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

Conversations with my future self...Having a spiritual yard sale..

Have you ever looked back on your life and wished that you could sit your younger self down and give them a few tips?  I think about that sometimes, how little things I've discovered later in life would have been really useful when I was younger.  Sometimes I'll even call out to my former self, as if maybe I could speak across time.

Of course, that's a bit of magical thinking there, but one thing that might actually be possible is something that can change my life right now - having a conversation with my future self, asking.. what would my future self tell me right now if he could.  Excuse me while I go floss...

O.K.  As I was sharing with a friend tonight, one thing I'd like to do is have a sort of a spiritual yard sale - I carry all of these things around with me that I don't really need, and get in the way of living my life.  They were all things that I picked up, most likely, at other people's yard sales, hoping to adorn my life with something that looked pretty or was useful at the time, but which really "aren't me".  Now, they are clutter, and interfere with those things that can really define me.   Tonight, more than ever, I am feeling a strong need to focus only on those things that are necessities to being me, and letting go of those things that I put on the display shelves for the sake of impressing company.

The hardest thing to believe sometimes, deep down, is I can be only myself - nothing more and nothing less - and that this is sufficient.  I hold on to all these trinkets of ideas and beliefs picked from somewhere else because I am afraid people won't accept me without them.  But at some point, I'm going to have to move - to grow - and it's hard to move when I am trying to cart around a bunch of junk - it's hard to grow when I've got barnacles hanging off of me.  When I have holes in my life, it is too easy to spackle them with something that will serve the moment, but so much more useful to walk around with a hole until the right piece is added, or the right part of me grows. 

 This is what I believe my future self is telling me - focus on the important stuff, and release the stuff you don't need.  Your life will be so much happier that way, and you'll laugh at the notion of why you ever thought you needed half that junk in the first place.

What old people wish they'd known when they were 21

Talk about a ballsy blog title - it's almost like I'm giving out the meaning of life or something.  hmm....

This is a universal spiritual idea for how one might choose to live their life.  It is not limited to the Christian pantheon (though that's the lens I choose to use for my own faith), but here it is:

We find our most fulfilling way in life by connecting a higher power into ourselves and honoring it with our choices as much as possible.

Many people are sitting around waving their metaphoric magic wands at the world trying to make it better for them or cursing things that don't go their way.  All this without realizing that they, themselves, are the wands. 

There is a fate laid out for everyone - you, me, your friends, your colleagues, your children - waiting for each person to discover their vast potential and step into it.  This is what so many 85-year old women and men realize right before they die - what makes many of them wish they could go back and live their lives over again.

Does this make you think twice about how much energy you spend worrying about your kids, your job, your image, or your love life?  When we are aligned, things have this miraculous way of taking care of themselves.

Why do I know this, you might ask?  Actually, it doesn't matter why I think this way, because if you do, but haven't trusted it until now, then I don't need to say anything.

Hello, Cruel World.

Hello, Cruel World.

This is a link to the one potitical blog where I've been posting on and off for the last 6 years.  The place is a little shrill and immature sometimes, so beware, but there are still a lot of good ideas to be had there.   The originators of the blog lost their way a bit, but they were part of the blogger revolution that emerged in the 2004 elections and influenced those elections.  When I joined the blog, there were only 5,000 people on it, and now there are over a quarter million.  The title is a play on the "goodbye cruel world" diaries popular there, where people get fed up with it all and leave in a snit - like I did (mostly) a couple of years ago after trying to stand up for Hilary Clinton to the Obama supporters, even though I was an Obama supporter myself who didn't vote for Hilary Clinton.  Anyway, spirituality is perhaps even more political than potilitics, I've learned, so will probably stick to things here.