What's Wrong With Pat Robertson?

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel (God in Search of Man)

My father recently joined a Facebook group called: “Dear God: If you really exist please tell Pat Robertson to SHUT THE F**K UP!” Now, my father, like me, is a very mild mannered person who rarely swears. It usually takes something fairly extreme before either of us are moved to utter a curse word. So it was quite startling to see him associated with these particular words. Before this, the most unexpected thing I’d seen him do was actually joining Facebook.

So, what was it that Pat Robertson said that had my Dad resorting to asterisks and expletives? Just this pearl of wisdom and compassion:

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."

When Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote the passage quoted above, I doubt he had Pat Robertson in mind. But to his list of religion’s failings—“irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid”—we might now add ‘heartless and cruel.’ Heschel’s critique of religion is not a condemnation, but a call to action. It is a powerful critique because it is made by a deeply religious man—a rabbi raised in a family of Hasidic Jews, a mystic, and a theologian. Heschel’s point is not that religion is wrong, but the uses to which it is put by human beings are too often wrong. God caused water to flow from a rock, but the vessels of religion that we have constructed to capture that stream harden into authoritarian doctrine and the living fountain of faith is stopped up.

I have seen the video where Robertson makes these reprehensible remarks, and I have to say, I think that he truly believes that he is being compassionate. He is not filled with righteousness or hatred. He is not preaching fire and brimstone. In fact, he expresses concern and hope for the people of Haiti. This does not make his words any less troubling, however. He still said what he said. He believes Haiti is being punished by God for making a pact with the devil. But, if he is not intending to be cruel, that still leaves this question unanswered: “What’s wrong with Pat Robertson?”

I’m sure several people reading this can answer that question easily, but I want to suggest something else, as well. I think that the problem with Pat Robertson, and those like him, is that they have constructed their religion in such a way that it becomes a defense against truly experiencing the full impact, the full horror and catastrophe of events like the earthquake in Haiti. To declare such a disaster as God’s punishment is to make an escape from the reality of human suffering. It means you don’t really have to feel the pain, the grief, the fear and the horror, which are inescapable realities for the Haitian people.

For Heschel, religion and love of God meant compassion and action. It meant being affected by the suffering of those around us and doing something about it. He was active in the Civil Rights movement and marched with Martin Luther King. Heschel believed that we should not defend ourselves from the human predicament:

“I would say about individuals, an individual dies when he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can hope against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.”

In the Christian tradition, the portrait of Jesus is one of a man who did not remain distant or aloof from human misery. We see a man who weeps in the face of death, who reaches out his healing touch to the sick and needy, who responds to those who seek him out honestly with love and compassion. He saves his condemnation for the scribes and Pharisees, those religious leaders who rigidly hold to the form of religion, but have lost its spirit. To others, the so-called sinners, as in the story of the adulterous woman, he speaks with tolerance, forgiveness, and acceptance.

How different is this portrait than the one painted by Pat Robertson! I suppose that if you conceive of an event like the earthquake in Haiti as God’s punishment, then you can’t feel too sorry the victims because that would be to question God, to doubt both his mercy and his justice. But to experience doubt about God in the face of such a tragedy is an honest response. And maybe it’s against that kind of doubt that Robertson’s version of religion is ultimately defended against. It is uncomfortable to consider where a loving God is in all of this and how he could let such devastation occur to a poor and defenseless people. It is hard not to feel that the Haitians have been abandoned by God. And if them, then all of us.

I believe a truly religious attitude must be willing to undergo the painful feelings of doubt and abandonment. To allow such a feeling is to share in an experience that has been sanctified, in the Christian tradition, by Jesus’ own encounter with suffering. In the unspeakable torment of his crucifixion, he confronts the terrifying possibility that he has been abandoned by God, and cries out the opening words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It is by allowing thoughts like these, as Jesus did, that we prevent ourselves from offering facile and merciless explanations for occasions of suffering, such as that offered by Pat Robertson for Haiti. The word compassion means ‘to suffer with.’ We cannot defend ourselves against the suffering of others if we are to be able to respond with caring and compassion. And when we consider the outpouring of concern, the expressions of compassion, the relief efforts, the generous contributions of time, money and assistance; when we consider the spontaneous generosity of ordinary human beings, isn’t this where we find the presence of the divine that we had thought to be so absent from the scene? I believe that if we can learn to sit with suffering, if we can allow ourselves to experience doubt and grief, then we truly stay open to the living fountain of divine reality, which reveals itself in the astonishing resilience of the human spirit.

The New Testament offers this assessment of religion: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:26-27).

Today Haiti has more widows and orphans than it did a week ago. They need the care and generosity that is the true spirit of humanity; they need the compassion that is the hallmark of true religion.

If Pat Robertson cannot open himself to this vision of the human spirit, so beautifully exemplified in the life of Jesus and in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, then he should just shut the fuck up.

Pathways of Love

O my friends,
What can you tell me of Love,
Whose pathways are filled with strangeness?
When you offer the Great One your love,
At the first step your body is crushed.
Next be ready to offer your head as his seat.
Be ready to orbit his lamp like a moth giving in to the light,
To live in the deer as she runs toward the hunter’s call,
In the partridge that swallows hot coals for love of the moon,
In the fish that, kept from the sea, happily dies.
Like a bee trapped for life in the closing of the sweet flower,
Mira has offered herself to her Lord.
She says, the single Lotus will swallow you whole.
~ Mirabai (trans. by Jane Hirshfield)

This is my New Year’s resolution: To lose my mind, to dive into the heart, to turn every moment of my life into a song of praise. Like the Hindu poet-saint, Mirabai, I want to be crushed by God, enclosed in His sweet flower, and swallowed whole by the Divine.

Do I sound a little crazy? Does what I want sound impossible, unlikely, extravagant? Then I’m on the right track. You see, I am tired of asking too little of my life and being disappointed if that is all I get. This year I don’t care about losing weight, eating better, or exercising more. I want nothing less than the total transformation of my being. I don’t want to be healthy, I want to be fully alive. I don’t want to have more fun, I want to know the fullness of joy. I don’t want to have better relationships with family and friends, I want to become Love itself.

There is a legendary story about the great Sufi poet and mystic, Hafiz. It is said that when he was still a young man, Hafiz fell in love with a beautiful woman. Desperate to win her love, he went to the tomb of a great Sufi master where it was believed that anyone who could stay awake for forty consecutive nights would be granted his heart’s desire. In his burning love for his beloved, Hafiz completed his forty day vigil, at which point he was visited by the angel Gabriel. He was so overcome by the beauty of the angel that he forgot all about the young woman. When he was asked to name his heart’s desire, he cried out: “I want God!” From this beginning, Hafiz became the God-drunk lover of the Divine who is still so wonderfully present in his ecstatic poetry.

There are two things that I take away from this story. The first is that any path, if followed with devotion and discipline, can become a path to God. In this case, it is the very human realm of romantic and sexual love that draws Hafiz to the revelation of God. But I would suggest that this would also apply to all the great religions as well. I will confess that I am not very picky when it comes to the ways God chooses to reveal himself. I mean, who am I to demand of God that he choose a particular face or dress simply to please my sensibilities?

Not that I think that it is a simple matter of my choosing one path over another. It is not the ego that leads in this, picking the bits and pieces it prefers from some spiritual buffet. No, my experience has been that certain things—moments, ideas, images—are filled with a power that can only be called Divine. I believe that it is in this way that my path chooses me. The individual definitely has a role to play—Hafiz had to stay awake for forty days before God was revealed—but the initial choosing belongs to God. And though it is the Christian path that has chosen me, that in no way precludes me from experiencing the Divine in other traditions as well.

The second idea I take from the story of Hafiz is that the heart of any path to the Divine is Love. And its two faces, as mentioned above, are devotion and discipline. In other words, Love is both a feeling and an activity. As the Hafiz story shows, there is a parallel between the relationships we have with other human beings, and the one we have with God. We are caught by some power that draws us into a relationship with the other and, in response, we take action to strengthen and understand that relationship.

But, just in case we make the mistake of thinking that the Path of Love is something merely sentimental or sweet, Mirabai, in her poem, lets us know that the road is not an easy one. She warns us that “when we offer the Great One our love,” we will be crushed, killed, trapped, and swallowed. Love, she is teaching, is a radical dismantling and de-centering of the ego. Perhaps what she is saying is that through love we return to, and become one with, the source of Love —“The single Lotus will swallow you whole.” In the Christian tradition these ideas are expressed in the words of John: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,” as well as those of Paul when he says: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

And so it is that I set myself the impossible goal for the New Year of being so completely overpowered by the Divine that all that is unworthy, all that is petty, all that is greedy and grasping and selfish in me is dissolved and I become, in the words of the old song, a fool for Love. I am under no illusion that this is a goal I can reach in this year or even in this life, but that is no reason not to make the attempt. Who knows? Maybe if I am disciplined and devoted enough, I might be able to say with Hafiz (as imagined by Daniel Ladinsky):

“It is all just a love contest. And I never lose.”

I Believe In Music

All the Levites who were musicians—Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives—stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets. The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.” Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God. (2 Chronicles 5:11-14)

Many years ago, when I was a student in theater school, we had an instructor who taught us his theory of the “levels” of drama. The first level was that of ordinary, naturalistic activity. At this initial stage the action on the stage is indistinguishable from everyday life. Out of this level proceed the next two stages of increasingly heightened reality (I don’t remember all the specifics. Like I said, it was many years ago). Finally, in certain instances, the “fourth level” is reached. At this level, naturalistic action is not sufficient to convey the significance of what is being portrayed.

In a Shakespearean performance, for example, an actor may suddenly step out of the scene and address the audience with a powerful and poetic soliloquy. In a movie, it might be a montage sequence, the juxtaposition of various scenes and images usually held together by a pronounced soundtrack that communicates the unifying mood or theme. But, the medium par excellence of the fourth level is the musical. Whenever the action of a musical reaches a particularly heightened point, someone breaks into song.

Something like this happens in the passage from 2 Chronicles. Solomon and the Israelites have completed the building of the temple of God. Overcome with joy and gratitude and reverence, they break into song. A good friend of mine, who identifies himself as an unobservant Jew who is into God, explained to me once that, “The ancient Israelites used to break into song when they experienced God; it is the perfect expression for the indescribable encounter with the Divine.” But in this scene, things do not stay at the fourth level. The song the Israelites sing is not just the expression of religious feeling. It is an action that causes the Divine to manifest. The fourth level here gives way to the fifth, sixth, seventh and beyond.

It is not the appearance of God that causes the Israelites to burst forth in this great musical performance. It is the love of God, the giving of “praise and thanks to their Lord,” that causes God to manifest. Hundreds of trumpets, cymbals, harps, and lyres, along with countless voices, join in unison to sing thanks to God, at which point “the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.”

Too often, our religious discourse takes place on the lower levels of our human drama. We are far too hung up on the activities and carryings on of our fellow humans, that it seems we forget that religion should be more about eternal matters than temporal ones. We fight about what to believe, how to believe, whether to believe. I wonder where God goes when we start yelling at each other? I doubt at such times that he appears in a cloud of glory. My guess is he vanishes like a wisp of smoke.

Notice the detail of the story describing how, when God’s glory is present, the priests can’t do their job. “Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.” God, it seems, is not as interested in our ritual observances as we are in performing them. It is not the forms of our worship and belief that are essential, but the quality of our singing, the fullness of our praise.

Music is one of the ways we sanctify the moments and events of our lives. Whether there be a wedding, or a funeral, or a birthday party, music is a signal that what is taking place is special, set apart from everyday life. Music and song can also be a way to elevate the everyday—it can transform a mundane moment into a joyous occasion. Think of the excitement that comes over a group of people when a favorite song comes on and a spontaneous dance party suddenly takes place.

Often, when I am stuck in a dark mood, the only thing that will shift it for me is to put on some music. What works for me is usually some bourbon-soaked torch song by Frank Sinatra. I’m not trying to make my feeling go away, but to raise it to a different level, to give it meaning, to find the holiness in heartbreak, so to speak, and the sacred in the sad. I believe that we are each building a “temple of the Lord” and that temple is our lives. And the more we can let each moment “sing”—whether it is a song of pain or a chorus of joy—the more we invite the Divine into our lives.

To this end, the Sufi poet, Rumi, offers this advice:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Why Do We Believe In God?

"Humans did not evolve to be religious; they evolved to be paranoid. And humans are religious because they are paranoid." ~ Satoshi Kanazawa (Psychology Today)

Recently, I stumbled upon an article on the Psychology Today website, called Why Do We Believe In God. It is a year-old entry in a blog entitled The Scientific Fundamentalist and can be read by following these links: Part 1 and Part 2.

The author, Satoshi Kanazawa’s argument rests on Error Management Theory, which basically states that the human mind has evolved to make decisions, even when faced with uncertainty and too little information. Simply put, the human mind will choose between two possible errors by deciding on the one with the fewest negative consequences.

The example used is a man who strikes up a conversation with an attractive woman he has just met. Apparently, men are wired to interpret this kind of interaction in their favor. That is, even in the absence of any real evidence, men assume they are going to score. Why? Because, if they are right they get to have sex. If they are wrong, at worst they experience rejection. If, on the other hand, men assumed that they weren’t going to score, being right might mean they protect their egos, but being wrong means that they miss an opportunity for sex, and therefore for potentially passing on their genes. And we all know, of course, that the sole purpose of human life is to pass on our genes, as if the whole of existence were some kind of genetic thrift shop.

Error Management Theory says that given these two possible errors, human beings—in this case, men—will make the least costly error. In the example given, getting rejected is less costly than missing a chance for doing the horizontal gene swap. Kanazawa then goes on to apply this theory to the belief in God. He states that religious people tend to commit the “error” of attributing intention to certain forces of nature and interprets his observation this way:

The cost of a false-positive error is that you become paranoid. You are always looking around and behind your back for predators and enemies that don’t exist. The cost of a false-negative error is that you are dead, being killed by a predator or an enemy when you least expect them. Obviously, it’s better to be paranoid than dead, so evolution should have designed a mind that overinfers personal, animate, and intentional forces even when none exist.

The author takes the example of a bush on fire and suggests that you could understand this to be the cause of an impersonal force—lightning—or you could interpret this (erroneously, of course) as the cause of a personal force, that is, God. It is as if Kanazawa has never heard of the concept of metaphor, not to mention that he misreads the Old Testament story. The bush is not simply a bush on fire, the significant detail is that despite the fire, the bush did not burn up.

Finally, he offers his conclusion:

In this view, religiosity (the human capacity for belief in supernatural beings) is not an evolved tendency per se; after all, religion in itself is not adaptive. It is instead a byproduct of animistic bias or the agency-detector mechanism, the tendency to be paranoid, which is adaptive because it can save your life. Humans did not evolve to be religious; they evolved to be paranoid. And humans are religious because they are paranoid.

So, belief in God (and, really, any kind of religious belief is implied in this article), serves no real purpose because it “is not adaptive.” Ultimately, it is a kind of outgrowth of paranoia, which is adaptive because it protects us from potential natural “predators and enemies.”

I really don’t know where to start with this stuff.

First of all, apparently, “scientific fundamentalists” tend to read religious statements in as literal a fashion as do religious fundamentalists. Given their preference for the concrete, they fail to see that the image of a burning bush refers to something that cannot be formulated in words and concepts. That something is given metaphorical dress, allowing some aspect of the experience to which it points to be communicated. And even if the story of Moses encountering an angel of the Lord in a fire in a bush were understood in a literal way, surely one has to consider all the details described in the encounter. You can’t just say it was a bush on fire and ignore the part of the report that explains that the unusual thing was that the bush was not consumed by the fire. Science would never (or should never) allow some facts to be admitted for consideration while other facts are willfully ignored. Unless of course, it is dealing with religious statements, it would seem.

Then there is Error Management Theory itself. I don’t really know much about this theory, so all I can really comment on is the use to which it is put by Kanazawa. He declares, “One of the great features of Error Management Theory is that it can explain a wide variety of phenomena. It is a truly general theory.” Kanazawa starts with the assumption that religious belief is an error and then uses this general theory to show why humans make this error. The problem is that you can do this with anything. You could, for instance, say that humans are prone to making the error that science accurately describes the nature of reality and then go ahead and use Error Management Theory to describe how we continue to believe in the scientific error. All you’ve done is what Kanazawa has done, which is find a way to explain your personal biases. This theory doesn’t prove that belief in God is an error, it has to start with that premise in order to have anything to say at all.

Let me be clear, I do not in any way believe that the scientific method is erroneous. Clearly, human beings have derived immeasurable benefit from the increase in knowledge about how the world works that science has given us. I think the use of science to explain things that are outside of its capacity to explain, such as religious belief and experience, is definitely erroneous. And, I think Kanazawa’s argument is not only erroneous, but totally useless.

Science and religion point to different aspects of experience and they do not have to have an antagonistic relationship. Science wants to understand the causal relations between things in the physical world. Religion seeks an encounter with the mystery of life. Science adds to our collective knowledge and gives us concepts and language to communicate that knowledge to each other. “Religion,” says Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “begins with the sense of the ineffable, with the awareness of a reality that discredits our wisdom, that shatters our concepts.”

I do not know why human beings, including myself, believe in God. All I can do here is to assent to another statement by Rabbi Heschel:

“To assert that the most sensitive minds of all ages were victims of an illusion; that religion, poetry, art, philosophy were the outcome of a self-deception is too sophisticated to be reasonable. Bringing discredit on the genius of man, such an assertion would, of course, disqualify our own minds for making any assertion.”

Finding Home

This is an excerpt from my new favorite podcast, Speaking of Faith. Krista Tippet, the host of the show, interviews Diane Winston, who teaches media and religion at USC. In the interview they discuss TV, and the way that shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica have become modern-day parables:

Winston: I think those characters on Lost, like the characters in Battlestar Galactica are addressing a fundamental question which is "How do I get home?"

Tippett: Right. Right. And what is the meaning of home?

Winston: And what is the meaning of home? And that's the question of The Odyssey, it's the question of the Exodus story, it's the question of The Wizard of Oz. I think it's a question that all of us have and that's why those characters are so appealing to us, because they mirror some of our questions about it.

When my first child -- my daughter Annabel -- was born, I discovered that I finally possessed something that I never realized I had been missing, but that I had been searching for most of my life. A feeling of home.

Not only had I not known it was missing. I hadn't known until I found it that I had been looking for it. It was as if, having received this incredibly precious gift, I suddenly became conscious of my prior lack, like receiving the answer for a question that I hadn't known I was asking. It was kind of like that feeling I sometimes get when leaving the house -- that I've forgotten something, but I don't know what it is, and I wait by the door until it hits me that I'm missing my keys, or my wallet, or something else, only I'd been having that feeling for almost thirty years and had learned how to completely ignore it. But, all at once, there I was, holding my beautiful girl in my arms, and I knew two things: 1) that because of my parents' divorce, I had felt homeless ever since I was 11 years old, and 2) with the birth of my new family, I was finally home.

It seems to me that the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of home?” has two components. The first part of the answer, I believe, is that home is other people. In my case, that means, primarily, my wife, Allison, and my two kids. When I am weary and wasted from my engagement with the world, it is Allison I need to get to in order to find rest and get oriented again. The night of her emergency surgery when I thought that I was going to lose her, everything I thought was stable and real flew apart. I remember, the next morning, leaving her still unconscious in the ICU with a breathing tube down her throat and driving home to see my kids. I could barely function and felt like I was losing my mind. I had no idea how I was going to keep going, until the moment I walked in my house and saw my kids. Being with them and knowing they needed me helped me get mentally and emotionally organized again. Being their Dad gave me purpose, focus, determination. Home is other people. My kids were my home and I was theirs.

And home is not just other people in the family. Our neighbors and friends responded to our family crisis with incredible generosity and support. Meals were dropped off, laundry was picked up, snow was shoveled, groceries were bought. Suddenly this little town to which we moved two years prior, and in which I’d always felt a bit of stranger; suddenly this town was our town. Our home.

The first part of the answer addresses being home in the world. The second part of the answer, being home in the universe.

It has always been obvious to me that God exists. I have never been certain about any religion’s particular claim to God, but of his existence I have felt sure. I know that is not the case for others, so I say that as a statement of personal experience, not with the presumption of a definitive truth. But I have never been able to conceive of a random and meaningless universe. For me the frontiers of human knowledge have always been suffused with mystery and not mere void.

I can’t really say why I feel so certain about the existence of God, except to say that I have always felt at home in this life. In my human relationships, I have, at times, felt homeless, lonely, abandoned. But, at a fundamental level, I have rarely felt I was alone. Not 100 percent of the time, of course, but even in my most desperate loneliness, I have carried an almost elemental feeling of belonging. Like the psalmist in the opening of Psalm 90, I can say, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”

The early Christians as exemplified by Paul, in his second letter to the Ephesians, experienced their budding religion as a home in God, as “God’s household” built on the foundation of Christ:

“You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2: 19-21).

But finding a home in God is only the first step, as the next verse reveals: “And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2: 22). For Paul, a person finds a home in God, so that God can make his home in that person.

I think this is an amazing idea. God wants to make a dwelling for himself in human beings. Maybe -- just as my kids and I needed each other to hold on to a sense of home -- maybe there is a mutual need between God and human beings. And why not? Maybe that’s what this whole experiment of humanity is about – a place for God himself to find home. Whatever the case, it seems that whether we are dealing with our relationships with other people or our relationship with God, home is a kind of mutual creation that grows out of the relationship itself.

And maybe the way we find home is by becoming that home for one another.

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

From Songs of Kabir

O SERVANT, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo! I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque:
I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies,
nor in Yoga and renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me:
thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.
Kabir says, 'O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath.'

(translated by Rabindranath Tagore & Evelyn Underhill)

I am a restless person. In that, I am really just a man of my time.

This is, to be sure, a restless age. We live in a time when anything we want is available to us at a moment’s notice. We live in an “on demand” world. TV, iPods, the internet, smartphones—all these devices enable us to have any momentary whim satisfied in an instant. It is my belief, however, that this does not bring us any real comfort or satisfaction. I believe it causes agitation and anxiety.

At least, that’s the case for me. I like to think of myself as a patient person. I have practiced Tai Chi, meditation, and prayer. I study and practice Jungian psychology. And despite all of this, I remain a restless person. I have forgotten how to sit still, to wait, to be bored or impatient. Whenever I have a free moment, I jump on my computer and begin to surf the ‘net. Once I’ve made a pass through my usual bookmarks, I get stuck. I don’t know what to Google next. I think to myself: “What am I looking for?”

If my computer is not at hand, I reach for my cell phone. I just bought a new Palm Pre and I love it. With one device, I can place a phone call, check my email, surf the internet, look at photos, watch videos, listen to music, and read a book. However, I come up against the same problem. Often after about five minutes of flicking and scrolling on my smartphone, I’m at a loss for what to do next. Again, I think, “What am I looking for?” Or, perhaps I find myself driving in my car with some free time to spare. Quite often I'll have the feeling that I want to buy something, but I won’t be able think of anything I want or need. “What do I want, what am I looking for?,” I wonder.

In the poem above, Kabir teaches that “What am I looking for?” is the wrong question. It is not the what that is important, it’s the where. “O Servant, where dost thou seek Me?”

I tend to interpret my restlessness as a feeling that some Thing is missing. And so, I begin seeking for that elusive Thing. But my seeking only increases my restlessness. And if, by chance, I find The Thing that interests, excites or entices me, well, I might like it, I might be happy with it, I might even have fun with it, but usually it doesn’t serve to make my restlessness go away.

Again, my mistake becomes clear in the light of Kabir’s poem. The Things I seek are something other, something external to me. I am looking outside myself when what is missing is actually much closer by. “Lo, I am beside thee.” My restlessness is a spiritual restlessness. And I suspect that at the heart of our current age there is an almost universal spiritual unrest. And just as I cannot satisfy my spiritual hunger with the daily bread of technology and consumerism, Kabir teaches us that this same hunger is not quelled by any particular belief, creed, or ritual. “I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash.”

I don’t think Kabir is stating that there is anything inherently wrong in the temple or the mosque, or, we could add, the church. I think he is saying that God cannot be found in any of those places unless we have first become aware of the presence of God in our own lives, in our minds and hearts. “If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.” I think what Kabir is saying is that we must have an experience of the divine before we can “find” God. God is not to be found in the church, the temple, or the mosque, unless we take Him there with us, so to speak.

From a slightly different angle, Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his book, Man is Not Alone, puts it this way: “In formulating a creed, in asserting: God exists, we merely bring down overpowering reality to the level of thought. Our belief is but an afterthought.”

Over time, I have become more and more convinced that the primary religious statement is “Be still and know that I am God.” I am far from being an enlightened being—as I said, I am a restless person—but I know that my most meaningful moments have always been moments of stillness. Whether in meditation, or work, or an afternoon spent playing with the kids in the backyard, the decisive factor is the extent to which my mind and my heart are quiet and stilled from their usual longing and clutching, fear and anxiety.

Stillness and centering have always been understood as the essential means to finding God, or Ultimate Reality. Almost every tradition has some form of meditation. Rather than taking the attitude of the seeker, meditation puts the practitioner in a receptive position. Whether one practices Dhyana, Vispassana, Centering Prayer, or Taoist Standing Meditation, one of the main goals is to let go of the striving ego and simply experience the divine energy. It suggests that the path to experiencing the Ultimate is, in a sense, to stop seeking and be found. Perhaps this is what Kabir is talking about when he says, “God is the breath of all breath.” No need for seeking because God is right here, closer than you can even imagine.

I guess this suggests that I need to learn that God isn’t waiting for me to find Him. Maybe He is waiting for me to stop moving around long enough to recognize that the divine presence is all around me and within me. And if this is the case, then maybe that original question not only is not about what I’m looking for, it’s not even about where I’m looking for it. Maybe the reason I can’t find what I’m looking for is that it can’t be found. There is nothing to look for and nowhere to look for it. It’s already here looking for me.

This is a wonderful poem by David Wagoner that expresses exactly this idea. It is a poem taken from a Native American teaching story about what to do when you are lost in the woods. As the poem so beautifully describes it, the goal is to stand still until you can be found.

LOST

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Living is a Sacred Act

“Days are scrolls: write on them what you want to be remembered.”

Bachya ben Joseph ibn Paquda, 

from Hovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart)

William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well, states, “If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.” My wife, Allison, who is a wonderful writer, describes the process of writing as “pure hell and torture…until it works.” For her it is a journey through doubt and insecurity to a place of flow, self-assurance, and a satisfaction rivaling orgasm. In my case, writing involves a long battle with myself. It is a battle in which my task-oriented ego resists being overpowered by the creative impulse. Before sitting down to write, I pace back and forth in front of my computer like a caged animal, sometimes for several days, until my ego finally concedes defeat. When that happens and words begin to appear on the page, I am filled with a feeling that can only be described as gratitude.

The quote above from the Hovot HaLevavot, an 11th century text on the ethical teachings of Judaism, is not just an exhortation to “seize the day.” It is a reminder that life is holy and living is a sacred act. To say “days are scrolls” is to invoke the image of a Sefer Torah, a ritual scroll read during Jewish services. Each day is to be treated as a sacred thing, and our lives—the writing on the scroll—as a revelation of the Holy One.

My own experience, however, is that, like writing, sacred living is “one of the hardest things people do.”

Writing is a way of paying attention to the world. But more than this, it is method of discovering what is of value, of extracting some small bit of truth from the chaos of life’s events. A great deal of material has to be cut out, tossed away, and edited before what is truly of value is revealed. It is, as William Blake said, a corrosive method, “melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.” Not everything that happens to us is significant, not everything we do is meaningful. Not, that is, until the hidden infinite in what we do is revealed.

“Days are scrolls: write on them what you want to be remembered.” Is it possible that the art of writing offers some clues about the art of sacred living? The writer, Luis Alberto Urrea, believes it does. In his essay for the NPR series, This I Believe, he describes the ground of being as an essentially literary energy. “I believe God is a poet,” he writes. For Urrea, what counts is the act of paying attention:

“I learned that if I went into the world and paid attention (in Spanish, you “lend attention,” presta atencion), the world would notice and respond. I would have demonstrated my worthiness to receive the world's gifts. It’s a kind of library where you lend attention and receive a story. Or God will toss off a limerick for your pleasure.”

I don’t believe that sacred living means only doing overtly spiritual or pious things and avoiding so-called ‘profane’ activities. I have spent many dry and unsatisfactory moments in prayer and meditation, and I’ve experienced grace sitting in a booth in McDonald’s. I do believe that what is essential is the quality of attention we give to our lives and to the world. The way we pay attention to our lives will determine the quality of what we find. I know that when I look for the worst, I find it. When I look for the good, I find that, too.

Taking this further, I believe that the sacred in our lives is revealed by taking a sacred attitude, by treating our lives as a sacrament. In a sense, God is a lens through which we look in order to find God. Not that we invent God in our imaginations and “project” the divine into the world. I do not believe God is an invention of the human mind. I see the situation more as one of needing God in order to be able to find God. (Incidentally, I believe this to be true of love, as well—we need love in order to experience love.)

What do I want to be remembered? What do I want to have written on the scrolls of my days? I don’t think the answer to this question is a list of events or experiences. I think the answer is whatever makes those events and experiences worthwhile. I’m not wise enough to be able to give a complete answer to this question, but this is the one I’ve come up with so far: Love and Gratitude.

Love and gratitude are like the inhaling and exhaling of breath. Love goes out, gratitude comes in. Love gives. Gratitude receives. They are paths beyond the ego and means of remembering the Other (“write on them what you want to be remembered”).  I believe that if, in any given moment, I can connect to the possibility of love and gratitude, I can experience the holy. And until that happens, all I’m really doing is pacing back and forth in front of reality like a caged animal, waiting to be overpowered by the Divine.

What's Your Story?

“Religious, or anti-religious, questions…cannot be settled by logical demonstration, for the essence of what is at issue is whether it makes better overall sense of experience to believe that there is a divine mind and will behind it all or not to believe that. We can give motivations for our answer, one way or the other, but we cannot simply settle it by argument alone. In the end we have to commit ourselves to a chosen point of view.” ~ John Polkinghorne


It has always seemed to me that the idea of choosing what one believes is problematic. My own experience tells me that I find myself in a particular belief, rather than make a conscious decision that I will believe one thing over another. I tend to assume that this is true for others as well, and, consequently, I have never been one to have much enthusiasm for trying to convince someone else of my beliefs. Nor do I assume that my belief could possibly be universally true. Occasionally, I have been so convinced by the power stemming from my way of experiencing the world that I have felt others would, of course, benefit from seeing things as I do, too. But any proselytizing on my part has been decidedly unsatisfying. In my more sober moments I try to hold a believe-and-let-believe attitude.

Ever since I was a child, it seemed obvious to me that if God created everything that is, He must also have created all the religions as different avenues by which the divine mystery could be experienced. Different people need different stories. I still find this idea convincing. I believe that we are all born into a particular story. Our task is to recognize our story and grow within it.

The story in which we live is the way we make sense of experience, as the quote above from John Polkinghorne would have it. Or, to say it another way, based on my individual experiences, I find that one story makes better sense than others. For me, the God story works. That is, I feel more alive and engaged in the world when I consider that “there is a divine mind and will behind it.”

Polkinghorne is a theoretical physicist turned Anglican priest. For him there is no conflict between the story that science tells about the world and the story religion tells. For Polkinghorne, they are both avenues toward truth. His writing makes it clear (as do the writings of many scientific or religious writers) that there is no conflict between science and religion. Any conflict that exists is between fundamentalist science and fundamentalist religion. The fundamentalists in religion sticks rigidly to the literal reading of their story, while the fundamentalists in science abandon their story to assert a metaphysical belief for which there is no proof (i.e., there is no God).

What if we were to let everyone live their own story? What if we got curious—rather than defensive—and chose to listen to each other’s stories instead of trying to shout each other down with our own beliefs. This world, this life, is so immeasurably rich and wonderful. We need all the different viewpoints to even begin to comprehend the whole in its physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, relational, spiritual, and mysterious complexity. We might find ourselves enriched by the differences and surprised by the similarities.

Where the religious story might ask, “Do I serve God or do I serve sin?,” the humanist question might be, “Do I choose to love or to hate?” For the scientist it could take this form: “Do I serve understanding or ignorance?” The artist, “The beautiful or the ugly?” There are differences, to be sure, and important ones. But couldn’t it also be that there is enough similarity for each to be open to the other?

Perhaps the idea of everyone getting along is naïve of me. After all, as Polkinghorne states, we have to “commit ourselves to a chosen point of view.” If we don’t necessarily choose our beliefs, as I asserted before, we do need, apparently, to choose to commit to our beliefs. Just as a marriage, for example, cannot hold together without commitment, neither will any path yield all of its available truth without commitment. It takes long, specialized training to get to the point where one might discover something new in science. It takes long, specialized training to be consistently open to the muse for an artist. It takes long, specialized training for the religious person to reach enlightenment. All paths require us to commit. And maybe it’s this need for commitment that makes us view each other suspiciously. I might have to believe my way is the only true way in order to realize that complete commitment.

Maybe, then, we might never get to the point where we all get along, but I guess that’s interesting, too. Maybe the best any of us can do is say: “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

What I Don't Know

Different, indeed, is it from the known,
and also it is above the unknown.
Thus have we heard from the ancients who explained it to us.

That which is not expressed by speech,
but that by which speech is expressed:
know that to be God, not what people here adore.

That which is not thought by the mind,
but that by which the mind thinks:
know that to be God, not what people here adore.

That which is not seen by the eye,
but that by which the eye sees:
know that to be God, not what people here adore.

That which is not heard by the ear,
but that by which the ear hears:
know that to be God, not what people here adore.

That which is not breathed by the breath,
but that by which the breath breathes:
know that to be God, not what people here adore.
~Excerpt from the Kena Upanishad



When I was in elementary school, I had a teacher who used to complain that I never asked any questions. She would say that asking questions was a sign of intelligence. But for various reasons—some temperamental, some environmental—I experienced not knowing as dangerous. To me asking questions was a sign, not of intelligence, but of ignorance. The world, with all of its unknowns, was threatening and because I did not feel I could engage it or inquire about it, I became isolated from it.

Passages like the one above from the Kena Upanishad help me to remember that not knowing is an essential part of the experience of God, and, by extension, the world. The passage is a warning against literalism, certainly, but it is also an invitation into mystery. It is a call to ask questions, to inquire, to wonder, to play.

If I cannot hold an attitude of openness or wonder or inquiry, I become isolated from God. To put it another way, the moment I become attached to my ideas about God, or about anything at all, I have lost my connection to the Divine Mystery and the sacredness of living.

In Jungian analysis, the goal is to get the conscious mind (the part of us that we know) to dialogue with the unconscious mind (the part of us that we don’t know) and thereby be enriched and changed.

Not knowing is difficult. It requires humility and (at least for me) courage. It requires the willingness to examine and, perhaps, let go of some of our most cherished notions. My fear of not knowing is the fear of looking foolish or making a mistake. It is a fear that somehow if I don’t know, if I’m not in control, I might cease to exist, as if my being is made up solely of the bits of information I have been able to acquire. It’s as if I’m afraid my encounter with the Divine Mystery would be annihilating instead of transforming.

The lesson from the Kena Upanishad, though, is that the ineffable reality of God is also an essential part of our own being. And since God is "That which is not thought by the mind, but that by which the mind thinks," our being is ultimately rooted not in what we know but in our coming to know, that is, our openness to life and the world. Not knowing, therefore, is not a ceasing to exist, but a coming to be.

Perhaps, then, the willingness to make mistakes, to look foolish, to be surprised, to be changed is a truly sacred attitude. And maybe asking a question is really a form of prayer.

Whole-hearted acceptance -- variations on a theme

I've been reflecting some more on the quote from Jean Pierre de Caussade that I referred to in a previous post. Here it is again:

"The Treasure is everywhere. It is offered to us at every moment and wherever we find ourselves. All creatures, friends or enemies, pour it out abundantly, and it courses through every fiber of our body and soul until it reaches the very core of our being. If we open our mouths they will be filled. God's activity runs through the entire universe. . . . We could not choose to become good in a better, more miraculous, and yet easier way than by the simple use of the means offered us by God; the whole-hearted acceptance of everything that comes to us at every moment of our lives." ~ Jean Pierre de Caussade

I am conscious of the fact that truly understanding the writings of the mystics is not possible, as they are writing from the core of their experiences -- experiences that I have not shared. It is not just theory with them. They are trying to reflect in their words something of their actual lived experiences. Therefore, a merely intellectual approach to their writings will always fall short. So I try to listen to these writings as I would listen to a psychotherapy client. That is, I try to get an empathic understanding of the other's experience. Empathy is the process of trying to understand another by imagining yourself into their experience, by feeling yourself into their story.

I said in the previous post that I do not know what the Treasure is that Caussade talks about. That's true. After writing that, I thought some more about this. I tried to put myself in the position of someone who could accept "everything that comes to us at every moment of our lives" whole-heartedly. It was then that I got that rush that feels like insight. I had the thought, "I know what the Treasure is!" It occurred to me that the key is when Caussade says "God's activity runs through the entire universe." Perhaps the Treasure that is offered to the one who can open his or her heart to every moment is the awareness and the experience of the presence of God in each moment. The felt sense that God is active in each and every moment of our lives, waiting, as it were, for us to take notice. I don't know if that's true, but I have to admit that when I consider that thought, I feel something like resonance or excitement that has for me a convincing power.

Here are some others who say something similar to Caussade:

"When one does the next and most necessary thing without fuss and with conviction, one always does what is meaningful and intended by fate." ~ C.G. Jung

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi


"My formula for greatness in man is amor fati: that a man should wish to have nothing altered, either in the future, the past, or for all eternity. Not only must he endure necessity, and on no account conceal it--all idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity--but he must love it. . . . " ~ Nietzsche


"Don't demand or expect that events happen as you would wish them to. Accept events as they actually happen. That way peace is possible." ~ Epictetus


"[The] Christian worldview compressed . . . into a sentence: the world is perfect, and the human opportunity is to see that and conform to that fact."
~ Huston Smith

What if the Mightiest Word is Love

From "Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration" :

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.


Text of the benediction by Rev. Joseph Lowery during President Barack Obama's inauguration, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou, who has brought us thus far along the way, thou, who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.

Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.

We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.

We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.

He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.

Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.

For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that yes we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.

And while we have sown the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.

And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.

We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.

With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.

The Whole-hearted Acceptance of Everything

"The Treasure is everywhere. It is offered to us at every moment and wherever we find ourselves. All creatures, friends or enemies, pour it out abundantly, and it courses through every fiber of our body and soul until it reaches the very core of our being. If we open our mouths they will be filled. God's activity runs through the entire universe. . . . We could not choose to become good in a better, more miraculous, and yet easier way than by the simple use of the means offered us by God; the whole-hearted acceptance of everything that comes to us at every moment of our lives."

~ Jean Pierre de Caussade (quoted in The Teachings of the Christian Mystics, edited by Andrew Harvey)



The above quote continues the theme of suffering begun in my previous post. For though it does not deal with the subject explicitly, it seems to me that Caussade's "whole-hearted acceptance of everything that comes to us at every moment of our lives," necessarily includes the experience of suffering.

In the first place, if I think of accepting those things that I know or want or like, it hardly seems to be an issue, so that the real problem comes when I am confronted with the unknown, the unwanted, the despised. And if I am honest, the unknown, unwanted and despised thing is as likely to be love or happiness as it is conflict or illness. And if love or happiness, then it is a question of growing beyond myself, of letting go a tiny piece of my narcissism and allowing myself to be affected and changed by the world. The ego suffering itself to be changed.

In the second place, "everything that comes to us" includes such things as illness and death. Two people that I love more than I can measure are currently suffering through their own individual ordeals. My wife is battling breast cancer and enduring the punishing effects of chemotherapy, which are assaulting her body and mind. My sister has ALS and is witnessing the too-rapid deterioration of her body (though not her spirit, which is as bright as it ever was). My mother and father, my in-laws, my nephew, family and friends, and myself -- we are all suffering for them and from our collective inability to prevent any of this from happening.

It is hard in the face of this to experience this as "The Treasure" that Caussade describes.

The Treasure is "offered to us at every moment" by God and our task is to accept whatever happens to us in those moments "whole-heartedly," states Caussade. I don't know what the Treasure is. I am nowhere near being able to achieve whole-hearted acceptance of everything. I am sure of this much: The Treasure is not that which is happening in each moment. It has something to do with understanding that it is God who is offering us each and every experience. In other words, that whatever happens to us is not just random and purposeless, but filled with meaning through and through. Perhaps it is only through a courageous kind of acceptance that we can begin to recognize and experience that meaning.

I'm not sure. Like I said, I don't know what the Treasure is. I hope I can learn to gracefully accept the gifts God offers.

However, this quote from my sister's blog, in which she writes about her experience of living with ALS, I believe, gives some hint of what might be experienced when the Treasure is encountered:

I am blessed at every turn. Do I sound full of shit when I say that? I hope not because it’s really true. ALS has torn my heart wide open and there are unimaginable gifts in this disease.

Circling Around God

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of this world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

~Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. R. Bly)


This is where I begin. This is where I am going.

I don't intend to make this a very personal blog. I am not interested in confession or memoir or exhibition. Making the personal meaningful is hard and one needs considerably more talent -- and far less ego -- than I possess to make it work.

What I love is the way the Soul speaks, the images with which it cloaks itself, and the magnetic force with which it draws us to that mysterious center which is both our self and the world. I love the infinite ways that God manifests in the world and the many forms of worship and praise that humans have devised that attest to God's presence and power. Mostly, I love those God-drunk lovers who, like Rilke, keep circling around God until they break into song.

This blog is about listening to that song. It is not about anything that I have to say, which would not be very interesting, anyway, given the relatively few years of experience I have acquired as against the Soul's thousands of years. No, I would rather hear from that great Other -- call it God, the Soul, Love, what have you -- and try to simply and humbly respond.

I don't believe that it is the essential thing that we finally come to know whether we are "a falcon, or a storm, or a great song." It's not as important what we are transformed into, but that we become transformable, that our fixed notions of ourselves dissolve, become more fluid, more flowing. It is not important on this journey -- if it is even possible -- that we ever arrive. It's the circling that counts, spiraling wider and wider out "over the things of this world." And that is my hope and intention for this blog, to keep circling until I can more clearly hear that great song that the mystics call the Beloved and peoples everywhere have always called God.

And maybe sing along.