American Christianity’s Elephant in the Room

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Jerry Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden

Since the very beginning of the nation, Christianity has been the dominant cultural narrative of the United States. Or, more accurately, the narrative of American Christianity has been the dominant narrative, and it reads something like this:

Jesus, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, was different from you and me. He was truly God’s child, the first and last God incarnate. We are not.
Jesus loves you and wants to live in your heart.
Jesus looked pretty much like a white middle-American, except he wore a robe.
Jesus plays good cop to God’s bad cop. We sit in the chair of interrogation. In the end, if we don’t answer right, we’re going to get it.
Jesus said a lot of wonderful things and performed a bunch of miracles, but what really matters is that he died on the cross to save you from your sins. Jesus saves.
Everyone is welcome in heaven, so long as they believe Jesus died for their sins and they praise his name on a regular basis.
Jesus is coming again to get those who qualify under number 6 and to leave the rest behind, gnashing their teeth as the world goes down to hell. One of my favorite bumper stickers, in fact, reads, “Jesus is coming soon, and is he pissed!”

I would argue that this is not at all what Jesus was about. But that is for another day. Today, the message is that Christianity, at least in this cultural narrative, is dying in America. And for the most part, the Christian church does not begin to comprehend the reason why. Look around carefully, there is an elephant in the room.

Church attendance has indeed declined steadily for at least the past two generations. Catholics have been hit hardest, followed by mainline Protestant congregations. Large evangelical churches have been more likely to hold on, but even these are now seeing some decline. In every research result, the “nones” and their “spiritual but not religious” cohort (all unaffiliated with any church) are steadily rising, especially in the emerging dominant millennial generation, but even among boomers and the silent generation that preceded them.

The evangelical mega-churches which had their hay day in the last twenty-five years are not immune. Their marketing strategies and strategic plans implicitly acknowledge the consumer mentality of their, should we even use the label, parishioners. Entertainment is not true religion. Run the country out of fossil fuels or put on a better show down the street and watch what becomes of the theater seats, big screens and easy faith.

Some pollsters say the numbers lie, that what is happening is that people just go to church less often. Others say that people are expressing their faith in house churches and other nontraditional gatherings. There is no doubt a level of truth in both of these observations.

But no one is identifying or addressing the elephant in the room. The American Christian church is dying. It is dying not because of Jesus, but because American Christianity’s dominant story line, its basic value proposition, is bankrupt, with fewer and fewer willing to consider it credible enough to buy. Fewer and fewer give any credence to the narrative that we are at core defective, not made just the way Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source (C/S/M/S) intended, and that America’s Christian God requires blood sacrifice – specialized human/deity blood, at that – to keep from damning us to hell.

And nowhere in the church is that being acknowledged or addressed straight out. In my review of religious demographic surveys I could not find even one that asked Christians or anyone else whether they truly believed that God required the blood sacrifice of a human incarnation to redeem them from their fallen nature. Why is that?

I suspect at least three problems. First, American Christian leaders are scared to hell of the likely results, which is why they persist in speculations and surveys about every other possible reason for their steady and imminent demise. Further, it is possibly beyond the realm of imagination for these bearers of Christian angst to conceive of this issue at all. It is literally unthinkable. Finally, the elephant is both so large and so preposterous that people in general find it simply easier to dismiss it quietly and not to talk about it. Who wants to disturb a holy elephant, dead or alive? The result is that hot air is steadily cooling in this once dominant balloon. And the poor wizard, while nervous, convinces himself that the curtain still hides him and the illusion holds sway.

Spirituality in America needs a new value proposition. There were two special metaphorical trees in the Garden of Eden, both intended for us in the mind of C/S/M/S. We ate from the first, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We did not fall, we just thought we did. We simply woke to all the splendor and terror of human awareness. C/S/M/S never wanted us to kill anyone or anything to get free of that tree. That was our idea. The call in all times and places has been to grow up, to make good choices in the context of who we are and to move on to 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.

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.

Environmentalism and the Two Trees

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

In some big way, the Earth is the tree in our garden. Going back to the C.S. Lewis view of the garden of creation in the Narnia books (Two Trees in the Garden, “The Fruit of Our Heart’s Desire”, July 26, 2013), our two trees – the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life – are really the same tree. The difference is in how we approach the tree and our use of the fruit we take away.

The Earth is the giving tree of creation. It is full of fruit. We choose, each day of our lives, which tree we will make it.

When we view the Earth from our perspective under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we view it through a lens of scarcity. Whatever the Earth might provide us, there is never enough. The natural response is to grab, to grasp, to hoard and to engage in glutinous consumption. The consequences of that view are apparent. There is a rapidly increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots in the United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth. (A recent president referred, with some chilling sarcasm, to “the haves and the have-mores”, blatantly celebrating the disparity.) Resources are gathered and consumed without regard to the social or environmental cost. And, ultimately, this gathering and hoarding is protected with violence and the cost of life. War after war has been waged in the name of some lofty principle or other that masks the underlying defense of access to natural resources and the associated wealth.

We can swing our environmentalist, social justice and peacenik bats as fast and furiously as we like. Certainly we must take positions of clarity on this issue. Ultimately, this is a spiritual problem and needs to be addressed at that level. We should be neither blind to nor distracted by the possible consequences.

Jesus, Gandhi and King are exemplary here. Certainly there are others, but these we know in the West, the United States in particular. In our objection to greed and abuse of power, we should never overlook the obligation and compassion of call to the one lost under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Jesus’s call to Zacchaeus, whose greed and fear were expressed in the abuses available to the tax collector, is a clear and simple picture. There was some spark for Zacchaeus, at least enough curiosity to cause him to climb the tree so that he could see Jesus. Jesus called him out. He confronted him with compassion. Zacchaeus changed his behavior.

Under the Tree of Life, our response to greed and fear must be the call of compassion, a call that cares for the perpetrator lost in self-centered fear and greed while at the same time fending for, protecting and improving the lot for the victims of the perpetrator.

We should never delude ourselves about the grip of power and wealth. The human heart lost in that grip will resort to killing and devastation of anything to avoid freedom from and relinquishment of those false protections. But neither should we be deterred or dismayed.

If we save the world from devastation through violence, we have saved nothing. We have only lost ourselves to our own isolation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

There are no guarantees of success in the short-term. We could lose the Earth to the violence and environmental degradation caused by those who are themselves lost in the grip of plunder, convinced that comfort and ease in this particular life will somehow protect them from bodily demise. And we could easily die, as so many others have, standing in the way and making the compassionate call to view the Earth as our shared Tree of Life, with enough for all, and with a vision that is longer, broader and deeper than our current incarnation in the here and now.

In fact, there are no guarantees of success in the long-term, either. There is only a choice of faith:

faith that the choice to live under the Tree of Life is the ultimate path of spiritual progress
faith that sets aside both hatred and fear
faith that expresses compassion and stewardship in ways that transcend our necessarily limited physical view and understanding of the world around us

I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist about the future of our planet. It is a beautiful gift, one that calls for nurture, restoration and compassionate stewardship that seeks the good of all. We choose what tree it will be – a nourishing Tree of Life or a depleted and exhausted Tree of the Know ledge of Good and Evil.

What I am convinced of, deeply, is the challenge and importance of our choices, personally and collectively. My spirit rises to the call of the Tree of Life:

the call to steward, to stand, to confront and to call with compassion and welcome
the call to take the bullet or to be nailed to the tree when a frozen heart is convinced that our death will clear the path for the temporary safety of wealth and power
the call to rise up again – and again and again – to rise up again and to live in the home of love under the Tree of Life.

There is no end. There is nothing to fear.

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.

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: Philosophy

American Christianity’s Elephant in the Room

Who We Are

Willingness vs. Willfulness

Environmentalism and the Two Trees

Scientism and The Tree of Life

I Believe

Deteng, Baby, Deteng!

For Shouldness Sake

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