, and I find myself struggling to believe this will ever turn around.  I tell myself, "Just keep on trusting in God.  Trust in God and all will be well."  But the other voice cuts like a piercing scream: There's nothing to trust in!  There is no magical rescue.  The cavalry does not exist.  You are headed for bankruptcy and homelessness! Stop deluding yourself into thinking it's all going to be okay! Homeless people line the streets every day - do you think you're so special you won't end up just like them?

On some fundamental level, I think, both of those voices are true.

The day after Alex's breakdown, we were at a picnic with family and friends, celebrating my son's graduation, and I fell into a conversation with a woman whose faith in God, she said, had never wavered since her earliest memories as a child.  She was a successful attorney with the bright, sunny disposition of someone for whom everything tends to works out well.   "I don't know why; I can't explain it," she said, "but ever since I was a little kid, I've been talking to God. We talk all the time. I've been praying since before I can remember."

She can't help but think that her success has something to do with this relationship with God. And she knows that not everyone is so lucky, or has that innate trust. Her God-daughter, she told me, had lost her parents at an early age; she had gotten into drugs and was pregnant before she turned 20, and now finally, at the age of 30, she was beginning to get back into school as a single parent of two boys, with a full-time job.  Her God-daughter was struggling to keep it all together, and was often overwhelmed by the difficulties. She said, "I told her, 'Just pray to Jesus!  Pray to Jesus! I guarantee you: He will answer your prayers!'"  

I found myself thinking two contradictory things simultaneously:

1. "Yeah, right: and now explain to me why hundreds of people just died in that earthquake in Nepal, all of whom were crying out to their God."  

2.  "Yes, I've experienced the power of prayer; I have known, in humbling, unmistakable ways, the presence of God, showing up, giving me strength, getting me through tough times, and seeming to make things happen for my benefit. I know on some fundamental level that I am not abandoned."  

And yet, nothing about #2 makes any kind of sense in light of #1.  If God answered the prayers of all the desperate people in this world, we wouldn't have anyone suffering or dying.

My Catholic priest / Roshi in San Francisco told me about how, for months after his enlightenment experience, his Zen Master was very annoyed with him. It turns out to be a common experience after a powerful kensho experience: one becomes a "Zen drunk." He was filled with joy, sparkling with celestial pixie dust and thoroughly obnoxious, convinced that he was at the absolute center of the universe. "But of course, I wasn't," he said. "But it sure as hell felt like it!"

On the night before my most recent job interview - for the Job of My Dreams - I had a fantastic dream. God, in the form of Al Pacino, was looking deeply into my eyes, his hand on my shoulder, smiling broadly. "Yes," he said. "This is your time. I love your ideas. I am committed to you. I will make it happen!" I woke up dazzled and joyful. All morning, it felt like God was carrying me along with a laser-like vision for my ministry. As I made my way to the meeting, a series of bizarre coincidences unfolded, reinforcing my sense that I was "in the groove" and meant to be there.  

And then I got to the interview, and it was over before it began. My future prospective boss told me he had just found out that the funding for my Dream Job had fallen through.

So what do you do with that?

This is what I think now: there is no past. There is no future. There is only the present moment. All our efforts to read the signs, predict the future, lasso meaning from the bucking bronco of the present moment, convince ourselves that God is "on our side" and everything is going to turn out fine - these are all escape attempts - escaping from the present moment.  

In our anxiety, we want the universe to tell us that we are in some way protected from tragedy - but that desire is yet another attempt to escape from the present moment, which is guaranteed, on some days, to include tragedy and deep suffering. But in the meantime: what is happening now? Is there air enough to breathe? Can you hear the song of a distant bird? Is someone calling for your love?  Yes: this moment is calling to you. Answer it.

It is entirely possible that, five minutes from now, this building will fall on top of us, and for the love of our lives we will fight until we can fight no longer, and then with our dying breath we will hear ourselves say, "Okay." Nowhere in that scenario is there room for anxiety and fear. And so, we trust, (breathe), trust, (breathe), trust, (breathe), trust...

An Episcopal Priest in Buddha's Court

I arrived at Zen Garland like Jonah, freshly vomited from the belly of the whale. A beautiful series of catastrophes had dismantled my life back in Northern California, where for eleven years I had served as Rector (Senior Pastor) of a busy Episcopal Church in the heart of Wine Country. Now, free of responsibilities, short on money, and longing to find refuge in the Buddha/Mind of Christ, I landed here on May 3.

I am a Christian, and a student of Zen at the very beginning of what I expect to be a life-long journey into koan study, sitting, and instruction. I was first exposed to Zen 35 years ago, while at Union Theological Seminary in New York. A Japanese Zen master - probably a famous one, as he was accompanied by an entourage that included an American translator - offered an introductory course on zazen.

I had been practicing Transcendental Meditation for eight years, off and on, and I was curious, having read a bit of Thomas Merton. Something about the teaching sparked me - I'm not sure what, exactly - but soon I found myself sitting 2-4 hours a day. When I wasn't sitting, I was running (6 miles a day along the Hudson River) and attending classes filled with confident future pastors, all of whom seemed eager to assume their identities as professional answer-givers. Meanwhile, my questions were only deepening, and deepening some more, until one day I felt all of my careful theological constructions collapse like the proverbial house of cards.

Everything that I had previously thought was true about God and the cosmos suddenly seemed ridiculously vain and hollow. I had been studying Christian theology seriously, and at a high level, for five years by that point, but all of a sudden I felt like a stranger in a strange land, unable to comprehend what all of these very earnest Christians were talking about.

I left seminary, and Zen too (that encounter with emptiness just scared me too much). I moved to Boston and tried to figure out how to make a living as a 25 year-old seminary drop-out with a seemingly worthless degree in Religious Studies. I became deeply depressed, nearly homeless, and profoundly lost in a universe which, for the first time in my life, seemed absolutely uncaring and devoid of meaning.

The story of how that all turned around for me is a long one, and for another time. Suffice it to say that my suffering brought me into a deep encounter with the cross, and through that, with the risen Christ. The encounter instantly healed me of my depression and gave me a profound insight into the truth of the Christian message. Soon, I was back in seminary, and eventually ordained as an Episcopal priest.

Flash forward to the summer of 2014. I had been a priest for 24 years; I was recently divorced, in the middle of a mid-life crisis, and deeply unhappy. It was around two in the morning. I was in bed next to my beloved when a wave of self-loathing and futility came over me. "I just want to die," I said. "This ego, this personality, these thoughts, this whole little self - I just want it to go!"

My girlfriend, who is an incredibly powerful spiritual being, said, "So: go!"

With those words, I felt myself letting go, deeply, completely, unconditionally. I released as completely as I could. Everything was placed on the altar. I found myself saying, "Take it. Take it. Take it." I felt myself falling, as if I were dropping down into a well, my thoughts and ideas falling away from me, and then there was a Presence. She was hovering above me and to my right, female, seated as if on a cloud or something. Her colors were orange and green, and there was an energy coming from her, a wave of what I can only describe as Mercy. Waves of love came washing over me, on a level I had never experienced before, and I began to weep like a child out of gratitude, sheer gratitude.  

The next morning, flipping through a book on Buddhism in my girlfriend's apartment, I saw her, just as she had appeared to me. She was seated on a lotus flower, and had several arms. "That's her!" I exclaimed. "That's who visited me last night! Who is she?"

My girlfriend smiled. "Oh, that's Avalokitesvera," she said. "She's a Bodhisattva - one of the manifestations of the Buddha."

I stared at the image for some time, taking in her beauty. "Avalo...whosiewhats?" I had her repeat the strange name a number of times, trying to get a handle on it.  

"Some people call her Guanyin," she said, helpfully. I decided that would be my name for her, at least for awhile.

"Why does she have so many arms?" I asked.  

"Well, her name means, 'The one who hears the cries of those who suffer.' She has all those extra arms so she can reach all the people who are crying out. She's like the Buddhist Virgin Mary - the embodiment of Mercy."

I was, as they say, gobsmacked.

Before this, if you had asked me if saints or angels or specific deities really existed, I would have said, with great confidence, that these are projections of our subconscious mythological brain, and that they are sometimes efficacious in channeling divine energy, like a window lets in the light. But I would have also said that they are in actuality mere mirages, dreamlike phantoms, which don't actually exist as discrete spiritual beings. But after that experience, I'm not so sure. She seemed pretty darn real to me! All I know for sure is that she showed up when I needed her, and when she did, everything changed.

In a moment, I came to see why the famous First Commandment is First: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind. For me, that's all there was to it. I had to finally get to the point of handing everything over - and when I did, everything changed.

Since then, I have wanted nothing more than to dive into that emptiness - to give away everything that I habitually cling to; to let my self with a small "s" die and die and die again, so that this Source can live more fully in me. Christians call it the Mind of Christ.

Beginning that day, I started reading every book I could find on Buddhism and its relation to Christianity. My previous encounter with Zen took on a new meaning for me. My best friend, who belonged to a Zen sangha in town, invited me to join him, and so I picked up where I left off 35 years earlier.  

Before long I began to find other Christians who also had a love of Zen - mostly notably, Roshi Ruben Habito, the former Catholic priest who wrote the classic book, Living Zen, Loving God. Ruben introduced me to Roshi Gregory Mayers, a Catholic priest who leads a small Christian Zen community in the Bay Area, and he became my Roshi. Soon after that, I googled on "Christian Zen" and came across Zen Garland - a Zen community with a Zen-Christian congregation within it. Roshi Genki and Roshi Ankai connected with me over Skype, and after I babbled at them for an hour and a half, Genki suggested I come out to Zen Garland for a month. Having absolutely nothing better to do, I happily accepted, and so: I am here.

I have been deeply touched by the warm welcome I've received, and by the beautifully open hearts and deep wisdom that is alive here. It has been an incredibly good experience for me thus far, and I have no doubt this is exactly where I need to be at this time in my life.

Tonight we begin a weekend Zen retreat. I am looking forward to whatever comes up; and I have deep trust that whatever happens, whether difficult or easy, joyful or sorrowful, will be worthy of that trust.

Gone Fishing...

I've taken on a month-long residency at Zen Garland - a Zen sangha in New York that includes a Zen-Christian community.  It's proving to be a wonderful and very productive time.  But I'm not writing a whole lot - spending my time sitting, and reading, mostly.  That seems important right now - and it could change.  Stay tuned!

Mindfulness at Kaiser Permanente

A friend sent this photo, from our local hospital.  It reminds me of the mindfulness bell at Plum Village - whenever it sounds, everyone stops and breathes.  But in a hospital?!  How cool.  I wonder how many people are actually practicing it...  Thanks Chris Bell for sending this!

Best photo ever

What's In A Word?

This NY Times Magazine article, "The Muddied Meaning of Mindfulness", makes some provocative points as it unpacks the current popularity of the term.  It would be a terrible shame if this wonderful word were dismissed as simply a fad at best, and at worst a conspiracy among the 1% to wring another few ounces of productivity out of its freshly-anesthetized worker-bees.  What a terrible thing to do to one of the best words in our language!

If "mindfulness" becomes a victim of its own success, we'll only have to invent another word.  And then watch helplessly as that one gets the same treatment.  Sigh....

Anyway, the thing I find most disturbing in this article is the implication that church-going is contrary to mindfulness practice.  Sheesh: how wrong can you be?!

Something to memorize

“You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men [and women] are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.

Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table: till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made: till you love men [and women] so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for being good to all: you never enjoy the world.” 

― Thomas Traherne, Centuries Of Meditations

I especially like "...and more than so, because men and women are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you."

Also, "...till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made..."

Meditation for pastors overwhelmed by sorrow

As a parish priest, there were days when I began to feel overwhelmed by the great sorrow of the people around me.  My parish hosted a day shelter for homeless women and children every day, and a feeding program for the street community every Sunday morning, so I was in close contact with many people whose suffering was quite acute.

Homeless people routinely dropped by my office, sometimes to ask for money, sometimes just to talk.  Their tales of woe were bone-rattling, and permanently cured me of the notion of God as a Lone Ranger-type rescuer.   While I heard my share of heart-warming and sometimes miraculous turn-around stories, more often than not I was witness to an unending parade of unfortunate events that very few people ever gain the resources to rise above: chronic poverty, mental illness, addiction, disability, debilitating disease, and just plain old ordinary very bad luck.

But as extreme as these tales of woe were, it was even more difficult to cope with the daily suffering of my parishioners.  Their stories, while usually less dramatic than my homeless friends, were more difficult for me because, of course, I loved them so much.  Eleven years as a pastor in one church was enough time to feel a bond even with the least involved of my parishioners.

I watched many beloved "pillars of the church" progress from a healthy and lively maturity to feeble, incontinent, institutionalized nursing home residents, then swiftly on to the illness that killed them.  I watched as parishioners entirely forgot about nursing home residents who had once served as Senior Wardens and committee chairs.  I witnessed surviving children spend far more time bickering over who got the treasured keepsake than over how much they missed their mom or dad.

There's a brilliant novel about a young pastor who is assigned to his first church in a small Midwestern town.  After about a year, he begs his bishop to re-assign him - not because he's not getting along well with his flock, and not because he's not an excellent fit for them, but because he has realized, to his horror, that if he stays in that parish for any length of time, he will have to bury these beloved people.  He's fallen in love with them, and can't bear to think of watching them die.  Thus the title of the novel, The Solace of Leaving Early (by Haven Kimmel).

Over time, this constant river of suffering takes its toll.  Like doctors, nurses, and home-care providers, clergy need to find a way to have compassion without it killing them.  I learned to cope by inventing a method of prayer which I now realize was very similar to the Buddhist practice of tonglen.  I would go into meditation, visualize the person I was praying for, see the suffering on their faces, and then imagine the light of God shining on them, warming them, healing them, bringing them into smiling wholeness.

In this short video, Pema Chodron introduces the method of tonglen.  It's a method that helps us have compassion without being afraid of the suffering we see: we can take it in, and let it go, without the suffering overwhelming us.  For pastors who encounter as much sorrow as we do in the course of our days, I highly recommend this practice.

Simple. Not Easy.

"Our interpretations of reality, the stories we continually tell ourselves about people, places, things or circumstances, are like the clouds in the sky of our consciousness. They cover over the shining presence of God within us that is our own essential, true nature as God’s children. Just like the sun in the sky, our true nature is always shining. Its very nature is to radiate pure happiness. So, happiness is never really absent from us—it is just covered over sometimes."
     -Francis Bennett, I Am That I Am

Francis Bennett, the former Trappist monk, Zen student and Vipassana practitioner who now makes his living giving talks and leading retreats on nondual spirituality, is elegantly articulate with a very simple message about awareness and awakening: We are already awakened; all we need to do is settle into our awakened state.

It sounds so easy!

Lately, I've been letting myself relax more and more deeply into meditation.  I've managed to just stop trying to meditate.  I've found a warm, merciful presence inside that just keeps inviting me into presence.  No matter how distracted I get, or how determined I become to hammer that "nail" of a mantra, I keep hearing "Good.  Now relax."  It's not a permissive voice, saying "Anything goes."  It's a voice that embraces what is, and returns me back to simple attention.  At its heart, it feels like infinite mercy, unconditional love.

Why so many words?

One day, after I had celebrated the Eucharist, a woman whom I had not seen before approached.  She told me that she had been moved to come to church during a meditation.  She had never spent any time in church before, and had been a practicing Buddhist up to that point, but that during a recent meditation a chalice had appeared in her mind, quite vividly.  She was gripped by a strong sense that she needed to start taking communion; and by an intuitive, very strong attraction, quite out of the blue and much to her surprise, to Jesus.  So she went online, started researching churches that celebrated the Eucharist, and ended up at mine.  

She said the Eucharist had been very meaningful to her - but she had one question: Why so many words?

Why, indeed?

I don't remember what I answered, but she became a very active member of the congregation and a faithful leader of our meditation small groups.  Her question, like the best of questions, stayed with me long after the answer faded from memory.

Why so many words?  Garrison Keillor, in yesterday's Writer's Almanac, talked about Mark Strand, the great poet who once served as Poet Laureat of the United States:

"Toward the end of his life, at the age of 77, he decided to quit writing poetry.... He fell in love with a Spanish woman, moved to Madrid, and began making art again. He said: 'I started collaging as an escape from making meaning. I got tired of writing poems, of trying to make sense - verbal sense. It is a relief to make a different kind of sense - visual sense. One must think, of course, but it is an entirely different kind of thinking, one in which language does not intrude.'"

As my meditation practice deepens, I grow less and less interested in the cascade of words flowing from the priest's mouth.  The living Christ, the undifferentiated Self of pure Awareness, whatever word we want to give It, is present and calls to me.  Like the Real Presence that we project onto the Eucharistic elements, it is simply and powerfully there, exercising its gravitational pull.  What else needs to be said?  

Here's a gorgeous poem by Anne Sexton that says it all - again, cribbed from Garrison's Writer's Almanac:


"From the Garden"

Come, my beloved,
consider the lilies.
We are of little faith.
We talk too much.
Put your mouthful of words away
and come with me to watch
the lilies open in such a field,
growing there like yachts,
slowly steering their petals
without nurses or clocks.
Let us consider the view:
a house where white clouds
decorate the muddy halls.
Oh, put away your good words
and your bad words. Spit out
your words like stones!
Come here! Come here!
Come eat my pleasant fruits.

"From the Garden" by Anne Sexton from The Complete Poems. © Houghton Mifflin, 1999. (buy now)

The Junkie and the Monk

This incredbily funny, poignant, and profound true story - about a suicidal heroin addict/comedian and his encounter with a Tibetan monk - is pure delight.  PLUS he describes tonglen in a very powerful way.

http://themoth.org/posts/stories/the-junkie-and-the-monk

Hope Is What You Do

I spent Easter Sunday attending a retreat at Spirit Rock with Joanna Macy – she’s the godmother of Earth-based spiritual activism.  It was a beautiful and moving day.

Macy reminded us that we are at an unprecedented time in the history of mankind – a suicidal time, in which we are “devouring the physical, natural, ecological basis of our own existence.”    As we come to recognize this, the system begins to lose its coherence and starts to unravel.  Thus we are witnesses to the “Great Unraveling” – which then gives rise to the “Great Turning” – when people devoted to the health of the planet come together to create a massive revolution – a revolution in which we transition from an economy of growing industry to an economy of sustaining life.

While she was speaking, I thought about the great majority of Christian churches, and certainly the vast majority of Episcopal churches, that continue on with a "business as usual" approach.  I was reminded of the Romans who, even as the barbarians approached the gates, were convinced that the "Eternal City" could never fall.

   

During a meditation, Macy quoted the 8^th Century Buddhist monk Shantideva: “Let all sorrows ripen in me.”  She explored the Buddhist notion that compassion means not being afraid of suffering; that mindfulness involves the ability to face into suffering without fear or denial.  She talked about the pharmaceutical companies that have “pathologized suffering” - making vast profits on the illusion that suffering must be avoided at all costs - whereas meditation practice can help us bear suffering with open hearts and open eyes.  

“Blessed are those who mourn,” she said, quoting Jesus in the Beatitudes.  “At times like this, it’s good to have a big messy heart.  And anger too.”

As many times as I’ve sat with the Beatitudes, I’ve never heard that interpretation before.  It struck me as such a healthier spiritual practice than what Christians are typically offered.  It’s a psychology of living in reality; of moving through sorrow into compassionate, fearless action – rather than the psychology of magical thinking that pervades so much Christian tradition.  The story of the resurrection, as powerful as it is, also teaches the illusion that all tragedy ends happily.  From the Exodus to the final Revelation, the Bible is replete with stories of God intervening to save the day. 

Our commitment to the illusion of happy endings is so deep within us that when we see a movie in which the good guy does not win in the end, we feel cheated and disturbed.  Only recently, as we enter the Great Unraveling, are we seeing shows, such as “Game of Thrones,” that feature “good guys” getting killed as often, if not more often, than the “bad guys.”  As our fundamental notions about hope and heroism shift, we are finally opening ourselves to the notion that our story may well end in defeat, not victory - and that can't stop us from acting heroically.

Humanity as we know it may very well come to an end, on our watch.  It is clear that God is not going to come down from on high to rescue us.  We know there have been mass extinctions before, and we know we are not exempt.  We need spiritual communities that help us face the reality our situation while sparking our capacity for hopeful action. 

Thus the title of one of Joanna Macy’s books: Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In without Going Crazy.  About this, she said, “Hope is not something you have.  Hope is something you do.  You can act without hope, in a hopeful way.  Hope is what you choose to put your attention to.”

Quoting a 12th Century Tibetan prophecy, Macy is hoping, without illusions, for an army of “Shambhala warriors” to rise up.  “Now is the time for Shambhala warriors to go into training.  They carry two weapons: compassion, and insight into the interdependence of all phenomena.  You need both.  When you’re not afraid of the suffering of the world, nothing can stop you.  Compassion gives you that.  But the insight of interdependence is needed to prevent burn-out.  You need the heat of compassion and the cool of insight/wisdom.”

I wonder if our churches can learn from these great spiritual traditions, so that we can finally get over our hysterical denial and become Shambhala warriors.  Can we develop the tools of insight and compassion the earth so desperately needs?  I am hoping, without illusions, to do my part.

How Progressives (Like Me) Get It Wrong on the Atonement

This being Good Friday, let’s talk about the Atonement.

It’s fashionable these days for progressive Christians to distance themselves from the Atonement - the idea that Jesus had to die on the cross in order to spare us from judgment.  I am one of those progressives: for years, I have followed Matthew Fox’s inspired lead by questioning this basic construct: that Jesus acted like an older brother, stepping between a violently abusive father and a helpless child, taking on a punishment meant for us.

One common way this theory gets expressed is in terms of the slave economy of Jesus’ time: Jesus “redeemed us” – he “bought us out of slavery” by paying the price in his blood.  Yet another gruesome image is the blood of the Passover lamb: on the night before Moses was to lead his people out of slavery, God sent the angel of death to kill the first-born children of the Egyptians.  The Jews were instructed to paint their doorposts with the blood of a slaughtered lamb – this was the signal for the angel of death to “pass over” that house as it went door to door killing the Egyptian children.  Just so, the blood of Jesus, symbolically poured over us in baptism, protects us from eternal death.

Whichever way you tell it, God comes across as a psychopathic killer, a murderous slave holder, a genocidal child-killing demon of the night.   Anyone in their right minds, we think, would rightly reel from these horrifying images.  

And of course, this theory of the atonement becomes an easy target for critics of Christianity: what kind of psychopathic God would kill his only Son in order to appease his wrath?   I am always taken aback by the smirky confidence of “new atheists” who trot out these arguments – they are like so many college sophomores, convinced that Christians must be either blinded by their faith or too stupid to see the horror of these metaphors.

Anyway, for the entire length of my 25-year career as an Episcopal priest, I’ve taught my congregants to look at these disturbing images with a critical eye, and I’ve offered the insights of Matthew Fox and the great Christian contemplatives as a healthy corrective to this line of thinking.  But much to my surprise, a new insight has caused me to wonder if I’ve been a bit too hasty, maybe throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Imagine the worldview of those who, in Jesus’ day, took all that we find horrifying about these images of God for granted, as simply true.  From their point of view, the world was a brutal and violent place; God’s justice was enforced by gruesome violence, and if God was to be just, violence was necessary.  God’s brutality was not only on display in the actions of the King and Temple police, it was on display in every storm and drought, leaving entire nations vulnerable to famine and disaster.  It was on display in the dozens of lepers and cripples covered in dirt at the village gate, clearly being punished for some kind of sin; it was on display, in a world without insurance, in every random accident that left prosperous families destitute, forcing mothers into prostitution and children into slavery.  

In those days, a slave economy was considered perfectly normal – there was no anti-slavery movement calling it into question.  Wars were fought with ferocious brutality; rape and pillage, slavery and grisly death happened all the time, and could only be explained – indeed, could only be endured – when seen as the inscrutable actions of an ultimately just and good God.  

 In other words, what we see as a psychopathic, murderous God, the people of Jesus’ day saw simply as reality.  That’s just the way God was.  Anyone who thinks that they would have thought differently if they had lived in those days is simply arrogant and foolish.

And then, in the space of a generation, an unbelievable revolution of paradigms occurred, and everything changed.

The amazing thing about the Atonement is not that it presumes a psychopathic God - that was considered normal; it’s that it proclaims, with incredible joy, that those days were over!  That as much as that brutal idea of God made sense before Jesus died and rose from the grave, that idea of God was now obsolete!  A new reality had broken through!  The curtain in the Temple, separating God from the world, was torn in two!  God could finally be seen as alive and active on the side of mercy and forgiveness and love!

Sometimes we progressives get so caught up in criticizing the conventional images of God that we overlook the message that the theory of the Atonement was proclaiming, which is, Hey, let it go!  Those days are over!  There’s a new reality now!   As much as it may seem like we’re in bondage to sin, slaves to corruption and death, that’s no longer the case!  We're free now!  As much as it might seem like God is out to hurt us, that’s no longer the case!  He's on our side!  As much as it might seem like our suffering is God’s will, that’s not true!  God is on the side of the victim!  As much as it might seem like death has the last word, we now know better!  Life has conquered death!  As much as it might seem like God is on the side of a murderous dictator, we now see that God is on the side of a righteous, persecuted minority!  God is on the side of the outcast!  God is on the side of everyone who suffers!  That old God we were carrying around - if "he" ever lived - is gone for good!  Now we see the truth: God is Love!  Mercy!  Forgiveness!  Abundant, joyful new life! 

In other words, grow up!  Get over yourself!  

By constantly getting stuck on how horrifying and obsolete those ancient ideas of God are, we act like grown children still blaming our parents for whatever mistakes they made in raising us.  We distract ourselves from the new life that is right in front of our faces.  We collude in distracting ourselves from the new life that is right here.  We much prefer to argue with that old paradigm; we'd rather fight with a God who no longer exists than awaken to the real message of the Atonement, which is that an entirely new experience of God is available to us. 

From this new perspective, brutality, violence, slavery, and murder can be seen for the horrifying things that they are.  Ironically, it’s the theory of the Atonement that proves its own obsolescence.  By helping us imaginatively identify with this new understanding of God, as revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Atonement stories ultimately reveal how obsolete those old images of God are.  By taking seriously the Atonement, we’re able to identify a new face of God; a God of non-violent, unconditional love; a God that we now find alive and well and dwelling within each of us. 

And that, I think, is pretty cool.  However we got here, here we are, At One with God.  That's literally what Atonement means: At-One-ment.

But don't get me wrong: I’m not saying I’m going to start preaching the Atonement in an uncritical, Biblically orthodox way.  But as I meditate on the message of the cross, I can’t help but be filled with a new respect for just how radical this message must have seemed at the time, and how radical it continues to be.