encouraging the way of respect, beauty, dignity and love...

When I was a freshman in college, I wrote down my deepest beliefs on a yellow legal pad. A young idealist with a bent towards peace-making, works of mercy, and personal and social justice needed clarity in those heady days when it seemed as if "revolution was in the air." My goal was to articulate my values and their source as a way to measure my integrity. If I was authentically certain about my core values - and knew they were of the Lord rather than culture, race, class or gender - then I could guide my life into the ways of righteousness. 

From time to time I stumble upon this legal pad while sorting through boxes of old papers and I continue to set is aside for safe-keeping. For even in this season of ruthless de-cluttering in retirement, I trust that my initial attempt at theological discernment warrants honoring. Not because they were particularly insightful, however, or true. Rather, I find my notes to be inflated, self-centered, and naive. At the time, I was certain that if I could clearly state the core of Christian universalism, then I could train myself to live an ethically consistent life. I ached to smash my inner contradictions and was confident I had the moral strength to do so. 


 
Forty eight years later, my arrogant innocence is humbling - not uncommon among religious zealots of all stripes, of course - but still discomforting. Hubris was integral to being a straight, white, 18 year old, male college student in bourgeois America in 1970. How many times did I sing along passionately with Jefferson Airplane: "You are the crown of creation?" 

Today, I take my counsel more from another Paul: When I was a child I spoke like a child - and acted like a child - and thought like a child. Now that I have aged, I must put childish things away. For now we see as through a glass darkly, only later shall we see face to face... Only three things endure: faith, hope and love - and the greatest of them is love.
Spiritual discipline and well- crafted theology still matter to me. But in 2018, rigidity strikes me as dangerous - especially when married to notions about God. Abstract, intellectual tests of faith tend to become lethal, making orthopraxis - right action - rather than orthodoxy - right thought -  true north for my spirituality today. Like St. Paul confessed about himself: Rarely am I able to consistently do the things that I know are good; and the things I hate I wind up doing so often that I cannot rely only on myself. Joni Mitchell said it best: I've looked at life from both sides now, from win and lose, and still somehow its life's illusions I recall: I really don't know life at all.

I still wrestle to find a coherent way of understanding both my core beliefs and their moral implications, but not to beat myself into ethical obedience. Or trick myself into doctrinal belief. Rather, I need a vision of the holy that rings true to my experience to serve as an antidote to the fear and hatred of my heart and as a guide into life's questions. Left to my own limited insights, I get lost - angry and afraid - of real life. All these years later, I have stumbled upon four touchstones that give me a taste of God's peace and a way through the darkness: 

1) My world view is now grounded in the Pashcal mystery: This is a Cross shaped analysis of every day life and its purpose. Taking a long, loving look at reality through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus helps me search for where life is emerging from death and where the possibility of compassion might be born within the bleakest experience. It is a non-dual way of contemplation that trusts the mystical while awaiting the holy beyond what is obvious.

2) This world view must be nourished and I have embraced four new /old practices: silence, study, music-making and humor. These are my time-tested tools for the inward journey that simultaneously feeds my soul and stretches my consciousness. These disciplines are quiet, metaphorical and beyond judgment.

3) Tenderness in community is where I encounter God's presence in my life. This includes the concious creation of beauty, listening and living honestly with people who are just as wounded and confused as myself, trusting that grace trumps karma, and practicing the 10 foot rule as the core of my outward journey. 

4) Actively searching for clues in tradition rather than reinventing the wheel: the stories of Scripture, the saints of the Abrahmic tradition broadly defined, and their worship rituals are where I discover ancient words to explain new experiences. As Huston Smith wrote: the great religions of the world are the distilled wisdom of the holy as revealed to humankind over the ages. I am NOT the crown of creation so why act otherwise?

Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice. This voice distrusts the status quo. It sounds out the falsity in things and encourages dissent from the images things tend to assume. It under lines the secret crevices where the surface has become strained. It advises distance and opens up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning of a situation might emerge. The inner voice makes any complicity uneasy. Its intention is to keep the heart clean and clear. This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or known to others outside. It receives little attention and is not usually highlighted among a person's qualities. Yet so much depends on that small voice. The truth of its whisper marks the line between honor and egoism, kindness and chaos. In extreme situations, which have been emptied of all shelter and tenderness, that small voice whispers from somewhere beyond and encourages the heart to hold out for dignity, respect, beauty and love.

(John O'Donohue, On Beauty)

Over the next few weeks I am going to try to give form to how and why this spirituality matters.