The Field of Heart

Those on the path are they who have heard; then comes the devil and takes away the word from their hearts in order that they not believe. Luke 8:12

To follow the Path of Jesus is to do so with heart, soul, and mind in the same way that the first Commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. I believe that all creation, including every human being, is in God's body and dependent on God's heart to nurture and supply us with all that we need. (Pause and feel/hear that rhythm underlying your own heartbeat.) God's heart is a mother's heart - a good mother's heart -- and no compassion, love, gentleness, or goodness is spared. 

But in our world there is an opposition force.  Scripture calls this the devil or Satan.  This force is one we can choose in our use of free will. Free will is character and choosing our character is a lifetime daily decision. If we choose to pursue the opposition way it is like putting a blockage in the flow of life, and the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace...) withers. The result of a blockage is growing jealousy, greed, competition, lies, possessiveness, isolation, and even violence, all of which only hasten death.

We, in the United States, are experiencing the symptoms of a heart attack, a concerted blocking of godly generosity.  Cynicism and withdrawal is a natural response to repugnant behavior that is hurting others. Yet that is a plan to avoid treatment of the condition.  Adopting the Path of Jesus is God's modeled plan for addressing clogged channels of love. So lift up your voices.  Sing praises to our Mothering God. Share a smile, a small act of kindness, and an encouraging word.  Let the Godly flow of all things helpful go through you and out to fill the field of heart with the seeds for peace.       

Sacredness Within

She brought an alabaster jar of ointment. Then she stood behind Jesus’ feet, crying, and began to wet his feet with her tears. She wiped them with her hair, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.  --Luke 7:38

The lectionary my church is using this Sunday asks us to reflect on Luke 7:36—50, the story of the (unnamed) woman) who anoints Jesus' feet with oil, tears, and her hair. It is a touching scene. Luke describes her as a woman, well known in the community for having many sins. Jesus meets her gesture with mercy and forgiveness. Simon, the well-off Pharisee at whose house this scene takes place, questions how Jesus allows her to touch him in this way.  Jesus answers him that she was lavishing him with love in measure for all the sins for which she was forgiven.  He contrasts this to Simon's small heart and the lack of love he has shown to Jesus since they arrived at his house. Which of the characters in this story understood their sacredness more? 

Jesus' sacredness comes as a given in the gospels.  It's something he tries not to flaunt, but his frequent actions and words reveal a for-real confidence and certainty in his spirit.  

The Pharisee presumes his sacredness.  Much as many in the religious structural orders assume a certain haughtiness about their position with God, their lack of sensitivity and perception of those around them betrays their puffery.

Then there is the woman. I'm just going to give her a name, for she deserves one. I choose Desiree because she knows where she comes from and desires greatly for the Messiah to see her and remember her.  She takes her full authentic self, casts aside all the cultural baggage that villagers have heaped on her, and takes the radical steps for a woman to trespass in a wealthy man's house, side-stepping all the gossip about her, and without asking touches Jesus in a quite intimate way - even by our own social standards today!  And Jesus filled with Spirit, accepts her, forgives her, blesses her, and receives from her what she has - profound gratitude to him for restoring her sacred worth.

How do we connect with our sacredness?  For from out of our sacredness comes our resilience to roll with what life throws at us. Our sacredness instills us with a peaceful countenance and a firm confidence of knowing whatever may come we will survive.  We will have the certainty to take loving actions toward all those we come into contact with because our sacred will recognize and speak to the sacred in another.

So some sacredness-building ideas:

1) Affirm and love yourself. If you can look in a mirror and say "I love you," and mean it then you're on the right track.  If not, practice it, no matter how stupid you feel, until you don't feel that way and do find truth in the statement. While you're at it, get in the habit of every time you see yourself in any reflection, find something that you really like in what you see.  

2) Look for the good.  Being critical, judgemental, and assuming the worst is a culturally inculcated habit-forming creed but it's not the lead step of one with healthy sacredness. It is a harmless assumption and probably quite often true that everyone you meet has something bubbling under the surface that is not okay with them.  Our trite auto-response of "Fine" to another's question of "How are you?" is more due to a lack of trust/time/closeness or sheer overwhelmedness.  We don't have to pry the truth out of anyone. Just know that "fine" probably doesn't wholly mean fine and pray for them - or better yet, when you part, offer a short blessing like, "May everything come together for you today just right."

3) Do spend some time daily looking for joy, gratitude, love, kindness, and things to praise for going right.  When we look for something, we have a far more likely chance of finding/seeing it.  When you see it, you feel it, and that feeds your soul's sacredness. Along with this time can come some compassionate prayer -- lifting or "sending energy" to others you know are in need.  The Spirit realm is holding the world together. I believe that!

4) Nearly every place has a park or a place where nature's beauty still holds out against concrete and structures. Take advantage of being in that space at least weekly.  In Japan, far more densely populated than most places, they are encouraged to do "forest bathing" which has been proven to lower blood pressure and stress.  God's greatest sacred moment was birthing you and creation at large. Sacred rubbing elbows with sacred generate more. 

5) Confessing your screw-ups takes away the tarnish on your sacred. I don't have to list the "sins" for you to watch for.  You have a built-in detector and you know when there is a wrong that is smudging up your spirit. Confess it and be done with it.  Confessions are still heard by priests/pastors, but it doesn't have to be a "religious authority."  Good friends will listen.  I find trees remarkably well-equipped!  You can write it out (and then burn it). And then, go back to #1!

6) Don't forget to be kind.  It's among the best exercises for endowing your sacredness.

May a galaxy of Blessings flood your day!

AMEN. 

   

Making Peace

For where there is jealousy and selfishness, there will also be turmoil and everything vile.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere.  And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for they who make peace."  - James 3:16-17

The present state of things in the United States could summarized as "in turmoil." Certainly, some wisdom from above would be welcome.  But I don't believe a big rain cloud of wisdom will drop from the sky and dump the listed virtues on the population, or even just our politicians!. Those virtues - peace, gentleness, reasonableness, mercy, etc. are available only to those who actively seek, perceive, and adopt them for their own.. Sadly, that isn't an automatic occurrence.  It is sometimes difficult to find those virtues under one's roof!  There are plenty of reports that even in monasteries and abbeys these qualities are known to take flight. Living in a hermitage might get you close, but that's not practical for most. So what can we do?

I know that we can put our heads in the sand and swear off paying any attention to the news in this quest for peace.  But that is, in essence, leaving the world to fend for itself.  As we already see that doesn't work out well when power structures are hellbent on grabbing as many of Earth's resources as they can for their own power and gain.  When cruelty becomes the goal and masses are being hurt. We see, too, that the evil this brings also tends to corrupt the religious structures and we see dimensions of this evil in Christian Nationalism. So we shouldn't build any hermetically sealed bubbles to ignore what is going on. Jesus didn't.  So neither should we.  But what can we do?

We can limit our consumption of news. Take in enough to know where things are going. Participate in what ways you're comfortable.  This is the public engagement phase of life.  But then it is important to withdraw, to remember, and to recognize that this entire planet is the tiniest of specks in a colossal galaxy.  God's "church" is the universe and God will be here for us regardless of what transpires. Take time out to bask in silence, and practice breathing deeply from your toes to your head. Pick one of the above virtues and think about it for the duration of time you can give over to the meditation.  For instance, what does gentleness feel like?  When have you been gentle with someone?  What would the world be like if gentleness were the primary indicator of social welfare (rather than the economy as it is now?)  Then, make a pact with yourself to try living gently for the rest of your day. Every day you can take a different virtue. This is the way to righteousness. It is the way to make peace.  

Combating the Sorrows & Losses

 

In the long run, change is as much devotional as it is psychological. It is out of love that we ultimately reshape our lives. It is a matter of discipline, a word has the same root as the word disciple. In other words, “To what will we be devoted? What is it that we will love and serve?” ---Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

 The news this week has not been great.  Plane crashes, incompetence & lying being crowned, jobs being removed, the judicial system being undermined, and people deported. Lots and lots of grief and loss being purposely foisted on 330 million people with not much aim apparent toward a positive goal.  I think a good reflection point is in the questions Francis Weller poses above.

One of this Sunday's texts in the Wilda Gafney Lectionary is found in Luke 7. It is the story of Jesus at Nain raising a child from the dead and putting them back in their mother's arms.  Putting the metaphysical miraculous element aside, we can see behind the scenes with a larger lens the fact of the earth's "life cycle" at work.  The completeness of life that we are granted only temporary & partial direct experience of is the flow from living through death.  Like the moon, we only see the lighted side, never the dark backside. 

Throughout life, we experience gain and loss, birth and death. Too often, we plunge ourselves into wallowing in our losses while the gains we experience seem fleeting. I say we do it to ourselves because, far too frequently, it's our brain's interpretation and in-built assumptions that anticipate, exacerbate, or extend our anxiety and misery.  We are wired to expect "the worst" and thus kick start our worry and sense of loss before "it" even happens. How often has "it" not turned out as awful as we imagined? Do we make "it" worse by bottling it up and recycling it over and over in our heads?  I have done that until I am sick of "it" and of myself for allowing it.  Which I don't believe is where God wants any of us to live.

Humans have an extraordinary capacity to change things. We can look at glasses as half full or half empty.  If we carry a belief in the unseen "hereafter" being a glorious improvement over life on earth, death loses a good measure of its pall. As Weller says above, change is devotional as much as psychological. How much devotional time - meditative time - do we spend imagining ourselves in positive spaces surrounded by joy, gratitude, hope, promise, peace, and love? Do we have the positive habit of looking for those virtues bubbling to the surface all around us, all the time?  I call it taking time out from stress. Can we imagine (using the power of our brain) shifting ourselves into a Jesus-loving space where we can feel Jesus loving us and us loving like Jesus? 

I believe there is a realm that is very near, just beyond our physical touch, that operates on the purely virtuous side of life. We are every bit as much spiritual beings as we are physical ones.  The spiritual side breaks into our lives many times a day.  Does it pass us by because we're too busy in our heads/lives to take notice?  Do we look for it? It IS there. Reshape your life with Love. Take it as a New Year's challenge.  Who/what will you be loving and directing Love toward?