It’s Not Always Clear

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

It’s not always clear, the path forward. Our vision is limited. There are far too many factors to weigh. Feelings are a roller coaster ride from day-to-day, and then there is the vast unknown. If I go left, will I be right? If I go right, am I wrong and left behind? Could‘a, would‘a, should‘a are crying from the back seat and the whole trip begins to seem like a sham.

“Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!” (Fred Hillebrand, 1932) We walk by faith, not by sight (Paul, 2 Corinthians 5: 7). Fear and misgivings are the roadblock, the isolated ego cowering in the corner.

In the three worlds,
there is nothing I must do,
nothing unattained to be attained,
yet I engage in action.

What if I did not engage
relentlessly in action?
[Humans] retrace my path
at every turn, Arjuna.

As the ignorant act with attachment
to actions, Arjuna,
so wise [folk] should act with detachment
to preserve the world.

(Krishna to the wilting Arjuna in The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War, The Third Teaching: Discipline of Action; 22-24, translated by Barbara Stoler Miller, Bantam Classic Edition, 1986)

Creation is the path forward. Something from nothing. Or something new, something that has never been, as the next step from all that is. Beautiful, joyful. There is no wrong path in faith, there is only the next step of creation on the road ahead.

Faith, by nature, is blind. It is not ignorant. Faith is based on the experience of goodness and beauty that result when we act while resting in the Spirit of all that is. Even God, I think, has no idea what is going to happen next. Let’s take a step and see!

What matters is not where we are walking to, but where we are walking from. If we are walking from a place of fear and defense, our steps will falter and creation suffers. If our steps are from a place of joy, kindness and compassion, the beauty of the universe unfolds with us, just far enough ahead to meet our foot as it greets the path of creation.

When we are attached to what we think is/will be the outcome of our action, we falter. We have no idea of any outcomes. Or if we do have that idea, we fool ourselves. We can never know all the implications before we act, or the outcome of a different course.

Home, James, and don’t spare the horses! Home to the Tree of Life. Create with joy. Create with kindness. Create with compassion. Put the paintbrush to the canvas, in faith, and see.

Jerry Kennell now provides spiritual direction by Skype. Contact jerry@2treegarden.com.

The Choice of Devotion

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Sri Ramakrishna, the 19^th century Indian saint, embodied above all things the practice of devotion. He eschewed study and strict adherence to Hindu ritual in favor of childlike adoration of Kali, the feminine aspect of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source. Sometimes petulant, sometimes playful, often appearing mad and completely out of control with devotion, he yearned to become one. He whimpered, pestered and cried to experience absolute unity with the Godhead through ceaseless pursuit of Kali’s attention and affection.

And by all reports he was rewarded, after a time but then regularly, with the state of Samadhi, the expansive experience of complete absorption, joy and oneness with C/S/M/S. In the midst of teaching his disciples, he would break into songs of adoration and then effortlessly enter and return from extended states of unitive bliss. He brought back tales of love and beauty beyond measure. Even dying of throat cancer, he seemed oblivious to his physical condition because of his laser focused devotion to the divine, the profound reality of his journeys.

Rumi, Teresa of Avila, Paramahansa Yogananda, Hildegard von Bingen; the great mystics of all traditions have been explorers of the outer edges and inner depths of human spirituality. Their times and cultures somehow made space for them, accommodated their extravagance, supported or at least tolerated their journeys. For all time, we welcome and stand in awe of the news they bring back.

Most of us live in the world of more mundane dimensions. We are the householders, the engineers and teachers, the burger flippers and shopkeepers of day-to-day existence. We raise kids and deal with plumbing problems and domestic struggles. We worry about our finances and the decisions of our governments.

But here’s the thing. Is there really any less wonder in the day-to-day? Is the amazing expression of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source any less as I turn right onto Montgomery Boulevard and walk or drive to the grocery store? I don’t think so. I don’t believe for a minute that C/S/M/S is any less present or less available for connection in the ordinary moments of daily existence.

In a single block, I see, I am part of the homeless person holding a sign for support at the intersection, the turquoise sky of the Southwest, the courtesy and service of the store clerk as I check out my oranges and baking powder. I am granted in every instant, at every turn, the opportunity for choice and participation. Will I engage consciously, with all my thought, all my intention, all my heart? Will I play my part, giving and receiving with wonder and gratitude? Will I practice love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and self-control – the beautiful and deeply satisfying fruits of the Tree of Life?

Or will I stay asleep at the wheel, angry at the young person who cut impulsively in front of me in the parking lot? Will I numb myself, choosing to be lost in the tedium, bother and annoyance of a world that just doesn’t get what I want, what I need, what I deserve?

Whatever my talent, whatever piece of the extravagance of God I am gifted to touch and unfold for the world around me, I have the choice of devotion or neglect. I can touch a relationship for healing, or I can stay lost in my hurt ego. I can polish my little part with the devotion of joy, or I can miss the moment, the now, entirely.

Truly, we each choose our devotion and practice it persistently throughout our life. Under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, our primary devotion is to preservation of self. We think we protect an isolated and threatened ego with fear, anger, defense, power, greed and violence.

Under the Tree of Life, we choose a different practice. We practice connection of Self; not an abandoned ego, but a connected Ego. We offer, we recognize and realize with willingness, our connection to Creator/Spirit/Mind/Self, the entire created universe. And we start and end by focusing that connection on the immediate. We are clear, we are conscious. Where there is anger we see hurt. Where there is the inability to function productively on a daily basis, for whatever reason, we feel cold and hunger. Wherever, whatever, we experience the deep beauty, the struggle of the birthing universe. And we become the midwife of creation.

Let’s choose that devotion, our home in all that is. Let’s find ourselves beneath the Tree of Life, with its leaves for the healing of everything.

Jerry Kennell now provides spiritual direction by Skype. Contact jerry@2treegarden.com.

For Christmas this Year, Let’s Let Jesus Off the Bloody Hook

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

For Christmas this year, let’s give Jesus a gift. Let’s let him off the bloody hook. Somewhere between the Sermon on the Mount and Paul’s letters, “Follow me” turned into “I did it all with blood sacrifice.” Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 – 1109, sealed the deal with his writing on the satisfaction theory of atonement.

And ever since, we’ve been killing him (Jesus) softly but surely by piling on the sins of the world, Sunday after Sunday. Data tells us he’s almost half dead now, under the load. Barna Group relentlessly counts the beans of evangelical angst, documenting the slippage of the “churched” through the door to become the “unchurched”, searching for just the right moves to get’em “churched” again. Their latest book, Churchless: Understanding Today’s Unchurched and How to Connect with Them, documents that the “unchurched” segment of the US population has grown not just steadily, but at an ever increasing rate from 30% in the 1990’s to 43% in 2014. For Barna and company (A better book title might have been Clueless.), it seems a daunting task to stem that tide, given what they see as the relentless bashing of Christianity by godless unchurched culture. A small first step might be to get rid of those repelling and out of touch churched and unchurched labels.

Let’s let Jesus off the bloody hook. Lots of folks have tried to redeem atonement by turning it into “at-one-ment.” Too little too late, I fear, but the sentiment is useful. I believe with all my heart that Jesus was “at-one” with Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source. And I believe “the way” to which he persistently called the people of his small corner of the world in his time is, indeed, the path forward – the very same foundational path forward whispered by the breath of life in all places and all times.

But we – you and I and Aunt Suzie – won’t find that path by continually “casting our burden upon the Lord.” (If you are sufficiently unchurched, that phrase of evangelical atonement might be unfamiliar, and I promise not to use it again.) We will find it, metaphorically, in our own journey from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to the Tree of Life. We will find it by changing the way we view ourselves and the world around us.

“Salvation,” another hopelessly abused and by now nearly dead word, is really just our choice to grow up and move along that path. A bloody choice? Well, let’s be honest. Turning from the fear and separation of the metaphorical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is very threatening to power, at least to the misused power of twisted politics and those that wield religion to mediate your redemption and mine. Taking personal responsibility for growing up to compassion, confidence and responsible relationship – becoming the Adult of God (Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source – not an old man in some heaven) that we become under the Tree of Life – taking that personal responsibility and acting on it generally, at some point, puts us crosswise with the powers of fear. Witness Jesus as the Romans nailed him to a tree, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and six millions Jews up in smoke in bloody Christian Germany.

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5: 21-24. God I love my old Revised Standard Version.)

Want to be saved? Stop going to war. Want to be saved? Take care of the planet. Want to be saved? Don’t even think about killing the food stamp program.

Want to be saved from “sin and death?” Stop nailing Jesus to the tree and crying salvation. Grow up and choose it. Forgiveness is not a gift that was given in the bloody slaughter of the Lamb of God. Forgiveness is a state of being. No one can give it to you. You must truly embrace it for yourself. And then move on.

Move on, move on down the road. And consider a gift to Jesus this Christmas. Take him off the bloody tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree of fear and hate and twisted power. Clean him up, like the Good Samaritan would. Clean him up and walk with him, even through the valley of the shadow of death. Walk with him, all the way to the Tree of Life.

Jerry Kennell now provides spiritual direction by Skype. Contact jerry@2treegarden.com.

Suchness and Form

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source, the infinite mystery of the universe, is described in many ways: word, breath, spirit, formless, suchness, energy, nameless with a thousand names. We turn to look and do not see. We listen, but the sound escapes us. But somewhere in our being, everywhere in and beyond our being we know, we revel, we delight.

This Teacher of mine, this Teacher of mine – he passes judgment on the ten thousand things but he doesn’t think himself severe; his bounty extends to ten thousand generations but he doesn’t think himself benevolent. He is older than the highest antiquity but he doesn’t think himself long-lived; he covers heaven, bears up the earth, carves and fashions countless forms, but he doesn’t think himself skilled. It is with him alone I wander. Taosim. Chuang Tzu 6*

The sages have sifted and filtered the light for us and with us, spoken pieces of the word, cast metaphor on the formless, seen spirit in the manifest:

Just as light is diffused from a fire which is confined to one spot, so is this whole universe the diffused energy of the supreme Brahman. And as light shows a difference, greater or less, according to its nearness or distance from the fire, so is there variation in the energy of the impersonal Brahman.

Vishnu is the highest and most immediate of all the energies of Brahman, the embodied Brahman, formed of the whole of Brahman. On him is the entire universe woven and interwoven: from him is the world, and the world is in him; and he is the whole universe. Vishnu, the Lord, consisting of what is perishable as well as what is imperishable, sustains everything, both Spirit and Matter, in the form of his ornaments and weapons. Hinduism. Vishnu Prana 1.22*

C/S/M/S is the essential energy and spirit. We are not separate. We and everything are embodied temporal expression of that spiritual reality. We fool ourselves into fear when we hide alone in seeming separate ego. But we hide only from the falsehood of fear. There is no true hiding from our essential being, the Self that breathed us and is us – the Self that is every rock and tree and is at the same time the no-thing, the mystery we can only sense, only trust, but not fully grasp.

When appearances and names are put away and all discrimination ceases, that which remains is the true and essential nature of things and, as nothing can be predicated as to the nature of essence, it is called the “Suchness” of Reality. This universal, undifferentiated, inscrutable Suchness is the only Reality, but it is variously characterized as Truth, Mind-essence, Transcendental Intelligence, Perfection of Wisdom, etc. This Dharma of the imagelessness of the Essence-nature of Ultimate Reality is the Dharma which has been proclaimed by all the Buddhas, and when all things are understood in full agreement with it, one is in possession of Perfect Knowledge. Buddhism. Lankavatara Sutra 83*

We move, we feel, we see, hear, judge and act. We must never forget who We are as we do these things. The talent is not to be buried, but to be used to its fullest in the creation of beauty, wonder, compassion, the newness and suchness of each breath.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. Christianity. John 1:1-4 NRSV

We are the Word, spoke into being by I AM. Thinking ourselves alone we hide in fear under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Awake, we breathe, we create. Growing, becoming, we heal. We are, suchness and form, in the image, under the Tree of Life.

Jerry Kennell now provides spiritual direction by Skype. Contact jerry@2treegarden.com.

Who We Are

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Tradition has it that Jesus was born to a virgin, conceived in an immaculate flash of union with the Holy Spirit. Tell me, how is that different from the way you or I were born? Creation is creation. Or perhaps becoming is becoming, if we think of things in an evolutionary frame.

We can explain the mechanics of conception and birth in great depth and detail. But it seems we will not touch the complete mystery of life and spirit anytime soon. Even Jesus looked around at the rocks in the field and said that Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source could make children of them.

We are who we are, no more nor less. We are a particular mix and match of Higg’s Bosons – the very same quarks and electrons that make rocks, stars and all that is – coming together under the right conditions. Where did the self-awareness step in, and how? Does it matter? Despite the insistence of some religions on our fallen nature, we are children of the universe, beings with the gift of self-awareness, being and becoming what we will become. Let’s relax with that.

Is there a creator God behind all of this, pushing around the Higg’s Bosons, mixing and matching the quarks? Perhaps. That is a question of faith, not science. I believe (the faith piece, the confidence in things not seen, but perceived) that there is, indeed, a vast and beautiful creative source and energy. I believe that we are somehow emanations and expressions, actual part and parcel of that immaculate energy. And the essence of that energy is creative expression, not manipulation. There is no offended judge ready to burn our bodies and spirits for eternity in hell because we didn’t say this, we didn’t do that or we broke somebody’s holy rule.

What are the grounds of my belief? Simple. The cells of my body literally rejoice when I contemplate and trust connection with the energetic whole. They are flowering and at peace in the sunshine and rain of all that is. And I know, as well, when they despair, hate, fear and retreat. This happens whenever I drift into belief that I am disconnected and alone, an isolated and completely vulnerable ego-self.

We cannot really separate ourselves from what we are. We can only imagine that separation in the awakening process of our self-awareness. And when we imagine that separation, we create our own little imaginary hell in which to live. It is a hell of worry and fear, expressed in grasping this and fending off that. It is a hell that is, most of all, scared to death of death, of perceived annihilation.

But my spirit soars, it thrills, at rest in a stream beyond the speed of light, basking in the unseen power and evanescence of being, of becoming. It is this perceived knowing that is the experience, essence and expression of faith. It is knowing beyond comprehension, seeing beyond observation, joining in union beyond touch. It is being and becoming.

We waken to life, conceived in that immaculate flash under what appears at first to be the tree of duality, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We grasp at good, we ward off evil, we run, scared as hell, from death.

But when we stop, when we set down our grasping and defending, we find ourselves at peace, being and becoming under the Tree of Life. Come rest with me in that streaming stillness beyond the speed of light. Drink the refreshing tea of the leaves that heal the nations.

There were two special trees, planted as crown jewels in the metaphorical Garden of Eden. Yet they are one. It is our faith that makes us whole.

Scripture today from Cat Stevens, “Sitting:”

Oh I’m on my way, I know I am,

Somewhere not so far from here.

All I know is all I feel right now.

There’s a power growing in my hair.

Sex and the City of God

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

My Mennonite denomination (Mennonite Church USA) finally seems near the point of over-determination on issues of human sexuality. That is to say, the tipping point, however long and tortuous the path, seems imminent on elevating the gospel message of loving relationship over the ancient purity codes around human sexual preference and practices. Recalling the early church’s angst over circumcision, I find it interesting that two millennia down the road, the hottest topic in the church still revolves around what happens with men’s penises. At least today vaginas are on the table, as well. We can be grateful for small steps.

Sexuality is powerful. Where there is power, there is danger of abuse. Perhaps a good measure of the power of sexuality is the immense catalog of abuses it has accumulated over the millennia. The major sections of the book would include slavery, domination, profiteering and the threats of damnation used to perpetuate religious institutions.

Power, in and of itself, is neither good nor evil. It just is. And the biblical lens on sexuality reflects this. We each have power – whether sexual, monetary or otherwise – in various measures. The primary tasks – and the biblical admonition – in our connection to power are to submit it in relationship and to use it in the service of justice.

For Christians, perhaps the most instructive biblical lessons on sexuality and power are in Matthew’s less than subtle but almost completely ignored inclusion of four women, all notably not Israelite, in his genealogy of Jesus.

The first among them is Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah. Tamar seduced Judah and bore his son in order to shame him into honoring his obligations to care for family, whether Hebrew or other. When all else failed, she effectively used sexual power in the service of justice.

The second is Rahab, the Canaanite woman who ran a house of prostitution on the walls of Jericho. It is interesting that Joshua and his band of spies stayed with her and was protected by her on that holiest of land grabs, the retaking of the Promised Land following the Exodus from Egypt. Rahab apparently married one of the troops and was elevated to the status of a progenitor of the Christ, despite the fact that the ancient world thought women played only the role of incubator in the process of procreation. Sexual power, here, was turned to relationship.

The third is Ruth, the Moabite daughter-in-law of the Hebrew Naomi. Ruth, with the direction and support of her mother-in-law, seduced Boaz, effectively claiming a rightful inheritance and protection for these socially vulnerable women. Ruth was the grandmother of King David. Sexual power, here, was used to secure protection.

And finally, there is Bathsheba, the Hittite who withstood the murder of her husband and the uncontrolled sexual urges of King David, becoming the mother of Solomon in the royal line of the (biblically) chosen people. In an act of redemption and justice, Bathsheba is elevated, at least in Matthew’s genealogy, to the position of matriarch in the messianic line.

People point to the story of Sodom to illustrate divine hatred of homosexuality, if not just sexuality in general. What was hateful in Sodom was the wanton pursuit of sexual satisfaction without regard to the safety and welfare of the other, yet alone any thought of relationship. The men at Lot’s door would not be satisfied without violent and abusive sex. And the worst among them was Lot, who was ready to submit his own daughter to rape and murder in order to save his own sorry self. That city burned itself down with self-centered violence.

The point of these tales is not that God (as the Bible names and perceives Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source) somehow had a negative view of homosexuality (in the case of Sodom) or on sexuality as a force in human relationships. Rather, it is that sexuality was recognized as powerful. Like all biblical stories of power, the consistent message is that it is used appropriately for relationship and for justice, and never for violence, greed or anything at the expense of others.

Under the Tree of Life, sexuality is a thing of astounding beauty, magnified in relationship. It is, in the words of Jackson Browne (“Looking East”), “the power of a sunrise, the power of a prayer released.”

Under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil we become lost in rules, social norms and false morality that have everything to do with the abuse of power and nothing to do with beauty, relationship or justice. Our sexuality, when we own and celebrate it in relationship, travels with us as a lovely companion – strong, true, beautiful and useful – on our journey to the Tree of Life, at the center of the metaphorical city of God.

Born in You this Day

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

“To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:11, NRSV.

There are so many ways to wreck a good story. In fact, we might as well call it Christmas Cancer for all that it has become in the last two millennia: grafted onto holiday trees from other traditions; the insanity of soldiers stopping to sing carols to the enemy across the front lines of WWI, resuming the fight in the morning; Santa Claus and Rudolph; enough lights to outshine a supernova; a worldwide binge and burp of the economy big enough to make us confident that Jesus has finally entered the temple and whipped, once and for all, the rogue dogs of evil empire.

What was born? Who was born? Lamb of God? For all our focus on blood sacrifice to grab salvation, Jesus might as well have been a 4-H calf, corn-fed and off to the fair, sold at auction to the highest bidder, the owner of the fanciest restaurant in the state.

What was born? Who was born? The birth narratives of Matthew and especially the iconic scene of the stable, manger, angels and star in Luke, are memorialized annually from the tiniest of crèche scenes reconstructed in the shell of a bird’s egg, to the bigger than life plywood or even living crèches that, despite our silly doublespeak laws about what religious freedom is or isn’t, stand in front of churches or town squares worldwide. God almighty, the things we fight about to avoid our own truth.

What was born? Who was born? Without doubt, a true Rose of Sharon, a balm in Gilead, a little Prince of Peace. And stories like these pasted onto the front of Matthew’s and Luke’s life narratives are effective “sit up and take notice” calls that here was a birth and a life of great importance.

Alas, we are so prone to losing ourselves in icons, drama and worship – anything to avoid personal responsibility.

The real birth of Jesus, good friends, took place in the silent stretch of nearly twenty years between Luke 2 and Luke 3, a gestation of learning and practice, of formation in the womb of wisdom and spirit. The real birth of Jesus was the birth of authentic Self, the hero’s/heroine’s journey to which we are all invited when we are silent in the presence and willing in spirit.

Luke tries to hammer this home with his genealogy, the long list of names at the end of the third chapter, almost entirely ignored by 2,000 years of Christianity, that ends, for both Adam (read “you and me”) and Jesus, with “Son (child) of God.” This genealogy marks the line of transition, the end of gestation. It is followed immediately by a baptism of grown-up spirit and the launch of Jesus into his brief public life of healing, bathed and swaddled in an honest and consistent call to peace, compassion, fairness and, most of all, the pleading invitation to each of us to join him in our own true birth.

What was born? Who was born? A human was born, like every human, who gained his life with the whisper of prana, the tickle and nudge of the breath of God, the life force of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Self. Born a human, you and me, under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

This one grew up. This one accepted that suffering (true love, while it may cast out fear, just as often draws fire) was the price of second birth, the true and human birth to capital “S” Self, the birth canal of silence, prayer and practice that bore him all the way to the Tree of Life.

How utterly astounding that for all the effort to tell us in symbol and story, for the repeated invitation of Jesus to each of us to grow up, to enter and to walk through the inevitable suffering of birth to true and mature life, we choose instead to worship the stories. We shield our eyes in the waving of palms and drown the voice in our din of praise. Truly, for the most part, we would rather kill the guide than hear the call, hear the invitation and embrace the path.

Born in you this day. Born in you this day, kind friend. The invitation to embrace the path, the invitation to second birth. Born in you this day. The call to accept, without judgment, the pain and suffering of growing up. The call to embrace and transform it with the practice of peace, of compassion for self and others. The call to be authentic sons and daughters of C/S/M/S, true birth under the Tree of Life.

Born in you this day. Let it be.

Adoration

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

So much of our connection and relationship with others is shaped by our emotions. We don’t like this person, because they do things that annoy us. Someone else made us angry. Another just sweeps us off our feet because they are so incredibly attractive.

These feelings are powerful. If we try to ignore them, they find ways to keep popping up. Or sometimes we just give into them and let them shape our responses. We may vent our anger. We may carry a grudge. We may pine away with hopeless longing for connection.

Long term intimate relationships can be especially confusing. We are never another and they are never us. We never fully understand another, and so we often interpret their actions as somehow directed at us. That leads us to an emotional response.

And feelings, of course, wax and wane for a huge variety of reasons. Our partner can become the unwitting object of all these changes. While they are always the same person, there are days when our feelings for them may be wonderful and other days when we really don’t want to be with them.

We can chase our tail for life, under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, responding to one feeling and another, giving those feelings power over how we act and how we use our energy. The end of that chase is generally exhaustion, and never satisfaction.

We have an alternative – a Tree of Life alternative. Somehow I suspect that the Spirit that created us absolutely adores us. We do not always act adorably. Yet the choice of our Creator was and is an ongoing act of adoration. We block it and don’t respond to it for much of our life. But that is our choice, not the action of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source.

While we may say we adore something or someone – you know, the warm fuzzy feeling – adoration, as I am using it, is not a feeling. It is a practice. It is an ongoing active choice.

Really. Sooo – how does that work? Well, let’s say we start by choosing to adore our long-term committed partner in life. We acknowledge that our feelings in that relationship will ride the usual roller coaster. We accept and don’t fight those feelings. Rather, we choose to own them as our own, not something created by our partner, or for which our partner carries any responsibility. And we choose not to let those feelings, positive or negative, carry the day with us. We observe them and we learn what we can from them about ourselves. And we own that our actions and reactions are ours, by personal choice.

That realization is called being free from attachment. We are ourselves. We are not the feelings to which we thought we were attached.

OK, step two. Once we are free from attachment, we can choose not the feeling, but the practice of adoration. Suddenly we are free from the blame game and the tail chasing, because we have stepped out of that vicious cycle. We can stand still and truly see. We can observe, we can soak in our partner as they truly are – an adored creation of C/S/M/S, just like we are. And we can choose to adore them.

We can choose not to judge or to criticize. We can choose to appreciate and to love what we see – all of their unique expressions, all of their hopes and fears, all of their work along their own path, as a creature learning and growing in all that C/S/M/S has for them. And we can give thanks, and appreciation and adoration. We can choose, in reality, to see them exactly as we can choose to see ourselves and all of creation around us.

We can accept and be grateful for the gifts they offer, rather than grasping or demanding what we think we need or deserve, or being disappointed that somehow they haven’t figured out what we really want from them. We can give up “want” altogether, because we know we have what we need, and we are satisfied.

Adoration is not blind. Rather, it is compassionate, knowing that we have far more to work on for ourselves along the path than we can possibly expect of or get from another. Adoration reflects back, helping another shine her or his own light, rather than hitting back.

There may be times when safety or wisdom require separation – even permanent breaking off of an intimate relationship. There is still no need to engage in the blame game. Self-adoration, self-care, is our first responsibility – and then to love our neighbor. Becoming stuck in hatred or bitterness is really just another way of giving up adoration of our self – another form of unhealthy attachment to feelings and to what we project about the other.

Practice is the key to success. We practice the adoration we have received from our Creator. And we practice letting go of our attachment to emotions and to our dependency on blaming someone else for the way we feel.

There were two special trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Practicing a different way locates us under the one that yields true satisfaction.

Willingness vs. Willfulness

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Two hearts diverge in the center of my chest. One is right, absolutely certain of what it deserves, red, furious, sulking, adrenalized, ready to explode. This one does not like change, at least not change that does not go in the direction it wants – the right and fair direction, the direction that I can see so clearly.

The other is quiet and at peace, in relationship, observing, taking in the whole, engaging without attaching, nimble as a stream flowing over rocks, flexing with what truly is.

What a grip the first heart has, and how complete the blindness and stranglehold. And how utter and painful the defeat if it carries the battle to the end and loses. Or how empty the victory if it wins and beats its perceived opponent into the ground.

It is all the same heart, of course. It is mine and I make the choice, just like choosing whether or not the giving tree under which I live is going to be the Tree of Life or the other one.

But how can I make that choice when I am so thoroughly blinded? The truth is, sometimes I can’t, or don’t, and I drift further and further into the hell I create with my own sightless determination. How difficult, but how important it is to change course and to bring it all back home. Sometimes the path is long and painful because of the bitterness built up inside and the damage inflicted on others around me.

What are the turning points, the places of repenting? Sometimes it is awareness of the misery, sometimes it is the voice of another who can see me more clearly than I can see myself. Sometimes it is the practice of quiet prayer, the prayer that seeks, in a mantra of willingness or a broken open silence, to let in a small sparkle of light, a trickle of healing water, finding the pinhole through which a larger landscape can be seen.

Always the turn involves practice. It involves breathing and conscious letting go. It involves releasing my death grip attachment to a self-determined and willful outcome.

We do not diminish ourselves when we choose willingness, the open connection to the whole. Rather, we become our true selves, the Self of paradoxical oneness with all that is.

The picture is always larger, and I am only a part of the whole, not the entire thing, as I want to believe.

When we practice willingness, when we practice being open and available, expanding our vision and releasing our determination to have the speck of sand we thought was everything, we experience healing. We find that the ache and inflammation begin to subside. The poison is leached little by little from our system and the blinders fall away. We are able to see both the detail and the landscape. The stream flows in its ripples and pools, turning with ease to follow its natural course.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. (Psalms 51:10, NRSV) It’s not so much a new one, but rather a connected one. And it is already there. We don’t have to beg or grovel for it, nor do we have to tear out anything as though it is wrong or defective.

Rather, we choose. Will we be willing or willful, separate or connected? Our spirit and our heart are not other than that with which we are gifted in our creation. There are no defects. There is only choice, the choice of isolation or the choice of connection. When we are real and whole, we are both individuated and connected. We are the gift of our own place and being. And we are the gift of the entire universe. It is the paradox and beauty of being a thread in the fabric.

In any case, our heart is truly only one, our very own, offered willingly in connection to the whole. Ah, the wonder and taste of the Tree of Life.

Suffering

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

My wife is a special educator. She tells me stories about kids who are and will be, no matter how hard they work, miles and miles short of successful functioning in our society. I hear about the amazing ways that she confronts them and engages them to draw out even the most basic responses to external stimuli – things like pointing to or grabbing a particular picture that indicates something they want or need, communication in its most elemental forms. My mind spins off into the future for these little lives and I ache. Something in me inclines toward discouragement.

According to Wikipedia, 230,000 people died, in 2004, in the Indian Ocean Tsunami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami), triggered by an undersea megathrust off the west coast of Sumatra. The millions that survived carry the soul etching memory of terror, and the loss of loved ones, places and ways of life that were wrenched irrevocably out of their being. Even from a distance, the collective soul of the earth feels and bears the rip, the wound and the scar.

The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University (see http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-civilians) estimated, in February 2013, that between 16,700 and 19,000 civilians have died in Afghanistan as direct or indirect casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom. iCasualties counts 3383 deaths of coalition troops since the war started in 2001 (http://icasualties.org/oef/), not to mention the traumatic head injuries, loss of limbs and suffering of families of the injured.

Life as we observe it and experience it is full of suffering, whether natural, psychological or of our own making. And it is so for the observer and survivor just as it is for the victim.

The Sanskrit term dukkha captures this completely. The Wikipedia article on dukkha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha) explains it in three categories:

The obvious physical and mental suffering associated with birth, growing old, illness and dying.
The anxiety or stress of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing.
A basic unsatisfactoriness pervading all forms of existence, due to the fact that all forms of life are changing, impermanent and without any inner core or substance. On this level, the term indicates a lack of satisfaction, a sense that things never measure up to our expectations or standards.

When we choose to stay stuck under the metaphorical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, life is indeed dukkha. We see everything through a lens of a battle to eliminate the pain of our current existence, even to the point of killing others and increasing pain because we think somehow our own security will be enhanced and our dukkha decreased. In reality, we just pile it higher and deeper.

I have a friend, Vern Rempel, who postscripts his emails with these words of his: “The code of the universe is written in beauty.” The Buddha said: “I have taught one thing and one thing only, dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.” Somehow I think these two assertions are headed in the same direction.

We cannot judge the pain of temporal existence any more than we can judge – as good, bad or indifferent – the unfolding of our universe and the emergence of life itself. It is. It is, it is, it is. To say “it is” is not indifference, but rather acceptance of and wonder at the mysterious whole and trajectory of creation.

The cessation of dukkha is no more nor less than the choice to live under the Tree of Life. It is, I believe, a more complete nirvana, and the essence of the Greek term metanoia, translated in the Christian Bible as repentance. That word has become heavy laden with the trappings of a religion of judgment. More accurately, it simply means to change, or to turn away from.

When we turn away from our judging and fearful view of life under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we find ourselves, simply, under the Tree of Life. We repent of dukkha. We let go of, we turn way from our limited and temporal view of suffering and we engage fully in the ongoing act, the revelation/evolution of creation.

We, in our evolutionary state, have been given at least the level of awareness that comes with observation. And we have been gifted as well with the ability to judge what we observe. We also have the ability to choose our response.

We can willfully try to manipulate life and the world around us, desperately seeking to avoid what we perceive as dukkha. When we do this, we only create more.

Or we can willingly accept and participate in the beautiful and staggeringly powerful onslaught of creation, sharing compassion, soaking in the beauty and mystery, acting in the creative initiative of God/Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source.

There is a tremendous ache, the ache of birth, in the act of creation. We are part of it. The birth, the code of that ache, is the handwriting of the universe. The child of it all, the child of us all when we participate in and do not fight the unfolding, is beauty beyond words and saying.

Come, turn, breathe, care, steward and create. Live under the Tree of Life.

Spiritual but not Religious

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

In the past few years I have heard people describe themselves, and have sometimes described myself, as spiritual but not religious. The label begs definition. I guess, on a very simple and literal level, it means having a sense of larger connection to something we might call spirit that envigorates, guides and, in truth, is us, but having checked out of, or never been part of, institutional religious expression of a particular faith.

I have admired that position, at least insofar as it represents a bravery about rejecting or not being actively concerned with blind dogma and positions that separate rather than unite humanity – demands that people say this or that and assurances that if you follow the particular company line, heaven is just around the corner.

But there is, at least for me, something significant lost in that position, as well. What is lost is the sense of belonging, of being part of a close-knit community of commitment.

Every fall, just after Labor Day, the community of Estes Park hosts the Long’s Peak Scottish Irish Festival. There are bands and dance competitions, jousting, and real cannon firing bowling balls to try to sink an inflatable plastic dragon in Lake Estes.

And there is a parade. It features, I think, just about the biggest collection of pipe and drum corps in the nation. And it features clan after clan marching in alphabetical order, families in their tartans and kilts, marching proudly and happily together behind their particular plaid. I have to admit there is something that grabs me at the root and brings tears to my eyes as I see them march by – little children, old men and women, their little Scottish terriers all decked out, heading to no war, setting aside their own squabbles and differences for a day of being part of something that reaches way back and commits to going forward, reveling in pure belonging. I can’t help it. Tears just run down my face.

I don’t know how long it has been true, but it is true now that something very special has happened in those ranks. Yes, there are tall lordly Scotsmen – some kind of purebred marked by a particular demeanor and full white moustache – and strong women capable of cutting down forests with only a few strokes of the axe. But there are also, in the clans, marching with all the same pride, people of Asian or African descent, fully Scottish just because they have married into the clan and everybody says so.

There is nothing inherently bad about religions. They are just the tools we make them. And there is value and meaning in belonging – in a commitment to community that says, come hell or high water (or, as we have in Estes this week, the hell of high water), and regardless of our petty differences, we are one. We will stick together and care for one another and we will take pride in and celebrate our values and commitments.

There is nothing inherently bad in this, so long as there is a significant grain of salt in all our sacraments. Strength comes in offering and welcoming, in serving and caring. The stories we tell and the lessons we teach are nothing if they don’t result in true humility and compassion. We may display our colors with pride, so long as the door is open and says come in if you like. And so long as we know our door is just one of many on the street.

At the end of the day, we may take off our clothing, grateful that it has protected us and provided a vehicle and context for our service. But that is all it is, a bit of pretty decoration for a body that is no different, or better or worse than the one inhabited by each of our global and religious – or not – neighbors.

And our religious families are wasted and nothing if they are not chiefly a magnification of service and welcome at the level of community, rather than just the individual.

Spiritual but not religious is, I believe, a wonderful position that sheds, appropriately, the strictures when community has lost its way, more concerned about the clothing than the body, wrapped up in pomp, power and appearances. It is a sign of prophetic rejection of all that is hollow and false.

But it is also lonely. Grant us community, a family that makes us part of something broader and stronger, that accomplishes so much more than we are able on our own. And gift us, Great Spirit, Breath of Life, the vision that whatever our community, we are always part of a larger family still, a family that flourishes on strong humility and confident sharing, founded on a bedrock of compassionate service.

Make us one, be us one, under the Tree of Life.

A Good Read Under the Tree of Life

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we abuse scripture. We bind it up in leather, with gilt pages and we worship it. We thump it on the pulpit, we display it on the brass stand or podium, and when we do open it to read it, we shop for – and find – the bullets, knives and bombs we need to protect our separate selves and our separate religions. The tree always gives us the fruit for which we ask.

Scripture is the place where the stirrings of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source (C/S/M/S) meet the mind of humanity for distillation into concepts and words. Bodies of scripture, combined with years of interpretation, become the normative structure and formative tradition for religions and even whole societies. That is, perhaps, a useful social function. But it also, when scripture is adopted as uniquely and exclusively authoritative, becomes the blinders of division that keep us from open interaction and rich cross-fertilization between traditions. At its worst, it becomes the justification for oppression, violence against individuals, sexes and classes, used most abusively to support terrorism and war.

Types of scripture lend themselves to particular forms of abuse. Historical narrative – the bulk of the Bible being the prime example – can, for instance, lead us to believe that the struggles and understandings of one culture are more than that. We allow them to become the defining history of C/S/M/S to the exclusion of all others. We miss the richness of interaction and learning when we idolize the characters and stories rather than seeing them as a useful record of human experience, much like our own. When we close the canon, we in essence deny and shut down our own direct and vital connection to C/S/M/S.

Revealed scripture – the Koran, the Book of Mormon and more recently, A Course in Miracles – lends itself most easily to manipulation. Followers may be tempted to grant it an air of particular exclusivity. Again, the learning of the content is ignored in the sacralization of the whole. We may find ourselves using it to define in-groups and out-groups, or to idolize the founder who received this intense spiritual download.

Myth – like we find in the Bhagavad Gita, the biblical creation narrative or the many stories of the Buddha – is sometimes written off as not being real. We think, “How can something that is not real be as authoritative as something that is real?” Or equally as risky, we make it authoritative, clinging to and slinging around a literal interpretation of a good teaching story.

I personally find most easily accessible the experiential writings – the Psalms, the Upanishads, the struggles of the prophets. Somehow it is easier to place myself side-by-side with another human who relates their experience of wrestling with or finding unity on their spiritual path. But the same risks apply. I might be tempted to grant sacred status to the experience of another while denying the reality of my own interaction and relationship with C/S/M/S. Or I might ignore the truth that is there because I grant higher status to another source.

We get all messed up with judgment under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good Evil. We make this sacred and that secular. We assign qualities and attributes to make things more or less than what they are. And we do the same to ourselves.

In general, we have adopted a low view of ourselves in relation to all that we choose to label sacred. We insist that we are stuck in our separation from C/S/M/S and that “believing in” this set of writings or the tenets of that religion will save us from our assumed natural state of doom.

I believe scripture. I don’t believe in it. What am I saying when I say that? Under the Tree of Life, everything – absolutely everything – is available to us for learning and for growth. The written experience of all cultures and interactors with C/S/M/S is useful. We have tools to use, not objects to worship.

We don’t need to grant authority to one book or another. C/S/M/S is our author, and we are the breath of that creation. We have the same dynamic relationship as the prophets and writers of any past. And we share the same temptations to isolation and to ego.

We have the opportunity to rest and to revel in the word, in all the words that we encounter in each day of our life. They are the expression of our human discovery of connection and unity with C/S/M/S.

When we sacralize and canonize scripture, we profane our own lives. The fruit is ours, to pick, to eat and to live. It was never intended to be worshipped or to be thrown as a weapon at someone else.

Here we are, under the Tree of Life. Let’s settle down with a good book.

Scientism and The Tree of Life

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

My son John called a few months back to tell me that he had spoken with my father. That’s a sweet and common thing, right, for a child to speak with a grandparent? And it was especially nice that he bothered to tell me. The thing is, Dad died suddenly more than 27 years ago. We adopted John, then just under three years of age, 26 years ago. John never met Dad on this plane. He just gets these kinds of visits.

There was no life-changing message in the conversation, at least yet revealed. Mostly it contained well-wishes for all of Dad’s descendants, with a heartfelt sentiment about how much he loved them and was proud of each of them. John received a distinct sense of each, including far-flung infant first cousins once removed that he truly did not even know.

There were other uniquely identifying memories in the exchange, a particular car, for instance, that Dad talked about. John described it to me in detail, a car I had no photos of and would never have had reason to mention to my son. I knew immediately which car it was and found a photo of one just like it on the Internet and sent it to John. He recognized it with certainty as the car Dad was talking about.

And my Grandma Schertz was pushing some kind of greeting through in the background, too. She would have done that, while she was busy busy minding her plants.

I am probably thinking about this today because my good friend Ki Johnson sent me Eben Alexander’s wonderful book, Proof of Heaven, last week. If you are not familiar with it, Alexander is a neurosurgeon who experienced an extended and particularly deep NDE (near death experience) in 2008, an experience that has changed the course of his life and expanded his view of science and spirituality.

We have become, over the past four hundred years, so enamored with science that we have created a new religion, scientism. Perhaps nothing in the world has greater allure and power to hold us under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and to blind us from the fullness of the Tree of Life. Scientism would certainly dismiss or rationalize in some material way my son’s experience.

There is, of course, so much to be grateful for in the scientific method and its fruits. In addition to the amazing advances in medicine, transportation, communications, daily comforts and understandings of the physical universe, there has been the very valuable checkmate of the abuses of religious dogma and the crushing power of the super-institutionalized church.

But scientism is no different than its religionist adversary. Scientism turns an essentially useful tool into an abusive force when it claims ultimate and exclusive truth. Scientism says that if science has not seen it, touched it or named it, it does not exist. Scientism becomes especially queasy, if not downright dogmatic and fundamentalist, when spirituality enters the room.

Science, itself, in an interesting turn of events, may be approaching spirituality. Or at least a perhaps necessary but over-exuberant burst of human pride at the discoveries and advances of the scientific method may be coming to a more balanced and humble correction. We have been presented with the observations of astronauts as they view the earth from space, the photos of galaxies from the Hubble telescope, and, in another direction entirely, the almost infinite tininess of the Higgs boson. And we learn that rocks and trees and skies and seas are all made of the same stuff – the tiniest of particles whirling and attaching in relationship with mostly space in between – just like the universe – just like us, the most sentient of beings on our speck of a planet.

And, of course, Hinduism, perhaps the oldest of the major religions, can point back to its roots and say “I told you so.” Its philosophical underpinnings and observations of its sages reflect the kind of unitive creative force and energy to which physics now also points.

So as we consider our own spiritual path, what are the implications?

We begin to experience our old concept of God more as Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source than as an image of us, a human form, who lives and rules from somewhere in a direction that we have arbitrarily chosen to label up.
C/S/M/S is no less real or personal. In fact, just the opposite. C/S/M/S is in and through all of that creative space and energy, the stuff that you and I and everything are made of.
The immanence and transcendence of C/S/M/S begin to seem more like the realities of the physical universe and less like theories for discussion. In fact the distinctions between physical and spiritual, immanence and transcendence, begin to blur, if not disappear altogether.
Our role clarifies. Somehow, because we have been granted the gift of consciousness (insofar as we can say what that is and that we possess it in some unique and special way), we have both the power and the responsibility of co-creation, of participating in our own way in the ongoing act of creation and its care. That is perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of being in the image of C/S/M/S.

Scientism and religionism duke it out in a futile and unending struggle of ego under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Science, the observation of what is, and spirituality, the willingness to be, rest and act comfortably in each other’s presence, without judgment, under the Tree of Life. Let’s be there.

I Believe

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Two Trees in the Garden grows out of more than sixty years of experience in Christian community, with a steadily growing awareness and restlessness about the boundaries and limitations of that experience and particular discomfort with the dominant narrative of creation, fall and atoning sacrifice. Twenty-some years of study and reflection across the scriptures and religious traditions of the world, carried out in the context of a constant, simple breath prayer (“Thy will be done.”), have led me to the following working statement of faith, the themes of which are expressed in the weekly blog:

I believe in Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source (C/S/M/S) – immanent, transcendent, omnipotent, omnipresent, love, essence, ground of our being and so much more, beyond all language, in whom/which we live and move and have our being. I grew up with the name God, but choose in general not to use it in this writing because it seems especially important in these times to break out of the cultural trappings surrounding that name. Names of any sort speak only to the limitations of our gift of language and intellect and fall inconceivably short of the reality. Most succinctly: C/S/M/S is; C/S/M/S is love; love is.

I believe we are expressions of prana, the Sanskrit term for life essence breathed by C/S/M/S. We are created in the image, like Jesus, like the Buddha, like Aunt Susie and every other Child of C/S/M/S who has walked the Earth. We are enlivened by the breath of life.

I believe in basic free will choice. When prana enlivens a body, we gain awareness, including awareness of our temporal limitations. This body needs resources to live. This body is born and dies. We can choose the isolation and limitation of our bodies (the choice of ego), which results in fear and its countless expressions in efforts to possess and to control, coupled with its rage when those efforts are thwarted, as they ultimately are. We can also choose our higher Self, the fruit of which is confidence and rest in the eternal and enlivening C/S/M/S essence which both pervades and transcends all things temporal. Our life is the journey of that choice, with consistent results, individually and as societies. We grow to the extent that we learn from our choices, moving toward Self and away from ego.

I believe that revealed scripture –whether Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon, Islamic or other – is inspired. It is full of Truth. This Truth is filtered and interpreted over and over: by the person to whom it was revealed; by the scribe; by the translator; by the reader; by the listener; and by the responder who turns it into human action. When the human interactor is aligned and free in Spirit, the truth of scripture is revealed and results in acts of creative beauty, kindness, healing and compassion. When the human interactor is aligned with ego and fear, scripture is twisted and misused.

I believe there are no closed canons of scripture. My friends Jeff Gundy and JD Martin write scripture – the expressions of their C/S/M/S essence – in poetry and song. Georgia O’Keefe painted it and a million voices sing it in every instant. Scripture is the very essence of our created hearts, yours and mine. Time and historic comings and goings do not begin or end the Word, nor do the sacred and secular labels that we apply to justify our egotistical judgments. An open and willing heart is an open canon.

I believe that historic scripture is a useful record of the human experience with C/S/M/S, subject to the limitations of vision and experience for the writer, requiring and welcoming constant conversation, evaluation and fresh revelation in the context of the present experience and expression of C/S/M/S in our hearts and being.

I believe that religions of any label — Pagan, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, Islamic and hundreds more, past, present and future – are neither more nor less than our corporate (communal) expression of the maturity of our understanding and expression of C/S/M/S. A powerful social tool, religion holds the potential for the communal expression of an open and willing heart, with hands, feet and voices of compassion, healing, welcome and stewardship. It holds the same potential for chasing useless sacrifice, empowering hierarchical mediators of the sacred and profane, instituting rules of obligation and shame, and justifying hatred and violence of all kinds. Either way, we choose, engaging and using the tool under our own gifted power.

I believe that worship means to be engaged, individually and corporately, in the creative activity of C/S/M/S. It is to be engaged in joy, beauty, healing, compassion, curiosity and creation. It has nothing to do with noises of adoration separated from these acts of creation, especially when these sounds and acts are engaged primarily for self-indulgence or a hope of gaining points for access to an eternity to which we already belong and of which we already partake. As with so many of our religious terms, we do well to let go of the baggage laden worship label and engage in being the true article, our essence, that for which we are created.

I believe in life everlasting – that prana, as the metaphorical out breath and in breath of C/S/M/S, never changes as it enters and leaves any particular body or temporal expression. We – our spirits – are part of that breath, enlivening and departing the bodies we inhabit. While some report direct awareness of lives before and beyond the one we experience in any given present, I have yet to possess, and do not strive for, that particular gift or awareness. Yet I trust that, to the extent we are open and willing, we are always (before, in and beyond time) growing, learning in grace and love, with deeper and deeper Self-awareness, which is to say, experience of our C/S/M/S essence.

Who knows where that may take us. I love our journey.

Learning Everlasting

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Lifelong learning. It’s a great concept. Now that I work for a library, it helps to pay the bills. It keeps the minds of millions occupied, distracted. As a busy lifelong learner, I can avoid the contemplation of death and the possibility of the end of me as I know me – or perhaps not just as I know me, but just the end, indeed, altogether. Maybe all that is left is a whirling dispersion of atoms, quarks and Higgs Bosons, randomly traversing the universe and likely as not getting trapped for something close to eternity in a gas giant like Jupiter. There is some small comfort, in that case, in the present thought of having no awareness at that time.

“Well take another look, and tell me baby: Who’s zoomin’ who?” (Thank you, Aretha Franklin). Who is looking through these eyes at these words? And tell me, Mr. or Mrs. Higgs, how did you think up your boson? And why is there a race track, just for electrons, underneath a couple of countries in Europe, all for the joy of catching one of these little buggers? And why does my spruce tree smell so good in the afternoon sun, while the aspen leaves shimmy in the breeze, the hummingbird hovers inches away at the feeder and the most beautiful swallows in the world dart with abandon through all of it?

I don’t believe for a moment that this is just a chance material world. But then, neither do I believe in any hard and fast predestination, where we are pawns on a stage for the entertainment of some cynical cosmic audience.

The sages that dreamed the Upanishads called it prana – the life force or essence, the breath of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source, exhaled and inhaled by all that is. Prana given and prana withdrawn is the life experience of the material. Prana is expressed in senses and awareness, but its presence or absence does not change it. It just passes through creative stages, one form, one life to another. Prana spins, organizes and reorganizes itself. And at our level, prana wakes to the awesome joy and fear of awareness – the ability of the created to be so fully awake that it can observe itself participating in the very act of creation. What an accomplishment and gift! You, I, we are part of that.

We can dance, we can play, we can create. We can care, we can tend, we can nurture. We can also bury our talent – our prana – in fear, invest it in greed and control, or try to obliterate it in self-destructive behavior. No matter, ultimately, I think, beyond whatever joy, sadness or learning we experience from the consequences of our behavior, individually or corporately.

I believe in learning everlasting. Paul talks about seven heavens in the New Testament and others speak of many planes of existence. We toy with questions of the edges of our universe. Is it expanding? Is it contracting? Are there others? What does all of that mean?

The Prashna Upanishad goes into great depth about prana, speculating that prana divides itself into five expressions when it enters bodily form. The Sanskrit term for the fifth of these is udana, the force that gathers our prana at the end of each lifetime and moves it forward to the next. Question III, verse 7 of the Prashna, says this of udana:

At the time of death, through the subtle track
That runs upward through the spinal channel,
Udana, the fifth force, leads the selfless
Up the long ladder of evolution,
And the selfish down. But those who are both
Selfless and selfish come back to this earth.

Could be. I find myself at home with this thought of learning everlasting, of an eminently patient and persistent Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source that breathes us full of prana, the very breath of life, and lets us choose, in perfect freedom, how we will use the gift, one lifetime after another. Can we spin ourselves off to an isolation of no return? I doubt it, despite our longest and worst efforts. Can we stay stuck at one level, torn between isolation and connection for a very long time? I suspect so. Is there always a loving call home? I believe it with all my heart and soul.

“Softy and tenderly, Jesus is calling. Calling to you and to me.” (Will L. Thompson, 1880) Born under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, whispered forever to the Tree of Life, let’s go home.

Scripture today, from my friends Jan Garrett & JD Martin:

Red Rock Canyon (We Go On)

Red rock canyon loves the light, juniper pinon sunrise
And the sweet earth is still damp from last night’s rain
The smell of the sage is a simple prayer
Rising up in the morning air
Saying welcome home again
And oh, what a wonder, I cannot begin to say
Such unspeakable beauty calling my name

We go on, like a beautiful song
We are carried on great winds across the sky
We go on, we go sailing free
We come shining through, we go on

There are secrets singing in the breeze at dawn
A fresh familiar song
And everywhere I look, the world is alive
The soul of the river is one and the same
As the holy blood running through my veins
Like a father’s smile in his newborn child
So, stand still, let me look at your face
Everything keeps changing, but this love remains

We go on, like a beautiful song
We are carried on great winds across the sky
We go on, we go sailing free
We come shining through, we go on

(Lyrics and Music, Jan Garrett & JD Martin)

George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin and the Path Between the Trees

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

I speak of this journey on the path between the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life as though it is an individual adventure. It is, certainly. But it is also a social journey, the journey of the family, the journey of the community, the journey of society, the nation and humanity. Yesterday George Zimmerman was acquitted, in the State of Florida, on the charge of murdering Trayvon Martin. There was never any question that Mr. Zimmerman shot and killed young Trayvon. The question had to do with the crime of murder. And by Florida law, which says in essence that if you are afraid of someone, you can shoot to kill, Mr. Zimmerman was not guilty. He was afraid of young Trayvon. He is exonerated under the law. The case is closed.

I believe, truly, that Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source, with infinite compassion and wisdom, will in good time call everyone involved to healing and to home. But somehow, in this twisted travesty, I have difficulty imagining the task complete in my lifetime, or in yours. Who knows what the path holds for Mr. Zimmerman. Nor can I imagine any quick and easy cleanup for the Florida legislature, and their voting electorate, that chose to pass laws that embrace and codify fear and its cousin, hatred, as legitimate bases for the function of society. And what of this life so rudely cut off for young Trayvon?

We have a common phrase in English, “the straight and narrow.” It is an allusion to a teaching of Jesus quoted in Matthew that many of us learned as kids: “For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matt 7:14, NRSV) The common meaning of both the phrase and the way it was taught is, “Be good, really good, which is really really hard, and you might, after you die, get to heaven.”

But that is not at all what these words are about. They are about finding our way, as individuals, as communities, as societies, nations and humanity. These words are about finding our way off the merry-go-round of fear that keeps us travelling round and round the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, one lifetime after another. As Joni Mitchell wrote, “We’re captive on a carousel of time.” (Joni Mitchell, “Circle Game”) The lights are bright and the music is loud. It’s hard to imagine, riding in the nighttime of this blaring sorrow, that the Tree of Life is just a few steps away. It’s hard to leave the cotton candy and the popcorn. It’s hard to venture into the quiet darkness. And when we do, there’s a pretty good chance that our leaving will threaten the whole show enough that someone will just shoot us in the back. Because the merry-go-round, friends, stops when the riders all walk away. And that’s a major threat to those who can’t imagine anything besides that ride.

The way, the truth and the life, friends, looks like a tiny path in the darkness from up here on the merry-go-round. It is not illuminated by the lights of fear or greed. It is not paved and policed by laws that say the right thing is to live behind a gate, to be afraid and to shoot to kill whenever we have the least worry about our seat on the painted pony, or that someone might have the audacity not to be aware of or paying attention to us and to our rules about our street, full of our possessions. Too bad about that, young Trayvon, too bad.

It’s hard, today, not to run right back to the merry-go-round and jump on a pony and just chase Mr. Zimmerman down the same way his neighborhood and the laws of Florida are set up to hate and chase down folks like young Trayvon. But friends, the way, the truth and the life demand that we close our eyes to a false light that draws us like moths back to that endless circle of fear, hate and despair.

Yes, we must, with complete detached engagement stand in the path of fear. Yes, we must with complete detached engagement let our government and the Florida legislature know that these laws point us down an easy path to certain destruction. Yes, yes, yes and YES!!!

But we must do these things from the clear path that leads to life. It’s not really that the path is so small and narrow. It’s more that we refuse to look for it. It’s more that we keep coming up with reasons, even when we have found the path, to stop singing and to turn around and run back, get on our pony, claim our seat, hold on to our righteous stuff and hate someone. We dare not. We dare not forget our song.

We sing it with confidence, forward to young Trayvon. We sing it with confidence to Mr. Zimmerman. We sing it with arms around mom and dad Martin. We sing it with clarity to the Florida legislature, and to the judge and to the jury, and to all the corners of our own hearts that want to turn our tears back into bullets.

The way, the truth and the life leads only one way between the trees. It is lit by one light and sung by one song. Let us close our eyes. Let us open our hearts. Let us sing our song and let us walk forward on that path.

Deteng, Baby, Deteng!

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

I keep talking here about letting go, relinquishing attachment. You might get the impression that I am advocating the life of a hermit or an ascetic. Not at all, not at all. In fact today let’s talk about engagement, true action, the kind of action that happens without grasping, without attachment to outcomes. Perhaps there is a good word in English for this. Since I have not found it, I have invented one – deteng, or short for detached engagement.

What we seek to relinquish is not action, but the grasping at hopes or the shrinking from fears about outcomes of our actions. These things, in fact, obstruct pure action in life and destroy the beauty and benefit of true living experience.

Take the moment I am in at present. I have committed, right now, to write this week’s blog entry. It is very tempting to worry about what the little readership graph on my blog administration site will look like tomorrow. Will there have been more viewers than last week? Any comments? What will you think of me after you have read this, if you have read this – if anything at all? This represents the attachment of desire.

And sometime soon I really should build up the email list to expand distribution of the blog. I could be distracted by that thought, which feels like work, a chore. I don’t want to be bothered, which is the attachment of aversion to action.

In either case, desire or aversion, I am distracted by my attachment to outcomes. I want to have, or to avoid, a certain result, and that becomes my obsession. And In either case, I compromise the fullness of current action, which is to sit in the recliner with my laptop, writing exactly what I am able to write, without concern that it will not be complete or enough, in the time that I have at present. Deteng. I am doing what is before me. I am relaxed in spirit. I am fully and completely doing what I am doing. I am at peace. Deteng.

I believe that the best result of my action, my writing in this case, always happens when I have “given up” on outcomes and have gifted and immersed myself and you, to the extent that I am able, in Spirit, before, during and after the process.

How do I do that? Very simply. Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it relinquishment. I engage in the act of bringing you to mind in the all-encompassing presence of Spirit before I write, and I pray the prayer I pray throughout every day – “Thy (Spirit’s) will be done.” I breathe Spirit into me – Thy will – Spirit’s will. I release Spirit to you – be done. This is for you. It is through me. It is of Spirit. It is interactive. It is one. It is just us together, at one, in the breath of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source.

The more I am mindful of that before I write, the more fully I am engaged and at ease in the act of writing. And the more open and engaged you are with Spirit as you read, the more complete, blessed and useful the outcome is for all.

The same is true for us in every action. Life in Spirit is not about inaction. It is about moving in Spirit. I encourage you, if the language or some form of it works for you, to practice this before every action, before every interaction; to ground yourself in Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source by bringing the action and its intended recipient to mind. Hold them in heart and mind. Breathe in, “Thy will.” Breathe out, “be done.” Bless them, experience being blessed together.

And then act, in complete trust, with full engagement in your action – so much engagement that there is no room for worry about results or outcome. Trust that you are in Spirit, in the flow and beauty and power of the universe. So is your action. And if they choose to be, so is your recipient. Nothing could be better. Nothing carries more health, peace power or goodness. Nothing could possibly require less worry. Nothing will ever find us more at home under the Tree of life.

Deteng, baby. Deteng. Will will be done.

Scripture today is from the Fifth Teaching, Renunciation of Action, of The Bhagavad-Gita:

A person who relinquishes attachment
and dedicates actions to the infinite spirit
is not stained by evil,
like a lotus leaf unstained by water.

Relinquishing attachment,
people of discipline perform action
with body, mind, understanding, and senses
for the purification of the self.

Relinquishing the fruit of action,
the disciplined person attains perfect peace;
the undisciplined person is in bondage,
attached to the fruit of their desire.

For Shouldness Sake

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Many of us grew up with the notion of God and God’s religion – which was God’s complicated way of getting to us – as being a big list of shoulds and should nots. All of this, of course, had nothing at all to do with the intentions of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source in the establishment of our being. Nevertheless, I look back on a good bit of my life and realize that I could have been a lead character in a blockbuster children’s book, The Little Engine That Should.

It all started right there under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, where we learned that long long list, and the certain knowledge that we would never be good enough to stay in the garden because there was no way that we could ever possibly be all that we should be.

Should, in its very essence, is an endless chase that lasts beyond any concept of exhaustion. Because any time we should be doing something, we are either:

not doing it, which is totally unsatisfactory and fraught with guilt; or
doing it because, well, we should – an External Motivator, which, chances are, leaves us perpetually falling a little short of full expectation. Duck and run, here comes the big Unsatisfactory Rubber Stamp again.

Questions of should also lead to endless and useless discussions of how much and how often. These questions imply giving up things in a zero sum game where, if we give what we should be giving (a tithe, for instance), we will have less of what we had. If we do have more, it will, of course, be only because that External Source has rewarded us in some way for our good/should behavior.

Or we go to this meeting or belong to this church or that organization because we should. Then we must attend x number of times per month or, once again, we are not measuring up for the Shouldness Judge. Not to mention the time and energy wasted on worrying about this stuff.

And then there are the opportunities for humans to dress up like little Shouldness princes, princesses, priests and judges, casting shouldness spells on their scared and foolish but quite willing little subjects who pay exorbitant sums for the privilege of running around, all in a dither.

Ah, sweet life of our little ego creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Krishnamurti said it so well: “You might as well put a piece of stick you have picked up in the garden on the mantelpiece and give it a flower every day. In a month you will be worshiping it and not to put the flower in front of it will become a sin.”

True creation is the flower, friends, and it is us. Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source the Universe – that, who, what, beyond concept and language, whether noun or verb – Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source breathed the flower and breathed us, too. There is no should under the Tree of Life. There is only being. And the essence of that being is both noun and verb. It is the will and the willing to trust, to love, to appreciate, to give and to receive, all in the in and out breath of kindness and compassion. These are action and stillness, a complete fullness, all in one.

There is no obligation, there is only essence. There is no bondage, only freedom. There is no shortage, no need for hoarding, only and always enough.

The one by Galilee got it so right: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” And what did we do under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? The usual thing, of course. The shouldness thing.

We put him on a stick on the mantel and started to worship him.

Oh my shouldness. Oh my shouldness.

Two Trees in the Garden

Thoughts on a New Spirituality

Tag Archives: creator spirit

It’s Not Always Clear

The Choice of Devotion

For Christmas this Year, Let’s Let Jesus Off the Bloody Hook

Suchness and Form

Who We Are

Born in You this Day

Adoration

Willingness vs. Willfulness

Suffering

Spiritual but not Religious

A Good Read Under the Tree of Life

Scientism and The Tree of Life

I Believe

Learning Everlasting

George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin and the Path Between the Trees

Deteng, Baby, Deteng!

For Shouldness Sake

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