Unwrap the Bindings

I have noticed that spiritual people can have a tendency to over spiritualize everything in life, as though somehow every act came straight from the hand of God. I am not speaking of those who see the hand of God in events, but rather to those who exclude the human element of life, the human struggle, the human dimension. And when we do that, we forget the human effort needed to rise above human tendency.

Easter is just one sort of event. Christians all believe that Jesus rose from the dead, a day glorious and offering profound hope of immortality. What we often forget is, Jesus too, as a human being, had a choice. Jesus rose because he could follow through with his calling, he could let go of the past and move forward to his destiny, he could unwrap the bindings that held him and step forth into the light.

Think for a moment of what might have happened had Jesus held on to the pain and suffering he endured. What if Jesus could not let go of his suffering and humiliation? What if he had gotten "stuck" in the memory of what had happened and could not move past that?

It is unimaginable to think of Jesus stuck in death. And yet, that is how I sometimes live; stuck in a bad memory, in anger and resentment. Stuck in my bad luck, bad choices, unfortunate incidents.

What good is it to believe in resurrection, in eternal life, if I cannot rise above events here on earth? What good is it to hope for heaven when I live life as though in a tomb? For when I am stuck, I cannot hear the call to come forth. I am, spiritually stuck in death.

Jesus showed us the power of letting go when he stepped out of the tomb and into the light. He showed us the power of dropping our bindings and moving our sealed stone that keeps us imprisoned. He opened the sealed compartment of his tomb not by force, but by grace. Such is the power of letting go.

Jesus invites me to do the same. Easter is a reminder that eternal life starts here on earth, that rising begins with daily events, that each of us has a tomb requiring resurrection. Easter is a symbol for each one of us to come forth from the tomb of disappointments, disillusionment, judgements and resentments. I am called to live a resurrected life, to unwrap whatever binds me and holds me prisoner. I am called to grace, a grace that can perform powerful acts of God within my life, if I let go.

Let us each live resurrected, here and now, so that we witness to the power of believing.

Refusing to harm myself

Forgiveness brings tranquility to the soul

It was quite interesting to find an article on forgiveness in a non-religious magazine. In fact, it was in Counseling Today, the ACA magazine for licensed, professional, clinical counselors. The article was so interesting that I'd like to quote a couple lines here:

What stands between many clients and a happy life is the often-elusive process of forgiveness.

Blockages people struggle with in their lives were linked to some sort of issue for which they needed to forgive someone.

Forgiveness isn't about the other person or about making someone else apologize or change--it is about setting yourself free.

Not forgiving creates an emotional prison, ties you to a person or an event that usually you would rather forget but are unable to.

I could go on. But I think the above quotes demonstrates quite well that forgiveness is about me, not about the other person. For when I failed to forgive, I become the prisoner, chained to the person or event I will not let go. Refusing to forgive keeps me very small, and small means many things: bitter, resentful, jealous, angry, hateful, stuck.

When Jesus said, forgive others as you want God to forgive you, he was in effect trying to remind me to keep balanced. Just as I do things that need forgiving, so too do others. Do not expect them to be something I cannot be.

Finding an article on forgiveness in a counseling magazine shows just how far reaching resentments can go. I do so much harm to myself when I refuse to forgive.

So the next time someone hurts or offends me, maybe my question should be, "Do I want to punish and damage myself over this?" If the answer is no, then it is time to let go.

Behold, all things are new

The Spirit of the Lord fills the whole world! we read in Wisdom 1:7. That spirit comes to fill us, but it takes on different aspects for each one of us. It can come to complete, it can come to make sense, or it can come to give courage so that I can move on. One things is certain, being filled with the spirit means I am not stagnant or static. Being filled with the spirit implies movement.

I think that many of us find movement very hard. Because it is so easy to keep looking back and longing for what once was. It is so easy to see the past that is gone as lost.

I am thinking of my past summer at the monastery, and how so much of what I saw and experienced brought back vivid memories of living there. The nuns were so eclectic! They learned how to do major plumbing jobs, as well as electricity and carpentry. They had to, as they could not get anyone to come and do it for them! But now, gone are the sisters that could wire in a new fuse box or lay a new water line. It isn't that the pioneering spirit has been lost. It is simple a question of membership and time. 

Perhaps that is why the past is hard to let go. As I walked around the monastery grounds, I found myself longing for those days when the tool room was full of tools and the gardens were large and flourishing. Now the tool room is full of cobwebs and the gardens are small. Perhaps our greatest challenge in letting go is not looking at the past as loss. The spirit prompts us to consider it movement, going forward, coming into something new.

Perhaps that is the meaning of the verse from Revelations 21:5, Behold, I make all things new.

We should not be afraid of new. We should realize that moving forward means letting go, and that past memories of things that used to be do not have to be chalked up to loss. It can be stepping stones into what we are to become.

For what are we as Christians if not seekers of the new? And how can the new be beautiful unless it is filled with transformation, new life, a living creation?

That is how we are filled with the spirit. That is how the spirit makes all things new.

Letting go of words and living the experience

I love this ancient legend of an old woman describes how she is asked about her love for God. "Yes, yes, I love him very much," she replies. "And do you hate the devil?" she is asked. "I love God so much I don't have any energy left to hate the devil."

The moral of the story speaks to my own soul: if I put my energy into loving, I won’t have time to hate. I will be too busy seeking the experience to worry about how someone else is living out her life. But that is not easy in our day. There are so many baskets begging us to contribute something, our heart for this cause, our mind for this doctrine, our energy for this group. Though such causes are good, they can get us so caught up in the tangible that we forget we started out as seekers of the Divine.

It all started with a desire for the Divine; that we are where we are because we have come to love God deeply. We need to take the time to savor where we are in our journey, to stop and enjoy the moment of truth, the place our energies have brought us, the light we share.

It is time to let the Divine warm our hearts and seep into our soul. It is time to enjoy the presence we have worked so hard to identify within our very selves. It is time to put down the map, and relish being. It is time to let go of words, and live the experience.

Shaking the dust from my sandals

The emotions were spawned by a Youtube clip of monks. As I watched them describe their life within the monastery, and attribute their union with God to their monastic silence, I felt they were being a bit "coy". When I realized this, I took a soul-check and saw that I still have a little anger toward the established monastic communities for their lack of understanding of me years ago. And as I thought about this, I became amazed that there is still, after all of these years, a vestige of anger inside of me.

That brought to mind a scripture passage about Jesus telling his disciples to "shake the dust from your sandals" (Mt 10:14) whenever they were in a house that would not accept them. Perhaps Jesus was not telling them to do so in contempt or disgust (as I always assumed) or even in some sense of righteousness. Maybe Jesus told his disciples this because he was trying to tell them, rejection is hard, and the results (anger) will cling to you like dust. You cannot just walk it off. You have to take off your sandals and shake them, which could mean to imply becoming humble before your own soul, and then consciously letting go (though shaking seems to imply more than just letting go...more like "struggle").

Yes, I think anger is like dust that clings. It certainly can obscure vision. Like sand it can irritate, and like sand it can creep into everything.

And so, again, I take off my sandals and shake off the dust. I will probably have to do so many times before I am free.

For want of insight

Insight. In the world of psychology, it is the mark of mental health. In the world of spirituality, it is the mark of atunement.

I think insight is so important because it is a mark of growth. It takes life as it comes, instead of trying to fit everything neatly into a box of my own creation.

I think of this in light of recent conversations held on Christian Mystics. The topic concerned the calling of God, but the conversation quickly turned to other things, such as the question of duality, the tendency to use scripture as a static verse, the need to evolve in our spiritual world.

That got me to thinking, we all struggle with the need to control. Yes, even in the spiritual realm, we want to control the game, to know what is happening, to explain the process. And in that light, I think insight can be the antidote. Insight can help us let go. Insight can be the inflatable that helps us flow with the process.

For it is true, we understand in stages. If we do not change in our understanding, we remain quite rigid, like statues in a church. Insight allows us to see the new, to understand in a different way, to grow as we go forward.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of the scribes and pharisees of scripture was their lack of insight. They had the law and the prophets, which they understood perfectly. So perfectly that when Jesus came as a fulfillment of those prophecies, they could not accept him. He did not fit in the "box."

Insight is what brings the monastic realm out into the world because it is insight that allows us to live in the spirit of God. It is insight that turns a simple activity into one of light and grace. It is insight that keeps us from settling for less.

The only way I can diminish my need to control is by opening to insight. Then, I will not need to know or understand perfectly, because I will know it is an ongoing process.