September 2008

Opening Prayer 9/7/08
Divine Heart
Make room in our hearts for your mystery
Filled with our own devices we cannot feel you
Our hearts and minds know too many boundaries
Your heart is pure mystery
Love beyond reason
Beauty beyond imagination
Joy beyond experience
Open our hearts to yours
Amen



(Chandogya Upanishad, Hindu Scriptures)

In the beginning there was Existence, One only, without a second. Some say that in the beginning there was non-existence only, and that out of that the universe was born. But how could such a thing be? How could existence be born of non-existence? No, my son, in the beginning there was Existence alone--One only, without a second. Brahman, the One, thought to himself: Let me be many, let me grow forth. Thus out of himself he projected the universe; and having projected out of himself the universe, he entered into every being. All that is has its self in him alone. Of all things Brahman is the subtle essence. Brahman is the truth. Brahman is the Self. And that, Svetaketu, THAT ART THOU.




Edwina Gately (11th November, 1982)
It is good to have a sense for what is going on in the periphery of church and society, if I am going to ever understand what this ministry is about… It is important to be aware of how people are "unacceptable" and rejected. Perhaps it is those who consider themselves the norm, who are in fact the periphery as far as God is concerned? What is we turned it all upside down and were able to see with God's eyes - the rejected and the oppressed are ourselves in our lack of charity and our prejudice? So, I ask myself, "Who is on the periphery? What is the treasure? Who are the chosen people?


(Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, October 27, 1921)
What .. . . is Truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the voice within tells you. How then, you ask, different people think of different and contrary truths? Well, seeing that the human mind works through innumerable media and that the evolution of the human mind is not the same for all, it follows that what may be truth for one may be untruth for another, and hence those who have made these experiments have come to the conclusion that there are certain conditions to be observed in making those experiments. . .It is because we have at the present moment everybody claiming the right of conscience without going through any discipline whatsoever that there is so much untruth being delivered to a bewildered world. All that I can in true humility present to you is that Truth is not to be found by anybody who has not got an abundant sense of humility. If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth you must reduce yourself to zero.


We look with uncertainty
Beyond old choices
For clear-cut answers
To a softer, more permeable aliveness
Which is every moment
At the brink of death;
For something new is being born in us
If we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
Awaiting that which comes …
Daring to be human creatures.
Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love
- Anne Hillman



(Thich Nhat Hahn--Vietnamese Buddhist Monk)
Life has left her footprints on my forehead, but I have become a child again this morning.
The smile seen through leaves and flowers is back to smooth away the wrinkles as the rain wipes away footprints on the beach.

Again, a cycle of birth and death begins. I walk firmly. I walk on thorns, but firmly, as among flowers. I keep my head high. Rhymes bloom among the sounds of bombs and mortars. The tears I shed yesterday have become rain.

Childhood, O my birthland is calling me, and the rain melts my despair. I am still here alive, able to smile quietly, the sweet fruit brought forth by the tree of suffering. Carrying the dead body of my brother, I go across the rice field in the darkness.

Earth will keep you tight within her arms, dear one, so that tomorrow, you will be transformed into flowers, this flower smiling quietly in the morning field. This moment you will weep no more, dear one, we have gone through too deep a night.

This morning, yes, this morning, I kneel down on the green grass and I notice your presence. O, flowers, that speak to me in silence, the message of love and understanding has indeed come.



On the Pulse of Morning
(Maya Angelou)

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
It says, come, rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made, proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet know you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.





A butterfly comes and stays on a leaf –
a leaf much warmed by the sun –
and shuts his wings.
In a minute he opens them, shuts them again,
half wheels around, and by and by –
just when he chooses and not before – floats away.
The flowers open, and remain open for hours, to the sun.
Hastelessness is the only word one can make up to describe it;
there is much rest, but no haste.
Each moment is so full of life
that it seems so long
and so sufficient in itself.
- Richard Jefferies



Chandogya Upanishad

As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were ever separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being.


9-14-08



I will give you a talisman ...
Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.
Mahatma Gandhi


Blessed are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God
Luke 6:21– King James version

How blest are those that know their needs of God; the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Matthew 5:2

The poor in spirit go out of themselves and all creatures: they are nothing, they have nothing, they do nothing, and these poor are not save that by grace they are God with God: which they are not aware of.
Meister Eckhardt



Ripe are you who feel your personnel strength drained away,
your real power lies in the reign of Unity.

In tune with the cosmos are you who feel completely dissolved,
your new form appears by the vision-power of the One.

Suited for the divine purpose are you who are exhausted,
your power to stand then arises from the First Cause.

In the right time and place are you whose sense of Self becomes less,
to you belongs the integrity of the divine “I Can!”

Blessed are you who hold onto very little,
yours is the wealth and the rule of your original divine image.
From the Aramaic translated by Neil Douglas-Klotz


“… those who are willing to embark on a path and accept the hardships and the pain involved in it will reap the rewards of their commitment. When we speak of a kind of tolerance that demands you accept the fact of hardships, pain, and suffering, we should not have the erroneous notion that these spiritual teachings state that suffering is beautiful and that suffering is what we must seek. Needless to say I do not subscribe to such a view. Personally I believe that the purpose our existence is to seek happiness, to seek a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. However since we do experience hardships, pain, and suffering, it is crucial that we develop an outlook toward them that allows us to deal realistically with these trials of life so that we gain some benefit from them.
Dalai Lama on The Beatitudes from The Good Heart


Mulla Nasrudin was outside on his hands and knees looking under a lantern when his friend came up. “What are you doing?” the friend asked. “I’m looking for the key, I’ve lost it.” So his friend got down on his hands and knees and they both searched for a long time in the dirt beneath the lantern. Finding nothing, the friend finally asks, “Where did you lose it?” Nasrudin replies, “I lost it in the house, but there is more light out here.”



I have no parents
I make the heaven and earth my parents
I have no home
I make awareness my home.
I have no life and death
I make the tides of breathing my life and death.
I have no divine powers
I make honesty my divine power.
I have no means
I make understanding my means.
I have no secrets
I make my character my secret.
I have no body
I make endurance my body.
I have no eyes
I make the flash of lightening my eyes.
I have no ears
I make sensibility my ears
I have no limbs
I make promptess my limbs
I have no miracles
I make right action my miracle
I have no principles
I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles.
I have no tactics
I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.
I have no talent
I make ready wit my talent.
I have no friends
I make my mind my friend.
I have no enemy
I make carelessness my enemy.
I have no armor
I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.
I have no castle
I make immovable mind my castle
I have no sward
I make absence of self my sword.
- Samurai song (15th cen.)







Let Your God Love You
Be silent.
Be still
Alone. Empty
Before your God
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still
Let your God
Look upon you.
That is all.
God knows
And understands.
God loves you with
An enormous love.
Wanting only to
Look upon you
With Love.
Quiet
Still
Be.

Let your God--
Love you.



Divine Heart
Make room in our heart for your mystery
Filled with our own devices we cannot feel you
Our hearts and minds know too many boundaries
Your heart is pure mystery
Love beyond reason
Beauty beyond imagination
Joy beyond experience
Open our hearts to yours
Amen



9-21-08




Certainty undermines one’s powers and turns happiness
into a long shot. Certainty confines.

Dears, there is nothing in your life that will not
change – especially all your ideas of God.

Look what the insanity of righteous knowledge can do:
crusade and maim thousands
in wanting to convert that which
is already gold
into gold.

Certainty can become an illness that creates hate and greed.

God once said to Tuka,
“Even if I am ever changing –
I am ever beyond
Myself,

what I may have once put my seal upon,
may no longer be
the greatest
Truth.”
Tulkaram 17th cen.

Psuedo-Dionysius - anonymous 6th cen. Monk points out two classical Christian states of contemplative consciousness in describing how the soul comes into union with the Divine Spirit: via Positiva and Via Negativa
“…we ascend to God, Dionysius wrote, through praising the ‘affirmative theology’ [via positiva] and the conceptual names, symbols, images, activities and emotions of God. And yet, as we rise from the things of this world up to God, we leave behind language and names because everything we know about God pales in comparison to the higher and more holy negation, [via negativa] the pathless path of contemplating God in its mode of nothingness. …
Apophatic discourse from the Greek word apophasis (to unsay or speak-away) is a language of negation based on the dilemma posed by attempting to name the transcendent. It is usually found paired with its opposite term kataphasis (to say, speak-with). If kataphasis expresses divine word, apophasis is divine silence. Leaving behind our ideas of God, the more the soul climbs toward God the more language falters [until one turns silent completely since it will finally be at one with that which is indescribable.] The result is a language of paradox, and the denial of names. Only a language that continually erases itself can capture the unknown divinity.

[In spiritual maturity] the journey of faith moves away from known into unknown, from belief into doubt, and from intellect into mysticism. The shift from affirmation to negation involves the whole person and everything that one has – up until now – accepted as true or real about self, God, or the world. …


Mystics from traditions as different in their metaphysical orientations as Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc. tell us that it is in this radical ambiguity – or nothingness- of being that we are open to Reality in itself. As the fuel of self-emptying, negation takes apart all that is constructed, all that is immediately present, dynamic, or real. It functions as a disruptive element in the spiritual life, designed to break down its linguistic coherence and structural logic, and thereby to shock the person outside conventional notions of reality into another plane of existence.”
Beverly Lanzetta – Radical Wisdom


Doesn’t this sound like Greg Bradden? Like physics today that tells us that reality is not what we perceive it to be? No wonder the way to make God laugh is to tell Her or Him your plans!



An Insidious Idol
Meister Eckhardt 14th cen

Commerce is supported by keeping the individual at odds
with himself and others, by making us want more than we need, and
offering credit to buy what refined senses do not want.

The masses become shackled; I see how their eyes weep
and are desperate – of course they feel desperate - for something,
for some remedy

that a poor soul then feels needs
to be bought.

I find nothing more offensive than a god who could condemn human instincts in us that time, in all its wonder
have made perfect.

I find nothing more destructive to the well-being of life
than to support a god that makes you feel unworthy and in debt to it.
I imagine erecting churches to such a strange god will assure
endless wars that commerce loves.

A god that could frighten is not a god – but an insidious idol
and weapon in the hands of
the insane.

A god who talks of sin is worshipped by the infirm;
I was once spiritually ill – we all pass through that –
but one day the intelligence in my soul
cured
me.


“… The corollary to the negation of concepts is the unsaying, undoing, and unwilling of the ‘lower self’ – that entity defined by the world of attraction, ego, demand, and economy – to find the one thing necessary, the true self.
Beverly Lanzetta – Radical Wisdom


I was meditating with my cat the other day
and all of a sudden she shouted,
“What happened?”

I knew what she meant, but encouraged
her to say more – feeling that if she got it all out on the table
she would sleep better that night.

So I responded, “Tell me more dear.”
and she soulfully meowed,

“Well I was mingled with the sky.
I was comets whizzing here and there. I was suns in heat, hell – I was galaxies. But now look - I am
landlocked in fur.”

To this I said, “I know exactly what
you mean.”

What to say about conversations
between

mystics?
Tulkaram 17th cen.






The mountains, I become a part of it . . .
The herbs, the fir tree, I become a part of it
The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering waters,
I become a part of it
The wilderness, the dew drops the pollen
I become a part of it.
Navajo chant





I am the one whose praise echoes on high
I adorn the earth
I am the breeze that nutures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.
Hildegard of Bingen


9-28-08


During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida … understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings.
And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger.
As the process of globalization draws us ever closer in networks of communication and exchange, there is an understandable longing for simplicity, clarity and certainty. This desire is responsible, in large measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and religious fundamentalism - in this country and around the world. True believers of every stripe - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr. Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our world.
Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open.

By MARK C. TAYLOR
Birds
don’t brag about flying
the way we
do.

They don’t write books about it and then give
workshops,

they don’t take on disciples and spoil
their own air
time.

Who could dance and achieve
liftoff with a bunch of
whackos tugging
on you?
Tulkaram




Selections from Who Can Be Found Like Him?
By Matt Cavagnetto

Who does not fear the oncoming turmoil, even when the thunder is straining at its cloudy leash,
Or the wolves of the back country, rutting and fierce,
Or when the ibis and the crocodile present their dreadful questions;
Or when the darkness seeps from the very roof of the sky, down through the rafters of the trees;
Or when the eerie and electric cyclone threatens the calm Hesperidins, with its noise all blowing and fierce;
Yes, even though the very tumult of the sky be filled with mortal fear;
This man will not shake, nor blanch, nor turn tail and escape to dull safety;
But will dwell all content in uncertainty, knowing as he does that chaos is sacred,
That chaos is the counterpoint of order,
That order is the province of God and God alone,
That no one is perfect,
That to dwell in uncertainty is the province of those confused mortals, who live their lives all helter-skelter.
Yes, the gods alone are the ones who dwell in happy unity, and see in us only a scattered diversion.
Therefore be happy in confusion I say,
Be happy in uncertainty,
Be happy in doubt.
Be happy when even the rocks break in two,
Be happy when there are knocks on your door,
Be happy when you are full of mud,
Be happy when you are full of water.
Be happy when you are full of sunlight,
Be happy when you are full of champagne.
Be happy when you dive like a swan into nakedness.
Be happy when you are all alone in a dark room,
So that the walls of that room rush in on you, and back out again;
Be happy when the candles etch their vibrations on the walls,
Be happy when the grass pushes its wet face against yours.
Be happy when you draw a circle in the sand,
Be happy when you make an eye out of your two arms,
Be happy when you have to wait thirty thousand years to be delivered out of this land.
Be happy when the horses are all in promenade,
Be happy when the sounds of the air are all silver and rush in upon your ear,
Be happy when the water nymphs answer no questions, but only ask;
Be happy when the clouds of the sky turn quickly from light to dark, so that your very essence seems to be in peril;
(For who can fear destruction that nightly dissolves themselves in love?)
Be happy when you rush down the road to your dark appointment.
Be happy when you understand nothing.
Be happy when others try to explain that which can never be truly explained.
And be happy when the beasts of the field are curled up at your feet,
Be happy when your slumbering child breaks the fever that has weighed upon its brow,
When you contemplate the liquid iron of the sea,
When you cross the land on your own two feet,
When you drink the cup of destiny that no one can possibly empty,
Be happy when you see the fifty million forms that inspiration can take in one single moment.
Be happy when you are not happy,
And you will be that singular someone, an avatar of nature and calm as a water buffalo to all onlookers--Let the birds graze on your back.

In the end, religion collapses back into mysticism as it recognizes that after we have said all we can say about God, we are still surrounded by an impenetrable silence. Thomas Aquinas devoted his most rigorous thinking to trying to establish how we could speak about God based on analogies taken from human experiences.But after our minds have erected the ladder of analogy as high as possible toward God, he concludes, "we remained joined to Him as to One Unknown." Augustine, after writing endless words trying to explain the Trinity, admitted in the end, "I only write in order not to be silent."Mysticism counsels us to follow the via negativa, to honor the infinite distance that separate the finite and the infinite, to live within "the clouds of the unknowing" (Jacob Boehme), to respect the silence of the Godhead where nobody is at home (Meister Eckhart), to recognize the hiddenness of God (Martin Luther's "deus absconditus"), to understand that we can only speak about God in symbolic, parabolic and poetic way.We are caught in a paradox called human condition.
mysticsaint – blog



Eat dessert first. Life is uncertain



If you have the choice of the divine knowing or the divine unknowing, take the divine unknowing.As soon as you know, you have to take responsibility for all the actions. As soon as you don’t know, you still are open to receive of the grace of that.– John-Roger(From: The Tao of Spirit)