Transformational Spirituality Pays Attention to Walls

Gordon MacDonald, author and speaker on spirituality, tells about one Christmas vacation when their son Mark flew home from college and greeted his parents with an unexpected gift – a cute little ferret named Bandit.  Unexpected, for sure.  And not exactly a gift they were hoping for. But in the following weeks, the cute little furry animal worked its way into their hearts – Bandit was cuddly, fun, funny.  They enjoyed him.

But enjoyment stopped after about four months.  Bandit began to grow up, and they started learning the hard way that adult ferrets can become nasty – they bite, they exert independence by neglecting simple hygiene producing a stinky house – it all overwhelmed their delicate senses.

Gordon and his wife Gail soon lost all affection for this Christmas gift critter.  Which led them to begin considering how they could get “rid” of Bandit.  The idea finally emerged:  Why don’t we take Bandit up to our cabin in the woods and give him his freedom.  After all, the acres of forest and woods will be perfect for him to live and roam and enjoy!  Nothing there will be bothered by his smelly habits!

Gail said she’d feel more comfortable if she could first go and talk to the pet store people to see what they thought.  Later that day, she came home and told Gordon:  “The pet store people explained that we shouldn’t release a tamed ferret (or any tamed animal for that matter) in the woods.  It would be dead within twenty-four hours because it wouldn’t know how to find its own food and it wouldn’t know who its enemies are or how to defend itself again them.”

The irony of the situation struck them both.  By taming this ferret, by taking it out of the real world and teaching it to live in the safety and seclusion of their nice home, they had destroyed its ability to live where it had been born to inhabit.  It could never be a free ferret.

Is it possible we do the same thing with our faith and our spirituality?  By trying to forge faith and spirituality within the exclusive confines of a personal, small, safe, isolated, and secluded world, we create a faith that doesn’t work in the real world – a limited faith and spirituality – a potentially timid, narrow, insecure, ineffective, unliberated spirituality.

I love the way Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it.  Bonhoeffer was the Protestant pastor in Germany during WWII who became convicted that he should preach and write against Hitler and the genocidal Nazi regime.  He boldly broke ranks with many Christian leaders of that time who were either silent or supportive of Nazism.  He ended up being arrested and jailed and then finally executed by Hitler just as the Allied Forces struck the final blow of liberation in Europe.  Here’s what he wrote:

“It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith … By this worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities.”

Effective spirituality, transformational spirituality, has to be forged and lived in the real world.  It has to work and make sense and produce positive effect in the WHOLE world, not just our safe, small worlds.

So in my spiritual community Second Wind, we’ve had a series during September called “APPLYING YOUR SPIRITUALITY TO THIS WEEK’S GLOCAL HOT SPOT."  Our goal is to inform our spirituality by means of seeing the rest of the world beyond our individual lives.  So each week, we focused in on a current issue taking place in the world (*GLOCAL = think global + act local).  What is the “crisis/need/situation” – what are the issues involved – who are the people involved – how is the situation being currently handled – how are we impacted?  And how does this situation inform and shape our spirituality?  What kind of spirituality does it take to work in this situation?

The whole attempt is to inform our spirituality and faith with the real world, opening ourselves up to a bigger picture than we would typically allow for ourselves.

This last Saturday we looked at the current plight of the Roma, Europe's largest minority group that originally migrated from Northwestern India back in the 11th century.  They traditionally held slave-type positions among the aristocracy and monasteries of Central and Western Europe.  And now they find themselves spread out all over the continent and beyond, often living in camps under squalid and marginalized conditions from the rest of society, barely able to eke out subsistence to stay alive and provide for themselves.  Last year, Amnesty International described current realities:  "The Roma community suffers massive discrimination throughout Europe. Denied their rights to housing, employment, health care and education, Roma are often victims of forced evictions, racist attacks and police ill-treatment."

The Roma have especially been in the news the last few months as France's President Nicolas Sarkozy moved to expel over 1,000 Roma from his country back to Romania and Bulgaria, creating quite a firestorm of controversy among the nations of the European Union.  It's forcing leaders to address this significant humanitarian crisis within their borders.

So how does our spirituality and faith inform our response to this contemporary situation?  How does this significant human need shape and inform our spirituality and faith?

Timothy Egan, in The New York Times last week said it well:  “Perhaps the best way to judge the health of a nation’s heart is by how it treats the shunned.”

He's certainly echoing the sentiments of historic sacred scriptures.  Jesus himself put it this way:  "If you've shown compassion to one of the least of these, you've shown it to me."

In other words, a Christlike heart (a healthy heart) manifests Christlike compassion, especially to the shunned and marginalized of our world (in Jesus' statement of what the final judgment is about, he refers to acts of compassion to the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, and prisoner).  And the amazing thing about Jesus' statement - that reveals how important this issue is to Jesus and the values of God's Kingdom - is that when we show compassion to those in need, we are in reality showing compassion to Jesus - Jesus incarnates himself within the "shunned" person so that we're actually encountering and relating to Jesus himself.  And in the End, says Jesus, we are judged by our response to these people (and therefore to him).  Quite a different paradigm from the picture of Judgment so many religious groups paint of the End, where we're judged by what we believe, by our subscription to the doctrines of those religions and how closely we align with them.

Transformational spirituality is informed by a global view of the world, not just our narrow individual every day worlds.  Transformational spirituality, the kind that really works and makes a difference, chooses to actively engage with the "least of these," refusing to ignore the shunned, the strangers among us, the aliens and foreigners, the dispossessed, the refugees and immigrants, the sexual "other," all of those people groups who are too often labeled and judged as "less than" or wrong or unworthy for whatever reason.

This is a raw and honest kind of spirituality that refuses the easy way out, that allows itself to be confronted by those most unlike us, that chooses to look beyond the surface and in fact discover that we are one family under God, interconnected, interdependent, and intertwined in the life of this planet.  How we navigate this complex, complicated, and yet very human journey is how we are ultimately judged, says Jesus.  Sobering and yet exciting and brimming with possibility!

I'm reminded of Robert Frost's profound poem Mending Wall.  He pictures himself and his neighbor walking along the stone fence that separates their two properties, talking together about the purpose of the wall, the sections that need mending and how.  His neighbor's view is that "good fences make good neighbors."  He, however, doesn't see it that way.

"There where it is we do not need the wall: / He is all pine and I am apple orchard. / My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. / He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder / If I could put a notion in his head: / 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it / Where there are cows? / But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, / That wants it down.'"

Transformational spirituality is about taking down walls where there shouldn't be any.  It's about refusing to shut ourselves out from the "shunned."  It's about engaging the world of hurt, human suffering and pain.  It's about not allowing our sight to become mono-focused and narrow to our own little worlds.  It's about compassion for "the least of these."

Rarely easy to do.  I admit.  But, as Timothy Egan reminds us, it reveals the true health of our hearts.  And who among us doesn't want a healthy heart!

[If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others - click on the share button to the right.  If you would like to receive each new blog post as an automatic email, please subscribe at the right.]

Two Implications About Spirituality From Terry Jones' Qur'an Burning Frenzy

A Moment in the TV Studio Malcolm Muggeridge, the English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist, wrote about the time he escorted Mother Teresa into a New York television studio so that she could be interviewed on a network morning show, “a program,” he wrote, “which helps Americans from coast to coast to munch their breakfast cereal and gulp down their breakfast coffee.”  Her interviewer for this TV show was, as Muggeridge described him, a man “with a drooping green mustache, a purple nose and scarlet hair.”

Here’s the way Muggeridge told the story.  “It was the first time Mother Teresa had been in an American television studio, and so she was quite unprepared for the constant interruptions for commercials.  As it happened, surely as a result of divine intervention, all the commercials that particular morning were to do with different varieties of packaged food, recommended as being nonfattening and non-nourishing.  Mother Teresa looked at them with a kind of wonder, her own constant preoccupation being, of course, to find the wherewithal to nourish the starving and put some flesh on [the] human skeletons [in Calcutta where she served].  It took some little time for the irony of the situation to strike her.  When it did, she remarked in a perfect audible voice:  ‘I see that Christ is needed in television studios.’  A total silence descended on all present, and I fully expected the light to go out and the floor manager to drop dead.  Reality had momentarily intruded into one of the media’s mills of fantasy – an unprecedented occurrence.”  (quoted in Gordon MacDonald, Forging A Real World Faith, p. 42)

Both Malcolm Muggeridge and Mother Teresa certainly knew that this world they were in that day, this environment of the TV studio run and operated by real people with real lives facing real issues was a real world.  But it wasn’t the whole world.  It was a world that tended to be isolated from the starving and suffering people she served every day in India – the commercials and advertisements that day revealed that truth.  In contrast, her spirituality and faith were informed every day by the realities of a bigger world where the poor, suffering, and dying existed on dirty streets and faced daily injustices and inequalities.  A world beyond the sanitized TV studio – the world of the ghettos, where the color of your skin or the level of your economics or the place of your birth determined your opportunities or lack of opportunities in life.  Mother Teresa’s spirituality compelled her to point out the reality of their limited world that day in the studio.

Muggeridge had lived most of his life as an agnostic.  But his relationship with Mother Teresa, his up close and personal witness to her passion to live out a real-world spirituality and faith that made such a radical difference in the lives of so many suffering people through the years, ended up leading him to convert to Catholicism and Christianity.

One of our great temptations is to assume that the world we live and work in is the whole world.  When that happens, our spirituality and faith become narrow and small.  Our faith and spirituality become in fact unreal – divorced from the rest of the planet.  And the irony is that that is antithetical to the true nature of spirituality and faith.

True spirituality, having a faith that is genuine and that works, has to be connected with the whole world – it has to work in the rest of the world beyond the fences & studios of our own little lives.

So we’ve started a Saturday morning series at Second Wind this month called “APPLYING YOUR SPIRITUALITY TO THIS WEEK’S GLOCAL* HOT SPOT."  Our goal is to inform our spirituality by means of seeing the rest of the world beyond our individual lives.  So each week, we’re focusing on a current issue taking place in the world (*GLOCAL = think global + act local).  What is the crisis/need/situation – what are the issues involved – who are the people involved – how is the situation being currently handled – how are we impacted?  And how does this situation inform and shape our spirituality, and how does our spirituality inform our response?

Last Saturday we looked carefully at the stunning circus surrounding Pastor Terry Jones (of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida) and his threat to burn over 200 Qur'ans (Islam's holy scriptures) on the anniversary of 9/11.  I call it a "stunning circus" because Pastor Jones' hateful rhetoric and threats managed to provoke not just a local response but a global one, including personal statements to him by the leaders of our government including the President, the Pope, and governments across the world.  His YouTube sermons and Facebook pages went viral on the internet.  The media became obsessed and every other news story was obscured by their coverage of this one man and his tiny congregation.  In one month, he had become a global media celebrity.

The Spirituality of Interconnectedness

Let me suggest two implications for real-world spirituality from this major news event.  First, interconnectedness.  Genuine and transformational spirituality must embrace today's global reality:  nothing ever happens in isolation.  We no longer live and act in isolation – one action can cause a global stir.  We are first and foremost citizens of the world.  Which then embraces the truth that we have a responsibility to each other on a planetary scale.

Spirituality and faith are not just about me and God (or whatever label you put on your Life Source) and the rest of the world can go to hell.  Personal spirituality must include global interconnectedness and interdependence.  I must allow the "other side" of the world to help shape and inform my spiritual life.  And I must recognize that the way I live out my faith impacts the "other side" of the world, too.  Though John Donne wrote "no man is an island" several centuries ago, that paradigm is especially true today.

My sense of global citizenship profoundly shapes my spiritual life because I allow my mind and heart to open up to broader, wider, deeper possibilities and realities beyond my local world.  Mother Teresa comes into my personal studio - a place where my focus is on what cereal I'm going to have for breakfast in the morning - and interjects global reality - children and adults are dying from hunger on her streets of Calcutta.  And suddenly I'm forced to open up my spirituality by asking, What do my spirituality and faith do in response to that acute awareness and need?

The Spirituality of Honoring Others

Second, freedom and expediency.  We live in a country that honors and values religious freedom.  It's protected by our Constitution shaped by our founding fathers and mothers.  It protects the right for the Terry Jones in our midst to proclaim their message of personal and religious conviction.  Even though the city of Gainesville was refusing to give Terry Jones' congregation a fire permit to burn the Qur'ans on their property, his lawyers were reminding him that his right to burn those books was a guaranteed and protected right.  So go ahead if you are so convicted, they said.

Genuine spirituality acknowledges freedom.  Embraces it.  Celebrates it.  And it also willingly includes a caveat.  "All things are permissible," says the Christian New Testament, "but not all things are expedient.  You are allowed to do anything, but not everything is beneficial.  So don't think only of your good.  Think of others and what is best for them."  (1 Corinthians 10:23-24)

Manifesting the Divine Nature

Transformational spirituality embraces complete freedom with self-imposed limitations in order to show tangible honor and respect for the Other.  Terry Jones' worldview compels him to conquer the Other by putting his own convictions and even rights ahead of honor and respect.  Though he concludes that he is putting his honor for God ahead of all others and therefore is not compromising his faith, ironically his approach reveals a lack of understanding about the very God he feels he's honoring, "who though he [Jesus] was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God.  He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form ...."  (Philippians 2:5-7)

That's profound!  The very nature of the divine life, the very nature of divine freedom, is expressed in the context of self-imposed limitations out of honor and respect for the Other.  Terry Jones missed that nonnegotiable center of Godly living.  Exercising the freedom of his convictions was more important to him than whether they were truly beneficial to the Other as perceived by the Other.  This tends to produce a very self-centered spirituality with minimal benefit and often destructiveness to the world.

The central and core principle at the heart of every enduring spiritual tradition is what has been called The Golden Rule:  do to others only what you would want them to do to you.  Transformational spirituality uses freedom to show honor and respect to the Other, just as you would want that same honor and respect shown to you.  What a profound contrast the two spiritualities of Mother Teresa and Rev. Terry Jones are!  This isn't about having to agree with everyone.  It is about honoring and showing care toward others even in the midst of our disagreements.  Which of the two spiritualities would you like someone in your world possessing?

[If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others - click on the share button to the right.  If you would like to receive each new blog post as an automatic email, please subscribe at the right.]

How Hope Can Trump Fear

This last Saturday at Second Wind we began a new series ("Applying Your  Spirituality To This Week's Glocal Hot Spot") in which we're taking a very current event happening in the world and asking what the story tells us about the journey of spirituality.  How does this event inform and shape our spirituality so that we develop a real-world kind of spirituality, a perspective on faith and the spiritual life that works in real life, that embraces contemporary life in a relevant way.  Saturday we focused on the story unfolding in Chile with the 33 trapped miners which has already broken the record for the number of days miners have been imprisoned underground.   Experts are predicting that it will be at least another 3 months before the men are able to be rescued, provided more collapses don't take place.  A heartbreaking story, to say the least. Imagine if you were a family member or one of the miners.  How would you be feeling?  What would keep you alive and hanging on?  Would you hope for a good ending, even if the possibility existed that it might not happen?  Would you allow hope to set you up for a potential catastrophic disappointment?  Does hope work?

The Washington Post last week reported about Jerry Linenger  who was the only American on the Mir space station in 1997 when a small fire caused a crisis that left him isolated in space for four months with two Russian astronauts. Cut off from his family and facing a lot of stress, Linenger endured a period of uncertainty that provides a good parallel to what the 33 Chilean miners are facing.

The initial explosion terrified and galvanized the crew of six. After the fire, the connection between the two modules that made up the space station was cut, leaving Linenger alone with the Russians. Over the next months, the Mir lost its oxygen generator and had serious trouble with the carbon dioxide scrubber. The toilets malfunctioned, and communications broke down. But the worst aspect, Linenger said, was being led to expect something that failed to materialize.

"Expectations unmet are a horrible thing," Linenger recalled, "especially when you're already psychologically stressed. The biggest dips for me and the others is when we were told something would happen and it didn't."

Among the many examples he could point to, the one that remains raw after 13 years is when he was told he would be able to speak with his pregnant wife at a time when potentially life-threatening problems had begun to mount.  "They said I could talk to her for a short time as we passed over a ground antenna near Moscow," he remembered, "and I prepared for a week. I wrote down what I would say and then crossed things off and added new ones. I was so excited. But the time came, they said she was on the line, and all I got was static. And then another emergency started and we were cut off entirely. After that, I expected nothing and was psychologically more healthy."

What do you make of Linenger's conclusion?  Is it healthier to simply not hope, to not have expectations, in order to prevent disappointment?

Though I can appreciate the need to try to minimize emotional pain from loss and grief (I've gone through this many times myself), the truth is that according to recent neuroscience about brain formation and function, hope is one of the most significant brain functions to not only taking away fear but also to producing profound life transformation.

As we know, our brains were originally wired for fear responses - it was to protect humans from being gobbled up by predators - it's the basis for the fight or flight response.  And according to recent research, fear is so wired into our brains that the brain actually "senses" fear-producing stimuli even at an unconscious level (before we recognize it).  When something dangerous occurs outside of awareness, the conscious brain reacts to it.  In other words, as experts are telling us, your brain prepares you to respond to danger faster than it does to other tasks, and it starts to respond to frightening things before you even realize they are frightening.

And unless this wiring tendency is proactively dealt with, fear always trumps everything.  And when we live in fear, our stress levels stay heightened, causing us to live on increased cortisol which keeps our physical and emotional systems over-stimulated and thereby more susceptible to disease and deterioration.

I'm reading a book right now written by Dr. Srinivasan Pillay, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the former director of the Outpatient Anxiety Disorders Program and the Panic Disorders Research Program in the Brain Imaging Center at McLean Hospital.  Dr. Pillay is writing about the recent neuroscience findings about the brain and fear and how to overcome the tendency to be paralyzed from from fear:  Life Unlocked:  7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear.

He says that hope is the choice to make the assumption that something is possible.  Instead of allowing the facts to justify fear, we use hope to reveal new facts and remove the fears.  This is precisely what people like former South African president Nelson Mandella, world-class athlete and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, and countless others have done every day.  Rather than wait for their fears to disappear or for facts to back up their hope, they used hope to create new facts and reach their goals.

According to brain science discoveries, hope and fear both wander around in the unconscious parts of our brains.  They both require amygdala activation, and whichever one is stronger will win the amygdala for its own use (the amgydala is the almond-shaped part of the brain, a mass of nerve cell bodies, designed to be the danger alert system, "the guard dog of the human brain."  "It's so powerful and efficient that it alerts us to danger in our environment within tens of milliseconds of detecting it.").

Dr. Pillay's point is this:  "To be processed by the amygdala, emotions have to stand in a queue, with their order determined by their strength - the strongest soldier gets to the front of the line.  If fear is strongest, then it will grab the amygdala's power and dominate all the other soldiers in the line.  If hope is stronger, then it will be preferentially processed over fear ... So we have to develop a strategy to help hope 'bulk up' and have an intelligence that supersedes the intelligence of fear.  This isn't easy because, as we've learned, our brains are structured so that the amygdala processes fear first in order to protect us from danger."  (p. 52-3)

This certainly explains why it's easier for us to give in to the impulse of fear instead of building hope.  But it also explains why it's so important for us to choose hope, to give intentional attention to hope and what it is we're hoping for.  Regularly imagining the state of life that hope is directed to.  Those specific activities build up our hope response.  And when we hope, says Dr. Pillay, we stimulate out brain center (amygdala) to use its mass of nerve pathways to empower our bodies to act in harmony with that hope instead of short-circuiting it with fear.

Hope isn't a naive, feel-good fantasy approach to life.  It's central to using our brain structure to facilitate positive, profound life transformation.  We do need fear, too.  We need to feel fear to keep us from dangerous situations - we need the fight or flight response for survival.  But we can't live there - we end up destroying our systems if we do.  So we must "bulk up" hope.  We must choose to imagine what we truly want our lives to become.  We must spend time directing our attention to that picture.  We must allow our emotional, rational, physiological systems to mobilize us toward that preferred future.

No wonder many of the sacred scriptures of the great faith traditions talk about hope and setting our minds and hearts on the object of our hope.  "Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see."  (Hebrews 11:1)  Confidence.  Assurance.  And the rest of that chapter describes how those qualities lead to dramatic and transforming action.  Maintaining that kind of hope is what empowers us to take necessary steps to bring it into reality.

It's significant that all the families of the 33 trapped Chilean miners are staying on the mining site in a tent village that they're calling Camp Hope.  They are choosing to stay focused and to embrace hope.  Like Elizabeth Segovia, the wife of one of the trapped miners (reported by CNN).  The day before the tragic mine collapse, she received a piece of great news - she was pregnant with a girl - an ultrasound had confirmed it.  The next day, her world collapsed.  She cried and cried.  As the weeks went by, she found herself talking to her baby girl inside her, "Daddy's okay?  Daddy's okay!  It's going to be alright!"

Last Thursday, Segovia got a handwritten letter from her husband Ticona proposing they name their daughter Esperanza Elizabeth -- esperanza is Spanish for hope.  "First, because we never lost hope," she said, and "second, because it's the name of the camp where the families are living; and third, because the 33 miners never lost hope either."

With her daughter due to arrive in less than two weeks, and her husband due to arrive in perhaps four months, Segovia plans to make a video of the birth to ensure he doesn't miss it altogether.  "We have to record the birth in great detail, as well as everything that happens to my baby day by day so we can show him," she said.

What do you need to hope for in your life?  What is your preferred future?  What do you need to hang on to in order to stimulate your brain center into powerful action?  Where are you most fearful?  Is your fear paralyzing you?  Can renewed hope in you create new facts to bolster that hope and bring transformation?  Esperanza.  Hope. Best to hang on to it!

[If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others - click on the share button to the right.  If you would like to receive each new blog post as an automatic email, please subscribe at the right.]

Dealing With the Fear Of Taking the Risk To Be Alive

"Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are." Don Miguel Ruiz I spent some time this morning at the Federal Building for Immigration downtown San Francisco supporting one of my gay friends, a dear colleague in ministry and one of our leaders of Second Wind.  He appeared in front of an immigration judge this morning to tell his story in order to apply for legal asylum here in the States.  His request is based upon the real dangers of being gay in the religious subculture he lived and worked all of his adult life within in his home country.  When he emerged from the court room with his lawyer and we debriefed the experience, I asked him what it felt like to retell his story in great detail.  "It was cathartic in many ways but also very painful - remembering all the awful things I encountered when I came out as gay:  the ostracization from my church community, the loss of my pastoral occupation and reputation, my marriage, the pain for everyone including my kids who had to put up with ridicule from their friends and others, living with the fear of rejection every day, often experiencing it in painful ways.  But I feel good about how clearly and openly I told my story to the judge."  His son was there to speak to the judge on behalf of his father, too.  "I want for us both to be able to live here in this country and build our lives here," he told me.

Now my friend (along with his long time committed partner) waits for two weeks to hear the immigration judge's verdict.  And we wait with them as their friends and spiritual community who love them and are committed to the journey of life together.

And I'm reminded of the great courage and bravery he's manifesting to take the risk to be genuinely alive, the risk to express who he really is in spite of the consequences he's both faced and continues having to put up with even in this country.  I admire him for his honesty and his integrity to live with transparency and congruity.

It's not easy choosing to be alive and really live life in alignment and integration.  It takes risks.  We have to encounter our fears.  We have to be willing to fail from time to time but then to pick ourselves up and keep moving forward.  It's not easy.

Have you ever asked yourself what your biggest fears are to living the life you feel deep inside you're called to live?  What does the cage look like that might tend to keep you from being really alive?

Maybe that's why in my work with people I encounter so many who are simply trying to survive, to make it to death safely, not pushing the edges of their lives, simply maintaining the status quo.  It's easier that way - it appears less risky.  But notice I say "appears" because in actuality, it's more risky.  When you live your life out of alignment, not being who you really, trying to live someone else's life instead of your own, when you're not living your calling and purpose, settling instead for status quo, your inner spirit and physical body pick up on this lack of congruity and create what we call dis-ease - a restlessness inside, a lack of ease.  Experts remind us that this condition is a condition of stress.  And when you live with this state of stress for a long time it becomes chronic.  And chronic stress has been shown to be terribly debilitating to the body, leading to a susceptibility to disease and illness on multiple levels, including depression.  Our human systems are designed to experience maximum status when there's complete alignment between our emotions, our feelings, our thoughts, and our behaviors - when we're living within the integrity of our true selves, when we're using how we're wired with boldness and confidence and purpose.

As I listened to my friend's lawyer giving a thumbnail sketch of the process this morning and where it goes from here, I felt deep admiration for her as a professional who is so committed to helping people enjoy the opportunity to live life deeply and freely in this country.  I was reminded of the profound statement of mission and purpose Jesus stated when he began his ministry.  He quoted from Isaiah 61, applying the mission of God to himself:  "God's Spirit has anointed me and chosen me to bring freedom and liberation to the captives, to proclaim this as the year of God's redemption and favor for all."

In my opinion, this powerful and professional lawyer who is helping our friend and all her other clients has stepped into the legacy of the great prophets of old and Jesus himself who came to give all people the joy of freedom and liberation to be alive, really alive.

Filming the event this morning was another of my friends here in the City.  He and his wife (both leaders in our Second Wind spiritual community) are producing a documentary about gays who are trying to reconcile their sexual identity with their religious and spiritual orientation.  These two courageous people are sacrificing everything they have to travel the country (carrying their 20 month old daughter along) filming stories to highlight this tremendous need.  They, too, have stepped into the legacy of Jesus' mission of announcing the freedom and liberation to be alive, really alive, for all people.  I admire their persistent passion and boldness.

It takes courage to take the risk to be alive no matter what your orientation - "the risk to be alive and express what we really are."  This isn't about sexuality.  It's about being human on every level.  We all face it.  And it's risky business.  We have to take intentional steps forward every day, choosing to live deeply and purposefully instead of letting the days go by without any thought or awareness or momentum.  It's about choosing to live our God-given life, not someone else's.

But in the end, for those who are willing to take that risk for themselves and on behalf of others, the reward of living in alignment, of living with purpose and mission, of choosing courage and boldness instead of fear and intimidation will far outweigh the risks.  There's certainly stress in taking risks.  But this kind of stress - eustress - always trumps distress!  It's actually good for you.

I love the way George Bernard Shaw describes this kind of life.  This is the way I want to live.  This kind of life is the highest level of spirituality and it produces the most profound kind of transformation possible (Jesus' life showed this to be true).  Here it is:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a might one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.  I rejoice in life for its own sake.  Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

So here's to taking the risk of being alive and expressing what we really are, for our sakes and for others and for Life itself!

[If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others - click on the share button to the right.  If you would like to receive each new blog post as an automatic email, please subscribe at the right.]

Mindfulness in the Sanctuary of Jiffy Lube

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Invite them to subscribe and receive every new post via email – hit the button on the right to subscribe.] There's a Zen story about an old zen master who was dying.  All of the monks gathered - in a kind of restrained eagerness  - around the deathbed, hoping to be chosen as the next teacher.

The master asked slowly, "Where is the gardener?"

"The gardener," the monks wondered aloud.  "He is just a simple man who tends plants, and he is not even ordained."

"Yes," the master replied.  "But he is the only one awake.  He will be the next teacher."

Apparently there's something about working in and being present to the natural world that produces a kind of "awakeness" toward Life.  The famous painter Vincent Van Gogh expressed this same reality:  "All nature seems to speak ... As for me, I cannot understand why everybody does not see it or feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand." (The Complete Letters, 248, I, 495)

There's something spiritually stimulating about being in nature and allowing it to speak to your heart and mind and soul.  There's something powerful about getting close enough to creation to hear its song and listen to its rhymes.  Every major religion in the world recognizes the spirituality of nature and provides various ways to become more "awake" to the voice of the Sacred that speaks from the world all around us.  It's pretty amazing what we begin to notice when we're being more mindful and aware of everything we see, hear, and feel.

I was sitting in the waiting section of the oil change garage off of the busy Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco last week.  My chair was close to the garage entrance so I could see the street.  I was thinking about the upcoming spiritual retreat we were taking with my Second Wind spiritual community, the retreat theme this year being on the spirituality of nature.  My initial response to what I saw and felt in the midst of my very urban environment was to heave a sigh of relief knowing that it wasn't much longer until I was going to finally be out of the city into "real" nature where I could hear God's voice and feel closer to the Spirit of life.  But then, as I looked outside the huge garage door and saw the cars driving past, hearing the traffic sounds, I was suddenly struck by a significant reality:  I was surrounded by "nature" right there in the middle of my huge city.  It wasn't just the green trees on the median of this busy boulevard, or the birds I saw flying overhead.  The heart and soul of nature was also evident in the awe-inspiring creative spirit that went into the design and construction of today's modern vehicles - the intricate, micro "creation" of computer chips and boards running the cars and trucks, the impressive design of the engines propelling vehicles toward their destination, the guys changing the oil in my car, running back and forth, using their appendages skillfully to service my amazingly constructed automobile (even though I kind of hate my old car these days and wish I could get a nicer new one).  Even the sounds that we so much associate with "anti-nature" (car horns, exhaust pipes from loud buses and trucks, traffic, construction sites, loud voices) are in fact the sounds of life, all of which involve the divine spirit of creativity, artistry, invention, passion, desire for the best in life).  And when that perspective hit me, I became aware of "nature" in the middle of my city in new ways that led to a deeper appreciation of God's Spirit all around me.  I had a very meaningful spiritual epiphany right there on busy Van Ness Avenue - I encountered the God of life in the sanctuary of Jiffy Lube!

Living with our "eyes" more open wherever we find ourselves, suggest the spiritual sages of all time, produces a deeper experience of life and an increased connection with God.  Nature is where life is; and life is everywhere.  I do realize, in addition, that being in environments that are more silent and quiet and environmentally natural is extremely conducive to spiritual depth and connection, as well.  But it's amazing how often even when we're in those settings we simply don't see or hear the Sacred Spirit of life very deeply - we're too busy "doing" instead of simply "being" attentive.  Intentional mindfulness helps make the connection.

The Hebrew poets in Scripture manifested this intentionality with nature so profoundly in describing their experience of God.  Their poetic similes and metaphors were filled with an environmental awareness that opened their hearts to the Divine Creator.  One pointed to the other.  God was both in His creation and the Master of Creation.  Looking at one was like looking at the other.  They facilitated experience, one with the other.  Notice this example:

"O my soul, bless God! God, my God, how great you are! beautifully, gloriously robed, Dressed up in sunshine, and all heaven stretched out for your tent. You built your palace on the ocean deeps, made a chariot out of clouds and took off on wind-wings. You commandeered winds as messengers, appointed fire and flame as ambassadors. You set earth on a firm foundation so that nothing can shake it, ever ... What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations ... The glory of God-let it last forever! Let God enjoy his creation!" (Psalm 104)

There is a profound spirituality associated with nature that is accessed by developing a greater mindfulness or awakeness or awareness of what you're seeing and experiencing.  That's why, at Second Wind, we value the natural world and desire to enjoy it, honor it, respect it, care for it, and share it often.  And we also value the city we live in as a place where God's breath blows and moves and stirs up life, too.  As urban dwellers, we're learning to feel the divine breath energize us and bring us to life in the middle of our urban "forests," where the voice of God sings to our souls the music of life.

This last weekend, on our Second Wind retreat, our closing "ceremony" was to write a collective psalm of praise to God, each one of us writing two lines describing our personal experience of the weekend, and then putting them all together into one song.  After taking a few minutes to compose our two lines, we stood in a circle and read our lines in one complete collective psalm.  I'm telling you, it was a profound experience for me as I listened to the richly diverse and meaningful ways everyone had encountered God and experienced the depth of life through the retreat time, described in some wonderfully poetic tones.  Our intentional experiences of heightened awareness and awakeness, including times for reflection upon and observation of those experiences, revealed a significant spiritual epiphany for all of us.  The power of keeping our eyes, ears, hearts, spirits, and bodies open to Life!

As Van Gogh once said, "Oh! My dear comrades, let us crazy ones have delight in our eyesight in spite of everything - yes, let's!"

Is There More To Life Than What You See?

There's a profound dynamic to sailing that goes beyond the scale of the boat, the engineering, the rigging, all the equipment that helps the boat go fast and stable, that goes beyond even the condition of the water and even the crew.  It is in fact, ironically enough, that which cannot be seen.  And without it, there would be no sailing.  Figured out what it is? Exactly.  Wind.  It's the whole force behind sailing.  You can't see it.  You can only feel it and notice its impact.  And believe me, it's quite a force to be reckoned with.  I've at times cursed it and hailed it (depending of course how well I'm doing leveraging it).  And I've been deathly afraid of it (when my boat appeared to be "going down" in the storm).  All of these responses to something you can't even see - but obviously acknowledge is there.

There's an intriguing spiritual dimension to this reality.  And of all people to acknowledge it is Christopher Hitchens, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, most known for his self-proclaimed role as one of the New Atheists called to debunk the world of religion and religious thought, as most recently revealed in his manifesto book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  His primary sparring partners tend to be religious conservatives and apologists for fundamentalism.

In a recent interview with a liberal Christian minister he made some surprising philosophical and spiritual observations of sharing a mutual appreciation for "the transcendent" and "the numinous" (which literally means, "surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious; filled with or characterized by a sense of a supernatural presence: a numinous place; Spiritually elevated; sublime"):  terms that Hitchens himself introduced into the conversation, not vice versa.

When asked about this, he commented:

"It's innate in us to be overawed by certain moments, say, at evening on a mountaintop or sunset on the boundaries of the ocean. Or, in my case, looking through the Hubble telescope at those extraordinary pictures. We have a sense of awe and wonder at something beyond ourselves, and so we should, because our own lives are very transient and insignificant. That's the numinous, and there's enough wonder in the natural world without any resort to the supernatural being required."

And then he surprisingly took it one step further.  "Everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter." More to life than just what you can see?

This is quite a profound observation from a person who has refused to embrace acceptance of anything supernatural.  More to life than just matter? Is Hitchens really saying what he seems to be saying here, that "the numinous" refers to the sense that there's something more to our existence than just the material world?

The ancient Hebrews (in Jewish scripture) had no problem acknowledging this reality.  In fact, to them, the scriptures never talked about "spiritual life."  Spirituality was NOT simply one of several aspects of life.  All of life was Sacred, God-breathed, infused with divine wonder and awe.  So they talked about only life.  As my friend Samir Selmanovic points out (in his book It's Really All About God), "the Hebrews loved both God and life.  Obeying God meant being fully human, with every fiber of one's being alive.  One could not experience one without the other...To tune in to human life is to tune in to God.  Existence itself is a sacred place."

There's more to life than just matter.  There's a Spirit to all life.  So embracing life deeply and passionately is a highly spiritual practice.  And historically (among spiritual traditions), this practice has been called "worship."  Living life with a sense that life is sacred, intentionally giving value to life and the Giver of life, embracing the awe and wonder that there is More than simply our existence, that there is a Life Force that flows all around us and in us and through us.  Worship is the spiritual practice of embracing God and showing value to the Divine life.

There's more to life than just matter - worship - embracing "the transcendent" and the "numinous" - giving honor to Life.  Renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens acknowledges this reality (in his own way).  I definitely concur.

In the spiritual community in San Francisco I'm a part of, Second Wind's "W" core value (in our core values acronymn S.E.C.O.N.D. W.I.N.D.) stands for "W.orship."  It's a desire to value living life with a sense of the divine, learning the art of living all of life as sacred, embracing the worldview (as Einstein pointed out) that the Universe is in fact "friendly," that God is the ultimate Force of love and compassion and goodness.  So we're trying to find meaningful and intentional ways to live out this value and important paradigm.  We think this value will empower us to love extravagantly and serve unselfishly to make this world a better place.

And in the end, isn't there something centering and grounding to sense that there is more to life than just matter?  That, as my friends in AA are so wise to regularly affirm, there's a Higher Power beyond myself, greater than myself, that nourishes and sustains and empowers my life toward greater self responsibility leading to wholeness and transformation?

When it comes to sailing, I can tell you that the most effective sailors are those that not only acknowledge the wind but learn how to live with it well, who embrace it and honor it and respect it - who learn the art of leaning into it.

What would it look like in tangible terms for you to embrace this core value, to affirm that there is more to life than matter and what you can see?  How would it impact your daily existence, your relationships, your concerns, your hopes and dreams?  What are specific ways you tend to show deeper value for Life, to carve out space to acknowledge and pay attention and affirm the Sacred in life?  When is the last time you actually thought about there being a Power greater than yourself and expressed respect and honor for It?