Matthew Fox has studied, written, and taught on theology
and the mystics for decades. In one of his books on Meister Eckhart, Fox
writes:
In the soul,
Eckhart maintains, there is “something like a spark of divine nature, a divine
light, a ray, an imprinted picture of the divine nature.” [1] . . . But we have
to make contact with this divine spark by emptying ourselves or letting go. And
then we will know the unity that already exists. [2]
Indian-born
teacher Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) puts it in similar terms:
Life’s real and
highest goal . . . [is] to discover this spark of the divine that is in our
hearts. . . . When we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the
divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all—all individuals, all
creatures, all of life. [3]
Meister
Eckhart was frequently criticized by his contemporaries (and still is by some
people today) because his language was far too unitive. We like our
distinctions! We don’t want to hear that we have the same soul as our enemies,
not our personal ones and certainly not our cultural or global ones! We want to
hate them, don’t we? And far too often our religion seemingly gives us
permission to do so. But mystics don’t hate anyone. They simply can’t. They
pray, as Jesus does on the cross, “Father forgive them, they do not know what
they are doing” (Luke 23:34). The mystic knows the other person doesn’t know.
It’s not malice as much as ignorance and unawareness. And, of course, it’s a
burden to know; it’s a responsibility to know, because once we know that God
has inhabited all that God has created, then all of our distinctions are silly.
They are just ways to create self-importance and superiority for ourselves and
put down someone else. We’ve played this game since grade school!
Mysticism
begins when we start to make room for a completely new experience of God as
immanent, present here and now, with and within all of us. God isn’t only
transcendent, “out there,” and separate from me. Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
wrote that God is “more intimate to me than I am to myself.” [4] St. Catherine
of Genoa (1447–1510) said, “My me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in
God.” [5] Like all mystics, they overcame the gap, and we can too. When God is
no longer out there or over there, we have begun the mystical journey. It’s not
simply that we have a new relationship with God. It’s as though we have a whole
new God!
That’s what Meister Eckhart meant when he said, “Let us pray to God that we may be free of God.” [6] That’s not sacrilege; that’s a beautifully humble prayer because we know that our present notion of God is never all God is. As Augustine boldly stated, “Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus” (“If we comprehend it, it is not God”). [7] Our present experience is never enough, but it is gratefully where we begin, and these mystics teach us that we grow with each experience of God.
An image is not of itself, nor is it for itself. It rather springs from the thing whose reflection it is and belongs to it with all its being. It owes nothing to a thing other than that whose image it is; nothing else is at its origin. An image takes its being immediately from that of which it is the image and has one sole being with it, and it is that same being. —Meister Eckhart
Sometimes it takes a mystic to translate another mystic for the rest of us. My dear friend, CAC faculty member, and modern mystic James Finley helps us understand Eckhart’s words. A slow, prayerful reading of this brilliant text will deepen your own insight:
[Meister Eckhart] says that the generosity of the Infinite is infinite and [that God] gives [God’s self] away as the reality of all things. And he says that our sorrow is that we do not know that we are the generosity of God. . . .
This is a paraphrase of Eckhart: Imagine you’re standing before a full-length mirror, and imagine the image of you is conscious, that it can think. And this image of you has been through a lot of therapy; it’s taken a lot of courses on being an insightful image. And it has come to a point in which it informs you that it doesn’t need you.
You say to the image of you, “Well, you know, this is going to be rough, really, since you’re an image of me.”
“No,” the image says, [after a pause], “I’ve worked on this; I’ve come to this point.”
And so, to gently help the image out, you step halfway off the side of the mirror; and half the image disappears. The image has a panic attack and goes back into therapy and says to the therapist, “I’m not real! I’m not real! I was working on my affirmations. I bolstered up my confidence, but I don’t know where I went. I buckled!”
Now, the image was real, but the image wasn’t real in the way that it thought it was real. It was real, but not real without you. It was real as an image of you. See?
Eckhart says, “The image owes no allegiances to anything except that of which it is the image.”. . . There is nothing that has the authority to say what it is except that of which it is the image. And so it is with us, Eckhart says, that we are the image of God. Without God, we are nothing, absolutely nothing. In being the image of God, we owe no allegiances to anything but the Infinite Love in whose image we are made. And the idolatry of diversions of the heart where we wander off into cul-de-sacs with the imagined authority of anything less or other than Infinite Love to name who we are: this is the problem.
Another of the Rhineland Mystics was
Meister Eckhart. His writings were probably the height of Western nondualism.
Carl McColman has written several accessible books on the Christian mystics
that broaden and deepen our notion of mysticism. He even makes a mystic like
Meister Eckhart understandable! Here McColman captures the essence of Eckhart:
Meister Eckhart stands alongside Bernard of Clairvaux and
John of the Cross as one of the most celebrated Christian mystics; he is also one
of the most controversial figures, having a number of his teachings declared as
heretical shortly after his death. Today, some scholars believe that the
censure of Eckhart’s ideas may have been politically motivated and have made
efforts to have his name formally cleared by the Vatican.
Eckhart entered the Dominican Order as a youth. After
spending some time in Paris, he returned to his native Germany, where he became
renowned as a preacher. [The
Dominicans are the Order of Preachers, and Meister Eckhart was a very popular
homilist in his day.] “Meister” is not his name, but a title,
referring to his receiving a master’s degree in theology. Eckhart’s impressive
body of work includes academic treatises in Latin, along with about one hundred
sermons in his native German. The German writings generally were his more
spiritually daring.
The problem with [reading] Eckhart seems to be that his
ideas were often expressed using language that could easily be misinterpreted.
[I, Richard, believe he was
misinterpreted because he was a nondual thinker, speaking to mostly dualistic
thinkers—just as Jesus was doing.] He has been accused of pantheism
(the belief that all things are God) or monism (the idea that there is
ultimately no distinction between God and creation). [Richard again: I believe Eckhart was
primarily teaching panentheism,
which means God in all
things.] He stressed God as a ground of being present throughout
creation—including in the human soul—and that each Christian is invited to give
birth to Christ within one’s soul. As a preacher, Eckhart saw his sermons as a
means of inspiring his listeners to recognize the divine presence within, and
in so doing to be “wonderfully united” to God. In his Sermon 5, he offers four
goals for his preaching:
When I preach, I
am accustomed to talk about detachment, saying that we should become free of
ourselves and of all things. Secondly, I say that we should be in-formed back
into the simple goodness, which is God. Thirdly, I say that we should be
mindful of the great nobility which God has given the soul in order that we
should become wonderfully united with [God]. Fourthly, I speak of the purity of
the divine nature, and of the radiance within it which is ineffable. God is a
word: an unspoken word. [1] [RR:
Unspoken, that is, until and unless we ourselves speak from the True Self!]
Author, spiritual teacher, friend, and fellow New Mexican Mirabai Starr offers us a bit of the story of Hildegard’s life with implications for our own lives today.
“Speak and write!” the voice from Heaven commanded.
But Hildegard of Bingen, medieval visionary nun, remained silent.
Hildegard was forty-three years old when her visions finally became so insistent that she could no longer contain the secret she had harbored since early childhood: the Holy One, identifying itself as “the Living Light,” spoke to her. It spoke to her regularly, its voice emerging from a swirl of spiraling light. . . .
“Oh mortal, who receives these things not in the turbulence of deception but in the purity of simplicity for making plain the things that are hidden,” the Holy One said that day in 1141, “write what you see and hear.”
It was not doubt that held her back, Hildegard assures us. The voice carried such authority that she was convinced its origin was divine. It was not a case of low self-esteem either, she says, nor a matter of worrying what other people might think. It was, she tells us, simple humility. Who was she, an uneducated woman, to proclaim God’s message to humanity? . . .
[But] the more she resisted, the more seriously ill she became. “Until at last,” she writes in her introduction to the Scivias, the first chronicle of her visions, “compelled by many infirmities . . . I set my hand to writing . . . and rose from my sickness with renewed strength.”. . .
We are not all prophets. It may not be our job to challenge authority and expose corruption. We may not be the ones to penetrate the code of sacred scriptures and feed the spiritually hungry. It may be up to others to sound the clarion call of impending doom, calling on humanity to change its ways.
Ours may be a modest awakening. We may simply refuse to participate for another moment in a life against which our hearts have been crying out for years.
It could be time to observe some version of the commandment to “keep the Sabbath holy” [Exodus 20:8] and begin to cultivate a daily contemplative practice. It could become imperative to curtail a pattern of overconsumption and make a concrete commitment to voluntary simplicity. It could be a matter of identifying the subtle and insidious ways in which we participate in a culture of war and take a vow of nonviolence in everything we do, in every relationship we forge and maintain. . . .
Speak out, Hildegard says. And when you do, when you recognize that inner voice as the voice of God and say what it has taught you, the sickness in your heart will melt away. The fatigue you have lived with for so long that you did not even notice how weary you were will lift. Your voice will ring out with such clarity and beauty that you will not be able to stop singing. To speak your truth, Hildegard teaches us, is to praise God.
Viriditas: The Greening of Things
Monday, August 3, 2020
Hildegard
is not only mystic; she is also prophet. . . . She disturbs the complacent,
deliberately provoking the privileged, be they emperors or popes, abbots or
archbishops, monks or princes to greater justice and deeper sensitivity to the
oppressed. . . . She can rightly be called the “Grandmother of the Rhineland
mystic movement” . . . [which] brought the powers of mysticism to bear not on
supporting the status quo, but on energizing the prophetic in society and
church. For Hildegard, justice plays a dominant role. —Matthew Fox
Throughout
the ages, mystics have kept alive the awareness of our union with God and thus
with everything. What some now call creation spirituality or the holistic
Gospel was voiced long ago by the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Africa, some
Eastern Orthodox Fathers, ancient Celts, many of the Rhineland mystics, and of
course Francis of Assisi. I am sorry to say that many women mystics were not
even noticed. Julian of Norwich (c. 1343–c. 1416) and Hildegard of Bingen
(1098–1179) would be two major exceptions, though even they have often been
overlooked.
Hildegard
wrote in her famous book Scivias: “You understand so little of what is around
you because you do not use what is within you.” [1] This is key to
understanding Hildegard. Without using the word, Hildegard recognized that the
human person is a microcosm with a natural affinity for or resonance with
the macrocosm, which many of us would
call God. We are each “whole” and yet part of a larger Whole. Our little world
reflects the big world. Resonance is the key word here, and contemplation is the key
practice. Contemplation is
the end of all loneliness because it erases the separateness between the
observer and the observed, allowing us to resonate with what is right
in front of us.
Hildegard
spoke often of viriditas, the greening of things from
within, analogous to what we now call photosynthesis. She saw that there was a
readiness in plants to receive the sun and to transform its light and warmth
into energy and life. She recognized that there is an inherent connection
between the Divine Presence and the physical world. This Creator-to-created
connection translates into inner energy that is the soul and seed of every
thing, an inner voice calling us to “become who you are; become all that you
are.” This is our life wish or “whole-making instinct.”
Hildegard is a
wonderful example of someone who lives safely inside an entirely integrated
cosmology. In her holistic understanding of the universe, the inner shows
itself in the outer, and the outer reflects the inner. The individual reflects
the cosmos, and the cosmos reflects the individual. Hildegard sings, “O Holy
Spirit, . . . you are the mighty way in which every thing that is in the
heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness,
is penetrated with relatedness.” [2] This
is a true, natural, and integrated Trinitarian metaphysics (what is) and
epistemology (how we know what is), both at the same time! Perhaps many Christians overlooked Hildegard’s
genius because we ourselves have not been very Trinitarian.
The Rhineland Mystics
The
Need for Mysticism
Sunday, August 2, 2020
We live in a time of both crisis and
opportunity. While there are many reasons to be anxious, I still have hope.
Westerners, including Christians, are rediscovering the value of nonduality: a
way of thinking, acting, reconciling, boundary-crossing, and bridge-building
based on inner experience of God and God’s Spirit moving in the world. We’re
not throwing out our rational mind, but we’re adding nondual, mystical,
contemplative consciousness. When we have both, we’re able to see more broadly,
deeply, wisely, and lovingly. We can collaborate on creative solutions to
today’s injustices.
I’m glad there’s renewed appreciation in the Christian
tradition for people who modeled such wholeness. This week I’ll turn toward my
own cultural roots in the Rhineland. These mystics were mostly German-speaking
spiritual writers, preachers, and teachers, who lived largely between the 11th
and 15th centuries.
You might already be familiar with the Benedictines,
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Gertrude the Great (1256–1302); the Beguine
Mechtild of Magdeburg (c. 1212–c. 1282); the Dominicans, including Meister
Eckhart (c. 1260–1327), Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), and Henry Suso
(1295–1366); and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), in what is now
Switzerland. Another Rhineland mystic in recent history who might surprise you
was psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Jung admits to being influenced
by Hildegard, Eckhart, and Nicholas of Cusa—especially Nicholas’ fascination
with “the opposites.” [1]
After the Protestant Reformation, the mystical path was
largely mistrusted. Some would even say it was squelched because of Martin
Luther’s (1483-1546) emphasis on Scripture as the only source of knowledge
about God (sola Scriptura).
To be fair, Luther’s contributions led Christians to an early stage “rational”
use of the Scriptures as a corrective to Catholic over-spiritualization. Within
his own Lutheran tradition, profound mystics arose such as the German shoemaker
Jacob Boehme (1575–1624) and the inventor Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
In the following centuries, German academic theology
flourished, relying almost exclusively on Post-Reformation rationalism. While
theological study continues to be an immense gift to the world, one can easily
get trapped inside of endless discussions
about abstract ideas with little emphasis on experience or practice. In
contrast, mystics honor the experience of the essential mystery and
unknowability of God and invite us to do the same. The more you know, the more
you know you don’t know!
Over the next couple of days, we’ll focus on one Rhineland mystic in particular: Hildegard of Bingen. She was far ahead of her place and time, a Renaissance woman before the Renaissance, who led a monastery north of the Alps. Hildegard combined art, music, poetry, ecology, medicine, community, healing, and early feminism. She preached on her own, stood up to bishops, and was persecuted for it. No wonder it took a German Pope, Benedict XVI, over 800 years after her death to declare her a saint in May, 2012, and then name her a Doctor of the Church on October 7, 2012.
Blessed
are the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God. —Matthew 5:9
Today many think
we can achieve peace through violence. The myth that violence solves problems
is part of the way we think and is in direct opposition to all great religious
teachings. Our need for immediate control leads us to disconnect the
consistency, connection, and unity between means and ends. We even named a
missile created for the destruction of humanity a “peacekeeper.” But such peace
is a false peace, the Pax Romana of mutually assured destruction (MAD). We must
wait and work for the Pax Christi of mutually assured forgiveness.
The above verse
from Matthew is the only time the word “peacemakers” is used in the whole
Bible. A peacemaker literally is the “one who reconciles quarrels.” Jesus is
clearly not on the side of the violent but on the side of the nonviolent. Jesus
is saying there is no way to peace other than peacemaking itself.
Coretta Scott
King reflects on her husband Martin Luther King, Jr.’s commitment to
nonviolence with love at its center:
Noncooperation
and nonviolent resistance were means of stirring and awakening moral truths in
one’s opponents, of evoking the humanity which, Martin believed, existed in
each of us. The means, therefore, had to be consistent with the ends. And the
end, as Martin conceived it, was greater than any of its parts, greater than
any single issue. “The end is redemption and reconciliation,” he believed. . .
.
Even
the most intractable evils of our world—the triple evils of poverty, racism,
and war which Martin so eloquently challenged in his Nobel lecture—can only be
eliminated by nonviolent means. And the wellspring for the eradication of even
these most economically, politically, and socially entrenched evils is the
moral imperative of love. In his 1967 address to the anti-war group Clergy and
Laity Concerned, he said:
When I speak of
love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of
that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying
principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to
ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about
ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
“Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of
God and knoweth God” [1 John 4:7].
If
love is the eternal religious principle, Martin Luther King, Jr. believed, then
nonviolence is its external worldly counterpart. He wrote:
At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives. [1]
Peaceful change starts within us and grows incrementally from where we are. Our social and physical location will influence the problems we see and the solutions we can imagine. We must “think globally and act locally” as did Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Wangari Maathai (1940–2011).
Maathai devoted herself to environmental and democratic reform in her native Kenya.
As a young academic biologist at the University of Nairobi in the 1970s . . . Maathai grew concerned about the environmental devastation created in Nairobi by widespread deforestation. She recognized that a massive replanting program could both save the land and provide a source of income for Nairobi’s poor. So in 1977 she founded a small local organization that paid Nairobi women to plant trees. The organization soon grew into a nationwide and then pan-African one known as the Greenbelt Movement. Since its inception, the movement has planted upwards of forty million trees in Africa and provided sources of income for nearly one million women.
The genius of Maathai’s vision was its holistic awareness of the linkage between environmental sustainability and economic opportunity. . . . [1]
In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Wangari Maathai said,
[The Green Belt Movement] participants discover that they must be part of the solutions. They realize their hidden potential and are empowered to overcome inertia and take action. They come to recognize that they are the primary custodians and beneficiaries of the environment that sustains them.
Entire communities also come to understand that while it is necessary to hold their governments accountable, it is equally important that in their own relationships with each other, they exemplify the leadership values they wish to see in their own leaders, namely justice, integrity and trust.
Although initially the Green Belt Movement’s tree planting activities did not address issues of democracy and peace, it soon became clear that responsible governance of the environment was impossible without democratic space. Therefore, the tree became a symbol for the democratic struggle in Kenya. Citizens were mobilized to challenge widespread abuses of power, corruption and environmental mismanagement. . . .
Through the Green Belt Movement, thousands of ordinary citizens were mobilized and empowered to take action and effect change. . . . They learned to overcome fear and a sense of helplessness and moved to defend democratic rights.
In time, the tree also became a symbol for peace and conflict resolution. . . .
It is 30 years since we started this work. Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated. Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.
In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.
Look
with the Eyes of Compassion
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
The
Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (born 1926) is one of the world’s most
influential spiritual teachers. During the Vietnam War, his work for peace
brought him into friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton,
and other Christians who shared his belief that peace must be who we are, not
just something we demand. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches:
This
capacity of waking up, of being aware of what is going on in your feelings, in
your body, in your perceptions, in the world, is called Buddha nature, the
capacity of understanding and loving. . . . It is with our capacity of smiling,
breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.
Many
of us worry about the world situation. We don’t know when the bombs will
explode. We feel that we are on the edge of time. As individuals, we feel
helpless, despairing. The situation is so dangerous, injustice is so
widespread, the danger is so close. In this kind of situation, if we panic,
things will only become worse. We need to remain calm, to see clearly.
Meditation is to be aware, and to try to help.
I
like to use the example of a small boat crossing the Gulf of Siam. In Vietnam,
there are many people, called boat people, who leave the country in small
boats. Often the boats are caught in rough seas or storms, the people may
panic, and boats can sink. But if even one person aboard can remain calm,
lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat
survive. His or her expression—face, voice—communicates clarity and calmness,
and people have trust in that person. They will listen to what he or she says.
One such person can save the lives of many.
Our
world is something like a small boat. Compared with the cosmos, our planet is a
very small boat. We are about to panic because our situation is no better than
the situation of the small boat in the sea. . . . Humankind has become a very
dangerous species. We need people who can sit still and be able to smile, who
can walk peacefully. We need people like that in order to save us. Mahayana
Buddhism says that you are that person. . . .
The
root-word “budh” means to wake up, to know, to understand. A person who wakes
up and understands is called a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to
wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature. [Christians would call this Christ nature, the Christ
self, or the mind of Christ.] . . .
When you understand, you cannot help but love. . . . To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.
Nonviolence: A Spiritual Superpower Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Be the change you wish to see in the world. —Gandhi
My good friend, John Dear, is a devoted student of Mohandas Gandhi and has dedicated his life to the promotion of nonviolence through his activism and writing. John writes:
In his search for God and truth, Mohandas Gandhi [1869–1948] concluded that he could never hurt or kill anyone, much less remain passive in the face of injustice, imperialism, and war. Instead, Gandhi dedicated himself to the practice and promotion of nonviolence. He concluded that nonviolence is not only the most powerful force there is; it is the spiritual practice most neglected and most needed throughout the world.
“Nonviolence means avoiding injury to anything on earth, in thought, word, or deed,” Gandhi told an interviewer in 1935. But for Gandhi, nonviolence meant not just refraining from physical violence interpersonally and nationally, but refraining from the inner violence of the heart as well. It meant the practice of active love toward one’s oppressors and enemies in the pursuit of justice, truth, and peace. “Nonviolence cannot be preached,” he insisted. “It has to be practiced.” For fifty years, Gandhi sought to practice nonviolence at every level in life, in his own heart, among his family and friends, and publicly in his struggle for equality in South Africa and freedom for India. It was the means by which he sought the ends of truth; in fact, he later concluded that the ends were in the means, or perhaps they were even the same. In other words, the practice of nonviolence is not just the way to peace; it is the way to God.
Gandhi’s nonviolence was a religious duty. It stood at the center of his spirituality, all his spiritual teachings, and his daily spiritual practice. Gandhi concluded that God is nonviolent, and that God’s reign is the reign of nonviolence. “Nonviolence assumes entire reliance upon God,” Gandhi taught. “When the practice of nonviolence becomes universal, God will reign on earth as God reigns in heaven.” After years of studying the various religions, Gandhi concluded too that nonviolence is at the heart of every religion. It is the common ground of all the world’s religions, the hidden ground of peace and love underlying every religion. . . .
Gandhi thought that the force of nonviolence was more powerful than all nuclear weapons combined and that if we all practiced perfect active nonviolence, we could unleash a spiritual explosion more powerful than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. “I am certain that if we want to bring about peace in the world,” Gandhi told a group of visitors a few months before his death, “there is no other way except that of nonviolence.”
“Nonviolence is the greatest and most active force in the world,” Gandhi wrote. . . . “My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more infectious it becomes till it overwhelms your surroundings and by and by might oversweep the world.
Story from Our Community: As I read the daily meditation this morning, I felt as if something bigger than me was telling me everything is going to be okay. My kids and I have just moved to a new town after leaving an abusive husband. It was not easy, and these first few days have been a struggle. We are healing, and I see this time in my life as more than just a change of address or a new job but as a transformation. I’ve been through the dark night, the fire, and I will be stronger. I am excited to see what our new lives will include. Thank you for the daily meditations. —Name withheld
Change
Comes from the Inside
Monday, July 27, 2020
As we come to know our soul gift more clearly,
we almost always have to let go of some other “gifts” so we can do our one or
two things with integrity. Such letting go frees us from always being driven by
what has been called the “tyranny of the urgent.” [1] Soon urgency is a way of
life, and things are not done peacefully from within. What if we choose to
simply do one or two things wholeheartedly in our lives? That is all God
expects and all we can probably do well. Too much good work becomes a violence
to ourselves and, finally, to those around us.
Let’s just use our different gifts to create a unity in
the work of service (Ephesians 4:12–13), and back one another up, without
criticism or competition. Only in our peaceful, mutual honoring do we show
forth the glory of God.
The Gospel is not about being nice; it is about being
honest and just, and the world doesn’t like those two things very much. Our job
is to learn how to be honest, but with love and respect. Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. taught us that before we go out to witness for justice, we have to make
sure that we can love and respect those with whom we disagree.
Imagine the surrender necessary for those who have been
oppressed for hundreds of years to continue to work peacefully for justice.
Frankly, I don’t know how anyone can do it without contemplation. How do we get
to that deep place where we do not want to publicly expose, humiliate, or
defeat our opponents, but rather work, as King said, for win-win situations?
Seeking win-win solutions, not win-lose, takes a high level of spiritual
development and demands spiritual conversion.
When we are hurt, we want to hurt back. When we are put
down, we want to put down the opponent. This is our ego’s natural defense
mechanism. We all move toward the ego, and we even solidify it as we get older
if something doesn’t expose it for the lie that it is—not because it is bad,
but because it thinks it is the whole and only thing! We change from
inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity,
which gradually changes everything.
True
contemplation is the most subversive of activities because it undercuts the one
thing that normally refuses to give way–our natural individualism and
narcissism. Once we are freed from our narcissism that thinks we are the center
of the world, or that our rights and dignity have to be defended before other
people’s rights and dignity, we can finally live and act with justice and
truth. People don’t really change by themselves. God changes us, if we can
expose ourselves to God at a deep level.
Being Peaceful Change
Inner
Unity
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Before you speak of peace, you must
first have it in your heart. —Francis of Assisi
Generations of Christians seem to have forgotten Jesus’
teachings on nonviolence. We’ve relegated visions of a peaceful kingdom to a
far distant heaven. We hardly believed Jesus could have meant for us to turn
the other cheek here and now. It took Gandhi, a Hindu, to help us apply Jesus’
peace-making in very practical ways. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968),
drawing from Gandhi’s writings and example, brought nonviolence to the
forefront of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
The nonviolence of Gandhi, like that of the civil rights
activists, affirmed a unity of peaceful ends and means. Thomas Merton,
reflecting on Gandhi’s nonviolence, wrote:
Non-violence was
not simply a political tactic which was supremely useful and efficacious in
liberating his people from foreign rule . . . the spirit of non-violence sprang
from an inner realization of
spiritual unity in himself. The whole Gandhian concept of
non-violent action . . . is incomprehensible if it is thought to be a means of
achieving unity rather than as the
fruit of inner unity already achieved. [1]
Training in nonviolence helps us admit that our secret
inner attitudes are often cruel, attacking, judgmental, and harsh. The ego
seems to find its energy precisely by having something to oppose, fix, or
change. When the mind can judge something to be inferior, we feel superior. We
must recognize our constant tendency toward negating reality, resisting it,
opposing it, and attacking it on the level of our mind. This is the universal
addiction.
Authentic spirituality is always first about you—about allowing your own
heart and mind to be changed. It’s about getting your own who right. Who is it that is doing the
perceiving? Is it your illusory, separate, false self; or is it your True Self,
who you are in God?
As Thomas Keating said:
We’re all like
localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence. So love is our
very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name. Love is all; not [love
as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest.
This is also marvelously exemplified in Gandhi’s life and work. He never tried to win anything. He just tried to show love; and that’s what ahimsa [the Hindu principle of nonviolence out of respect for all living things] really means. It’s not just a negative. Nonviolence doesn’t capture its meaning. It means to show love tirelessly, no matter what happens. That’s the meaning of turning the other cheek [Matthew 5:39]. Once in a while you have to defend somebody, but it means you’re always willing to suffer first for the cause—that is to say, for communion with your enemies. If you overcome your enemies [through force and violence], you’ve failed. If you make your enemies your partners, God has succeeded. [2]
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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