Surrender

Not just no. Hell no!

That is my instinctual response to the spiritual idea of surrendering. The response is reflexive, like flinching when someone throws a baseball at my head. This means giving up control over, as I see it, everything I need to survive. "From my cold, dead hands," my ego screams, and who am I to argue? I can practice this spiritual mumbo jumbo tomorrow, I reason, when the wolves are a little farther from the front door.

What is spiritual surrender? There are many explanations out there, but I think of spiritual surrender as a very conscious and intentional act of releasing our fate to the Grace of God. "Grace" is a key idea here, and by Grace I mean the unconditional gifts of a benevolent higher power. All people of faith admit to the existance of some higher power, irrespective of the diety they choose to worship. While I don't judge any person's deistic path, I do question putting one's faith into something that you wouldn't feel comfortable surrendering to. Why claim a faith, and it's associated positive aspects, and yet not stand by it, or surrender to it, in your times of need? I have to ask myself this, as a reminder, at least once a day. If we think of our faith as a set of clothes that we put on each day, then I think each moment we fail to step into that faith, we are spiritually naked. Spiritual surrender is like dressing our souls for life each day, and ensures that we aren't living out the recurring nightmare of walking around in our underwear.

I love thinking about surrender, even if I'm not as good at practicing it as I'd like. It forces me to reflect on all of these programs, fears, and otherwise bad habits that take me out of the moments and spiritual spaces where I can connect with God. It cuts to the chase pretty quickly when I'm feeling exposed and afraid, because it's usually because I have put my trust into something less benevolent than God. A fundamental practice in any faith is learning how to reprogram our responses to the world to something more meaningful, to something that transcends or fears and defenses. It is unbelievably hard, and violates our basic tendencies - like jumping off the high-dive, or allowing a friend to take care of us when we are sick, or getting on an airplane.

Let's talk a little about Carl Jung, just for fun, and to provide a more "scientific" explanation for our internal conflicts with surrender. He coined the idea of the collective unconscious - which is the idea that all of our experiences in life get hard-wired into our brains, or programmed. This provides our automated response to the world around us, and the challenges it provides, as a way of keeping us safe. Our immediate responses to the situations in our lives are as functional as what we have programmed into our brains. These responses can be healthy or unhealthy, which I'll leave you to decipher for yourself, but an example of unhealthy response might be a methamphetamine or gambling addiction, while a healthy response might be talking to a friend or meditation/prayer when things get rough. Whatever choices we have made in the past for how we cope, our brains natural response is going to be "I have to respond this way to survive!!!!!!". That is our programming.

So, this brings us back to spiritual surrender as a conscious, and sometimes difficult, act. Remembering that the whole point of having a spiritual life is to connect us with a higher, and more benevolent power. Spiritual surrender aligns us with that power as often as we engage it - even when our immediate fears and worries are telling us otherwise. In fact, this is the immense power of a spiritual life - it opens a new door of hope, even in our darkest times, and shows us the way to happiness, to Grace, and to God.

What We Can Learn from Flowers

One of Nature's boldest acts of faith is a flowering plant. From the darkness below, it brazenly asserts it's claim to light. It thrusts out gawdy petals and decadent perfumes. It woos the bees and the butterflies with nectar and fruit. It knows it's place in the world, and owns it.

We celebrate flowers for their unapologetic beauty, for their audacious sense of entitlement to brilliance. And then, in our uniquely human way, we pluck them and keep them in vases in our dining rooms, or give them to loved ones to spark romance or reconciliation. We attempt to harness something of their energy to infuse into our own lives, cloyingly holding them to our breast the way a child might smother an unsuspecting kitten. Yet, soonafter, the flowers wither in our vases and clutching hands, leaving us with dried-up stalks and blowing seeds.

What is it that we seek from flowers?

Imagine a person interacting with the world the way a flower might - wandering down the street with a big smile on their face and announcing to the world how beautiful and worthy of love they are. Imagine them looking at others in anything but disbelief if they were not unconditionally adored and showered with love and light. We would likely say, "who the hell does this person think they are?", or mutter disdainfully "they act like they're God's gift to the world!"

Unfortunately, too often we present ourselves, and each other, with a much different fate than flowers. Instead of simply acknowledging that we really are God's gift to the world, and celebrating that light in ourselves and others, we decide to cloud the skies with our own judgements and statements about right and wrong. We decide to stop simply trusting the light. We become weeds.

It's no wonder we got kicked out of the Garden.

It is a quintessential quest of spirituality to find our way home from this wilderness of weeds we create in our lives. It begins with shamlessly claiming our own God-given right to love, beauty, and light, and continues by allowing, giving, and defending that same right in others.

Ultimately, we decide whether our lives flower, or become choked by weeds.
What will grow from the seeds you have planted?

Forgiveness

We've all been mad at someone, sometime.  Sometimes you look back and get that sinking feeling that you may have overreacted a little bit.  Other times, you look back and feel thankful that you stood up for yourself when someone was being unreasonable or hurting you.  My own relationship with forgiveness has been a long learning process, because often times I held onto a moral conviction that I should forgive people, but confused that with acquiescing to their bad behavior.  Or, that someone should forgive me by acquiescing to my bad behavior.  However, forgiveness is much different than that.  Forgiveness is releasing yourself from negative thoughts, and has nothing to do with behavior at all.

I remember several years ago, before I had children, that I was taking care of my 2-3 year old nephew, who announced that he wanted cookies for lunch.  When I said "no", the temper tantrum ensued, and I was left trying to figure out what to do with the situation - disciplining other people's kids is always a challenge.  In a fit of dumb luck, I happened upon my most successful parenting strategy ever - have compassion for the child, but holding the boundary.  I said "I'm really sorry that you want cookies for lunch, and I know it's hard to not get what you want.  I think you're great, but you still can't have a cookie for lunch".  Much to my surprise, this combination of desperate words worked - my nephew calmed down immediately, and was no longer concerned about having cookies for lunch.  Turns out, he wanted to be soothed in his disappointment much more than feeding his inner Cookie Monster.

What does this story have to do with forgiveness?  I'm promoting the idea that forgiveness doesn't mean letting people walk all over you, or allowing people to get away with poor choices of behavior, but rather releasing them, and yourself, from the burdens of judgement.  It was Gandhi who said "I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.”  I love that Gandhi talked about forgiveness as "manly", and there's great truth here.  To forgive is to claim a power higher than dealing in fear and judgement and revenge, and recognize the power that compassion has over this.  My nephew's disappointment was transformed by compassion for how he felt, and it had nothing to do with his immediate solution for his disappointment (cookies) - we both found a meeting point for something that soothed him much more than a cookie could ever accomplish.  We found love, and that is the basis of forgiveness.

As we all know, Jesus talked about forgiveness a bunch too.  From Matthew 18:21-22
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

What all of this tells me is that we choose which state we decide to live in with the world. We can choose resentment and revenge, based on a fear of self protection, or we can choose to live in a state of forgiveness, based on a connection with the higher power of love to transfrom our relationships.

I have had my opportunities to learn about forgiveness in recent years, and what has come clear to me is that my decision to live in a state of resentment or forgiveness directly relates to what state I live in in general.  Even to this day, I have my good days, and my bad days, but I have learned that whatever esteem I hold for my adversaries I am also opting to plunge myself in as well.  Forgiveness may release others from the negative energy of resentment and hate, but, more importantly, it releases us from that same energy.  If you are someone who believes in the power of love, then all that talk about loving our enemies, and forgiveness, starts to make a little more sense.

Now.. I feel like I've earned my cookie :).

Deep Listening

A couple of blog entires ago, I wrote about listening to the voice of Spirit inside of us.  Raise your hand if you've ever heard that "still, silent voice of God".  Even though I evidently feel like I know enough about the subject to write blogposts about it, my own hand kind of goes halfway up and, then, with a doubt or two, thinks better of it and goes back down again.  For me, hearing and discerning the will of God is one of those aspects of my faith that I feel in the dark about sometimes, even when I'm trying to take my own advice and listen.  I have a good friend who told me that her prayer, every morning,  is nothing more than the four words "Thy Will be Done", but that it drives her nuts sometimes because the response is  never very clear.  You'd think if you asked every day, then perhaps the Guy upstairs could throw us a bone and just give us some stone tablets to work off of or something.

So, what gives?  I'm listening now, but how come I can't hear anything?

One of the real gifts of a spiritual life is that it allows us to access answers and spiritual motivations that can raise us above the din of everyday life and, hopefully, connect us with something bigger, wiser, and more meaningful.  And so it stands to reason that we're probably not going to hear those answers if there's too much of our own programs running in our heads.  There's a reason that Voice is called "still" and "silent", so, considering that, perhaps it's not surprising that we can't really hear it when our minds are racing around and full of the noise of our everyday life.  If everyday life was providing us the answers we sought, then we probably wouldn't be looking for God.  I guess I've heard stories of people hearing God being channelled through Oprah Winfrey, or in some sign in the orientation of the corn flakes they're eating before rushing off to work, but I know for a fact that I'm not so lucky as them in my divination pathways.

If we are really to hear that voice, we have to find a way to shut down all of the processes firing away in our hyperactive brains.  The worries, the thoughts, the schedule for today, the conversations we've had recently, the status quo of responses we have to every last detail of our lives - all these things are really just our brains trying to control and manage our lives.  This is programming, and while it keeps us organized most of the time, we have to shut it down to hear God.  We need stillness, and quiet.

Quieting the mind, such as this is, is one of those things that only comes with practice and, more importantly, time.  That is why your spiritual leaders and meditation teachers are telling us to make time for this.  If you're like me, and short on both patience and discipline, then this won't come easily.  You can't just pick it up and start doing it, multi-tasking it in along with the rest of your life.  But the type of deep listening that is necessary to really discern our spiritual guidance can't happen with all of our programs running,  Learning to shut down those programs is, at least for me, one of the most challenging aspects of a spiritual life. 

I'll start with a good first step, which I found on my friends bathroom mirror recently, and reminds us that the first step is to allow something bigger into our life.  In a post-it note were the words written:

"Good morning!  This is God.  I will be handling all of your problems today.  I will not need your help.  Have a miraculous day!"

Samaritans and Mexicans - Who would Jesus deport?

Early in the morning on Thursday, January 20th, where I live in Ellensburg, Washington, children and families in a small trailer park lay asleep in their beds.  In a few hours, in a normal day, the kids would be eating breakfast with Mom and Dad, getting ready for school after breakfast as their parents went off to work.  But this was not a normal day.  This day would be unlike any they had ever experienced.

The helicopters came at 5:30 am, backing up a coordinated raid that would leave 14 people, 13 women and a church pastor, under arrest, and several more taken into custody for likley deportation.  The children would awake to chaos of flashlights and watch as federal ICE officers broke into their homes, yelled orders at gunpoint, and took their parents (mostly mothers) away in handcuffs.  Many of them scarcely remembered living anywhere else, as their families, mostly undocumented workers who form the backbone of the agricultural workforce in our community, had been living and working here for several years.  Today, these children, and the families that make up their community, are torn from their mothers, their schools, their homes, and their way of life, seeking sanctuary somewhere safe.  Their numbers, just in our community, may very well be in the hundreds, and all of them are currently displaced, cut off from work and school, and hiding in terror.


Jesus, in His time, spent quite a lot of time praising the Samaritans.  This really torqued off his Jewish compatriots - even some of the disciples.  Like the Mexicans in our country, the Samaritans were unwelcome and disliked by many of their Jewish contemporaries.  They looked different, talked different, took the low-paying jobs, had too many kids, and were sinful trouble makers, at least as far as the non-Samaritans were concerned.  But Jesus humanized them, ministered to them, opened the doors of compassion to them, because He didn't believe that anyone should be excluded from the gifts of Spirit simply because of their ethnic heritage.  For many Jews of the time, the issue of the Samaritans was a political issue.  For Jesus, it was a humanitarian issue - they were God's people, deserving of the same Good News as everyone else... equal to the rest of us.  It was acts like these that ultimately led to Jesus dying by crucifixion.. dying for our sins.

My own church in Ellensburg will be facing it's own challenges as we step forward as a community of faith to provide sanctuary and support for the people affected by the raids.  Getting involved with people that are judged and criminalized by society does not help you win popularity contests, but living out the ideals of Chirstianity was never supposed to serve that goal.

My prayer for my community, and for my country, is that we remember Jesus' message to us regarding the Samaritans - that love and mercy might prevail over hate and judgement.  This isn't a political issue about immigration and citizen status - it's not even an ethical issue about whether these people are "good" or "bad" or have sinned according to our Law.  It's a humanitarian issue.  As Christians, we are not called to judge - we are called to witness the message of Christ's love through action and service to all poeple.  Our job is very simple - doing God's will through love and compassion for all, not just some, of God's poeple. 

And, despite the efforts of some to make us believe otherwise, these are people.

Hidden in Jesus' teachings about the Samaritans was a deeper message.  His lessons of compassion were not simply to love the less fortunate, but to transform those who learned that kind of compassion.  When the man lay beside the road, beaten and scared and left for dead, Jesus reminds as that those who passed him  and did not help travel their own paths to death.  Compassion transforms us, and connects us to the healing spirit of Life. 

Please pray for the inviduals who have been affected by this, as well as for those who face the decisions between judgement and mercy that will effect so many lives.

Lost your spiritual side? Well... Listen up.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have this silly little game I play with myself  - the one where I am having a bad day and feeling outside of myself and go on some epic journey to find some epiphany that.. "this time..." will be the difference-maker in my soul.  I always make a really big deal out of it too - like I'm embarking on some dangerous expedition out there into the wilderness to come back renewed and enlightened.  And so, out the door I go in search of my catalyzing morsel of wisdom, enduring the metaphorical wind and rain of the world, getting lost, getting hurt, spending night after uncomfortable night with roots and rocks poking into my back and depriving me of sleep and comfort.  And there, on some blustery outpost of my internal world, I find that idea and hold it forth as if it was some divine gift bestowed upon me by God on Mount Sinai - lightening flashing inches from my face.  And when I open the tablet I'm like...

"Well.. duh". it's not like I haven't thought about that before.  Why did I have to go through so much pain and suffering to learn something I already knew?".

And I almost immediately hear that heretofore silent Voice from Above telling me.. "It's because you weren't listening."

Why am I so hard on myself, creating epic battles out of the simplest messages - the same simple messages that God is trying to tell me all the time?  I mean, there I am, holding a map and a compass and top of the line GPS unit in my own soul, and crying out to God like the old Psalmists s "help! Save me!  I'm lost!".

Well, I do have an answer - but back to that in a second.  For now, I am continually amazed by the Grace of renewal - that no matter how avoidable my spiritual disorientation might be - there isn't a single second of my life where I can't return home by simply closing my eyes, clicking my heals together, and remembering the answers that I knew from the start.

What are those messages?  In my own faith, it's simply taking the time for prayer and recentering - getting back into myself and aligning with the Spirit of God.  For others, it may be that hour of meditation, or that walk in the woods, or just that moment playing with the kids with no distractions.  It would take most people about five minutes to write down those "right answers", all of which come from an honest discernment of our own hearts.  Exercise, connection with loved ones, throwing on the cross country skis instead of watching that re-run of the TV show that we always know is going to leave us unfulfilled.

So.. why is it so hard to focus on these things which we always admit after the fact make our lives so much better?  The buddhists call it attachment, while the Christians call it temptation.  To be human is to occasionally get inexplicably attached to the moment and the safety of what it gives us at that point in time.  So many things pull us in and demand our attention, pulling us away from ourselves and our sources of life, promising us some moments of security in return that always disappear in a "POOF" leaving us empty.  It's ok.  Some of us evidently can't know enlightenment until we know the suffering of attachment and the path leading beyond that attachment.  Others of us evidently can't know God until we know the suffering of temptation and the path leading us back to God.  We might suffer for awhile, but we can always stop, ask for directions, and go home.

So, the next time I find myself in some frenzied effort to seek answers outside of myself, I pray that I can remember to stop and listen to the answers awaiting if I just listen to the sources of power already opened up to me.  Of course, I won't always do that, and will still probably spend half my life wandering around needlessly lost.  But.. what can I say?  I'm human, after all.

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 1 Corinthians 9:12

There comes a time in evry life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart.  So you'd better learn to know the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying. Sarah Dessen - Just Listen