12/25/22

Some people wonder why I consider myself Christian. And honestly, I wonder myself sometimes, too, looking at what's been done in its name. But the short answer is, I find hope and inspiration in the revolutionary message contained within Christianity itself and not necessarily in the institution it's become.

When I read the bible, what I see is the story of a people who, on the one hand, are struggling with the world they live in, full of greed, oppression, and violence, yet dreaming of a world that's filled with equality, abundance, and peace. It's a story of historical progress towards something better and the successes and failures that a particular people found worth telling and remembering. And Jesus himself embodies the spirit of this dream. His name means "God liberates" or "God is liberation." His message was destined to be revolutionary, as Mary proclaims in Luke 1:52-53, "He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things and he leaves the rich with nothing." His birth was announced to poor workers (shepherds), not the wealthy or kings. His life was spent trying to bring a new and more egalitarian world into being through acts like healing the sick, feeding the hungry, opposing economic exploitation, chastising the rich and distributing their wealth to those in need, and working to bring those on the margins back into the heart of the community. He opposed Roman imperialism, religious hypocrisy, persecution, and violence. He spoke of compassion, forgiveness, universal kinship, and loving our neighbours as ourselves, making concern for others the entry fee to the kingdom of heaven. And he did all of this because he was inspired by universal love and compassion for the human condition.

It's a dream that I share, and just as this revolutionary spirit helped guide the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, I believe it'll also help guide all of us out of the bondage of our current system that's idolized and globalized greed, oppression, and violence. And for me, Christ is a living symbol of that spirit.

That spirit is also present in many other places, like social and political movements and monasteries—the former reflecting the active aspects of revolution and the latter reflecting the contemplative aspects and desired outcomes of equality and community. I think Ernesto Cardenal touches upon these contradictions and their synthesis when he wrote In Cuba:

At breakfast some Marxists asked me about our community at Solentiname. I explained that we try to lead a life in common, with no "thine" or "mine," a life of voluntary poverty—free from the desire for money and from the demands of a society of consumption. We live in brotherly union, all working for the community. We are all equal. And then I stopped. I understood that what may seem very novel in the capitalistic world is a daily reality in Cuba. (I couldn't talk to them about prayer because it would be misinterpreted, and I wouldn’t know how to explain mystic union to people who don't believe in God.) I was afraid that they were going to ask me what need there is for such communities in a socialist society. At that moment I would not have known what to say.

I kept thinking of the question that the young Marxists might have asked me. It seems to me that in a perfect socialist society it would not be necessary to "flee from the world" in order to live the Gospel. In any case, the material life of those communities would be the same as that of all the others. And I remembered what St. John Chrysostom said (in a letter to a rich man): "If cities were Christian, monasteries would be unnecessary."

For me, God is love. God liberates. God is the spirit of revolution. And Christ loves. Christ is a liberator. Christ is a revolutionary. And as Marcus Borg wrote, Christ "revealed what can be seen of God in a human life" through his words and actions. So I consider myself Christian because I follow Christ's example—not the Christianity of imperialism, wealth, white supremacy, etc., but the revolutionary Christianity of Jesus and the liberation of the poor and oppressed.

12/18/22

Today's service at Spirit of Grace was incredibly moving, both due to the nature of the readings and to the emotions, prayers, and thoughts that were offered by the community.

There was a tearful children's homily at the beginning about the birth of Jesus and the meaning of the name Emmanuel, 'God is with us.' Obviously there was something deeply felt by the presenter, Katie, about the idea of God walking with us, crying with us, and being present with us in good times and bad. (The community has certainly suffered its fair share of hardships and loss, as well as its joys and blessings, this past year.) And the theme of waiting appeared repeatedly throughout, particularly in Fr. Jack's homily—waiting for the birth of Jesus and for the ideals he embodies, waiting for a better future, for liberation, for the presence of God that'll change our lives and the world, a presence that's paradoxically already present.

But what I think we so often forget is that what we're really waiting on is ourselves, for our own awakening and transformation. The way we treat one another is up to us. The way our world appears is up to us. Ultimately, we've been given the "keys to the kingdom of heaven," and it has to be our decisions and actions that bring it about here on earth. God doesn't impose a just or unjust world upon us; we create the world we experience. This is our power, our gift. And the closer we are to God, Dhamma, Tao, Nature, or whatever we want to call it, the more our actions will be characterized by love and harmlessness, and the closer we come to realizing a more just world.

Many of the hymns and bible passages that are sung and read every Sunday mention waiting for God and for a world that's more egalitarian and compassionate, where no one suffers from want, from hunger or thirst, from lack of access to healthcare, from loneliness, oppression, imprisonment, etc. And we sometimes need to be reminded that this new world we're waiting for isn't going to come about through magic, unexpectedly overnight, like Christmas presents waiting under the tree for us as children when we believed in Santa and our parents would hide them while we were sleeping for us to find in the morning. It'll only come about when we consciously and collectively decide to do things different—to not follow our impulses that arise out of greed, aversion, or delusion, but cultivate those arising out of non-greed, non-anger, and non-delusion and lead to long-term welfare and happiness; to not promulgate and support any political or economic system that creates inequality and disadvantages anyone rather than providing for the needs of all.

We're waiting for God to deliver us from all this pain and messiness, but we're the ones who must be vigilant and follow the way forward—we're the ones who are called to love our neighbour as ourselves (Mt 22:34-40), who are called to see those who are hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison and minister to their needs (Mt 25:31-46).

12/17/22

Today is Pope Francis' birthday. I may not always agree with him, but as far as popes go, I think he could be a whole lot worse. For all his faults and that of the institution of the Catholic Church in general, I like that he's not afraid to criticize capitalism and the way that the poor and marginalized are treated within it. For example, when asked recently in an interview about those who call him a communist and how he'd respond to those who say that what the church and the pope have to say about economics isn't important, he answered, "I am much enlightened by the Beatitudes, but above all by the standard by which we will be judged: Matthew 25. 'I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was in prison, and you visited me. I was sick and you cared for me.' Is Jesus a communist, then? The problem that is behind this, that you have rightly touched on, is the socio-political reduction of the Gospel message. If I see the Gospel in a sociological way only, yes, I am a communist, and so too is Jesus. Behind these Beatitudes and Matthew 25 there is a message that is Jesus’ own. And that is to be Christian. The communists stole some of our Christian values." Amen to that. Happy birthday, comrade. 🎂☭

12/16/22

I stumbled on this quote today from Raimundo Panikkar:

The rivers of the earth do not actually meet each other, not even in the oceans, nor do they need to meet in order to be truly life-giving rivers. But they do meet: they meet in the skies–that is, in heaven. The rivers do not meet, not even as water. They meet in the form of clouds, once they have suffered a transformation into vapour, which eventually will pour down again into the valleys of mortals to feed the rivers of the earth. Religions do not coalesce, certainly not as organised religions. They meet once transformed into vapour, once metamorphosized into Spirit, which is then poured down in innumerable tongues.

It offers what I find to be the most beautiful and poetic articulation of what philosophia perennis means.

12/11/22

Today's gospel reading on the third Sunday of Advent is Luke 1:47-55, the Magnificat. This is the version used by Ernesto Cardenal in The Gospel in Solentiname from the American Bible Society:

"My soul praises the Lord;
my heart rejoices in God my savior.
because he has noticed his slave.
And from now on all generations will call be happy,
for mighty God has done great things for me.
His name is holy,
and his love reaches his faithful ones from generation to generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm;
he conquers those with proud hearts.
He pulls down the might from their thrones
and raises up the humble.
He fills the hungry with good things
and he leaves the rich with nothing.
He helps the nation of Israel his servants,
in remembrance of his love;
as he had promised to our fathers,
to Abraham, and to his descendants forever."

Like so many prophets and revolutionaries such as Isaiah before his birth, and others like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ernesto Cardenal after, Jesus embodies the spirit of this song of hope, and his life was devoted to bringing it about.

The translation they used today at Spirit of Grace was a modern, more inclusive rendition that was nice but had a less forceful impact. Nevertheless, the underlying message is the same. Mary, pregnant and waiting to give birth to her first child, Jesus, sings a praise to God and prophesizes the birth of a new world of justice for the poor and oppressed.

And that got me thinking about how that will come about. There are a lot of hymns that talk of waiting for this world to come, for God to bring it about. But I think that waiting is more like the waiting of an expectant parent, a waiting in which the parent takes an active part. The birth of a child takes time. And as this new life grows and takes shape, it's fed and nurtured by its parents-to-be until the conditions are right for it to enter the world and be born. So, too, the new world we hope to be born takes time to gestate, being fed and nurtured by our words and actions and the intentions underlying them.

But even after the child is born, care is still needed to protect it, nurture it, and help it to thrive and live long into the future, just as any social transformation still needs our continued care to protect it, nurture it, and help it to thrive and live long into the future. And just as we don't ever know the exact minute a child will be born and must wait patiently while preparing for its arrival, the same holds true of the new world, the kin-dom of God, we long for. We must wait patiently while preparing in whatever ways we can for its arrival.

And if we truly take the commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves seriously, then we must work to free our neighbour from social systems of domination and exploitation, from hunger and poverty, from injustice and discrimination, from oppression and violence, from political and economic servitude.

12/10/22

When I was in Seattle a couple of months ago, I picked up a copy of Waiting for God, a collection of letters and essays written by Simone Weil. Her life story is incredibly interesting and I think of her as one of the unnamed saints of the church, living a life of service to others with a faith deeper and more expansive than many of the saints who are named. There are many gems in this book, like the part of one of her letters to Fr. Perrin where she talks about the dangers of the church as a worldly institution and how things like feelings of patriotism can easily be caught and compel one to do and support things that are otherwise evil. One example she gives are saints who approved of the Crusades and Inquisition (12-15). And I think she's correct that there's a real danger of becoming absorbed in the social, being swept away into evil because that world is the domain of the devil, or from the Buddhist view, the domain of the defilements of greed, aversion, and delusion. I think that's why many mystics tend to turn away from the world and live in solitude or communal communities of like-minded people. She also speaks of truth in a deeply profound way, suggesting that she could never be a part of something, no matter how much she loves it, if it limits her intellectual search for truth, "that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go towards the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms" (27). And I think her essay "Reflections on the Right Use of School with a View to the Love of God" gets to the heart of prayer and meditation, as well as the important role of education in developing our powers of attention, that "prayer consists of attention," the "development of attention forms the real object" of education (57), and "students must therefore work without any wish to gain good marks, to pass examination, to win school success; applying themselves equally to all their tasks, with the idea that each one will help to form in them the habit of attention" (59). Even if we're not good at something and fail, such as trying to solve a geometry problem, the effort of concentration and attention that we devote to trying is never wasted as "we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension" and "this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul" (58). (And I think this is even more important now, in a time where the speed of technology and our daily lives makes it even more difficult to cultivate this kind of attention.) In terms of prayer and our developed faculties of attention, she write that, "It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God" and "the higher part of attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God" (57). In this, I very much see a connection between attention in Christian prayer and mindfulness in Buddhist meditation, with mindful awareness and concentration leading toward the absorption found in deep states of meditation (jhana) and union with 'the deathless.'

12/7/22

Is it just me, or is our society grinding many of us into exhaustion, depression, and hopelessness while forcing us to find any sort of rest, pleasure, or distraction that we can just to get us through the day and the next after that and the one after that, etc.? A society where workloads are too heavy because it's not profitable enough if we have enough people to actually do the job. A society with rents and mortgages many of us can't afford. A society where more of our taxes go towards the military and weapons of war that kill the workers and poor of other countries than to housing or feeding those in need at home. A society where the rich are getting richer and shooting themselves into space while everyone else struggles more and more to make ends meet, making us fight each other for the scraps left over. A society where we wake up each day dreading the commute and having to spend the majority of our waking hours trying to earn a wage rather than spending them with our family and friends and enjoy the amazing world we're born into. Is it just me who wakes up every day tired, beaten, and wishing for something better for all of us but only has the time and energy to heat up dinner in the microwave and watch a couple of episodes of a murder documentary before going to bed to do it all over again tomorrow? Am I the only one who truly believes it could be better than it is if we actually had a voice and choice and this reality wasn't dictated for us by those who benefit from it the most, sitting on their thrones of money, power, and privilege