Tag Archives: Spiritual Companionship

Born in You this Day

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“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.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  Share what is useful.  Please quote the source.

Spiritual but not Religious

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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.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  If you like it, share it.  Kindly note the source

A Good Read Under the Tree of Life

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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.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  Share what is useful.  Let folks know where you found it.

The Day of Non-Judgment

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Check yourself when you wake up in the morning.  What’s that first feeling inside?  Is it angst about the things you have to do?  It might be worry about meeting with certain people or concern about the pile of unfinished tasks that lies ahead.  Or maybe it is relief that this is a day off, or excitement about an especially anticipated event – a birthday or the beginning of a long awaited journey.

Whatever the feeling, it is almost certainly one of prejudice – pre-judgment.  We are pretty sure that things will be this way or that way.  And we have pretty much decided that this way is good or that way is bad.

I am not an advocate of positive thinking, of trying to manipulate actions and outcomes by painting them bright yellow and giving them a spin to the left or to the right.  Positive thinking is only what it is – a veneer we try to paste on our muddy core of judgment.

Nor am I an advocate of denial of feelings.  Feelings are simply the natural reactions to reality as it is perceived and experienced by small “m” me, the me I discovered when I awoke to my surroundings under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The very name of the tree implies exactly what it is – the tree of judgment.

Waking up under that tree, we believe that our life task is to sort our pile of baby blocks just as quickly and effectively as we can.  This block is good . . . It goes in this pile.  This block is bad . . . It goes in that pile over there and I hope I can figure out a way to trash it so it never comes back.  And, oh my goodness, worst of all, I can’t decide about this one.  What will it become?  How do I know?  What should I do with it?  What will it do to me?

I think I will bury the feelings, maybe over here under positive thinking, so I don’t have to feel this way anymore.  Shit!  That didn’t work either!  And now I am late for my meeting!

Chill, baby “m”.  Let “Me” (big “S” Self) hold you and tell you that we are here together.  And we are not, as you believe, under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We are under the Tree of Life.

We are not our feelings.  We just experience them.  And our true response comes from the source of everything we need – the fruit of the Tree of Life and the living water of the river by which it is planted – the gifts of Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source – our essence, breath and true being.

The essence of that water is love.  It nourishes the sustaining fruits of the tree, which are peace, true joy, patience and compassion.  Whether baby “we” know it or not, that is what we truly seek.  And when we open the eyes of our Spirit, on any given morning, we know that we have exactly what we need.  And we can offer it to our small “s” selves.  We can live it in all of our actions, in the touch of all whom we encounter.

Let’s hold that little fearful self for a moment to calm its terror about the day.  Let’s sit with it in joy and help it to let go of the angst that the things we have judged to be good might not work out.  We can tell it that all is well, that we can choose to be and to act, in each moment of each day, without judgment.  We can choose to be and to act as our true Self, the one that is fed and cared for – by and one with C/S/M/S – under the Tree of Life.

The practice of stillness, at one with the action of willingness, creates the doorway to non-judgment.  It is the practice of being the center of the spinning wheel – completely at rest and fully in motion.

Our focus and activity, in each moment and without judgment, is to drink the living water, which makes it possible for us to be the very fruit of the Tree of Life.  We offer this nourishing fruit, we offer Ourselves, in each moment and in each action.  We offer it first to the little one, the little self, crying in our arms.  We offer it to redeem and to transform the false vision of all who find themselves anxious and unhappy under the tree of judgment, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

A peach, for you and for me, together, under the Tree of Life.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote as useful, with appropriate reference.

I Believe

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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.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

Deteng, Baby, Deteng!

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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.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to use, referencing the source, if you find it helpful.

For Shouldness Sake

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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:

  1. not doing it, which is totally unsatisfactory and fraught with guilt; or
  2. 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.  Feel free to use this stuff, referencing the source, if you find it helpful.

Master Of The House: Teaching the Children of Our Dreams

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No one really touches us but ourselves.  Yes, bad, even horrible things happen to us.  Parents may have loaded us with guilt and shame.  Others may have stolen our innocence, our confidence, our health or physical abilities.  Even our own actions create wounds that bite and tear at us relentlessly, year after year.

We are filled with anxiety, self-doubt, hatred of ourselves, hatred of others, anger and bitterness that wear us down like a weight we cannot shake or a leaky tire that never has enough air.  If we lash out, we only engage a vicious cycle, with temporary relief replaced by acidic guilt, refueling anger, stoking the fire of seemingly justified rage, releasing itself in another inappropriate and damaging outburst – all of this often triggered by even just a single action that may have happened years ago.

Ignoring these lingering emotions is also counterproductive.  If we repress them, they may resurface in unhealthy ways, triggered by incidents and people that have no relationship and no proportion to the original wound.  Or they may turn on us, causing illness – true dis-ease, eating us alive from the inside out.

Jung and others have taught us to view the characters in our dreams as aspects of ourselves, qualities hidden in our subconscious that enter the house of our dreams and tell us hidden things, things we may or may not want to see or hear.

I would say that the emotions that linger from hurt and harm, whether inflicted by others or by ourselves, are the same.  Think of them as our children, clamoring for attention in our house, demanding that we do something, perhaps never enough from their perspective, to satisfy their wants and needs; to feed them, to protect and to defend them, to shelter them, even to go out and to fight on their behalf.  They are hurt.  They are ours.  We are responsible for them.  They demand satisfaction.

If they are children, somewhere, one would hope, there is a parent.  And of course, there is.  We are the parent.  As with all our children, we can choose how to parent these emotions.  We can parent from a place stuck under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We can choose anger.  We can choose to ignore.  We can argue with them on their own level.  We can let them, in essence, parent us, as we run around madly to meet their incessant demands.

The demands are incessant, of course, because they are not the real needs and, therefore, can never experience satisfaction on their own terms.

Satisfaction comes when we choose to parent our emotions from a position of life under the Tree of Life.  In that place, we are an adult.  We are spirit connected.  We are in charge.  We are caring and compassionate.  We are also separate, observing and directive, guiding and nurturing toward health.

The children of our wounds are primarily hurt, anger, shame and guilt.  We will choose our responses to them depending on their true level of need.  When wounds are fresh, or reopened for any reason, we need to show compassion and comfort to our children/ourselves.  We need to sit quietly, perhaps visualizing holding ourselves as a hurt child.

When our wounds are pestering us for attention and distracting from our work, daily living or relationships, we need to expect them to be quiet for a time, assuring that we will spend the time needed with them when it is appropriate.  Their gratification can be delayed.  That is different than repression and we must, of course, take the private time that is needed for listening, reflection and healing; time that can appropriately be set aside and used for that attention and purpose.  Otherwise our emotions will find us unworthy of trust and will strengthen their assault on our attention.

When our emotions are out of control and just wrecking the house, firm boundaries are the order of the day.  The time-out chair should be used without hesitation.  The good parent is clear about acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

And, of course, when either the wounds or the behavior are more than we can manage alone as a parent, professional help is in order.  Good parents make good decisions about when to take their children for medical or counseling attention.

I have found Getting Through The Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children, by Nancy J. Napier (W. W. Norton, 1993), an excellent practical resource for learning to take a healthy adult role in relation to our emotions, the children of our dreams that clamor for food and attention at the table of our heart.

The best place to deal with the fruit, the children, of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, is from our own grown up place under the Tree of Life.  It is our true home.  We can welcome our children to the table there.  We can treat them well.  We can raise them up.  They are never us.  But they are our charge until they are grown and ready to manage for themselves.

For today’s scripture, a fresh look at a well-known word from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young:

 Teach Your Children

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s, the one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

(Second verse counter-melody)

Can you hear and do you care and
Can’t you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in.

Teach your parents well,
Their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s, the one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  All rights reserved.

The Doorway: Life Between the Creeds

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  1. I don’t believe in a physical Father Almighty, though I suppose Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source (C/S/M/S) could choose to take that form in some very limited but specifically useful expression,
  2. Who fathered through the Holy Spirit an only-begotten Son of God who was physically or spiritually put together any differently than you or I.
  3. I do believe in C/S/M/S, that is the breath of life in all of us, in whom we live and move and have our being.
  4. I am much more inclined to believe in reincarnation than I am to believe in the actual resurrection of my specific physical remains (yuck!).  Or let’s say I think “I”, whatever spark of C/S/M/S “I” am, can likely be reconstituted in any way, shape, time or place Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source desires.
  5. I have a completely unfounded faith and confidence – call it a firm suspicion and longing – in/for life everlasting.

For me, as for many people I know and love, the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds just don’t cut it.  I live life between creeds.  An important disclaimer:  Growing up Mennonite, I was not raised in a creedal tradition.  We didn’t talk about it much, so I didn’t really know why.  I was aware of the creeds.  I think we read them occasionally, incidentally, accidentally.  We were just more concerned about following the teachings of Jesus about everyday life.  Looking back, I am grateful.

Liminal space, the threshold, the doorway between – spiritual directors like to talk about that as the creative place to be, the place where C/S/M/S can act for our growth.  It’s a place of wonder, of openness, but also of uncertainty and sometimes loneliness.  It is a place of leaving behind, of preparing to move forward, of not yet having arrived.  We live in liminal space and, I believe, in uniquely liminal times.

The people I connect with most don’t go to church anymore.  Or they confide, when they know they are safe, that there is nothing there for them spiritually – that they go for the sense of community, but that their spirit is hungry for something no longer found there.

I participate in two separate and independent gatherings, one called Journey and the other called, of all things, Journeys.  These groups both discuss questions of spirituality.  They are composed largely of people who grew up Christian, and who, for the most part, no longer participate in traditional church.  The average age in both groups, for whatever reason, is probably people in their early eighth decade (70’s, if you don’t want to do the math).  At 60, I am a relative youngster.  One meets in a church, sponsored and at least tolerated by a church, before the regular service.  Few of the perhaps 50 participants stay for service.

Liminal space is restless, like the times after a revolution and before the formation of a new nation.  These times lack definition and structure.  They are creative and risky, uncertain.  Traditional community is gone.  There is something within us, like the Israelites in the period of the judges, that at least subliminally (interesting, the derivation of that word) wants a king, and probably a creed.

It is 2013.  The world was supposed to end last year, just like it was supposed to end so many times before on so many calendars.  Perhaps it did.  Perhaps something truly tipped and the grip and bands of twenty centuries of Christianity (not Jesus, folks, but Christianity), broke, lost hold.  The bands did not disappear.  They did not dissolve in a flash, but they finally rusted through.  And the staves of the barrel are loosening.  The old wine is seeping and even running down the sides.

There is sadness, grief and pain in that loss.  It’s the music that hits me hardest.  So much incredible beauty, longing and hope, but with words that are hard to mouth and to articulate as we stand in this present doorway.  One day, and even now, I hope it can be sung with affirmation, as metaphor that, like all good metaphor, touches deep aspects of our human and spiritual condition, not as hard dogmatic reality.  I will not let the music go, or much of the scripture for that matter – language of healing and hope, full of C/S/M/S, beauty beyond beauty.

And there is hope and light in the doorway.  I can’t, even if I want, rush through it.  And the truth is I don’t want to.  Younger people will move past, and they should.  They will find their new creed and community.  And I might, too, in time.  But for now, I am at peace in the doorway, in this liminal space.  Both feet are perhaps on the threshold.  I am no longer in the past.  But neither have I moved on into some hard fast future.

I trust a bright tomorrow.  I trust the spirit of today.  I am grateful.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  All rights reserved.

Redemption

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Redemption is the follow-on act to forgiveness in the transformative process that moves us from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to the Tree of Life.   It is the action that makes our human experience useful for a life of spiritual growth and compassionate service.

Recall, again, that we are journeying from attachment and revulsion, to detachment from the controlling power of both our desires and also the burdens and pains of our human experience.  Detachment, in this context, is not disengagement from life.  Rather, it is a choice about control.  We detach by deciding that neither our desires nor our fears will have authority over who and how we are.  That authority comes from a different place and will be the topic for another week.

For the person engaged fully in this journey between the trees, forgiveness – relinquishing control – and redemption – accepting back as useful – are the paired constant tasks of life.  They are no more nor less than breathing in and breathing out.

Remember our experiential list from last week:

  • Desires that we chase, never to complete satisfaction
  • Fears and discomforts that we avoid
  • Wrongs that we inflict on others
  • Wounds and injustices that we receive

Forgiveness is the act of letting go of these things, of stepping off the merry-go-round, of no longer chasing our tail in our mad dash around the trunk of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Redemption is when all these things we have chased or run from, and now release, come back to us as useful tools for life.  Notice that I say tools.  We do not have to use them.  We do not have to go back to them.  Some we may choose never to touch again in any way.  Some traumas are too deep and the healing too long and painful to be picked up and put into active use as personal tools for the healing of others.  And I would never imply some kind of cosmic purpose dictated by the learnings from a horrible accident, for instance.

But at the very least, redemption is an action of sufficient personal healing to make it possible to move forward in life.  Perhaps, in fact, it is that very act of moving forward once we have been able to forgive and relinquish:

  • When I have let go of my attachment to a desire, I may choose to experience that pleasure when it is available if I know that it will not harm me or another, no longer controlled by my attachment to it. Or I may know that the possibility of reattachment holds too much risk for me.  In that case, I might choose to live my life without touching that experience again, while neither despising nor praising it.  I have experienced forgiveness.  I move on through redemption.
  • When we have let go of a fear we have long carried, we may simply move forward without it.  Or perhaps we will be comfortable enough with what we have learned that we can, in turn, help others on the path to name and to release similar fears.  Redemption is the move forward.  Redemption is also the new tool we have in service of others if we choose to use it.
  • When we have been able to give and to receive forgiveness for things we have done or for wounds we have received, redemption makes it possible for us to remind ourselves, with humility, when we might become critical or judgmental of others.  Or it may help us to empathize, to hear and to participate in the healing of another who has experienced a wound similar to our own.  In either case, it clears the path for us to move more freely and openly toward the Tree of Life, where all people experience and share healing.

Redemption touches and heals memory.  It does not take memory away, but it can make memory our teacher.  Redemption is our constant companion, if we are listening for it on the path, conversing with us, drawing wisdom and understanding from our experience.  If we allow it, redemption opens the ear of our hearts so that we can hear others with compassion.  It is the gift we become for each other on our journey to the Tree of Life.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  All rights reserved.