What drives our spirit

   Our Inner World

             OR

   Our outer world

Notice the Inner World is capitalized

   To me it is a big deal

Notice the outer world is in small letters

   To me it isn’t a big deal

Of course it all depends on my spiritual disposition

   Some days I go with the flow

   Some days I fight it

Watched a sea gull in the wind today

   When she went into the wind

      Flap her wings and went nowhere

   When the wind took her

      No need to flap at all

What a simple reminder

   When the outer world events drive me

      I go no place and don’t even know it

   When the spiritual wind of God drives me

      I go where It leads me

Sometimes I am even aware

   Of a choice

      Between Inner or outer

Dear Spiritual Companions,

Last week I watched a show on PBS entitled, “The Buddha.”  I recommend it highly.  It was very informative, but it also gave me an insight about suffering that I had never read or heard before.  Someone said Suffering was better defined as Disappointment.  It was an aha moment for me.  I have no trouble feeling or understanding suffering, but disappointment is even better.  I have used the latter approach on myself for years.  It was something I learned as a child.  No matter how hard I tried or what kind of effort I put into anything, it was never going to be good enough.  I don’t know whether this is an attempt by parents to encourage us to improve or be better than we are, but it can add a lot of suffering.  That at least has been my experience.  Instead of living a life of peacefulness there is a certain malaise we carry within.  Some people simply become strivers, while others give up and don’t even try because what good will it do?  The key is to give up our grasp of a disappointment style of living and realize no matter what we do it is always good enough.  Does that mean we couldn’t have done it better?  Of course we can always do it better, but becoming perfect is not what the spiritual journey is.

For the Buddha, enlightenment came with accepting every moment just as it is and living in it.  A Buddhist statement is, “Before enlightenment chop wood, after enlightenment chop wood.”  I would say, “Before disappointment do the best you can, after disappointment do the best you can.”  Life in God has nothing to do with how we are Doing.  That is our ego trying to distract us from living in God.  Life in God is letting each moment be what it is.  God is not disappointed in us.  That is a creation of religion based on rules and the law of Doing.  We may begin our journey with God there, but then we discover a mercy of Love that accepts us as we are.  Striving to be is simply folly.  We are already Being, so why would we strive to Be what we already are?  The Buddha taught that when we realize we are suffering then the next step is to become aware of our disappointment.  This is then followed by letting go.  Once we do all of that then we can get on with simply living as we are.  To put this into a Christian context it is to be reminded of what Jesus said, “The Kingdom is already in your midst.”  We already have it, so we don’t have to arrive or prove ourselves to some demanding god.  Heaven isn’t some time in the future, but realizing it in this moment.

When I am disappointed with myself or transfer that onto someone else, I need to simply become aware of the uneasiness inside of me.  When I do, then I can say to myself, “Oh it is disappointment once again.  Hello old friend.  How have you been?  Everything is alright so you can leave me peacefully until the next time.”  Can you feel the lightness?  Can you feel the peacefulness?  Isn’t it great to not have to be anything other than who we are?  As we realize this we no longer are using our energy, or inner spirit, to become better.  Now we can use that energy to be ever more fully who we are.  The ego thinks the only way we can become better is by being disappointed in self.  God knows this never works, so God comes to us and tells us how much God appreciates who we are.  This positive approach encourages us to embrace our Self as we are.  Now we can fulfill our co-creating dream with God we set into motion before time began.

As always we have a choice.  We can continue to live with disappointment and join with our ego in thinking this will enable us to do something that will make us standout.  Or we can accept God’s approach, to let go of that attachment, so we can learn more what it means to be who we are in God.  If we accept the latter don’t forget that is never a once for all time choice.  The adventure of this spiritual journey is to make the choice over and over again.

Peace,

Gary

Pirates

   Good or evil

On first glance obviously

   Evil

But maybe they are worth revisiting

   Good

Like most things in life

   We place our values on others

So unless we never want to grow up

   Be Peter Pan

      We might miss the good in being childlike

So unless we never want to side with protesters

   Be Jean Lafitte

      We might miss righting injustices

So unless we don’t want to see inequities

   Being defined by social class

      We might miss overturning cultures

To be a Pirate is to stand up

   Acknowledge good is never pure

      There are adverse affects to all actions

Life is filled with death

   Pirates believed that

      They had a flag of skull and crossbones

Pirates

   Good or evil

On second glance

   Both

Dear Spiritual Companions,

Having a concept of God is so tricky.  Who told us we could ever define the Essence of All There Is?  I love the Jewish Religion because it can’t even say the Name of G-d.  I also love the Hindu Religion because of the number of Gods it has.  Zen works with koans that have no answers so that one can not know the Identity of God.  The book entitled, “If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him,” says it all.  So what is this desire to put God in a box by defining what we thing It is?  Why can’t we accept the idea that God is Unknowable?  The best we can hope for is caught in the image of grasping at a definition of God symbolized in a closed hand.  If we open the hand and extend the fingers we find ourselves pointing at what God could be.  We are not saying this or that is God.  No, we are pointing at the endless possibilities of God’s Identity.  I invite you to go out in to a dark area on earth at night and look up at the stars and many galaxies that hide endless universes.  God is like that – endless and mysterious, ongoing and creating forever.

If you are still with me, now we can look at what happens if we live with the endless and mysterious nature of God.  We are free from having to define the Undefinable.  As a Pastor for 35 years I spent so much of my time trying to define God.  One thing I learned along the way was it could not be done.  People expect Pastors or Religious Leaders to have the answers to such questions of Identity or the Meaning of Life.  When one does not, then the spiritual journey begins in earnest.  Moses asked God to tell him who He was and after some prodding God replied, “I Am Who I Am.”  What does that mean?  The only thing I could come up with is God is Being.  All that has been, All that is, and All that will be is God.  That is obviously not a definition filled with clarity.  I say Good.  It is instead an invitation to more.  What does that line mean to you?  If you are anything like me it is too much to comprehend,  We are left with something that is beyond words – Nothing.  Break that word down and you get No Thing.  God is No Thing which means no definition. 

God is beyond words.  God is found in emptiness with No Thing.  The question now becomes one of then why do we try to define that which cannot be defined?  Good query isn’t it?  When we give up the search we can encounter God on God’s Terms.  When we become open to living life as it is, without those endless questions of why it is what it is, we can simply live it as it is.  This is where I have discovered the God of no Essence.  My words, which will one day end with this physical existence, no longer are my source of strength.  I now can venture into the unknown, the darkness and endless possibilities knowing in my heart that I am not alone.  There is a Being with me that has been there, is there and will always be there.  Now what happens doesn’t have to be explained, it just has to be lived.  The funniest thing is life is exactly like that, so why not embrace what is.  Now, along with God, we can say I Am Who I Am.

It is all so mysterious, but it has such a comforting feeling to it.  The search for meaning and explaining God among many other things is no longer necessary.  For me it is like a wonderful piece of cherry pie.  All I need do is enjoy it by being present to the moment of eating it.  Like life, God is found in that delicious piece of pie.  Worth pondering don’t you think?

Peace,

Gary

Just a moment

   That is all we have

      Just this moment

So why am I so concerned about the past

   What am I hanging onto

   Why can’t I let it go

   Why is it more important than this moment

      Questions to ponder

So why am I so concerned about the future

   Why do I want to jump ahead

   Why can’t I let it be what it will be

   Why am I so concerned about what may not happen

      More questions to ponder

I am free in this moment

   I have life

   I have everything I need

   I can just breathe

In just a moment

   This moment will be gone

   Only to return in a memory

      Found in the good old days

In just a moment

   I have been given eternity

      Can’t find that in the past or future

Dear Spiritual Companions,

I read something the other day about how our willfulness gets in the way of God’s Will.  I do not believe in a God who has any difficulty with our willfulness.  God created everything, so therefore God is responsible for our desire to play god.  In the Christian tradition this is Holy Week and in so many ways it is filled with human willfulness.  The bottom line is we want what we want when we want it.  This goes for what is happening in our lives, our country, our religion or anything else that is important to us.  Willfulness is about our ego desires in this life.  When we have given our existence over to our ego, we have lost our focus on the bigger picture.  Our ego will die one day as well as everything else in this life, so if are depending on this life or our ego for any lasting meaning we will be filled with futility.  This is good because one needs to see what they don’t have before they can see the possibility of what they could have.  It is a part of this journey of being human.  It is also why God would not have any difficulty with us being willful.  I know this goes against the idea of punishment for our supposed selfish acts, but so be it.  A simple question to ponder is why would God find any meaning in punishment?

So how do we know when our willfulness is getting in the way of God’s Will?  We begin asking ourselves a question,  ”Is that all there is in life?”  We find our definition of what is important isn’t fulfilling us anymore.  This leads to a certain uneasiness inside of us.  We suddenly are aware of the moment and begin to see our lives in a new way.  Maybe what someone else defines as meaningful isn’t.  Maybe what some religious group says is necessary isn’t.  Maybe what used to fulfill us no longer does.  Maybe this or that relationship has lost its intimacy.  It might be time for us to live with such thoughts or feelings.  Meditating, sitting in nature, pondering life as we go to sleep or wake up now become precious moments.  We have slowed down enough to begin to take a look at those maybes.  If we have the courage to sit with them, we can begin to see where they lead us.  We can breathe new life into them by noticing and spending time with our own breath.  We might even notice where they appear in our body.  It is what I believe Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane.  I believe he was chatting with God about an alternative to the cross and death.  When Jesus realized this life and his ego were more important than God’s will he said something like this, “Not my willfulness, but your will be done.”  By letting go of this life we find so much more.  We are so limiting in our thoughts and ways of living life.  When we wake up to this fact we might hear God saying, “Did you ever think of living this way instead?”  Notice there is no demanding us to do it this way, but rather simply to dare to look at another possibility.  

When we give up our willfulness we find such richness and quality in living every moment.  When we realize there is no arm twisting from God, we can remove ourselves from the arm twisting done to us by others or Institutions.  Actually we see that kind of behavior as contrary to how the spirit is leading us.  There is growing clarity of what to do or think.  There is less fear of failure, because we have come to realize there is no such thing as failure.  By missing the mark in life, being willful, we simply see it as an opportunity to learn and choose a different way.  This goes back to why God is not a Being who punishes.  We are moving from a child like relationship with God, one filled with fear or punishment, to an adult relationship, one filled with different choices or behaviors with no threats.  Jesus, like other spiritual beings who have come to reveal a new way we might like to try, uses Holy Week to be an example of how God works with us to find the best way of living. 

If you are a Christian, I invite you to walk through this week looking for Jesus’ example for your life.  If you are a Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or something else, I invite  you to revisit your spiritual example. See how they are speaking to you about another way to move from willfulness to God’s Will.

Peace,

Gary

Ignorance

   Is such a loaded word

It can alienate us from others

   As well as from ourselves

It can create opportunities for our ego to be in charge

   I know more than you do

   I have the truth

   How can you be so stupid

      Nothing comes from this except division

Could ignorance have a deeper meaning

   Like simply ignoring this or that

By not listening I may be showing my ignorance

   I am ignoring your plea to be heard

      We can be so alone when no one cares enough to listen

   I am ignoring my inner plea to learn

      Growth often comes from those who think differently than me

   I am ignoring my own fear

      What happens if I don’t have all the answers

   I am ignoring the way life is

      Gone today here tomorrow

Ignoring seems easier to accept than ignorance

   To be ignorant indicates I am not perfect

Maybe  I need to ignore perfection

   To see my beauty shine through my imperfection

How am I revealing my ignorance

   By ignoring life as it is

Dear Spiritual Companions,

Transformation or transcendence

   What is our choice for life

I believe we have been taught to transcend life

   Too many temptations every day

   We certainly can’t learn from them

   They will cause us damage

   They will lead us astray

      So naturally we need to move beyond this

Maybe

   Maybe not

Like most of this adventure we call life

   It is how we look at it

Your temptation might be my gift

   Or just the opposite

By living in life not trying to transcend it

   I might find myself transformed

So much of life is about destination

   What about the journey

Did we come to this life to miss it

   Or did we come to learn from it

All depends on your definition of God

   Or whatever Name you call God

Does God see us as defective

   If so we need to transcend ourselves

Does God see us as perfect

   If so do we

      If not this life is for transformation

The most amazing grace is

   The choice is up to us

Dear Spiritual Companions,

It has been four and a half years since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.  Just recently I visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast for the first time since the hurricane.  I had been putting this off because I remembered what it looked like before Katrina and wasn’t ready to see what had happened to something I loved.  Well the time had arrived to face death and it was haunting.  We drove down the gulf highway in Waveland Mississippi and it still wasn’t totally paved.  In addition, the houses along the highway going back for a mile were gone.  Many of the trees were also gone leaving a very desolate feeling.  This was the case on into Bay St. Louis, Pas Christian, Long Beach into Gulfport.  The highway had been paved in Bay St. Louis, a new bridge connecting Pas Christian and Bay St. Louis had been opened  six months before and a number of homes had been built, so there has been progress.  The problem for me was the magnitude and scope of the destruction and the reality of how long and how much effort will still need to be expended to recover what has been lost.  I feel an inner need to process this trip spiritually, emotionally and internally before I am able to rejoice in the progress.  I believe this to be true because the others who have been there a number of times and seen the after effects are able to focus more on the progress.  I believe that is because they have worked through the pain and emptiness of seeing what they loved no longer there.  Just like life isn’t it?

We know life changes and eventually ends, but knowing that doesn’t always make it easier to experience it.  There are so many outer and inner realities that need to be faced to get to the point of acceptance.  I am not overly wrapped up in houses or things.  Don’t get me wrong I still like them, but as I get older they have less value.  I have come to realize the fleetingness of life so relationships mean much more to me than things.  When I saw the destruction and so many homes gone I felt the pain of the families who had lived there and are unable to come home.  When I saw so many trees blown away by wind or water I thought of swings on those trees or loves carved into the bark in the shape of a heart.  I reflected on many different individuals who found God under an oak tree that is now gone forever.  Grief is what I felt for them and that doesn’t even begin to speak about the birds and animals who claimed that area as their habitat.  Emptiness seems to be a prevelant feeling for me, but over time I know God will fill that emptiness  with something else.  That process describes for me the gift of letting go, even if you have no choice in the matter.

One of the most wonderful things about being able to write and share my thoughts like this, is the knowledge that it often touches something deep inside of you.  When I was a Pastor and preached I was often humbled when someone would come up to me after the service and say to me, “How did you know I needed to hear exactly what you said?”  Obviously I didn’t which reminded me of another Loving Force at work in my spirit.  In my retirement my writing has replaced my preaching and so I am very touched when others say, “I wait for your writings because I know they will speak to me in ways I need to be spiritually touched.”  We are  connected by love so what  I felt so strongly on the Gulf Coast you feel in your life, but in a way that speaks to your needs and evolving spirit.  This is the beauty of God for me.  God knows we are connected not by the exact same thoughts or feelings, but rather we are connected by similar experiences that touch our collective spirit.  You have encountered destruction and loss during your life.  You have had someone or something you loved ripped out of your life.  You have seen various aspects of Mother Nature and Her creation affected in hellish ways.  We are not alone in this journey called human existence.  Knowing that, I believe, on a very deep level is one of the keys to being able to move through the catastrophes in our lives.

I thank you for riding with me the other day as I saw the destruction of the Gulf Coast for the first time.  I felt your loving arms surround me and hold me as I felt so lost.  I can go back there again now and know it will be easier the next time because I will be more aware of your spiritual presence.  I hope the same will be true for you as you dare to encounter the Gulf Coast losses in your life.

Peace,

Gary