Worthy Is the Lamb

Posted on December 7, 2019 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

It’s the Holiday Season in the United States. Lights, music, trees, the gusher of retail dollars and – Messiah sing-alongs. Yes, as a member of the Taos Community Chorus (tenor until faced with a high A), I am participating. How many times, how many places? And yet these texts from Isaiah and Revelation, set to Handel’s exuberant music, continue to inspire and thrill. May the abuses and domination of all twisted religious expression wither and perish. Please, dear God, save this glorious music.

One of the most powerful choruses is based on a surreal image from Revelation 5:12: “Worthy is the lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” (NRSV) Or in the King’s English used by Handel, “Worthy is the lamb that was slain.”

The obvious reference here is to the glorification of Christ, crucified by the threatened powers and resurrected in an immutable assertion that life as intended, the true spirit of love and compassion, can never be conquered, whether by evil intent or physical demise.

But it seems to me there is more in the phrase. As we journey from our experience of scarcity and fear under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; as we begin to know and trust it as the Tree of Life, there is always a lamb to be slain. The Buddha asserts with certainty, life is duhkha. We will suffer. The innocence of the lamb will be ravaged. We can delude and harden ourselves. There will be sickness. There will be abusers and victims. There will be war and hunger and loss of loved ones. And in the end, we will die.

No lamb avoids the slaughter. Worthy is the one that faces and embraces it. It’s not that some perverse deity requires blood to be satisfied. It’s that we don’t pass the test of life without dying to the lies.

We can paste over it with Christmas presents and walls of security and comfort. We can mask it with youth and pleasure. We can pretend to fend it off with walls and guns and warehoused kids at the border.

Or we can make a different choice. We can die right now and get on with the real thing. Die to fear. Die to domination. Die to greed and anger, our selfish anxiety and hoarding. In the end, it avails us nothing. Why not end it now? Why not make the choice, today, to shed all of this and replace it with the giving and receiving of blessing, honor, glory and power?

So let’s sing it, clear and strong. Worthy is the lamb, the lamb that is slain:

The family turned back at the border. Worthy is the lamb.
The youth taken by opioids in the towns along the Ohio River. Worthy is the lamb.
Christine Blasey Ford. Worthy is the lamb.
The “deep state” public servant, courageous enough to blow the whistle. Worthy is the lamb.
Jamal Khashoggi. Worthy is the lamb.
The Walmart shoppers in El Paso. Worthy is the lamb.
The Syrian hospital patients in the sights of the Russian warplane. Worthy is the lamb.
The indigenous environmental activists killed by governments and corporate thugs in Latin America. Worthy is the lamb.
The young women lured to hotel rooms and private jets by promises of open doors to the future. Worthy is the lamb.
You and I, friend, when we die to all of this, die to our comfort, our greed, our fear and embrace the cross that leads to real life. Worthy is the lamb.

Worthy, worthy is the lamb that is slain. Blessing, honor, glory and power be unto her.

Worthy.

Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development. Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078. Click FOLLOW to be notified of future posts.

Hard Rain

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

President Trump of the United States kicked off his 2020 campaign last week, pouring fuel on the flames of fear, mistrust and anger to reignite the hurting and fevered base that would assure his re-election. During the same week, more environmental regulations were rolled back in the face of the science that overwhelmingly points to a warming planet, with disastrous consequences for not just humans, but all life.

In another cynical gesture, Guatemala, among the poorest of countries in the hemisphere, with leadership grounded in corruption and abuse of its people, was forcibly named by the United States as the designated refuge of asylum for migrants fleeing gang or narco-violence and drought in Central America, particularly those from the neighboring countries of Honduras and El Salvador. This comes as the number of people fleeing Guatemala, for the very same reasons, is at its own peak level.

Wall Street waits on the sidelines, up a little today, down a little tomorrow, fluttering anxiously on the tails of the latest presidential Tweet. It is stunning to consider that the markets of the most sophisticated economy in human history rise and fall with so little rationality.

And someone somewhere thinks that yet another manufactured war in the Middle East will line enough pockets to make it worth the lives of countless unarmed citizens on another side of the globe and a few thousand dead or traumatized soldiers of our own.

We seem the epicenter of a newly unleashed global permission to hate.

But hatred is a thin veil for the underlying reality. As wealth becomes increasingly concentrated at the top, the masses turn to misguided anger. It is always easiest to hate someone who poses no threat beyond being somehow different. And the devil in power loves the opportunity to fan the flames in a sleight of hand to mask its ballooning greed.

We can delude ourselves with the religion of false morality. We can vent our frustration in political mudslinging. We can beam our positive energy out to the universe. If we don’t change our ways, “well it’s a hard, hard, hard, hard, it’s a hard rain gonna fall.” (Bob Dylan)

We don’t need a nasty god to judge us. We are doing a fine job of creating our horizon of hell.

Wealth is not the issue here, nor is power, though the mad grab for both is symptomatic. Human hearts that misunderstand their connection to creation, their responsibility to compassion and beauty; shrunken hearts deluded in belief that they are the majestic pinnacle in the unimaginable scope of all that is; hollow hearts certain that money can buy happiness, eternal life and the exit from all misfortune — these furiously pave the way to our collective demise. So many comfortable people, trailing just behind in the bell curve, would rather not know, turning a blind eye. The newly poor flare with misplaced anger. The truly downtrodden migrate in desperation for the next scrap of bread.

Dylan’s blue-eyed boy knows nothing of hard rain. Rather, it is the global masses in the path of rabid extortion and extraction, fleeing violence and hunger, the hidden but real costs of the low prices paid by the white north for food, clothing, energy, transportation and daily security. These, the most with the least, are the ones who know the storm. Their desperate lives are nothing but.

The headlong greed of the top and the complacency of the shrinking class we call middle (screaming rich compared to the displaced and suffering masses), have now traversed a height of slim escape, speeding blindly along a precipitous and razor thin ridge. The depletion of the earth’s resources, the warming of the atmosphere, the increasing likelihood of massive system failures, the insane stockpiling of sophisticated nuclear weaponry, these loom large and imminent on a rapidly approaching horizon. Yet money-madness and lazy comfort hold pedal to the metal, throwing up their flat screen charades, a vomitous spew of digitized misinformation, fooling themselves that all is well. America is now great again.

We have taken so much more than enough. Yet seeing only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we sap and burn the Tree of Life, sucking up even the water that feeds its roots in our insatiable appetite for the things that were never real. America, America, it’s a hard, hard rain that’s going to fall.

Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078.

Creation

Posted on September 9, 2018 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Creation is amazing. Things keep happening on a seemingly infinite scale from small to grand, subtle to nuclear, still to beyond the speed of light. What’s it about? Where do we fit in? Our vision is so limited and, given the immensity of the whole thing, we mostly just ignore it and go on our way.

Going on our way, however, is exactly our problem – or better put, the problem of “our.” The premise of Two Trees in the Garden is that, under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we became conscious, we woke up to “I”, “my” and “our.”

The “going on our way,” the “going” and the “way” of “our,” all happened on a road of fear. We believed ourselves to be alone and separate. We became aware of death. The response of “I,” “my” and “our” was greed and a grasp for power and control. Anger, deceit and violence became our tools.

But “our way” is not the way of creation, of true reality. It is only halfway. It is not whole. It is “self”-deceived. We don’t know it, but true reality is that we are under the Tree of Life, not the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is only our limited misperception of the real thing. And that real thing, the real tree, is love, goodness, beauty, relationship, peace, the surprise of creation, rest and enough. Why would we not want these things? How do we get there?

It’s been called by many names, this turn from “self”-deceit to connected reality: enlightenment; awakening; conversion; second birth; born again. And in our despair, we look for any one of these (they are all the same) as some sort of magical elixir that, if we can only reach it, grasp it, experience it, will make us happy and solve our worldly fears and woes, maybe even save us from death. And it always seems elusively just beyond “our” reach.

But it’s not elusive at all. Yes, it is beyond “my,” “our” grasp. The problem is that we are grasping at nothing to be grasped. And we are missing everything. Because enlightenment, awakening, conversion, second birth, being born again are the simple choice of turning from deception and coming home to reality. And “reality,” is “not grasping.”

Creation, friends, is the impetus, the impulse, the word of love breathed infinitely and eternally into the void. And we are part of it and with it, not separate, as our fear – the fear that is “I,” “my,” “our” – would have us believe. And our fear is only that, a belief upon which we act, resulting in our unhappiness, the unhappiness of “our.”

Alas, what must “I” do to be saved? It’s so simple. Confess. Confess and submit. Confess that you, the real you, are connected to and one with the great I Am, the love and exuberance beyond all knowing that is part and parcel of all you see, unfolding with joy and confidence into all you cannot perceive.

It’s a piece of cake, a walk in the park, a look into the eyes of the beloved. When deceived “you” lets go of grasping and submits to real everything, you are alive, awake, born for real under the Tree of Life.

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Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development. Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078. Click FOLLOW to be notified of future posts.

Submit Yourself

Posted on January 7, 2018 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

East, West, which way to look for that perfect spirituality? Such a quandary for the comfortable with time and resources to spare. No doubt my deep intentions are tilting the universe in a better direction, while in turn, that very same expanse is conspiring for my greatest good. But somehow the rubble still gets deeper in Syria. The thugs paid by the palm oil companies are still burning the houses of peasants in Colombia. And the string of cars belching carbon, clawing their desperate way to the mountains in Estes Park, Colorado, extend the crack in the Antarctic ice sheet.

There are flies all over all of us. What to do? We can rage against the darkness. It’s so easy to blame the stupidity of others for the burden we share. We can wallow in despair, sighing our way to the next tomorrow and the next. We can stick our heads in the sand. If I am comfortable in this moment, why look beyond my bubble? We can work ourselves to weariness with good deeds, shrug, and say we did our best.

But these alternatives share major flaws. They are selfish and disconnected. All focus on how I feel about myself in relation to the problem or to the rest of creation. My anger at others exonerates me from personal complicity and, therefore, action. And yet, especially as one of the world’s privileged, I take no step and breathe no breath without exhaustive and violent extraction from the Earth and all its creatures, including the bulk of humanity.

Despair, of course, is just completely irresponsible. I can blame my inactivity on the impossible size of the task and the exhaustion I experience just thinking about it. Focusing on my own comfort at least gives me pleasure and distraction. But these two options also abdicate responsible participation.

And let’s be real. My good deeds are never enough. I can never run fast enough or jump high enough to save the planet on my own. And the conclusion that at least I tried is just another form of despair, with the gold star of performance pasted on it to relieve my guilt with a little smug pride.

The root error of all these responses is that they focus on me, as though my feelings are what matter, or as though the outcomes of creation are somehow, in a very special and important way, on my shoulders. And when I am focused on me, I am too distracted to be truly useful.

I opened with a less than subtle dig at the spirituality of intention. Perhaps that is unfair. Focusing our intentions for good can, it seems, shift energy with positive outcomes in ways that we can observe, if not yet comprehend. As Masaru Emoto documents in his Messages from Water and the Universe, even a positive word pasted on a glass of water can yield a response of astounding beauty in ice crystals formed from that water. Perhaps on a given evening we could effect positive change if millions focused their intentions completely on the healing of our president. And yet our New Years prayers for universal peace – offered annually all over the world – have yet to tip the balance decisively. Who can say, of course, that they have not at least held us back from the brink of destruction.

What we miss in all of this is that we are not, indeed, ourselves. Nor are we just our intentions. We are intention embodied. We (not just humans, but every particle and the energy that binds it into being) are the hands and feet of Creation. Our intelligence, while seemingly vast from where we stand, is just a speck of something grand beyond imagination. Whether we look big and far to the stars and galaxies or small to the mysterious behavior of the Higgs Boson, we learn that everything is always more and different than we think. Our book of physics is never more than a scratchpad of notes in the library of what we vainly imagine to be the universe.

We are intention embodied, We act within the capabilities and limitations of our embodiment. Granted, that is a statement of blind faith. But what is more blind than the borders of what we think is real? I choose – I invite you to choose – faith that the wonder of all we don’t know is expressing itself continually into the void. And we are part of that expression.

I propose active submission to that greater intention. We can engage the gorgeous paradox of acting, in complete rest, into that intention. There is direction available to us for action. We connect with it when we, as Gerald May has put it so well, eschew willfulness and embrace willingness.

When we submit (read “allow connection of”) ourselves, all our intentions and all our actions, with confidence to Creation/Spirit/Mind/Source (read words I use for God), we move forward, acting with compassion from a position of expectation, the joy and surprise of creation. We are not exhausted. We do not despair, nor do we fear or avoid walking forward.

We cannot know. We do not need to know. Our satisfaction comes in submitting ourselves and all our gifts to the intelligent Whole, being and acting rather than owning and resisting.

Exhaustion and despair are the net of our selfish frenzy under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Rest and compassionate action join as one for health and wholeness under the Tree of Life. Come with me, dear one, to the place of wonder and deep satisfaction.

Good Friday

Posted on April 14, 2017 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

It’s Holy Week, Semana Santa. I started it this year in Guatemala. Everyone is back to their hometown, it seems, to visit family and friends. Alfombras, block long carpets of brightly colored sawdust and flowers, transform the cobblestone of colonial streets. Huge elaborate floats depicting the passion of Christ are carried on the shoulders of fifty or more of the faithful, inching their way past the cathedral and central park. The brass and drum corps marks time, in cadence befitting the gravity of the Lamb of God, taking upon himself the sins of the world.

It’s an outsize burden, I think. Mayan women hawk fabulously beautiful weavings, made of handspun yarn and natural dyes, painstakingly extracted from spices, flowers, berries and insects.

No price can adequately compensate the weeks of labor by these women, sitting on knees, the weight of their bodies creating the tension needed for the woof and warp of their backstrap looms. The work is so gorgeous. They ask so little. The market prevails in its daily disappointment.

Our travels took us to their villages, where tombstones decorated with primitive art depict burned houses and hanged, hacked and bleeding bodies of the hundreds, thousands, perhaps 250,000 of their beloved family and friends, slaughtered by soldiers and paramilitary in the 1980’s, pieces dumped into mass graves.

The generals justified these deaths with biblical quotes under a valence of anti-communism, preparing the way, as it has for 500 years, for the insatiable lords of wealth and power, the robes cast off by the killers piled for safekeeping at the gates of the School of the Americas.

I fly home. Three simple words that separate me indelibly from the suffering on the ground. I ride the slick shiny blade of the machete of progress, hacking its way through the friendly skies, bounding lightly across borders that say “No, you may not partake. Your cup is a sop of vinegar served up on whatever stick you can find.”

59 missiles flip their way mindlessly to an airstrip in Syria and MOAB, the “mother of all bombs”, is dropped in Afganistan, this week’s blackbird pie served up for the ego of a spoiled child, daily millions demanded to fund the latest Mar-a-Lago deal, the White House an empty shell of a sucked out egg, the hollow hope of the poor and downtrodden.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

No amount of blood poured out has ever offered a drop of redemption. It’s just another killing – another lie of the king, sanctioned by the priest, to justify clearing the path ahead. Jesus died because of our sins, never to take them away.

Good Friday.

Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development, Estes Park, Colorado. Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078. Click FOLLOW above to be notified of future posts.

Doctor My Eyes

Posted on February 18, 2017 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Donald Trump is not our problem in America. He is not the disease, although he is certainly a very troublesome symptom. Electoral politics and the dash to polarization are not the problem, nor the antiquated function of the electoral college, not to deny that a few systemic tweaks might provide some small relief from our indigestion and pain.

Our problem is our eyes. It’s literally that we have chosen and clung to a very limited vision, an illusion that we believe to be complete and real. Whether we quake in fear and despair, watching blue states tumble to red and making frantic calls to legislators who seem deaf to voices without dollars. Whether we fulminate from the brilliant ivory tower of The New York Times. Whether we are certain that the immigrant other, seasoned with a dash of moral decline, is undermining our safety and the foundation of our American values. Whether we shake our snarling 4×4 fist as big government swallows the last guppy in our hard-earned and well-deserved Mar-a-Lago koi pond. Whatever our fear and angst, we are all, for the most part, just looking through the eyes of our chosen limitation.

And that’s just it, the eyes of fear and angst. The thing that binds us together, the foundational truth of America today is eyes that see only my shrinking piece of American pie.

Jackson Browne laments:

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand*

Doctor, my eyes. They see the hurt, petulant little boy spinning like a pulsar between his black hole need for adulation and his fits of distemper when we are unwilling or unable to pacify him. But he is our little boy, and we put him in charge. We must accept full responsibility.

Noble democracy, precious concept, is not our elixir. Today it is our exfoliant. It reveals the perilously thin skin of our fear, our polarization, our sorrow and longing, our greed, our corporate angst.

‘Cause I have wandered through this world
And as each moment has unfurled
I’ve been waiting to awaken from these dreams*

From the Gospel of Thomas saying 22 or Gospel of Mary Magdalene 30:12, these confounding words are essentially the same:

When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will gain the Kingdom.

“When you make . . .” my, your, our making. When we make our eyes something other than the eyes of our personal fear. When we rebirth our limited sight with the panorama of the kingdom of the spirit, we see a different world. It is not an American world, a Russian world, a Christian or Muslim world.

When we make these eyes, we might see the hurting little boy just as he is and take care of him. Certainly we would protect him from the inappropriate terror, his and ours, of placing him in the most powerful political position in the world.

We might also see the broken dreams of the working class and the hopes of the refugee and immigrant, with or without papers. Perhaps we would see through the paper money walls of our financial skyscrapers and over the bulwarks of our gated communities. Maybe we would see that these gates, these flimsy walls, are built by and rest on the shoulders of the formerly invisible and now despised. And we would have compassion for the hunger and fear of every being across this entire spectrum of humanity.

We might see that promoting hollow entertainment all the way to the doorstep of our nearly abandoned White House does not make for good governance. We might comprehend that the illusionists of “reality TV” can never transform petulance into POTUS. We might notice that fanning the flames of polarization to sell media ultimately burns away the bonds of healthy community.

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
I hear their cries
Just say if it’s too late for me*

Good news. The doctor is in. She’s got our eyes. They are truly ours. We can make them new. We can use them to see a world without borders. We can peer with them into the heart of each and see the need of all. But let’s not stop there.

Let’s look up and down, left and right, in and out. Take in the beauty beyond imagining, the world as it is without the borders of our old eyes. Absorb the wonders of the created and the unfolding. Rest in the assurance of a shared enough.

May our true eyes light the path of compassionate action with no attachments. Perhaps in this way, we will pick up and wield the tool of democracy with better respect and to greater effect.

We Are One

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

I speak of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source, one of a million inadequate names for that which we commonly call God. In the very use of the name, of any name, I imply separation. But we are not separate. Separation has been our perennial blinder. We are One.

Under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we hide in our shame because, in our awakening to awareness of our surroundings, we believe we are separate. We have a sense of self. All good and true, that sense of self. But at the same time, We are One.

We think, rightly, of creation as the work of C/S/M/S. Creation is, in fact, the very outbreath of the energy of C/S/M/S. Because we can observe it, we are tempted to think we are not part of it. But even as we are gifted, in our limited capability, to look deeper and deeper into the infinite marvel of creation, we are the very thing itself. We are One.

All of our anxiety and distorted behavior; all of our anger and angst, our greed and despair; all of these are rooted in our shortsighted view of separation. Yes, we are unique in our embodied presence. Yes, we look out of these eyes and we see others and every thing. But every other and every thing emanates from the same breath, the indescribable marvel of mass, the speed of light squared and its energetic product. There is no difference or separation. We are One.

All evil emanates from the lie, the limited and incorrect view, that we are separate. We create. We make things. We buy things and sell them. When our making is isolated in self – when it is self-ish – it is corrupted and the wealth we generate and hoard only confirms our illusion of separation. I have more. That is good. Someone else has less. Too bad. Violence erupts and the only solution we can see is greater violence to crush our enemy.

When our making, our creating, takes place in the spirit of connection, we are conscious that we only touch, we co-create, we one-create with the Spirit of every thing and everything. And our product is a gift of beauty and utility for the world, the universe, the everything of which we are part. We are One.

When we wake in the morning, we can practice seeing things as whole. For me, the simple exercise of breathing in “Thy Will,” breathing out, “be done,” takes me to a place of connection. I am not separate from the creative will of C/S/M/S. Nor am I obliterated or forgotten in it. I am just in it, part of it, participating with openness and willingness. I am being my true Self, breathing, creating, acting in relationship to each one and each thing.

When we realize our true home under the Tree of Life, we are at rest in motion. We are at ease in creating. We have no fight with our surroundings, no fear of the other.

And we are empowered to speak with clarity, to touch with compassion, to invite with kindness.

We are One.

Scripture today from my soul brother JD Martin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q5ia2jUeqc

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.

Two Trees in the Garden

Thoughts on a New Spirituality

Tag Archives: Ego

Creation

Submit Yourself

We Are One

The Choice of Devotion

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*Doctor My Eyes, Jackson Browne. • Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group

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