Courage and Love

The way of love is not
a subtle argument

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling
they're given wings.
~ Rumi

My sister, Carla Zilbersmith, was this year's recipient of the Mary Lou Krauseneck Award for Courage and Love presented by ALS TDI. According to ALS TDI's website:

"T

his award is presented to a member of the ALS community who has, despite all obstacles, created a foundation of hope by maintaining a passion for life. The recipient of this award inspires his/her community to fight alongside them in the battle against ALS. He/She understands the importance of keeping a positive attitude and remains committed to finding a cure. This person is a model of strength, courage, and love in his/her community."

I was given the honor of accepting the award on Carla’s behalf. The following is the acceptance speech I gave on that occasion.

2010 Mary Lou Krauseneck Courage and Love Award Acceptance Speech

First, I would like to thank ALS TDI for honoring Carla with this award. Carla passed away May 17^th of this year, two and a half years after receiving her diagnosis. And though her loss is devastating to those who knew her and loved her, the impact on the world of her life, and the humor and the honesty with which she lived her life, is very much alive. This past weekend the film, Leave Them Laughing, a documentary about Carla, was screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It is incredible to think that through this film, Carla’s life will continue to inspire countless other lives with just those qualities for which she is being honored here today—Courage, Love and a passion for life.

My sister Carla was a performer. An extraordinarily talented jazz singer, an outrageous and outrageously funny comedian, a writer of uncommon depth and honesty, an actor, a director, a provocateur, a songwriter, and an occasional poet. But Carla’s greatest talent was her humanity. She was a devoted mother, a wonderful sister and daughter, and a loving friend. Carla loved people, and she had the ability not only to be able to see the real essence of a person, but to express what she saw, to communicate in word and deed to you what she saw and loved about you.

When Carla was first diagnosed, she was clear that she did not want to become a poster girl for ALS. In her blog she wrote, “I will not become a tireless crusader for a cure for ALS, I will not fight until the bitter end or be anyone’s poster-middle-aged-woman – rather I will do what we were all meant to do – be with people I love doing things that make me happy, trying to make the world a little brighter when I can and giving myself a break when I can’t.”

Carla was not unaware of the irony, in fact she thought it was pretty funny, that not two years later, it was a photo of her that headed up the Calendar she had conceived as fundraiser for ALS TDI. She had become a tireless crusader and a poster girl for ALS and it happened because she did, as she said, what we were all meant to do—be with people she loved doing things that made her happy and trying to make the world a little brighter.

Carla never felt that she was capable of the kind of dedication she had encountered in people like Corey Reich and his family, Toni and Warren Schiffer, Mary Harrington and so many others. She was awed but their endless capacity for giving, even in the face of their own personal tragedies. Carla considered herself a joker and an entertainer and felt that whatever she could offer would be in the example of her spirit for living and her prodigious creativity.

It was out of this spirit that she conceived of the Always Looking Sexy Calendar. For Carla, a person’s humanity was always more important than their medical status, and she envisioned a pin up calendar with people at different stages in their progression of the disease. She wanted it to be sexy, she wanted it to be real and honest, and she wanted it to make a lot of money for ALS research. I know that she was always grateful for the enthusiasm with which ALS TDI embraced what for some was a controversial project.

And this was truly an international project, with models from at least four different countries. In a matter of months Carla had coordinated models and photographers, printers and art directors, all while sitting as one of the models herself. It was a flurry of creative and administrative activity that would have taxed a healthy, able-bodied person, and she was tireless and dedicated.

Whether battling her illness, confronting her own mortality, raising awareness for ALS and the need for a cure, or writing bravely and honestly about it all, Carla used humor. She never missed the opportunity for a joke, especially if that joke was in any way bawdy or inappropriate. And yet, she was never gratuitous. When Carla formed a Facebook group called “People with ALS for GIANT Gimpy Foam Hands”, it was not to make fun of the failing bodies of herself and those with ALS, but to bring awareness to those bodies and the souls of the people inhabiting those bodies. Her vision for the Giant Foam Hands was never realized, but I remember her telling me how beautiful she thought it would be to have an entire stadium of people holding up these giant, yet frail, bent hands. She wanted to shock people into awareness, yes, but she also wanted to remind us all of our fragility and our vulnerability, to remind us that we are all dying, whether we are ill or not. She wanted us to remember that we are all in this thing called life together and it is our job to make this world a little better and a little brighter if we can.

And I think if Carla were here to receive the Courage and Love award she would say that the real courage is displayed by all of those who live their lives despite having ALS, who get up everyday to be with the people they love and do the things they love to do as long as they can. She would say that the real love is in the all the acts of caring—both great and small—given daily by families and caregivers of those with ALS. She would say that the people who have dedicated their professional lives to helping those suffering with ALS, or who devote their time and talent to finding a cure are the ones who display courage and love on a daily basis. She would look around her and say that everywhere you look you can see acts of courage and love and there just aren’t enough awards to recognize them all.

Carla believed that despite the pain and the suffering, there were gifts and lessons to be gained from living with ALS. It was Carla’s mission in the last two years of her life to bring awareness to those gifts, the chief among them being that this life is precious and there is no time to waste in the living of it.

I’ll close by giving the last words to Carla. This is an excerpt from her blog in which she describes the special knowledge that comes from living with ALS:

“You know how life can knock the wind out of you so suddenly and you envy the innocence of the rest of the people around you who don’t realize that just like you they could die at any moment. You want people to know how hard it is, but you don’t want them to feel sorry for you or to think you’re brave or to give you the Olympic Gold Medal for Suffering. You want people to see how easy it would be for them to wake up one morning and decide to give up their self-inflicted pain and enjoy their wonderful life. How easy it is to have a great day when you can make and eat you own toast, throw on your own clothes, go out into the world and do whatever you damn well feel like.

You want people to live all the life you’re going to miss.”

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.”

Poverty and Abundance

“Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, ‘Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’” (Luke 21:1-4)

Recently, my sister, Carla, wrote a post on her blog which was titled A Call to Action. It’s a wonderful meditation on the activity of love. She writes:

“If your partner is ill, love is a call to action. Love wakes parents up in the middle of the night. It caused a man I know to risk tenure because his mom was sick half way across the country in Cleveland. It invited my friends to discover the bottomless depths of their generosity and compassion. Yes. Yes. Love is not so much a feeling as an alarm bell, a runner's gun, a reminder that we are only as good as the good we do for one another.

Love is not so much a feeling as a call to action.”

Regular readers of this blog will know that my sister has ALS. Carla faces everyday with the knowledge that her time for action in this world is limited. She cannot use her legs or her hands. She has round-the-clock caretakers who wash her and feed her and get her dressed. And yet, through all this, she remains a woman of action.

Carla is endlessly creative. She has turned her confrontation with death into a work of art. She writes a beautiful blog. She doesn’t just use a wheelchair, she transforms it. She has decorated it, and the van in which she now travels, with colorful, funny, completely irreverent, and appropriately inappropriate images of her experiences.

In recent weeks she has been putting together her latest brainchild—a pinup calendar featuring regular people with ALS in provocative poses to raise money and awareness for ALS. It’s going to be called the Always Looking Sexy Calendar, and even though she is confined to a wheelchair and tires easily, Carla has coordinated the activity of models and photographers, printers and publicists from different parts of the country to get this project completed for the holiday season. It would be a daunting project for someone with full capacity and energy. Like many creative people, she’s a little crazy, but this allows her to throw herself into such a project and make it happen.

Whenever I read the story of the widow’s gift from the Gospel of Luke quoted above, I think of my sister. Whatever she does, she gives it all she has and all she is. She lives what she writes – that love is a call to action. One of the things that she loves the most is life itself, and her creative activity is one of the ways that she cares for life.

Last winter, after my wife had come home from the hospital following emergency surgery, Carla offered to come out to help take care of our family. She was already in a wheelchair and had very limited mobility. “I can’t do much,” she said, “but I’ll do whatever I can.” She didn’t have much she could do, or much she could give, “but she out of her poverty put in all she had.” She’s crazy like that.

And isn’t that the point of the gospel story? The widow’s poverty—like my sister’s—is, in reality, abundance because it is full of love. The abundance of the rich, really poverty if it is devoid of love.

I remember when I was a little boy getting into situations which seemed to me at the time scary or panic-worthy, like having soap in my eye that stung me, or getting my pants leg caught in my bike chain that I couldn’t get out so I was unable to get back home to safety. I remember in those situations crying and calling for help. Inevitably, it was Carla who would appear out of nowhere to see if I was okay. Rarely, did she get angry at me, but with simple caring and compassion she would rescue me and bring me back home.

In stating that love is a call to action, Carla has touched on the thing that Karen Armstrong finds is the root of all the major religions, that is, compassion:

“The religions are forms of ethical alchemy, if you like. That you behave in a compassionate way and this changes you. Why? Because all the great masters of religion tell us that what keeps us from a knowledge of the divine, from — which has been called variously God, Nirvana, Brahman, the sacred — what keeps us from this ultimate reality is our own egotism, our greed, that often needs to destroy others in order to preserve its sense of self, or even just to denigrate others. What compassion does, it makes us dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there. And it's this that they all teach leads us into the presence of the divine.”

Carla’s version is immediate and imperative:

“If you knew you were going to die, who would you want to be with and how would you spend your time together? What are you waiting for? From my vantage point I can see that there is no time to delay -no time to deny the people we love of our time, our attention or our action.”

Carla’s love is an active love. I have known it from the time I was a small boy. For this I am grateful. For this I am blessed.

I love you, Carla.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

“The aim of Jewish piety lies not in futile efforts toward the satisfaction of needs in which one chances to indulge and which cannot otherwise be fulfilled, but in the maintenance and fanning of the discontent with our aspirations and achievements, in the maintenance and fanning of a craving that knows no satisfaction.”

~Abraham Joshua Heschel (Man is Not Alone)

Religion is a strange thing. It has a tendency to take our common and accepted values and subvert them. It challenges our collective assumptions and finds our usual aspirations and desires wanting. Often, because of this tendency, people judge religion to be repressive and restrictive, a means of exercising oppressive control over the hearts and minds of its adherents, and desiring to do so over non-adherents. And it is true that there are elements within the religious world whose mode of expression is repression and condemnation. There are those who interpret the subversion of social norms in terms of a war against the prevailing culture.

At first glance, the quote above from Abraham Joshua Heschel might seem to belong to this category. Is it really true that all our efforts toward the satisfaction of our needs are futile? Is Heschel right when he states that we are able indulge our needs, but that ultimately they cannot be fulfilled? Is there anything inherently wrong in seeking the satisfactions of such things as position, wealth, sex or fame? Where do these things fit in the economy of the spirit?

A closer reading, however, finds that there is no condemnation of the “satisfaction of needs,” no denouncing of our “aspirations and achievements.” Heschel is not issuing a moral injunction against the pursuit of desire, he is suggesting that there is a deeper and greater value in discontent, in dissatisfaction, and in longing. It is not that seeking satisfaction is wrong, it’s just that it’s fleeting. He is reminding us that satisfaction as a goal in itself, as an end, is ephemeral and “futile.” This knowledge still exists in our common speech in phrases like, “Money can’t buy happiness,” “Fame is a vapor,” “All good things must come to an end,” and “Success is journey not a destination.” The Rolling Stones apparently knew this truth when they sang “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Who knew that song contained such spiritual truth?

It is no secret that our contemporary culture is geared toward the gratification of desire. Our whole economy is based on it. We are consumers who are constantly encouraged by advertisers and marketers to try new and different means to satisfy cravings we may not even know we have. There are so many things to do and to try and to buy that, to a large extent, we have lost the ability to just be. The ability to satisfy almost any need, almost instantaneously can seem like a great thing. However, there is evidence that one of the most important qualities we can develop as human beings is the ability to delay gratification and it seems likely that our prevailing situation has, to a large extent, eroded that ability for many of us.

The religious view, as articulated by Heschel, goes even further than this. He advocates, not just delayed gratification, but “the maintenance and fanning of discontent…, of a craving that knows no satisfaction.” I don’t believe that what is being promoted here is any kind of unhappiness or misery, as if the way to God was through some kind of suffering asceticism or mortification of the human will.

I think the relevant analogy here is the state of being in love. When we fall in love we are filled with a longing for the other. It can at times be painful, but it is a sweet pain and we would never wish it away. Even when we are with the one we love, we feel we can’t be close enough to our beloved or know enough about him or her. Joy and pain somehow intermingle, and our longing for the other can never quite be satisfied even when our beloved is near.

The religious masters of this experience are the Sufis. The Sufi shaykh Jami teaches that “The heart that is free of love-sickness isn’t a heart at all. The body deprived of the pangs of love is nothing but clay and water.” The poet, Rumi, puts it like this:

the longing you express
is the return message.
the grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.

A slightly more sober version of this idea might be image of the empty vessel of Taoism. A bowl that is full, like a desire that is satisfied, has lost its dynamic power. Nothing else can happen. But it is in its emptiness that the vessel is useful. It has the power to receive. And maybe that is the secret of the unsatisfied yearning. Though we are filled with longing, we are emptied of self, ready to receive something of the Divine.

I believe that we are changed by love. Our meeting is like that of the ocean and the shore. We come together for a time, sometimes with passionate intensity, sometimes soft and gentle. And just as the shore takes on a new shape when the tide recedes, some things washed away, some new object—a shell, or a lost treasure—left behind, so are we, in the ebb and flow of love, painfully and beautifully, made new. I believe that this is the kind of encounter that Heschel is inviting us to with God. To open ourselves by expanding our yearning and our need, to meet life with a transforming love, to be slowly changed into an image of the Divine.

And I believe God is a Stones fan and that he loves to sing these lines: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”

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 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 Road Which All Must Tread

"None can come to the sublime heights of the divinity," said the Eternal Wisdom, "or taste its ineffable sweetness, if first they have not experienced the bitterness and lowliness of my humanity. The higher they climb without passing by my humanity, the lower afterward shall be their fall. My humanity is the road which all must tread who would come to that which you seek: my sufferings are the door by which all must come in."

~Heinrich Suso (Teachings of the Christian Mystics, edited by A. Harvey)


What to do about the problem of suffering?

I don't presume to think that I can come to any conclusion regarding this difficult question, but it's an unavoidable one and, what the hell, I might as well jump into the deep end with this blog.

Buddhism teaches that life is suffering and that release from suffering is possible. It prescribes its Eightfold Path as the means for achieving that release. The cause of suffering is said to be attachment. Now, there is much that I admire and am drawn to in Buddhism, but I have always had some trouble with the idea of detachment. Don't get me wrong, there are many things for which I find detachment a wise and healthy and helpful teaching. I try (though I do not succeed) not to cling to material things, or self-aggrandizing states of the ego, or even to my hopes and plans for future, both near and far. However, there are attachments from which I have no desire to be released, no matter what suffering they may cause.

My wife, my two children, my sister, my family and friends -- these are people that I love, for whom I have experienced both joy and grief. Because to love is to suffer. Loving someone means becoming vulnerable, getting hurt, being afraid they'll get hurt, fearing you'll lose them, almost losing them, and inevitably losing them.

The quote above from the Christian mystic, Heinrich Suso, does not teach the avoidance of suffering, but states instead that suffering is the door to sharing in the divinity of the Eternal Wisdom, of Christ. It is through our humanity -- not avoiding or escaping it, but through it -- that we reach to the divine. Our humanity, says the Eternal Wisdom, is composed of bitterness and lowliness, as if it were our task as human beings to learn something about suffering, in particular, the suffering of love ("For God so loved the world . . .").

The night my wife was taken in for emergency surgery, I spent a terrified few hours thinking she would die, desperate at the thought that I would never speak with her, caress her, or kiss her again. I tried to avoid the scene in my head in which I had to tell my kids they would never see their mommy again. I have never experienced such profound desperation. She came through it, thank God, and if there were any way I could go back to avoid that night for both my wife and I, I would do it. And yet, there is something else that is left to me from that night that is harder to describe.

To be able to suffer that way for the love of another human being means something. It's painful, but it's good at the same time. To know that I have the kind of love that could cause me that depth of suffering gives my life a meaning, I believe, that it would not have in any other way. And as I think about it, as I write this, I want more of that kind of dangerous love in my life, not less. It makes me wonder if the Buddhist formula about attachment isn't backwards, at least in respect to the kind of attachment called human love. That is, I do not think, as I said above, that to love is to suffer. Rather, it is suffering that lets us know that we have truly loved.

I want more of that kind of pain.