secret place of thunder

'Melancholia' and the advantage of the Abused

2011-11-25T20:26:00.001-08:00

Lars von Trier says, in an interview regarding his recent release Melancholia, that

"You can skate across the polished surface in this film. The style is polished, but underneath the smooth surface, there's content. And to get to that, you need to look beyond the polish. But the worst thing to happen was when they said at Nordisk Film: There are some beautiful images,”

This film has beauty, and it is seductive. Images of the landscape, the castle, the wedding reception, and of Kirsten Dunst can draw us in. Von Trier admits the finished picture had a "plastic" quality that nearly turned his own stomach against it. The filmmaker's creation has almost bested him. And moreso it may his audiences. Search the online reviews; few can describe what this movie is about other than the obvious, superficial elements.

On that superficial level, I have to say the film disappoints. There are no plot twists. There is no escape from the inevitable. There is only a witness of how various characters respond to an impending crash of planets.

There is, however, a deeper statement, reflected in the transformation of Dunst's character Justine: from helpless, depressed, and crushed by the weight of everyday life - to clear, direct, purposeful and productive - all as the crisis draws nearer. It is no coincidence that the character in whom this transformation takes place is a survivor of sexual abuse.

I expect most reviews will miss this background of Justine's character, but the evidence is all there, subtly and unmistakably. The father who is obsessed with women he jokingly names "Betty" - bringing two of them to the wedding - which we later learn is his pet-name for his daughter. The mother who openly scorns the marriage ceremony, who later bitterly explains, "I wasn't there when that man had a crack at her body, I wasn't there for her first sexual experience, why should I be there for this stupid ritual." And, finally, Justine's growing panic as her new husband undresses to consummate their union, requesting a moment to herself - during which she impulsively and violently rapes an innocuous wedding guest in the sand trap on the golf course. Justine has transferred forward the violence done to her, engaging in anonymous sex, often the only kind of sexuality with which the child victim of sexual abuse can identify.

Justine's history as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse - which is so subtly told it will be lost on most audiences, I'm afraid - provides a crucial backdrop for her prevalent present features: her crippling depression and her strange clarity and strength as the end of the world nears.

Part I, "Justine," shows Justine's debilitating mental illness: the wedding is admittedly a performance, a last-ditch effort to revive her spirits. Yet it is a failure, she cannot live on her own and ends up back at the castle estate on which her sister's family lives. She spends days in bed and needs help being lifted physically to the dinner table or the bath. She is a woman who cannot summon the energy to participate in everyday life on the same terms as others.

There is a thread connecting the instances of Justine's energy, and this is part of the genius of von Trier's script: Justine comes alive only at opportunities to engage with truth. She actively seeks out her mother to reveal her feelings of confusion and fear, only to be smote by her mother's jealous bitterness. Justine shows surprising initiative at chasing down her father and arranging him a room to stay the night, because she needs to speak with him about "something important." The incestuous father, however, sensing the possible encounter with the truth of his past transgressions, finds the excuse to flee from the confrontation. The husband of her dreams, while making dull attempts at kindness in providing a fantasy life for her, cannot himself deal with the truth of her depression, but escapes into the bottle of Hennessy and by burying his face in her breasts, hungry for sex. When Justine leaves her husband in his state of excitement, she is an abuse victim not just fleeing from stigmatized sex, but also intolerant of her partner's inability to face her truth.

As this pattern repeats in part II, it becomes evident that Justine's depression is not an individualized disease (as our medical model would have it), but rather that she is sapped of life as her key connections stake out their commitments to flee from the truth. As the collision with the planet Melancholia becomes more inevitable, the other adults flee - one through suicide, and the other into flailing fantasy and despair. Meanwhile, the character Justine answers a nighttime muse to bathe nude and touch herself in the light of the approaching planet Melancholia, symbolically drinking in the truth about her melancholy, which all the functioning world would deny her.

Robbed of the stability that would have come from healthy boundaries being respected in her upbringing, Justine, like all abuse survivors, at a young age had her world turned upside down. While she is incapable of functioning in a functioning world, she conversely possesses the unique ability to draw strength from chaos - for in the chaos, there is truth. As Justine says, "life is evil;" the functioning world, like her father, would hide its chaotic violence and put on pretenses (such as the wedding) for their own benefit. Yet, they crumble or flee when the truth eclipses their pretense. Justine, however, finally has her nourishment: the unmistakeable approach of the destruction she has always known was there. While her nephew's parents have abandoned him, she relates to him and steps up to show him the way through chaos: with dignity, they prepare, join together, and close their eyes to meditate while their destruction rips through them. Von Trier explains:

"We are [alone]. But no one wants to realize it. They keep wanting to push limits and fly wherever,” he laughs. “Forget it! Look inward.”

As eloquently as Pema Chodron might put it, Lars von Trier shows that truth cannot be met by our common, cowardly impulses toward escape. And in facing the truth, the struggles that trauma survivors have gone through to grapple with their own worldly handicaps will actually serve them well. Jesus did say, "the last will be first."

Regardless of whether the world ends suddenly with planets colliding, or whether melancholy gradually eclipses us as our trusted sources of stability in life are compromised, Melancholia asks us to consider how we will face truth. Will we plan, like Claire, to put on Beethoven's 9th, drink good wine, and try to make it "nice"? Or, like Justine, will we have the courage to meet truth with truth, call those sorts of plans "shit," and prepare in all seriousness as best we are able?

Anyone commenting on or reading about von Trier's film has felt the truth of the film resonating within them. Are we content to comment on the superficial, plastic elements of the film, or will we try to probe deeper for the source of this truth within us? Will we allow ourselves to be seduced, like an abuser, into thinking that beauty is all there is to be had - or will we force ourselves to keep asking questions, until the reality of the destruction becomes something we accept?

If you have been abused, you have in your experience an advantage in answering this for yourself.

Inversion of Destruction

2011-11-20T17:45:00.001-08:00

Nov. 9 -

"World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change

Nov 20 -

"Rich nations 'give up' on new climate treaty until 2020"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/20/rich-nations-give-up-climate-treaty

News this month published by the Guardian tells us that we are within 5 years of being "locked in" to an irreversible trajectory toward 450ppm of CO2, by projected demand and pollution of existing power plants, and that our leaders have resigned themselves to inaction, bowing more to the difficulties of human relationships than the consequences of doing nothing.

This means any change that will happen needs to come from below - from choices individuals make in our habits and our purchases. Time for us to grow up, our leaders are not going to legislate this for us.

The reason they will not, of course, is they fear the political backlash from their constituents if they were to try and enforce rationing, similar to the riots in England against austerity measures. We have always had the power.

The question is, do we realize we are also the problem? Each of us is to blame - not our leaders - for the path our Earth will take, because we in effect whine whenever our toys are threatened with being taken away. Our leaders cannot win when it comes to climate change, because they have whining on the left about their not doing enough and whining on the right about quality of life being compromised. Perhaps the problem is not with our leaders after all.

There is hope in the "Occupy" movements in that it shows the people can have a voice, unite, get attention, possibly even effect change. However, even this movement can be inhabited motivated ultimately by a whine. Honest participants will be examining: am I here out of a sense of responsibility and a call to what is right - or am I whining because my life isn't what I want it to be?

The most important question any of should be asking is: How much do I care? Am I committed to effecting something positive and lasting with my time here? Or am I, like my leaders, content with finding excuses for giving up, and feeling justified with my whining. Our answers may not make much difference on the outcome, in one regard. But they can change the quality of what we are able to contribute along the way.

Reading the Qur'an

2011-10-24T00:19:00.000-07:00

I am embarking on a reading of the Qur'an. I have wanted to since college but put it off, however after attending an evangelical-leaning church for two years, I realized in a car ride today with my more left-leaning friends that I have begun questioning my long-held conviction that the God of the Bible and Allah in the Qu'ran are one in the same. Having not read the Qur'an, of course, this conviction was based on nothing other than the desire for the world to be a happy place where everyone gets along (as my family wasn't) and did not stand up to the assertion by my zealous Pakistani ex-Muslim friend who claimed that Allah could not be the same God as the God in the Bible because in the Qur'an it says _X_ (which I don't remember). But anyway, that assertion was enough to erode my so-called conviction, which like most things wasn't something so much I believed but a pleasant compromise position that served my purposes in most the circles in which I traveled. So, I decided it was time to see for myself.

I will cut to the chase after such a wordy prologue.

What stands out to me about the Qur'an, in starting to read from the beginning, includes:

- The recitation seems to be directed toward the disaffected descendants of Ishmael, but seeking to move readers beyond factionalism to a common reference point in Abraham. It is not directed toward "Muslims" - as no such people would have existed at the time of the recitation. Rather, it orients itself as pointing out the common problems with the practice of religion of both Jews and Christians:

They say: ‘Become Jews or Christians and you will be guided aright.’
Say: ‘Rather, the religion of Abraham, of pristine faith. Nor was he a polytheist.’
Say: ‘We believe in God, and in what was revealed to us, In what was revealed to Abraham, to Ishmael, to Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes, In what was revealed to Moses and Jesus, In what was revealed to prophets by their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, And to Him we surrender.’

Khalidi, Tarif (2009-07-23). The Qur'an: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Kindle Locations 577-581). Penguin Classic. Kindle Edition.

As for the believers, for the Jews, the Christians and the Sabeans* who believe in God and the Last Day, and who do righteous deeds - these have their wage with their Lord. No fear shall fall upon them, nor shall they grieve.

Ibid, 447-448.

They say: ‘Only Jews and Christians will enter the Garden.’ Such are their fancies! Say to them: ‘Show me your proof if you speak the truth.’ Yes, indeed. He who surrenders his face to God in all piety shall receive his reward from his Lord. No fear shall fall upon them, nor shall they grieve.

Ibid, 537-539.

This last quote I like particularly because it points to an unsavory aspect present even today in evangelical Christianity, namely that of in-grouping and exclusivity claims by a religious body regarding who may enter heaven. To this, the text answers (as does the Bible, but Christians seem to miss the possibility that it could apply to them) that it is a turn of the heart - "surrenduring... in all piety" that is more important - than to which doctrine you ascribe.

- The text does not seem to deny Jesus' sonship, as I have often heard attributed to it. Rather, it seems to acknowledge this claim, and put a different emphasis on it than Christianity evolved to - namely, to by it assert further God's power and sovereignty, which seems to be more of the intention of the text.

They say: ‘God has fathered a child.’ Glory be to Him! To Him, rather, belongs all that is in the heavens and on earth. All mankind obeys Him. Marvellous Creator of the heavens and the earth! When He decrees a matter, He merely says to it: ‘Be!’ and it is.

Ibid, 545-547

- In general, the wisdom and correction it issues forth seem on-par if not more direct and biting than anything we will find in the old or new testament regarding the necessity for genuine faith and the description and punishment for hypocrisy. Take this example, which not only captures the Christian doctrine of predestination but also adds a nuanced understanding of how the evil lie to themselves - an awareness I wish were more present in Christianity:

As for the unbelievers, it is all the same if you warn or do not warn them: they will not believe. God has sealed up their hearts, their hearing and their vision with a shroud, and terrible punishment awaits them. Among people, there are those who say: ‘We believe in God and in the Last Day.’ But they are not true believers. They try to deceive God and the believers but, unknown to them, deceive only themselves. Sickness abides in their hearts and God increases their malady. A painful punishment awaits them for the lies they uttered. And if someone says to them: ‘Do not sow discord in the earth,’ they answer: ‘We are merely trying to bring people together.’ In truth, they are sowers of discord, but they know it not.
Ibid, 368-374.

- Lastly, contrary to most popular belief - among fundamentalist Muslims and Christians alike - the text does not seem to prescribe violence. Although it is easy to see how for the simple-minded, this would be extrapolated:

O believers, retaliation for the slain is ordained upon you: A free man for a free man, a slave for a slave, a female for a female. But if a brother is forgiven by another regarding what is ordained, then gracious pardon must be offered, and seemly deliverance of payment made. This is an act of leniency from your Lord and a mercy. Whoever commits aggression thereafter, painful torment awaits him. The prospect of retaliation saves lives, O you who are possessed of minds - perhaps you will fear God.

Ibid, 650-654.

What I read in this is not an order toward violence, but rather a demand for accountability: transgressors must be made to know their sin, otherwise, how will they learn? However, as a caveat to this, forgiveness reigns as an even stronger law. Not forgiveness that we come up with on our own, but forgiveness that we are bound to BECAUSE another has forgiven us (cf Luke 7:47). Violence - as aggression - is strictly forbidden. It emerges that the threat of retaliation - rather than the retaliation itself - is the important element, in teaching us to fear God. This is an even more humane expression of the ever-popular "spare the rod, spoil the child" in Christianity (Proverbs 13:24).

If what I take from this brief introductory reading of the Qur'an holds true, I would say that reading the Qur'an is of utmost importance - not as a way of "understanding our enemies," as I am afraid it would often be taken, but as an additional word from God for any who consider themselves pious. The proscription of hypocrisy is even more crisp and upfront, and it seems directed toward dividing those who please God by their faith from those who posture with their religiosity - a theme taken up strongly first by Jesus in his evisceration of the Pharisees, and in Matthew 6:1-8.

I may come across more in the reading that challenges this hypothesis, but in the recitation issued through Mohammed I see a continuing accusation and warning against hypocrisy - issued by the One and Only God - leveled at Christians and Jews, but directed specifically at an audience who may have culturally been ostracized by both these groups, as descendants of the banished Ishmael, born to Hagar when Abraham showed his human weakness and doubted God's promise. These people deserve salvation too, and it would not be like my God to allow the descendants of Ishmael to suffer vile treatment - by Jews and Christians alike who were not living up to what He had taught them about brotherhood - without stepping in and saying something for their benefit.

I do not agree that what I have read so far was meant by God to spur a new, separate religion called "Islam," but then again I also do not believe necessarily that God wanted "Christianity" to emerge to contend with Judaism. Rather, I believe each action by our God is part of his ongoing effort to reach out to us, point out to us where we are off and our souls are in danger because of it, and invite us back into right relationship with his loving compassion and mercy.

relocation

2011-10-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

I think people should move out of L.A. because something bad is going to happen there within the next couple months.

Christmas: Presence, not presents

2010-12-25T07:37:00.000-08:00

I awake Christmas Eve morning agitated, anxious, jittery. The holiday weekend has begun; I have family and friends to look forward to, yet I am nervous out of habit. I feel punch-drunk from the brutal exchange of expectations from Christmases past, and trod dutifully back for another beating.

My pen and journal have helped calm my restless legs each morning this week, and again I reach for them to dig beneath the current of my racing thoughts. How did I come to be so would up around Christmas each year? What messages did I ingest to make the advent of the Prince of Peace so profoundly disquieting?

I remember the ramp-up: pressure around the tree and decorations; Christmas music required on-hand to ritually trigger desired memories and affect. And then there was Christmas morning, when we finally plumb the depths under the tree, desperate for the proper blend of presents and responses to our gifts so to pique our high; only to settle, spent, afterwards into an empty ennui of wondering what gift or experience we must have missed. The whole thing invested with so much performance that we might as well be seducing santa into our beds for a one-night stand.

What is it we are looking for under the tree? Didn't our parents promise us, in December especially but also throughout the year, that if we simply behaved, Santa would take note and reward us Christmas morning? And why would they need to promise this, except that their parenting skills fell short of making an imperfect world palatable to us and, instead of accepting this human flaw and sitting with us to show one can accept such pain in the moment, they displace it to a yearly reckoning wherein a bearded intruder settles the account with gifts.

The dynamics diverge for each family, from orgiastic cheer to unwrapped cartons of cigarettes; from semblances of the family unit, to parents fractured in relationship and psychology alike. There are always variations on a theme. But, almost uniformly, we trace our parents' footsteps in an annual pilgrimage back to the tree, to exchange gifts and hope it somehow fills the void. What we are looking for, boxed up under ornaments and lights, is the love our parents were unable to give.

When we obsess over choosing the perfect gift for our loved ones - with cost and thoughtfulness matched to what they mean to us - we are trying to assuage our guilt for what we have yet again failed to offer, in time or patience or care throughout the year. Contrast this to the gift God gave to us on the same holiday: nothing but his naked, vulnerable, dependent self.

The baby in the manger came with no frills, inside jokes, or utilitarian purpose. He came simply to be with us. He offered himself in purest form, with no adornments. How often do we think ourselves alone inadequate, our presence insufficient if we fall short in the number or value of gifts we put forth? Though we see in the wise men's frankincense and myrrh that a gift of simple presence may inspire an appreciative response that has material aspects, these cannot substitute for the real thing. Both the bible and our own hearts remind of us this, every Christmas morning.

The revolutionary statement Christ made in his first simple moments on Earth applies not just to Christmas, but all year round; at every moment we can stop and be with each other, with our children, remembering that Emmanuel means God With Us. Every day we are threatened with openings to intimacy, with the possibility of eye contact, of showing something true on our face. But not often enough do we accept God's first gift to us - the gift of coming alongside us, being ready for us without an agenda, of affirming we are enough, just as we are. This is the gift that can settle us down. That can end the ache of unrequited love that is chased throughout generations. This is the gift we have been looking for from our parents all along.

Each Christmas, we gather in the dead of winter, starved of presence, craving presents. This Christmas, let us follow God, and simply give ourselves.

Merry Christmas everybody. Please be introduced to this wonderful and a propos track from my friends at Church of the Beloved:

"our gift is not what we can do but who we are."
http://belovedschurch.org/hope/given.php

one part of the response

2010-07-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

Dead prez was right. Only its not just skin color. It's BS passed down as abuse by weak human beings who can't face their problems. We have to fight the lies. But we have to fight it first in ourselves. or nothing changes

Candice Isaacs McCormick, R.I.P. 7/22/2010

underneath

2010-07-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

The anger has always been here. Can't you feel it?

no, I can't feel it.

The wrath, that becomes the great tribulation, has been beneath the surface, in all of us, in our righteous anger, can't you feel it?

no.

The oil, that becomes the lake of fire, has been underneath us all along. Now it's spilling out. Can't you see it, taste it? See what it means?

Maybe I'm starting too.

The rage you have felt toward your mother has been in every relationship, a hate you couldn't access, a violence that was apparent but hidden thinly behind smiles and reassurances you were programmed to give. Can you at least feel that?

Yes. now I can.

Simply Christian

2010-06-27T22:42:00.001-07:00

Accountable Relationships

Continual surrender

Worldly responsibility

Private disciplines

Joy in Loving

music for reconciliation

2010-06-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

Feel moved to share this song with COTA today... living into the grooves David laid with his words toward a ministry of reconciliation sunday night. so long as we all take it with a grain of salt, so as to not fuel our codependent tendencies...

Never too late - Michael Franti & Spearhead.

Covenant

2010-06-04T20:08:00.001-07:00

Today on the ferry ride from edmonds I looked backwards.

Usually I prefer the front, full steam ahead, wind in my face, but for no particular reason I chose the back today, sitting in the covered area eating some cereal, looking at where I'd come from.

On my way to my car, parked near the back, I stopped to stretch near the mildly churning water, and I saw the most perfect rainbow, arcing from left to right with both ends in the water, like an archway the ferry had passed under. And I remembered God's covenant.

And I imagined him saying, 'never again will I flood your life with so much destruction.'

Islam - the conversation I have always wanted to see

2010-06-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine from Div School takes on good old-fashioned religious intolerance in the Islamic setting - with a conservative, though not extremist Muslim, in a conversation on Facebook. Who knew that postmodern contextualization could be just as effectively wielded in the Bedouin desert?

Zach Warren commented on Basheer Ghafoor's status.

Basheer Ghafoor
99. If it had been your Lord's will, they would all have believed,- all who are on earth! will you then compel mankind, against their will, to believe? 100.No soul can believe, except by the will of Allah, and He will place doubt (or obscurity) on those who will not understand.
13 hours ago
Dawood Banday likes this.

Zach Warren
indeed, he admonished, “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an 2:256)
And also warned us to consider and appreciate the personal diversity of belief : “Say: O you who disbelieve, I worship not that which you worship, nor will you worship that which I worship, and I will not worship that which you have worshipped, and you will not worship that which I worship, to you is your path (religion) and to me is mine.” (Qur’an 109:1-6).
Tuesday at 6:30am

Dawood Banday
@zach, the above verse doesn't indicate freedom of diversity of belief, rather it is rebuking disbelievers that muslims don't believe what ever you believe....thus, it says, Unto you your religion and unto me my religion.
Wednesday at 8:10am

Basheer Ghafoor
Yes.
Zach-- I'm not sure where you got that idea from. But how can God tell us to consider and appreciate more than one religion? There is only one true religion. The rest of them are just lies made against Allah (May He be Glorified and Exalted).
Verse: “And whoever seeks a religion other than Islâm, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers” [Aal ‘Imraan 3:85].
Here is a tafseer of surat Al- Kafiroon, http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=109&tid=59385.
Please study the suras from reliable sources... lest you would be making up lies against Islam.
Wednesday at 8:29am

Zach Warren
A chapter of the Qur’an entitled The Unbelievers, referring to those who reject the message of monotheism preached by Prophet Muhammad, stresses that belief is a matter of personal conviction and that difference in faith should not be the cause for persecution or abuse
Wednesday at 8:54am

Zach Warren
The Qur’an’s endorsement of religiously and culturally plural societies and the recognition of the salvific value of other monotheistic religions has greatly affected the treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim lands. If you're interested to learn more, I can recommend some Muslim historical texts, written by believers. Through the centuries, various Muslim societies have attempted to implement these pluralist ideals with varying degrees of success. It is also clear, however, that other Muslim societies, at certain historical times and in certain contexts, have chosen to ignore these pluralist ideals or to cast them aside. In their place, discourses of exclusivism and intolerance became prevalent. The most significant of these can be traced back to the eighth and ninth centuries when Islam became a religion of empire and attempts were made to bestow theological legitimacy to the growth of Arab imperial hegemony. Within this context, certain segments of the Muslim political and religious establishments promoted anti-pluralist - that is, exclusivist - readings and interpretations of the Qur’an, primarily to advance hegemonic goals. For this purpose, as Abdulaziz Sachedina has written (Abdulaziz Sachedina, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2001, see p 29), several Muslim exegetes devised terminological and methodological strategies to mold the exegesis of the sacred text so as to provide a convincing prop for absolutist ends.

In other words, in your words -- lies. The principal means by which the exclusivists were able to promote their view was through the declaration that the many verses calling for pluralism, commanding Muslims to build bridges of understanding with non-Muslims, had been abrogated by other vers es that call for fighting the infidel. The verses in question were revealed in the context of armed conflicts between a small, beleaguered Muslim community and its powerful Christian, Jewish and pagan Arab adversaries. Typical of these verses is the following: “Then when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent and perform the prayer and pay zakat (the alms tax), let them go their way. Surely God is forgiving and merciful.” (Qur’an 9: 5). Another verse, revealed when certain Jewish and Christian groups betrayed the Muslim cause and joined in the military assault by the pagan Arabs against Prophet Muhammad and the Muslim community, cautioned against taking Jews and Christians as close political allies (Qur’an 5: 51). It is only by completely disregarding the original historical context of revelation of such verses and using them to engage in a large-scale abrogation of contradictory vers es that the exclusivist Muslim exegetes have been able to counteract the pluralist ethos that so thoroughly pervades the Qur’an.

In other words, dear brothers, the charge of reading the Qur'an with an open heart and open mind requires understanding the historical context in which it was written. Otherwise, it is to choose ignorance.
Wednesday at 9:00am

Basheer Ghafoor
Yes, we shouldn't abuse or oppress any human being--- regardless of their religion.
But religion isn't how you put it. In Islam, there is a concept of fitrah. Each human is born with a natural belief and a natural tendency to worship one God--- it is the environment of the individual that causes them to make lies about God and to worship Him with partners. Simply put, if you believe there should be a judgment day, where all humans are recounted for their deeds-- there can only be one religion... one way. Please don't read an English translation of the Quran and interpret it however you please. Read the tafseer or ask a reliable Muslim scholar about Surat al kafiroon.
Wednesday at 9:09am

Zach Warren
Basheer, thanks for your admonition -- actually the translation I read comes from one of the world's experts on the Sura al Kafiroon. But I'll forgive the accusation that I "interpret it however I please," since the interpretation is by a believer familiar with hundreds of years of scholarship on the verse. He has a book on the subject coming out soon, and I'll happily pass it on if you're interested to learn more about your religious tradition.
Wednesday at 9:16am

Basheer Ghafoor
If I fully understood the above text, I agree with it. Muslims agree with it. And the Sunnah agrees with it.
In no way are we promoting isolation from non-Muslims and using such verses as an excuse to do so--- while "going to way" and killing them. No. Killing one innocent life is the same as killing the entire world's population--- that's how serious it is. If we were to hate and isolate our selves from non-Muslims--- and never speak to them and promote the killing of them--- that would be against the Sunnah of our Prophet (SAW).

But Surat Al-Kafiroon is exactly the opposite of your interpretation. Allah (SWT) orders our Prophet (Peace be upon him) to not tolerate the disbelievers. We cannot accept or tolerate Buddism or Christianity or Juddaism or any other religion, because it goes against the basic fundamental belief of Islam--- worship One God.

Please read the tafseer (explanation) of reliable scholars on the Surah. Or you can listen to a great speaker (I have posted the link, from Bayyinah Institute) about the Surah.

In the verse that I quoted before, Allah clearly does not accept any other religion besides Islam (which means to submit to One God). He (SWT) will not accept for His creation to associate partners to Him (May He Be Gloried and Exalted). He will only accept His creation to submit and worship Him, and Him only. And that is Islam.

As for the disbelievers (any religion besides worshiping One God), it is clear what will happen to them in the Hereafter.
If Allah accepted another religion besides the submission to Him, and Him alone, there would be no Hellfire. Everyone would just go to Heaven. There would be no judgment day, there would be no test. Nothing.

Sorry if I came off as harsh... but all of this goes against the basic principles in Islam.
Wednesday at 1:10pm

Zach Warren
The Sunnah and Islam as a whole supports the revelations of Jewish and Christian holy books. The Qur'an is considered the completion of these revelations, and therefore in no way is it true that "We cannot accept or tolerate Buddism or Christianity or Juddaism or any other religion, because it goes against the basic fundamental belief of Islam--- worship One God." Judaism and Christianity are monotheistic, Abrahamic religions. Moreover, the Prophet does not advocate intolerance. In fact, he speaks against intolerance and grants special rights and privileges to members of other monotheistic traditions within Muslim lands.

Perhaps what needs to be clarified, in this discussion, is what exactly is meant when you say "tolerance," on a level of policies. Is tolerance merely the absence of killing? Not by Islamic tradition. In Islamic schools of thought, tolerance is much more sophisticated, and relates to all levels of interaction. Tolerance of another faith tradition does not mean you have to agree with it. On the contrary, tolerance applies ONLY when you do NOT agree with it. Do you have any good recommendations for sources on tolerance, specifically? In particular, any texts that take an historical understanding of Islam, drawing from past wisdom?
13 hours ago

Basheer Ghafoor
We argue that, no, they are not monotheistic religions. In order for one to believe in a monotheistic religon (the religion of Abraham (AS), one has to believe in One God.
If one believes in One God, he is Muslim (Muslim = one who is submitting to Islam. Islam = worshipping One God).

Tolerance in the form of a middle path, not taking it to either extremes. That middle path is the way (sunnah) of our Prophet Muhammad (peace be up on him). He engaged in trade with them,
he conversed with them, and he gave them invitations/commmands to accept Islam. Other than that, they don't believe what we believe, and we don't believe what they believe.

Of course, to start off, here are some very important verses from the Quran. Please read at least the first three:

" Never will the jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion. Say: "The Guidance of Allah,-that is the (only) Guidance." Wert thou to follow their desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee, then wouldst thou find neither Protector nor helper against Allah.
" Al Baqara

" They say: "Become jews or Christians if ye would be guided (To salvation)." Say thou: "Nay! (I would rather) the Religion of Abraham the True, and he joined not gods with Allah."
( سورة البقرة , Al-Baqara, Chapter #2, Verse #135)"

"O ye who believe! take not the jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust.
"

The word for "friend" here is in no way the same "friendship" we are used to. There are many words for "friend" in Arabic, and the word used here means a close companion on whom you rely heavily upon (almost as a protector). Some use this verse as an excuse to say we cannot have Christian or Jew "friends", and they are wrong, and have misinterpreted the verse do to their ignorance of the Arabic language.

"O ye People of the Book! believe in what We have (now) revealed, confirming what was (already) with you, before We change the face and fame of some (of you) beyond all recognition, and turn them hindwards, or curse them as We cursed the Sabbath-breakers, for the decision of Allah Must be carried out. "
An Nisa

"The Jews call 'Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah.s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!
"
At-Tawba

Here is an English translation of (authentic) narrations of our Prophet (SAW). You will find his (SAW) interactions and dealings with the jews/or christians.

http://www.usc.edu/cgi-bin/msasearch
9 hours ago

Basheer Ghafoor http://www.thedeenshow.com/show.php?action=detail&id=1051
9 hours ago

---

Andy Varyu
Zach, I loved your conversation with Basheer Ghafoor, and was itching to chime in but Facebook won't let me unless he approves me as a friend

You are certainly more up on the texts behind this conversation than I, but it strikes me how much modern Islam, as with current American Christianity - bases so much on a rather superficial read on religions. Basheer seemed to be tuned into the point that Islam=submitting to the One God, but didn't make the leap that a Christian who submits (in his heart) to the same God might also be a brother. Why does the conversation continue to bubble up to the superficiality of "I call myself a (Christian/Muslim) and therefore cannot be a brother with you, a (Muslim/Christian).

In Christianity, as you know, we have the awareness that one can call himself a Christian without actually submitting to or loving God in his heart ("I never knew you!" Matthew 7:21-23). Do some Muslims also have this understanding - that it is not just going through the motions and labels that defines us (which fuel, as you put it, the "terminological and methodological" tactics), but what is going on in our hearts? I would assume that some do - and hence the argument would follow that there are subsets of Muslims, Christians, and Jews (at least) who in their hearts have and do submit to the the One God, can therefore be said to be practicing Islam, and are related as brothers and sisters as children of the One God - and many other Jews, Christians and Muslims who do not have this going on and are the infidels. It strikes me as a bit shallow to think of God as so superficial that he is going to pick whom to be pleased with based on what we call ourselves. No scripture I can think of supports that idea.

Anyway - great to see you taking on this topic, and so articulately - I wish more people would, and that it would be seen more! I think I will post it on my blog just for that reason :)

Peace and love bro,
Andy

an oil spill to puncture naivete

2010-06-02T13:22:00.001-07:00

it was clear 2 weeks into the spill that the gulf would never be the same - at least to some of us - but it took until today for NOAA to come out and say it. "the public has an expectation that with technology we can solve the problem. We know we can't" (Doug Helton, NOAA's seattle-based Emergency Response Division.)

it was even clearer that this oil spill had something major to say about oil and drilling, in answer to Obama's political posturing to open up our shores to drilling just a month before. Something along the lines of "this is not the answer." but it took Obama until today to admit that "there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth -- risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes."

the way I see it, these aren't risks. they are guarantees. because whether we burn the oil in our engines, or spill it before it gets to the pumps, it is choking the planet either way. we shouldn't get so worked up about the oil spill. just as much damage would have been done by carbon emissions from burning the oil if business had progressed as usual. Only, we wouldn't have been thinking about it.

the mass resistance we exhibit every day - both collectively and personally - to the present crisis of climate change is rooted in the same shallow naivete with which we continue to be amazed with how bad the oil spill is, letting awareness in step by step each week as our leaders put words to what we all know, deep inside.

that the gulf of mexico will remain a marred homage to our callous irresponsibility toward the planet through the lives of our children and our children's children has been the reality since week 2 of the spill. had the spill not happened, this same violence our society exhibits toward the planet would have been writ large on a thick sky and the ever accelerating temperatures through those same lifetimes. if it does alter the policy road Obama had started down, and raise the political ire to overcome the deadlock of our "leaders" on clean energy legislation, then i will ever after remember the oil spill with an ironic fondness.

however, whether that happens remains to be seen. so far, our response has been little more than the same old impotent outrage that conveniently distracts us from the fact that a spill like this was not an unfortunate accident; it is the absolute and necessary outcome of the course we have been pursuing.

criminal investigations into culpability on the part of BP, transocean and haliburton - as were announced today - need to be undertaken. But they need to be accompanied by a long hard look at things closer to home - from the history and structure of the MMS, down to each of our personal investments in a lifestyle dependent on oil-based transportation and disposable plastic goods.

denial has gotten us exactly where it was going to. now it's time to wake up and smell the black tar that has been smeared on the wall all along.

Black Wealth, White wealth

2010-05-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

The author of a book I read in college, "Black Wealth, White Wealth," has come out with a follow-up study. It was covered today on the Michael Eric Dyson show.

The original research (from 1984) shows that while blacks' average income had grown to within 77% of whites' pay for the same job, there was still a huge disparity in wealth, defined as financial assets. One illustration I remember particularly well described how long different families' available assets could support them if they lost a job. With no income, "White's reserves allow them to survive at the poverty level ($968 per month) for over a year, while most blacks... would not make it through the month."

The current update to this research shows that this original disparity between black wealth and white wealth has quadrupled since 1984. It's getting worse - according to the radio interview - at a time when the reigning perception is that a) the racial disparity has pretty much disappeared, and b) that if left to themselves, our social systems will trend toward equalization and erasing the problem.

The research shows this is not the case. There is much to be discussed here, but a conclusion of an hour-long discussion with three of us at Lydia house the other night on this topic is that we as youngish white guys perhaps don't have "responsibility" for creating this problem, but we do have "responsibility" for analyzing and holding accountable the current external social systems and internal unconscious prejudices which contribute to the increasing skin-color disparity in economic opportunity.

All I have to add to this is one thing. The radio show points out that typically such disparity is falsely attributed to flaws perceived as inherent in African Americans - ie, they're lazy, they're bad with money, etc. The research explores and refutes these claims by focusing on the highest-achieving blacks and whites, but still the tendency is to explain away the problem as something "personal" about people with dark skin.

I see a parallel problem that paralyzes well-meaning whites who might be interested in doing something about it: we read such news as an accusation against us - that the disparity is our personal fault and something we should feel guilty about - simply because of our white skin color. Thus we become defensive and take actions more oriented toward self-justifying than toward solving the problem.

Taken together, we can see that the problem is perpetuated by a tendency to blame the individuals involved, which distracts us from looking more broadly at the difficult problem of a complex society which both influences and implicates both blacks and whites in perpetuating both the unequal distribution of resources and a mass abdication of responsibility.

Ironically, we are bombarded by false concepts of responsibility which we must clarify and defend ourselves against, while the true responsibility we have and must take remains buried and unrealized.

We must scrutinize both our motivations and the ways false concepts are given free reign in our thinking and consequent behavior, or nothing will change.

The Mother wart

2010-03-22T22:53:00.001-07:00

.

It's interesting, our mother taught us a lesson about warts.

She said If you start getting warts, you need to remember which one came first. That's the mother wart. Whatever you do to get rid of them, you just need to go for the mother wart. If you try to attack the warts that came after, they'll just keep coming back again, or you'll get new ones to replace them. The cycle won't stop until you kill the mother wart. And If you go after the mother wart from the start and are able to burn it or freeze it away, all the other warts will just fall away.

Now I have never heard this story anywhere else but from my mother. For all I know its just an old wives' tale and may be limited to my family. But I find it interesting that this same story turns out to be what I am learning about growing up and letting go of relationships.

Because you may have trouble getting over an ex-, and even people from long ago can still feel like live wires if they come up. Its like they never went away. And in this case no amount of effort directed toward these ex-relationships, or forgetting, will make them fade from your mind. Because they are not the original source of your trouble letting go. It's your mother, who never let you grow up but forced herself into your consciousness, who must be left behind.

If the mother's relationship was like a wart - something intrusive, violating, near impossible to get rid of - then the troubling attachments that persist later in life also come from the mother. And the only way to move beyond any of them is to kill the mother.

My mother taught me that.

.

Braveheart as Healing from emotional incest

2010-02-07T09:51:00.000-08:00

England is the incestuous Mother. She can't stand her son Scotland to break away or find independence; she needs him. So she infiltrates the core of any love Scotland is about to embark on as an adult, inserting herself into the relationship so no real bond can be found between Scotland and its wives. Prima Nocte allows no real integration, no real growing up - the Mother will always be part of every relationship, part of what Scotland sees and remembers when they look at their wives. True love for the emotional incest victim is often murdered by the Mother's overpowering presence, which at first we are paralyzed to resist, even as we stand by passively while the murder takes place.

William Wallace represents the will, awakened by a direct and aware confrontation with the injury that has been perpetrated and accepted, unconsciously, for ages; the will to change is finally activated when a cherished love falls victim to the injustice we have tolerated and even participated in. Wallace becomes the true drive to separate, expressed as anger or rage even, directed appropriately toward its proper source in the incestuous parent. The nobles are the injured, non-adult self that prefers to crawl back into bed with Mom, rather than face the challenges of growing up as an adult, standing on their own as a unified Scotland, and incurring the Mother's wrath. Compromises like these are so easy for the emotional incest victim, for the Mother lives on in every relationship, every fantasy, every facet of our minds that wants not to face fully how injured and backwards we are. These parts of ourselves will compulsively sacrifice our will/betray William at any chance of crawling back into bed with Mother / the woman who we fantasize will take care of us.

Even when we think we have integrated, and are finally breaking away from Mother as an integrated whole, we find later that some part of us has subconsciously betrayed this intention through a bargain with the world to reestablish the old, incestuous relationship Mother initiated. The confusion this engenders within the emotional incest victim is captured on the face of William Wallace when he unmasks the Bruce, who made a deal to kill him for favor with England, and who personally struggles through the movie with his own enmeshment with a manipulative, selfish, domineering parent.

Wallace's relationship with the princess shows us that what seems impossible for the emotional incest victim is attainable - to experience love without having to sacrifice our true self in exchange for it. Any true love found must be approached with caution - shown by how on-guard and suspicious Wallace is every time he approaches her camp - as it will seem always at first to bear the needy and manipulative agenda of the controlling Mother. Through direct testing, however, we can uncover which potential loves share and support the quest for autonomy from our parents as a prerequisite to love.

In the end, the betrayal that succeeds is not a trap fallen for that is laid by an outsider (mother or lover), but by the unintegrated parts of ourselves which have adopted the agenda of being dominated. The weaker nobles, who have acclimated to living in bed with Mother, lay a trap when the two stronger parts of Scotland - Wallace and Bruce - are ready to unite. The forceful, uncompromising leader Wallace - who is also suspicious and guarded from real relationship must die, as eventually the emotional incest victim must go through a wrenching death of the incomplete identities he has taken on in order for the whole self to survive. The hallmark of this death truly approached will come as overwhelming resistance, from every facet of ourselves, urging us to abandon our principles and take the easy way out, swearing allegiance finally and forever to the Mother. The death must be walked to, however, and certain things we held dear abandoned, in order for the final unification of a new, whole self to emerge.

For Scotland, as for us, Wallace's singular, uncompomising adherence to the vision of and shape of freedom is essential to keep from falling into traps laid by an enveloping Mother, which may show up in even the slightest dynamics of relationship. In the end, however, Wallace's beacon of change cannot facilitate the internal healing Scotland or the emotional incest victim needs to stand as an integrated whole, once the possibility of freedom has been tasted. As a final step, after following an uncompromising Will through the first stages of battle, we must develop our Bruce, the broken part of ourselves that lives with an emotional connection to the wound opened by the tyrannical parent, which can chooose to embrace Wallace's force while remaining sensitive to the parts of ourselves that will continue to feel the pull back toward Mother's bed. This final integration allows Scotland, and the victim, to move forward tenderly, carrying all parts of ourselves forward in a healed, whole, and finally independent self.

MLK, climate change, and responsibility

2010-01-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

I have been listening to the speeches of MLK and his relatives today, especially Yolanda King, his eldest daughter, who made the connection for us of finding inner peace to MLKs philosophy of nonviolence.

And it seems to me that something has shifted, between the 60s and today, in that MLK had a clearly identifiable evil that he could articulate and orient against; that of white oppression, expressed so many different ways.

I have sensed that the fight on climate change resonates with principles of MLK's philosophy; namely that the way to approach change is through proactive action guided by principles (http://www.itscool.us/) - rather than backbiting/blame vs denial, which seems to be the prevailing approach.

In his first Massey lecture (http://www.prx.org/series/31037-martin-luther-king-jr-massey-lectures) King contrasted the effectiveness of the nonviolent approach - where the oppressors are exposed in their evil for violent reactions to nonviolent measures - with the strategy of riots which had erupted in the North, which gave fuel to pre-existing prejudices and arguments against integration. However, King did allow that non-violent protest had not been working as well in the North, where the racism, though present, was not as overt - so the oppressors could not as easily be taunted into exposing themselves.

How does this compare with the fight on climate change? Today we do not have a clear enemy. Society has quickly evolved (having learned from King?) to the place of more effectively hiding our evils. Multi-national corporations' oppression and rape of the Earth, while present and deplorable, is not the bulk of the problem. The subtext of every public plea to reduce energy use is the implication that we are all part of the problem; we are all to blame. There is no way to tweak one part of the system (along the lines of our traditionally linear, judicial model) and contain carbon; rational analysis by policymakers continues to conclude, rightly, that every penalty levied or offset offered will simply be paid for or passed along the supply chain, in order to preserve the right to continue polluting, or maintaining a standard of living within the "American way of life" without alteration. (Vanity fair featured a spread this week on a Vegas hotel that was LEED certified, proving "the simple notion that luxury and responsibility are not mutually exclusive" - http://www.vegasnews.com/16177/star-studded-event-marks-grand-opening-of-first-citycenter-hotel-–-vdara-hotel-spa.html ).

The downfall of all offset programs is that they must be comprehensive - encompassing the full carbon cycle, through the whole of the planet - to not be outsourced. The reason the simple solution of a worldwide, per-citizen offset system has not been introduced is that the implications are too radical. To do so would effectively address the economic imbalance between the first and third worlds - and this is something we would like to avoid thinking about for as long as possible.

It's not just our politicians and our corporations. It is, first and foremost, an evil embedded in our consciousness, as born by citizen of the developed world. Jesus had plenty to say about it, but the implications are so deep that nary a preacher wants to draw the obvious connection: our way of life is unsustainable, and it is simple sinfulness that keeps us from clearly addressing this obvious fact. Unsustainable, not just ecologically, but firstly spiritually. To dig to the roots of American concepts of "progress," what constitutes a healthy economy, and what kind of technological advances we should have the right to look forward too, would force us to call out the hypocrisy of manifest destiny, the deep distortion of the gospel and evil on which this entire nation was founded. Remember the religious fundamentalist mass murderer from Utah who claimed "God told me to do it"? That is our founding fathers, and the prevailing consciousness of the developed world.

While the rape of extermination of great native populations may seem far removed in history, we perpetuate the same mass denial today in our rape and extermination of the planet's healthy ecology. This same consciousness, which allows us to perpetuate rape and aggression while continuing to think we are basically good people, manifests in our relationships and treatment of each other, as I have recently learned the hard way. The simple act of looking at ourselves, to truly see and admit our sinfulness, is so difficult today that we must pay a fortune in therapy simply to access it.

MLK faced a simple, clear enemy. The oppression in the South failed to manipulate its audiences as well as the North. But the the civil war was fought largely for style points. The continuing, systemic racism in our country - discovered in the North by MLK after winning his battles in the South - shows that no one has ever been that interested in changing the status quo. We want our power and our ability to feel good about ourselves. So what to do? Change? No - simply get better at manipulating.

This seems to have been the course our country has followed since the Viet Nam era. It explains a fundamental problem that I have been noticing more and more in myself and in most people I talk to - a basic inability to take responsibility. Our deficit in responsibility fuels the therapy industry - most of which has us simply chasing our tales, but never getting called out for our part in causing the problem - and it is the basic evil that is at root of our inability to deal with climate change. We will continue to generate Green "spin" and talk a good game without taking action, until we can finally admit we're all fuckers who don't give a shit what happens to the Earth. That at least would be a good starting point, because we'd have some honest ground to stand on, rather than living in a self-imposed hype that increasingly has nothing to do with reality.

In the south, MLK had a clear enemy. In the north, that enemy was harder to see. Today, we are all going crazy and feeling under attack, because we have no idea where the problems are coming from. It's hard to look at ourselves when the enemy is within us.

The only way to take down this enemy is to take responsibility.

suffering from what we can't see

2010-01-10T22:20:00.000-08:00

Originally I posted then removed this article, but as it earned praise from the short time it was up here, I am going to repost, with a revised introduction.

Socially-sanctioned child abuse is a touchy subject, but one I feel it is important to face, because it holds the key for explaining and healing life turmoil for so many people who have suffered from it.

Sometimes addressed under the name "emotional incest" or "covert incest" (Adams), the dynamic refers to inappropriate emotional bonds between a parent and usually the opposite-sex child, which causes psychological and emotional damage on par with actual incest and child abuse, although no physical molestation occurs. Most writing on the topic has to do with mother-son violations, however it is perhaps just as prevalent between fathers and daughters, as this article below shows.

I encourage a read-through this, especially if you are a young parent, or if you suffer from general life chaos and repeated relationship problems for which you haven't been able to identify the root. And if this resonates, please do find a therapist experienced with emotional incest, and commit to yourself to work through healing from this dynamic in your life. It is painful, but wonderfully real and freeing work.

http://hugoschwyzer.net/2009/10/22/princesses-princes-daughters-and-dads-against-emotional-incest/

Princesses, princes, daughters and dads: against emotional incest
Published by Hugo Schwyzer on October 22, 2009
in Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Favorite Posts 2009, Marriage and Parenting.

Our daughter Heloise Cerys Raquel (often abbreviated as HCRS) is almost nine months old, and continues to amaze and delight her parents. She’s standing and crawling now, and making ever more comprehensible noises. She’s a happy baby, prone to shrieks of delight and an enthusiastic wind-milling of arms when she sees a returning parent or other beloved care-giver. We have a nanny to help out some of the time, but most of the care is done in carefully orchestrated shifts shared among my wife, her mother, and me. (My mother-in-law moved in with us after we moved from Pasadena to West Los Angeles at the beginning of summer, and that has been a special blessing for all.)

In August, I posted “She’s got you wrapped around her finger”: fathers, daughters, and a variation on the myth of male weakness in which I noted the extraordinary number of folks who expressed to me their certainty that I would treat Heloise as a princess whose whims I could not help but indulge. I’d like to touch on another aspect of the father-daughter relationship I’ve noted. Becoming a parent for the first time in one’s forties has myriad advantages, not least that one has had the opportunity to watch a great many of one’s peers “do it all first.” (I have two high school friends of mine who are already grandparents, mirabile dictu.) And I’ve seen, a time or nine, an unhealthy triangulation occur with dads, moms, and their daughters.

While the dangers of physical incest and abuse are real, there’s a kind of emotionally incestuous dynamic I’ve witnessed between fathers and daughters, one in which dads seek from their daughters the validation and affirmation that they feel they are entitled to, but are not receiving from their wives. Little children adore their parents. Really, it’s a lovely thing to come home each day and be welcomed, as I invariably am, with gales of excited laughter and delight. (I’m the primary care giver for much of the weekend and most late afternoons and evenings; my wife handles the mornings, my mother-in-law and the nanny work splendidly in the gaps.)

My daughter’s love is an impressive thing to feel, especially as she’s gotten better recently at wrapping herself around my neck and squeezing me tight. No matter what has transpired during the day, no matter what I’ve said or done (or failed to say or do), Heloise seems to adore me. It’s a wonderful thing, and I eat it up with wonder and gratitude and delight. I’m told that her devotion will only grow more intense; many little girls begin to bond more intensely with their fathers in their second and third years of life, presuming that a dad is around. One looks forward to this. Of course, spouses aren’t the same as children.

My wife loves me, a fact of which I blessedly have no doubt. But she most certainly doesn’t have me a on pedestal, doesn’t think I’m flawless, and doesn’t greet me with shrieks of joy everytime I walk into the house. Eira engages with me as a partner, and she challenges me and pushes me and asks me for things; I do the same for her. In a good marriage, iron sharpens iron, and the more friction in the sharpening process, the greater and more enduring the heat. Anyone who’s met my wife knows that she’s a tall, strong force of nature. (This is a woman who can dress down Israeli soldiers on patrol and make them blush apologetically. If you know the men and women of the IDF, you’ll know how astounding that is.)

She loves me and she encourages me as I do her, but she doesn’t conceal her displeasure when she’s unhappy, and she doesn’t come rushing to me like something out of a Marabel Morgan book when I enter the house. Here’s the thing: I’ve seen men play their daughters against their wives, mistakenly believing that the way in which their daughters see them (as heroic and perfect) is the way that their spouses ought to as well. If a man hasn’t done his “work”, he may find himself looking at his daughter, gazing up at him with adoration, and he may start (resentfully) to contrast his girl’s fierce and uncomplicated devotion with the somewhat less enthusiastic reception he may be getting from his overworked and exhausted wife.

In most cases, this doesn’t mean the papa will turn to his daughter sexually, though it surely, tragically, maddeningly does happen more often than we like to think about. But he may find himself relying more and more on the affirmation he gets from his adoring baby girl. A wife’s affection needs to be earned anew each day; it requires a husband (I’m writing this, of course, from a heterosexist perspective) who can pull his weight in housework and childcare and the emotional maintenance of the family. Marriage is, as we are invariably reminded, hard work. Getting a small child to adore you is not anywhere near so difficult.

Many husbands do tend to think that merely being married (or living together) entitles one to expressions of devotion from one’s partner. They buy into a myth about men and women, one that suggests that it’s a woman’s job to soothe, to affirm, to encourage, and to manage her husband’s emotions. Think of the execrable bestseller by Dr. Laura, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. Dr. Laura often suggests that if a woman doesn’t validate “her man” well enough, then she’s to blame if he looks for that validation somewhere else. Men have needs, Dr. Laura insists, and the greatest need they have isn’t for sex, but for a woman’s affirmation and admiration. If they aren’t getting that from their wives, they will invariably find it from another woman.

Men’s capacity to self-soothe is just as great as women’s, and women’s need for affirmation is just as great as men’s. That ought to be a given. But Dr. Laura does speak for a great many people who have bought into this delusionary understanding of what it is that men are entitled to. And men who do believe that they are being deprived of what is rightfully theirs may indeed go elsewhere. And disastrously, for fathers of daughters, that “elsewhere” may be to their little girl.

Again, that doesn’t mean physical incest in every, or even most, instances. What it means is that a great many dads (and it wasn’t until I became a father to a baby girl myself that I realized how common this was) start to rely more and more on the simple intensity of their daughter’s love rather than doing the much more difficult work to remain connected with their wives. I’m certainly not saying every father of a daughter does this, but it is common — and if you ask the mothers of daughters, as I have, you’ll hear plenty of anecdotes about this.

Princess culture is huge for little girls, as surely anyone who spends time around children between three and eight knows. I’m convinced that some of this phenomenon is fed by fathers’ longing for validation. After all, princesses need princes; giving your daughter her princess fantasy is a way for a man to feed his own longing to feel like a handsome prince, indispensable and heroic and good. The gulf between the “handsome prince” in his daughter’s eyes and the loved but decidedly imperfect man in his wife’s eyes grows greater and greater.

All the more reason to do what more than one man I know has done, and spend one’s family time basking in a daughter’s affection — and then, after the kids have gone to bed, spending time compulsively staring at internet pornography. And of course, there’s almost no time spent actually engaging, face-to-face and eye-to-eye, with one’s wife. This doesn’t mean that we won’t let Heloise dress up as a princess if she wants to. (For her first Halloween, we think she’s going to be a chinchilla.) But it does mean that as devoted to my amazing, lovely, grace-filled daughter as I am, I’m very clear that in our relationship, validation needs to be a one-way street.

Plenty of daughters grow up with a sense that they are somehow responsible for taking care of their fathers emotionally, for being the good and understanding woman in his life (as opposed to the mother/wife figure, who is invariably cast as judgmental and cold.) To do this to a daughter is child abuse, and I am determined not only not to do it myself, but to be bolder at calling out other fathers of daughters when I see the signs of what can only be called emotional incest. HCRS may or may not choose to be a princess as she gets a bit older. But in her little games, I will not play the part of the prince. I’m a father, and that is something utterly and wonderfully different. And if I need validation, I need to go and get it from my equal, my peer, and my partner — the one who will make me earn that validation, as she should.

Is it the 'homo' or the 'sexuality'?

2009-12-31T10:51:00.000-08:00

The problem I have with public issues of sexuality:

I recoil from liberal discourse on the topic

but am not conventionally conservative

I feel uncomfortable with the focus on gay rights

but not because I am against them

and I am anti-abortion

but don't feel it is my place to step in to protect unborn babies

but is rather to mourn, and perhaps to speak from my heart, where God gives me opportunity

But moreover, I am angered by the assumption

that I must "have" a position on these topics

These particularly political issues

are raised against a backdrop of non-controversial,

commonplace obscenity

in every commercial, movie and television plot;

there is a dominant discourse in which sexuality occupies center stage

in the sphere of human relations

while I feel that it should rather be something respected, treated as sacred,

and respectfully hidden from view.

Our kids should be well-protected from their parents' sexuality

and friends and neighbors should not be exposed to sexually-suggestive behavior of couples

Rather, we should be able to relate in human ways, from places of our heart

And sexuality should be expressed, celebrated, privately - so it does not need to be repressed

But simply kept in the bounds God designed it to be

We are an oversexed culture

We have no bearing about how to solve the problems of gay rights and abortion

But perhaps we can see that these "problems" are created when sexuality itself leaves the bedroom

And parades on the street

The trend toward everybody's sexuality

Being everybody's business

Creates the problems we cannot solve

The liberal emphasis on liberating sexuality

is one ingredient to the problem;

The conservative audacity to violate what God relegated to the privacy of couples, and committed communities at best,

is the other, reactionary at best.

Both are to blame, and neither is right

More modesty is needed all around,

built on humility

of our own confusion, flawedness, and brokenness

Adam and Eve's problem, recorded in the bible

should be suggestive enough

that we all are going to be confused around sex

None of us has the place to parade sex around,

Neither our personal sexuality, nor our positions on it.

Parents, humbled by their own struggles, and helped by God,

should introduce children to what they need to know, when the time is right

Couples should further explore sexuality together

Only when already committed to each other for life

And seek guidance from elders, and other committed couples,

Once sex has been put in its proper place:

Not the central issue, not an issue on its own,

but one mysterious dimension of human relationship and existence

of which our proper and most healthy priorities and boundaries

have already lovingly been described by God

God's way of treating each other, regarding each other,

Checking ourselves and living in obedience to Him

Must be the first and far more important emphasis,

and aspect of life to be explored and practiced

long before anything about sex is discussed or explored

This is the only way out of the mess

This is the only hope for surviving the confusion

Our particular brokenness must be discovered, confessed, allowed to convict,

and shared in living relationship with God

and then we will be shown what to do with the rest

Afterthought:

Churches should boldly address impropriety, or the desacralization of sex

But only in the context of their charge of shepherding their flocks,

Not as a weapon to wield in general, irresponsibly, doing the same damage

as the impersonal, generalized liberal portrayal of sex.

Thoughts, from an Abbot

2009-11-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

My one audience with the abbot. I'd been thinking about what to ask him for at least a day and a half of my retreat.

On Thanksgiving day, I went in asking Father Meletios about how to deal with sadness, suffering, and preoccupation with doing things 'right' - so that I could be less self-absorbed, and experience true thankfulness.

[paraphrased per my memory]:

The way we look at it, in the Orthodox Church, would be that you are having a problem with your mind. There is nothing actually causing you suffering right now: you are relatively comfortable, have a roof over your head, by all rights you should be happy.

The reason you are suffering, then, must be that your thoughts are creating that. We are amazing creatures of habit; you'll find that your current problem will disappear as soon as a bigger one comes along, but once that bigger one is cleared up, you will dredge up the first problem.

We all experience this. What you may want to try is what we monks learn to do: ignore the thoughts, and focus on what is around you, at hand, in the present. Increase your awareness of the love of Christ. You replace the thoughts with the voice of God, which is always experienced in the present, in whatever form.

One thing you'll notice is the thoughts are never about the present, they only deal with the past or future.

The other thing you'll notice is that thoughts are always about one of two things: desire or fear. And both of them hurt.

One practice that helps is centering your experience on your heart. Not your emotions, mind you, which are your body's reactions to thoughts, but the heart itself, which is always in the present. It shifts your life experience from centering around your thoughts to centering on your heart, and what you'll find is that operating truly from this place of love, there are no words for that. This is Christ living in you. You can have no thoughts when you're in that experience.

Now I know very few people who can do this constantly - the thoughts come up for us all. Maybe the Saints could live this way. But for the rest of us, even monks, dealing with thoughts this way is a constant practice.

Father Meletios Weber, Abbot of the Monastery of St. John of Shanghai & San Francisco

Emotional cripple

2009-10-30T21:18:00.001-07:00

.

I am disabled
In more ways than one

The second way
Earns me a check
And can be verified by a doctor

But the first way has affected
My life so much more

I can not walk alone in this life
I need crutches: people, relationships, projects, ambitions
Which prop me up
Not entered into healthily by a normal, whole person
But depended on;
Take them away and I collapse

Movies, social events, sports, pop culture, recreational substances, attractions
Do not meet my needs
As I require much more support than is natural.
At best, these things are distractions from my situation
Which I find unbearable to face directly
And sometimes I form unhealthy attachments - dependencies - addictions - compulsions
That make it tricky to navigate
What others call just normal
Stuff of life

See I "suffered a very serious injury from my childhood, because of how my parents positioned themselves in relation to me"
And this injury crippled my development
And left me emotionally disabled
As you will find If you try to walk with me any distance.

Jesus healed the disfigured
Even those crippled from birth
But those healed needed to know their need, as
It was "their faith that made them well"
Their reaching for his cloak
That healed them

If you walk with me,
Please expect delays
Have patience
Because I can only go so fast
I am ashamed
And prone to pretending
That I am more capable than I have learned to be
And I don't want to lie

Now I know I must risk rejection
If I am to be accepted as I am

Jesus suffered rejection
In order to live the life he was handed

.

Where there's smoke, there's fire

2009-10-20T17:09:00.001-07:00

Where there's smoke, there's fire
And fears mean a liar
But how many layers
Does it take to inspire

the truth? Comes in a place of love
How few of us rise above
Today's haunting demons to find them composed of

Our youth: when we learned to hurt ourself
Placing self love out of reach, on a shelf
The last book we study:
The hand we were dealt.

somehow, I agree with them both

2009-10-19T17:51:00.001-07:00

all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Julian of Norwich

all, dear reader, is not going to be fine. Even If we all agreed with the saints and the prophets, all would not be fine. For we would still be mortal, partial, suffering poor creatures, not very intelligent and never the authors of our best hope.

Wendell Berry

Political packages for the Future

2009-10-19T17:41:00.001-07:00

the government should only be big enough to annihilate any country and (If necessary) every country, to spy on its citizens and on other governments, to keep big secrets, and to see to the health and happiness of large corporations. A government thus reduced will be almost too small to notice and will require almost no taxes and spend almost no money.

Wendell Berry, from"The joy of sales resistance" in Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

Fremont canal in fall

2009-10-19T17:05:00.001-07:00

Soap bubble

2009-10-19T09:32:00.001-07:00

Soap bubble,
Where did you come from?
You magically appeared
In the course of washing my hands
Taking care of something I needed to do
I looked up and you were there
To brighten my day
Your perfect roundness,
Colors shimmering on your surface
Despite this grey day
How did the breath
That keeps you alive and afloat
Get inside you?
Soap bubble
Where did you go?
I looked down for a moment
To fix something with the water and
Having been uplifted by your presence
Looked up to find you again
But you were gone
Vanished as unexpectedly as you appeared

How can something so vivid in front of us
In fact be so fragile?

impasse and dark night

2009-10-18T07:42:00.001-07:00

Night in John of the Cross is the progressive purification and transformation of the human person through what we cherish or desire and through what gives us security and support. We are affected by darkness, therefore, where we are most deeply involved and committed, and in what we love and care for most. Love makes us vulnerable, and it is love itself and its development that precipitate darkness in oneself and in the 'other.'

from "Impasse and Dark Night"

by Constance Fitzgerald, O.C.D.,

in Living With Apocalypse, Harper and Row, 1984.

Particulars or waves

2009-10-08T18:16:00.000-07:00

So tenuous
Hanging by threads
We go through our ups and downs
But some dips there are no coming back from

The digestive tract didn't have to stop working
The chemo had given us such hope
She took this walk with me
Through the arboretum
Even though she was tired and had to sit down
We rode the wave for 15 months
But one too many days unable to keep liquids down
And we switched to TPN
She dipped too low
And now there is no coming back for her.

She didn't have to get cancer
But she did have to die someday
Would it have been any easier later? Maybe
But it would still have hurt a lot, just the same.

Just like I didn't have to make those particular bad decisions
That led to the end
But the problems behind it all
Had to come out eventually

Light sometimes behaves as a particle,
Other times as waves

Electrons, like reasons, exist in particular whenever we look for them,
But the rest of the time they are infinite waves, undulating in the background of space-time.

What exists, exists. What must happen must happen.
We just never know where, or how.

Quotes on patience

2009-10-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

Above all, trust the slow work of the spirit.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown,
something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability--
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you,
your ideas mature gradually--let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of your tomorrow.

Who can say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be?
Give yourself the benefit of believing that the Spirit is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of felling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Can you be patient unil the mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?

Stephen Mitchell

kind of like Truth

2009-10-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

The acorn falls to the cement.
The crow lands beside it.
He places one foot on the nut, and pecks at it with his nose.
He hears distant traffic and picks the large acorn up in his small beak. He looks around. Satisfied that the traffic is far away, he places the nut down and pecks at it some more, holding it steady with his right foot.
He wants what is inside. But it will take work to get to it.
He contemplates flying up and dropping it to the concrete again. But another crow swoops in from behind and lands near him.
He picks up the acorn and flies away.
He is not ready to share this prize.
Although he holds it now, he does not even know how to access it yet himself.

Every line a measured verse

2009-10-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

Sky that moves each step I walk
Shy I left you yet I talk
Breath that deepens, anxious less
Losing fear of meaningless
Friends with distance as it should
Leaving always saying I would
Sad about the other things
worrying less tomorrow brings
Holding truer inner sense
Relax brewing recompense
Captivating but ignored
Sallow missing unexplored
Bitter grief on nightly rounds
Crying always newer sounds
More amazed with wider eyes
Clearer answers fewer lies

17 years

2009-09-13T09:42:00.001-07:00

I spent exactly
17 years trying to be too good
Another 17 years rebelling against that and being bad, bitter, and lost
I think I may be finally ready to look for me

Origins

2009-09-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

Today I am on a walk my parents took with me outside of the apartment I was born in. They swaddled me up in a ton of blankets and took me out into the Chicago winter.

On that short, one block walk to the lake shore park I imagine parents who were happy?... confused?... uncertain of what to feel or what would be expected. Their little baby, going outside for the first time, one of the first things they attempted to do together as parents. I of course just stared up at the bare tree branches a lot, and took it all in.

My father's experience inside must have been blocked, or conflicted, or incomplete somehow, maybe in ways he didn't realize, since he was already cheating on my mom by then.

Perhaps my mom did not know yet. Her fantasy may have prevailed against the warning signs; or perhaps evidence of the truth pushed her further into denial, dissociation.

But they walked along. They were new parents.

My parents didn't anticipate that ultraviolet rays burn even in the cold. So I got a blistering sunburn on my face, at eight weeks old.

One of the first things they attempted to do together as parents. And the result.

My grandma gave them hell for not thinking about that later. I am probably psychosomatizing the overly sensitive area tingling on the right side of my face, returning to that same spot in the sun.

Donde Naci

2009-09-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Top middle window.

First sights and smells:

hurricane Andy

2009-09-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

Venn diagram

2009-09-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

All of the pain that was done to me
All that was robbed from me, that I never learned
About loving, about living in family, and real relationships
About being a child
About being wrong
And still being loved
About struggling as a man honestly, and accepting less than perfection
All the touch I never felt
And comfort I never received
These things I never knew that I never knew
And the tears I never cried
Belong in the first circle.

All the pain I have done
And continue to do
Which was only my fault
All the love that was rushed
By my angst of aloneness
All the good love starved of presence
By my anxiety of sitting still
All the trust I have shattered
And hearts I have dropped
Pain I have caused
Sincere promises I have failed at
Excuses i've given
And demeaning of myself;
Plus a future of only the same
Because I am "not healthy enough yet for a relationship"
And thus never yet have been
Even throughout attempting bonds
I thought could meet both our needs
These fill up the second circle

And I in my tears
Am in the intersection
Seeing for the first time both
Stricken by both
Mourning both

Mourning the loss
Of a self never known, and never presented

Of the holes in my heart
I have bled onto others
Staining what I wanted to keep

Of the irresponsibility
Of so many choices I have made
For wrong reasons, or simply at the wrong time

Of a hurt that is living today
Given birth through me
That my truest intentions cannot change
Because I in this state
Can create no other.

No child,
No family,
No true love
Only pain

What I was not handed
I cannot pass on
And never will be able to of my own power

So Abba you may decide
What miracle to grant me
For I am destroyed just as I destroy
And am no more
Than the splinters at my feet

Drum-making

2009-08-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

I am an unfinished drum.

The barrel is life; the animal skin my soul.

Til now, if you strike me, you only get empty thuds,
because my soul has not been stretched enough
to cover the actual shape and size of life.

God is stretching my soul into the shape
of the life he made me to fit.

growing uncertainty

2009-07-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

words about my father's ways
sprouting beliefs about myself
a long time trying to heal her, heal myself
by mowing down any sign of the same within me
never hearing which parts were ok
never hearing parts truly wrong
just the seed of choking vines
thriving in the dark
withering in light

but night

when I am alone
not just in bed, but inside myself
thuderclouds of worry and fear
keep me locked inside
I have no raingear

for her tears

simply water the seeds
of what I'd believed:
father that I never had
i am doomed to be;
husband she had dreamed about
I could never be.

Resurrection/Insurrection

2009-04-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning, my eyelids rose like the sun,
but Six hours late; the day had begun,
Ran the globe like a Gerbil to keep up with the sun,
So afraid of the dark I'd become.

I looked out on amber waves of grain that had kept my eyes warm,
and realized an enemy had been born.
Where did all this fear come from - I thought I was safe?
at least since Jesus erased my mistakes - My mistake...
Past sins may be covered but future ones remain, with the pain,
That's how God wants us playing this Game...

It's the tension we don't like to mention...
You'll find me huddled in the corner, a mourner,
peering out where the shadows can't find my eyes; I realize
that Rise is a place where we pitch our tents,
but with stakes that are writhing and driving and Bent --
Don't lament -- and yet...

We all play a part in making prophets' dreams come true--
So don't give a hoot: Pitch in, and pollute,
Cause we're sinners, with innards twisted hiding the truth:
With every layer of hurt comes a layer of guilt, settling down like silt,
It's how we're built.

And if Jesus wants to hang there on the cross to forgive us, fine,
But it we'd let him live, he's just be one of us...
He couldn't have gotten up there without us...

Someone had to sin, for Jesus it's an easy roll of the dice --
But we all blame Judas without thinking twice.

I'm Judas, I'm caught in God's catch-22
I'm going to do God's will then Get crucified too
He's a Jew, and they've been taking the fall, for us all,
From hitler, all the way back to Peter and Paul
But wait -- Weren't they Jew's too?

What hope do we have / if Anti-Semitism goes so far back? When the
Jews had to join us, they lost their counter attack.
no more whining, they inherited our hate, and self-hate was born
And centuries on centuries of internalized fathers we'd never be good enough for.
Think you can grow up and escape from the parents inside?
But there's nowhere to hide - there's nowhere to hide...
So we stuff it all down and then turn it to pride...

Not the Bride of Christ but the Bride of Godzilla:
Welcome to America, how can we Kill ya?
No wonder Judas hung himself from the nearest tree;
He wanted to die in time to get Out of Jail free
When Christ busted Gates open, he went along for the ride --
He knew God's plan, and the hell left behind

on Earth... It's Earth Day, and Shakespeare's Birthday
Was it worth it? What do you say? / To play the part
of birthing art through destruction - that's our function -
whether Christian or not - to heap starbucks cups into landfills cum methane fields and drive the wheels for oil spills to all become a lake of FIRE -

Our job is to destroy the planet... so God can finally Damn it.

(Ahem)
M: As we crucify the land and the Sea, we're only
Fulfilling prophecy. What more do you want from me, G?

G: Maybe some pain in your heart for what you're tearing apart.
Worst thing you could do is think you're home free --
You keep forgetting it all depends on ME.

M: But Lord, its Manifest Destiny. We're staking our claim
with our flags and our drills - Aren't you thrilled? We're finally
Getting this thing under control -- and once our drugs defeat death,
We won't need you at all!

G: The stakes in the land are the spikes in my hands -
And the spear in my side's spilling Carbon Dioxide.

M: We'll stick a spear in the permafrost and then light a match - and to the cattle grazing.
We're taking our stand -- Keg stand, that is -- we're gettin you and this planet DRUNK.
And see if you'll survive the hazing.

G: All the sour wine in Cana won't settle your stomachs.
Your acid reflux can't be cured with drugs -
Cause each night it is _I_ who drip in your cups.

...
John said, "whoever sinneth, hath not seen..." But didn't I see him last week?
When I was at my peak? didn't I hear him speak?
But then I sinned again -- so maybe I was just walking with a ghost --
I didn't touch his hands, too caught up in my plans --
Maybe all along my faith has been built on sand...

The only way to enter in is through SIN - THAT brings me down again.
And remember it is hands with holes that hold me - that's why I keep slipping through...
When I start seeming perfect I think I'm Jesus too. So sue me -
Sin needs to be written on my face to help me remember my place.

Fill the wounds with salt, say it wasn't our fault
Fill the wounds with salt, say it wasn't our fault

Gospel writers had Judas,
The Nazis had Jews,
Its always better to find someone else to accuse

Fill the wounds with salt, say it wasn't our fault

Hey Jude, your blood-stained clothes couldn't be any wetter;
Take this sad song from me and make it better

Fill the wounds with salt, say it wasn't our fault

EasierToHang a Christ from the Cross
than admit he's the Boss;
(until we taste the albatross)

Fill the wounds with salt, say it wasn't our fault

Now unemployment's Rising, same time as our Lord;
Better let someone else die by the sword
Impale him, let KVI string them from Cords,
Cause the Lords we choose in the end will be Hitler - or Sarah Palin.

So does that mean we're off the hook?
Does american passtime bible-thumping mean we take a bat to the book?
Can we finally look at what we've done -- knowing now that God has won?
Or do we savor the flavor of being saved --
No longer a slave to sin, Now again we want slaves...

No reel me in, feel me Jesus, reveal us / even if its
against free will to seal us. You can't save us from sin -
In fact you need it to win - Cause then we need you,
and that's where we begin.

If you DON'T want to hang yourself regularly, something is definitely wrong -
So touch your friend's hand while you have them along.
And share a piece of your fish, for that hole in their side.
Decorating a Cross? That's just how we share in the ride.

written for Easter II / COTA Earth Day Reverb 4/25/09

Praying for the whole world

2009-02-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

Praying on behalf of the whole world, that they might find light.... And be freed from the hectic pace which wearies my own bones and makes them all seem like assholes and enemies to me.... This was the first true evangelistic sentiment I have ever felt - imagining with hope that all might find God, at a same moment when I also experienced the triumph power of the Spirit to bring peace over my anxiety which otherwise haunts every morning waking.... Today I discerned this is the most important purpose for which I was put on this earth, to feel the joy of god's power to heal all that ails me, while believing fully that all may feel this. And to rise to the world after these 3 extra hours in bed into actions and words that bely this belief- that we all may know god's love, from living squarely centered in his healing presence, and that after finding our ways there, our only and most important job is to pray 100% the vision that others can and are finding their way to this truth.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Can husbands command wives?

2008-08-22T13:00:00.001-07:00

I mean does God say, I command you woman, I command you man... And what sorts of things does God command in that way, just scripturally evident commands (general ones) or specific things too (like do laundry). I mean there are ways God can speak to us all the time and guide our steps to do God's will, which I believe we often can perceive and which if we listen and do them our lives are enhanced with God...

But the foundation for these commands is the granting of free will and so every command in effect is a request. So if God requests we obey but understands it is our free choice to or not, then it seems to me that husbands are out of line expecting a relational command to be anything different than how God asks and expects of us.

doctor-pusher-flyer man

2008-06-23T14:54:00.001-07:00

So I'm coming out of Georgia, on a plane that hit turbulence on its last leg, throwing the flight attendant sitting in front of me into the side of the plane, sending one person to the hospital when they landed.

My previous flight from Roanoke landed thirteen minutes before this one was scheduled to take off. I barreled through the airport as much as I could run, passing the gate attendant and throwing myself into the emergency exit door trying to bust it open upon seeing the jetway door closed. The gate attendant yelled at me that I couldn't just throw myself against an emergency exit door, to which I replied "Well I just did and it didn't open, so now I want you to get me onto that plane." (Come to think of it, aren't emergency exits supposed to open?) She called security on me.

While we were waiting for security I calmly explained how no one from the previous flight – which was delayed for mechanical reasons – had called to ask them to hold the flight, despite my requests. I listed all the things their airline had done wrong, as she spoke on the phone to someone about me as if I wasn't there. Before security arrived, however, another delayed passenger did. Then another. Soon there were five of us waiting, all delayed for mechanical reasons.

While she talked to someone I assumed was in the office, I calculated my list of needs (a 4 star hotel, $60 meal voucher, and free flight – for all of us there). Then she said, "ok y'all, come with me." I thought she was taking us around the corner to negotiate a deal, but instead she punched in the security code and let us onto the jetway. "I have NEVER seen that happen before," said the woman I sat beside.

So now I'm in the first seat I saw – right in front next to the exit, facing the steward in his fold down seat. I ask him how his night has been. "Not so good," he replies, and proceeds to tell me about people hitting the ceiling literally on the flight in from Seattle.

After a bit he asks me and my neighbor if we're going to watch any movies. "I didn't think we had any tvs," I say, having scanned the walls and ceiling for something like the screens the other passengers have in the seatback in front of them. "Oh yeah," he says, "they're right down there," showing me rotating arms like a dentists lamp hiding next to my legs.

"Yeah they have nice touch screens and all kinds of movies and games you can buy."

"Oh I left my credit card in the overhead," says my neighbor.

"That's ok," he says in confidence. "You don't need one, not when you know me. I know how to turn them on for you."

It's what he says next that grabs my attention: "Yeah they have lots of options to entertain you , and that's what we want. That's the future. We want you to be entertained. Anything to make it a little less painful. It's a long five hour flight and we don't want it to be painful. We want you to be entertained so you don't feel it."

Suddenly I feel like I'm talking to a drug pusher. Even though I know he doesn't mean any harm, I feel like he's speaking the mantra of electronic corporations everywhere, whose CEOs maybe don't mean harm either, or maybe they do. But I think, isn't that just what its all about. Life is long and it can be painful, and they want us to be entertained so we won't feel it.

It's funny because a doctor said almost the same thing to my mom when he gave her up for dead: "We just want to make sure you're as comfortable as you can be from here on out. We're interested in your quality of life." That was when I killed him.

I mean, as far as I was concerned. I walked out of the room and started searching for other doctors. We never saw his fleshy face again.

But I wonder why the word choices of the doctor and airline steward are so similar. Both of them represent a cultural response to life that has gotten just too hard. Apple is just another drug company. Screw trying to fix things; we're going to take this little pill and wait for it to be over. Imagine if drugs were administered by looking at them. If we could stare at an IV bag of morphine and feel better, it would look a lot like TV.

Which means that basically we're turning America into one giant hospital. And the illness is life. Our cultural doctors don't really know how to make life better, so they've prescribed a heavy dose of Comcast. Think I'm exaggerating? Name the biggest companies you can think of. How many of them are in the business of electronic distractions?

My mom is home from the hospital now. She's slowly worked her way back to eating, walking on her own, and being able to take care of herself better. It is an incredibly long, patient process for a woman who two months ago was still robust and working, despite having cancer. Dehydration brought her within a virus of dying, and one month in bed on life support has made her very weak. We take it as a good sign that she can make it into the family room to sit with us evenings and watch tv.

Our economy right now is built on electronics and legal drugs. The bulk of it is subsidized by credit and insurance, since what will satisfy us is far disconnected from what we are able to provide for ourselves. All this is fine, for now. Just as nurses can rest reasonably when a patient is on life support with stable vital signs. But what about when they pull the plug? What will all our children do when they pull the plug? Every generation born after me has had internet from the age of ten.

The blackout in Florida last week went unexplained. Not even the people who run the power grid could explain why it happened. The tornados in Florida tonight and freak winter storm over the middle two thirds of the country don't need explanations any more. We seem to know that you don't need specific explanations when the overall system is so strained. Our overall energy usage in the US is growing by 20% each year. Because of laptops, ipods, LCDtvs, etc. And we're not using any of it to solve our problems. We're using that power to be entertained.

My time in Virginia has been spent working on a system to get kids involved in learning about climate change and reducing energy usage, organizing a program for the Girl Scouts to educate their communities about the importance of changing habits and of efficient devices like Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, which they will also be selling. I'm trying to change it all, but I'm just one person. I could die on this plane ride because of crazy weather caused by global warming. And everyone around me is just watching tv.

Lots of people go to the hospital. Some people die there. Some people come home. I went to the hospital once, and I didn't die. But it took me a lot of years getting better, to learn how to use my energy better, to work on what matters, to not get by in life just being entertained. My mom is home from the hospital now, and her path to getting better is long and slow, and not even assured. The sickness is still inside her.

The world needs a lot of us working on what matters now. We all are a lot closer to dying than we might imagine. Maybe it would help to realize that we are already in the hospital.

--
Andrew Varyu
Founder, ITSCOOL
Innovative Tactics for Sea Level and Climate Change Outreach and Opportunity Leaders
"Getting kids psyched to be America's leaders against Global Warming"
206.909.8868
founder@itscool.us

Press:
NPR: http://www.wvtf.org/news_and_notes/audio/cs_girlscouts-03-07-08.mp3
TV: http://cfc.wset.com/searchvideos.cfm?k=girl+scouts
Paper: http://www.kirklandreporter.com/jumpstory.html?story=news3&pubdate=10/10/2007
Partner: http://www.gsvsc.org/news.htm#itscool

_other projects:_
Harvard Masters of Divinity Candidate
Postulant to Priesthood, Episcopal Church of Western Washington.
blog: www.andywrites.org
alt contact: harharvar@gmail.com

Private property

2008-06-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

The really messed up thing is that I bet, when resources get more scarce, our governments start passing laws allowing people to defend their property with use of force. Its sad to realize we will think of that before we do away with the concept of private property, which is flawed at its root.

Response to John Carlson's "The Cooling of Global Warming," Redmond Reporter, 5-14-08

2008-05-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Letter to the Editor
May 17, 2008

On my desk is a recent issue of the Redmond Reporter, which devotes two pages to a faux-sceintific commentary by John Carlson on "what science is actually telling us about our climate." According to Carlson, the period from 1940-1970 (in which the earth cooled 0.1 degree C) and from 1998-present (which cooled even less) shows that Global Warming is a myth.

What he conveniently leaves out is that from 1880-present the overall change was an increase of 0.9 degrees C.

He also either leaves out, or is ignorant of, the fact that climate change models do not predict consistent warming, but periodic cooling as well, as fresh water from melting icebergs causes oceans temporarily to cool down. Al Gore could have told him that. If he had been listening.

Social debate about Global Warming is really not about science, as Carlson's (mis)use of it shows, but about an issue much closer to home– our ways of life. Behind the most vocal doubters' tantrums is a desire to protect this way of life we have built - energy-guzzling bigscreen tvs so we don't have to talk to each other at home, water-thirsty lawns that keep us safe from neighbors, ever-widening highways so we don't have to sit next to each other while we commute, and irresponsible commentaries issued in newspapers so we don't have to face those we debate. There is natural resistance to sacrificing things we have grown accustomed to, and so for people like Carlson, I can see why this would make him defensive.

The debate is really between people who want to justify our comfort zones and our right to waste more resources than most people in theworld have to live on, and others whose sensitivity to the suffering in the world - both in nature and in humans - does not afford us the luxury of this ignorance. For better or worse, I find myself a member of the latter group, and I feel outrage at the thinly-veiled attempts of public figures who use their mouthpieces to sway others in order to make their own lives easier.

The truth is, the simple things we have to do to stop Global Warming make sense on many fronts. Buying more energy-efficient cars or better – building public transport – can help us conserve resources that are limited. Using energy-efficient appliances and lightbulbs can shave hundreds of dollars off home energy bills. Switching to clean sources of energy (wind, hydro, solar) can improve our children's health (coal plant emissions cause asthma in children).

So why all the fuss, John Carlson? Is it too much of an inconvenience for you to care?

Andrew Varyu,
Redmond, Washington

Signs of the end

2008-05-17T00:27:00.001-07:00

I just read on my cereal ingredients label that it has BHT listed before the b vitamins, which means there is more of it in there. I think its really messed up that we would make a cereal and add vitamins artificially so that it looks good on a nutrition label but then add a greater amount of a preservative which is bad for us.

Economic sins

2008-05-16T11:52:00.001-07:00

Buying on credit, if for other than cash flow reasons, thus living beyond our means. Signifies a lack of satisfaction with the abundance god provides, pride in taking into our own hands the substance of our fulfillment, and a rejection of god's gifts.
buying an SUV if to enjoy the sense of power and protection it affords. Signifies a lack of faith in god to protect us, and a willingness to destroy god's creation for the sake of personal comfort, hence not treating our neighbors as ourselves.
Saving any money before we give ten percent of it away.

We should Ask god to help us Examine our hearts to find any sin in our own economic decisions.

2008-04-24T20:46:00.001-07:00

There is irony at all our medicine to take our survival out of God's hands, yet 75% of illness doctors see is stress related which doctors can't treat. We are killing ourselves as fast as we are saving ourselves.

homelus

2008-04-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

mortgages are rising homes in foreclosure people on street.

guys on fox debate
millionaire boy: "live within your means!"
sociactivist: "we are victims!"

man across the street sleeps on bench.

I think mortgages a bad idea to start with, like credit.
I tell mom : system never should be built, banking so much on future.

Mom: but how would people buy houses?

Exactly.

man sleeps on bench. some think we are better than he:

"I pay my bills," we say.

But really we don't. We pay to support the denial:
No one can live within their means in this system of "ownership."

Unless we live on a bench.

We thought we were better than he? Different?

God is showing us the truth.

Antinomies I Poverty

2007-10-15T17:36:00.000-07:00

Debates on poverty, between conservatives who believe that the poor should help themselves, and liberals who believe that the state should help the poor, are flawed from the start. Because both positions are predicated on not believing in God's abundance.

Though liberals orient primarily toward the poor, and conservatives orient primarily toward themselves, neither is morally right. We have to look at what fears are behind both their positions. Liberals are saying, if the government does not give, the poor will not have enough. Conservatives are saying, if the government does give, I will not have enough. Both believe that there is only so much to go around. This reveals that neither side believes that God is infinitely abundant. Because of this common limit to their faith in God, neither position can claim moral superiority.

If they believe in God's promise to provide, there would be no reason to be afraid. We can accept that conservatives will orient primarily to themselves and liberals will always consider others. This is balance, and this is as it should be. However, if both positions did believe in God's infinite prosperity, then their reactions to the poor would look very different. Conservatives would say, you may take my resources to give to the poor, because I know God provides for me and I will in no way be less well off by sharing my wealth with others. Liberals would say, I have more than enough energy and resources in my life to follow my heart and assist the poor. I do not need to hope the government or anyone else will take care of them for me. God has revealed their burden to my heart, therefore I am part of God's provision for them. I can give of myself because I know God will take care of what I need for myself in the course of opening myself to be an instrument of God's grace.

See, both liberals and conservatives reveal by their political orientations a common underlying belief - that God is not providing for them. To believe that God is watching over and providing for you opens up a third way, Jesus' way. This is neither liberal nor conservative. Whether your heart is given the gift of going out and personally helping others in need, or the gift of focusing and channeling prosperity, your attitude and reactions will look much different if you have faith enough to follow the third way.

This reveals one last important shared point - that neither side of the debate should concern themselves with the poor as a starting point. If liberals and conservatives have an incomplete faith in God, which does not allow them to see all the ways that God has, is and will continue to provide for them, then their first priority should be healing their own situation, to come into full awareness of grace. Jesus did not start by tending to the poor. Jesus started by realizing he was the son of God.

***

(* Antinomies are categories of mutual exclusivity, two positions that cannot be reconciled. Kant believed that the human mind was created in a way that causes us to see all things in terms of binary oppositions. Taoists believe that when two things seem irreconcilable, we must rise above and see the situation with a new mind, often which realizes the harmony and balance in the overall situation, as symbolized by the yin-yang symbol. This piece is part of a series that will explore underlying assumptions behind traditionally entrenched debates, toward seeing how ideological divisions can be dissolved toward mutual harmony and understanding.)

A prayer for friends. There are more than 3 now

2007-06-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

the three I hold
have fears from old
and you, O lord,
forgive them.

We hope so fast
that in our grasp
the future'd pass
as given.

A trembling heart,
When pierced by doubt
May bleed a pool
to drown in.

We, floating on
that surface pond
at last know Your
dominion.

Our Father be,
three come with me.
Our rain becomes
a shelter

Absent Love,
We fall to dust
and lay before
our Maker.

Grains of sand
pass through our hands
as we pass through
your healing.

Hope and help,
when done ourselves,
betray our lack
of feeling.

For Yours alone
can bring us home
and fan the tears
once fallen.

b like the squirrel

2007-04-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

aright

so now im thinkin bout nothing doing.

when you got things to do but doing nothing bout it.

thinkin first it was a philosophy but then realisin now this PSA is made possible by impossibility: couldn't do it if i wanted. the body, tormented by havoc wreaked from stress is having none of it. instead of work toward deadlines its killians red, a smoke, and rocknroll.

so wats this tell us.

when it was a philosophy i spouk it (spoke/spout) to a girl obviously too dominated by the deadline. usually people don't listen. ; thinks I: they can't

suddenly a new semester and she's eschewing responsibility with the best of them. and thinks i: was it something i said?

sits I back with beers and riffs pounding and almost make an excuse: well _I_ have a disease. I have an excuse for resisting powerfully the demands of outside. feels like, there is a natural 'NO' built in to the logic. having seized the reigns, the body imposes its tyrannical vegetation. when it permits work, only on condition that no stress accompanies this "pro duc tivity." I can get things done so long as the mind gels in coolness.

but another? she? what do we call it when a person has no disease? laziness, hmph. right. we call it laziness. pro crass ination.

but nature takes over. has power. vegetation that takes over takes root- grows up in vines, encircles our legs, impedes steps. it is no progress. time for a dive rather than drive. dive into ourselves. explode this world from inside out. a big mid finger to the BUA business as usual.

Nature takes over. "for janet, help came from her faith, but it also came from a squirrel." if that squirrel can take care of himself with a harsh winter coming on, so can I.

starts in the us whose livelihood gets seized by paralysis induced from the death wish against whom we play chicken.

but it spreads.

not all have to face death.

maybe you hear it from someone who has, and just it spreads in you. like that vine, like that virus.

suddenly, you are nature's child again.

and nobody, not those who haven't got it, not frickin Harvard, no one can defeat the power of the earth.

global cooling: a phenom of arrest within. life stops that which led us into the fire.

b like the squirrel.

Energy and Environment - org Feb 22 06

2006-02-22T17:53:00.000-08:00

Tonight I taught my first yoga class in a long while. Most striking to my personal experience was how little energy I felt, and how my emotions on entering my door afterward were sad. This could be cleansing, I thought; no need to make more of the sad feeling than it needs to be. Could be stagnant energy on its way out. But unmistakable was how it showed me how low my energy state is, which parallels the borderline sickliness I have been feeling lately, more like the person who has the condtition I have than the person who lives as if he doesn't.

But that is not the point. Upon opening my refrigerator door and smelling the stink that has been growing there for weeks, today I decided simply to find and throw out all the potential culprits. It is a simple act, but one that I had not found the motivation to do for weeks. After pulling out a number of containers into a trash bag, I walked the trash bag outside the half-block to the dumpster. Normally, my trash makes it to the door and waits for me to depart for class to be taken to the dumpster. Today, it went all the way. This in the end is more telling about my energy state than my 'feelings' after class.

Energy shows up significantly in the actions we take. It is the difference between doing the small things that maintain our environments, our relationships, and our lives, and putting these small things off until later, until the problem has grown so big as to demand attention. Simple actions to raise our energy levels have direct impact on the qualities of our lives because they enable minor acts that add up in the end. Walking back into my apartment, having purged that stink from my refrigerator, my emotions were now happy. The energy I gained from Dahn (energy) yoga class manifested in a tangible improvement in my environment.

Next, I did some dishes. For weeks, again, since returning from school, I have tended to leave the dishes undone until the problem of the kitchen cannot be ignored. Today, while doing the dishes, I noticed an element of the experience of doing the dishes that was different than other times: I used less mind. Less consciousness went into formulating a plan for which dishes I would do first, at what point I would stop sudsing and rinse some, and the best order of operations in order to conserve water. Today I began and had a stack of sudsed dishes and was rinsiing them before the first thought (of how this was different from normal) entered my head. What had happened?

The Yoga class had moved my energy from my brain down into my body. Resting in my body, the energy was more available for immediated action. Typically, the thoughts about how to do the dishes and the time it is taking add to the laboriousness of the process. Often, this is the reason the dishes do not get started: The energy that would go into accomplishing the task gets squandered on considering and planning (or excusing myself from) the task. So it gets put off.

The energy, on these days, has its home in the brain. In order for the energy to transfer into my body and thus into action, a process of permission must go on before the brain allows the energy to move into the body. If we pay attention, we can notice that the brain is actually very cunning. For often, we make excuses and put off tasks until later. In these instances, the task does not get done, and notice that the brain never had to give up its energy to the body and the accomplishment of the task. Under the auspices of weighing the decision to act, the brain has actually used up the energy doing what it likes to do best: idly thinking.

Notice that the majority of lifestlyes that have evolved through modern convenience and stay-at-home information gathering and computer-based desk jobs actually promote a general trend of energy movement away from the body and toward the brain. Our body does not need energy to accomplish tasks that can be done through telephone wires and radio waves. We do not need to move. At most, our brain needs to work to figure out how to operate the software or the machinery. This is at least true of my gradualte student life. The prescribed activity involves uses of the brain while the body is sedentary: reading, writing, discussing around a table. The reason my dishes do not get done is intimately related to the encouragement of my energy to be in my brain, ready to read or answer or process at the drop of a hat, rather than in my body, ready to empty my refrigerator when the need be.

Of course this is not to allay responsibility. My energy is my responsibility, as is undertaking whatever activities I personally require to keep enough energy in my body for purposes of everything from cleaning my apartment to creating blood to stay alive (which for me is also a conscious daily responsibility). The purpose of writing under the topic "Energy and Environment" is to show that our energy is not separate from our environments, but actually intimately influenced by and creative of them.

One day when, last semester, I awoke on a Saturday morning in a deep depression, I thought long and hard of how to cheer myself up. Something of the burden of responsibilities of indepenedent life and study and work weighed heaviliy on me, but I had no singular upsetting thoughts. Actually, every indicator I could think of showed an immensely positive trend in my life. I was happy with where I was at. But still I was depressed.

Gradually, it dawned on me that I was lying, practically paralyzed, in an apartment that I had not cleaned the week prior. Dust was on the floor, and the kitchen had not thoroughly been cleaned as I had been doing since moving in. Lying there "depressed," I knew the apartment needed to be cleaned, and this had been adding to my burdened feeling about the day. But, worried by the phantom depression, I was putting energy into trying to root out the source of my sadness before getting up and repressing it under a flurry of activity.

Finding no culprit for my sadness, however, I realized that my depression may be reflecting the abundance of energy stagnating within my un-cleaned apartment. One of the ways we kept the energy fresh in the yoga centers was cleaning constantly; at least every day, and then to fill the time when there was nothing else to do. This created a very clean and pure energy environment, and many students enjoyed coming to class just because it "felt good" inside the centers. Sure enough, when I left behind my presumption of a psychological cause to my depression, and set about tidying, dusting, washing, scrubbing, and letting fresh air in, my condition was "cured." I was happy as if nothing had happened.

We know - at least our bodies know - the difference between good (fresh) and bad (stagnant) energy. While our intellectually-oriented culture often finds the sources of our displeasure in deep, grandiose scars or sweeping ennui about the future and our place in the world, it may often be that our emotions are responding to stagnation in our energy environments - small things that have gone untended - whether in our domiciles or our relationships - that are very much in our power to do something about. In fact, we may be just one yoga class away from making a number of changes that will deeply change our lives for the better.

copyright 2006, andrew varyu

Letter to Bishop: what leads me to respond

2006-01-06T17:54:00.000-08:00

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,

thou wilt not despise.

Ps 51:17

2 - what leads me to respond

I laid in an empty room of a recently-rented apartment, forty miles from any friends or family.

Instead of furniture, there was the sound of frogs croaking in the backyard pool. My body pulsed with over-exertion from the walk upstairs. I laughed. Even if I had wanted to continue working the breakneck pace of the past three years, my body wouldn't allow it.

Instead of blessings, I counted the wonderful elegance with which things had been taken away from me: Six weeks before, my car and belongings were stolen. The day following, our approaching wedding canceled by my fiancee. Meanwhile, the progressive deterioration of my health that had started nine months earlier. The tapering of calls from concerned friends and family removed any obligation toward them. The utter comprehensiveness of loss felt strangely beautiful. I felt my body pulse and buzz, and peaceably readied myself for death.

Hmm, God reminded me. Hmm, there was one thing that hadn't been taken away, but had been strangely supported where things might easily have failed: the letter for scholarship money covering my expenses; the lucky securing of the last available campus apartment in my price range. God was opening one door, only one, while all others quietly shut on rooms full of death. I saw a singular beacon of light beaming through the decay.

"All things come of thee, o Lord." And when only one thing is given, there is little question remaining about what God has created for us. From this stark and unforgettable experience in mid-June of 2005, my priorities were clearly laid out for me. All things involved in bringing and sustaining me at Harvard, and which God had waiting for me there, were the focus of my life. Everything else could be left for dead.

In that beacon of light, God built for me a bridge past a life that otherwise had ended. On the other side of that bridge, now, I am His alone, and every action or decision gets weighed in consideration of the work He has shown as laid out for me. Some involves long-range goals and academic projects; other work involves daily devotionals of ministering to individuals for whom God has found me. As surely as I can tell, one of those acts is unashamedly declaring myself a servant through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of the One True God. With or without ordination, when I remember this, my energy is restored to keep on living. If ever I become sidetracked, death begins to set in again.

My early struggles as an acolyte against hesitant sermons or stultified congregations first awakened my passion for work within the church. This led to crises at each major life-path decision that did not honor what felt like the call to Seminary. After college, responses to a desperate letter to all the pastors who had mentored me through my life assured me that when the call was true, I would be able to answer it without anxiety. Meanwhile, I pragmatically challenged the idea that a young man, practically untouched by tragedy or the complexity of adult life and relationships, could have anything to offer a congregation. Secretly, privately, I welcomed such growth experiences into my life.

The crash of two jet airplanes into the World Trade Center while I slept in New York preceded by two months the discovery in my blood of a fatal and unknown disease. In three months, doctors finally confirmed that the source of my profound debilitation, my 14-hour nights of sleep, and my layoff and relocation back to Seattle was a rare bone marrow disorder known as Aplastic Anemia. For the next three years, I found dependence on my family, practices of yoga and Eastern healing, and a long conversation with God about what I was doing wrong, or how much I should even take responsibility for my illness and its healing.

Ironically ï¿½ some would say ï¿½ stories from the Bible became more accessible to me from my yoga practices than through Church itself. Through experiencing and learning to live within the laws of energy, I found principles quoted by Jesus and experiences of the Apostles in Acts to be for the first time understandable. Over a period of months, every sermon and reading delivered at Bethany Community Church in Greenlake recapitulated a lesson I had experienced in the yoga studio, just the week before. I began to accept that the One True God was working in all the world, and was recognizable by faithful people through many vocabularies.

The quality of worship exploded tremendously for me while practicing yoga! At pastors' prompting, I knew now how to let go of my doubt and resistance, and trustfully welcome the Spirit in through my brain, my heart, my complete body as an opening to faith and renewal. Suddenly, there was no need to question or wait for the proof from God about how to know or believe in Him truly. I knew plainly from those feelings of grace, deep cleansing, assurance, and inspiration that I encountered at every service! What before had been a vague affinity for church buildings, community, and attendance now showed herself to be the Holy Spirit, who had been working through my numbed body and brain all along!

With thankfulness, I had no doubt any longer about taking up the gauntlet to investigate a call to ministry. What remained unsolved were only minor questions about the church or denomination to facilitate the inquest. With fond amazement at the workings of God, I found that God had actually placed me in the right church over 16 years earlier; that my mother's best friend, who had lovingly saved me from a near-crisis by taking me into her home, had recently been ordained as a Priest in the Episcopal Church, and that one of the newest Episcopal congregations in Seattle turned out to be the first church I have ever felt was a home to me. It is no exaggeration to say that the church home at COTA feels as much like a family as the two beautiful families who raised me and nursed me through my sickness.

To answer more briefly: I can never say to know for sure the scope of God's plans or vision through the actions He takes in the world and our personal lives. Yet I answer my congregation's call to ministry because, to the best of my ability to discern, God has plans for me in this role, and has seemed to be preparing me for it quite intensively over the past seven years. I accept it happily because it may be the only thing for which He keeps me alive.

I answer the call to ministry in sober acknowledgment of the challenges facing the church today. Echoes of political struggles destabilize our polity, and a new generation addicted to stimulus, proof, and mistrust finds less of value among church offerings. Firsthand work managing yoga studios has shown me what people will pay for tangible improvements to their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Consistent with my experience, my God-given vision involves creating safe and sane ways to incorporate body-mind practices into liturgies, so we may better minister to societies for whom the disconnection of their souls from God is intimately related to sedentary lifestyles, distraction, and a disconnection between their minds and their bodies; and between the lives they deeply long to create in harmony with the Spirit and what they successfully realize.

Sincerely,

Andrew Varyu

5 Jan. 2006

Prepared for Bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Olympia

Statement from Aspirant to Postulancy Andrew R Varyu

Submitted Epiphany, 2006

one of the twenty words for snow

2005-12-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

I wish the destruction of her house.

I wish the luscious flames to consume it in snowfall.

Her smile and shining foreheads of her family in the prarie

Turned to ash, tossed to breeze

wretched in its own disease.

Silence. And Howling: the wind through empty doorways.

A field on which to lay myself

And freeze my naked brittle sheath

To cracking shatter frost and gloom

where fragments of my loss maroon

on frozen blood spat underneath

Bound up in twisting coils of stale,

One of the twenty words for snow

now lays me down and throws away

the thoughts that haunt me everyday

of winter smiles in that old house.

spiritual pleasures of the body

2005-10-27T18:01:00.000-07:00

don’t know if you’ve noticed

but millennia of church fathers

and other spiritual leaders

have been saying bad things about the body

like it’s a block to spirituality, a distraction from God,

sinful

well they’re wrong

we have a spiritual body

that overlaps with our physical body

if we don’t love our bodies with reverence,

allow them to feel good, treat them with love

we won’t be spiritual

this is literal;

spirit can flow down through our limbs,

tickle our toes.

after a good sleep: feel the warmth, the comfort.

now instead of jumping out of bed, move your fingers

rotate your ankles, squeeze and stretch and wriggle your feet

slide your shoulders, twist your spine

and feel the spirit starting to caress you from the inside

keep moving and enjoying this body

and you will feel the peace of God finally inside of you.

Jesus said eat his spiritual food; not stop eating food.

he wanted us to feel the spirit through our bodies

this way we can know God’s peace

but if we keep what we have of Spirit only in our minds,

and deny the body,

we will never know for sure

God will remain a possibility, a nice dream,

but we will never feel the peace in our hearts,

the faith in our guts

to make us sure.

God must go everywhere

if we say She is everywhere but the body,

if we do not let her into our bodies,

then She cannot empower us to act

and we cannot be God’s people

The spiritual pleasure of the body

behaves differently than the physical pleasure of the body:

The physical pleasures come as compulsions;

the spiritual pleasures as peace.

The physical pleasures are enjoyed and leave us empty;

spiritual pleasures resonate; they can last forever.

This is why Jesus said you will not hunger,

you will not thirst.

The body is compulsive

only when it is starving for God;

if you gently let God into your body

with enjoyed, regular acts,

the compulsion of your acts will go away.

Your body will become infused with Spirit.

In your every act you can let God in,

but if you do not find God in your physical movements and sensations and processes,

then your body becomes sinful.

Keep your body moving. Don’t forget about it,

don’t let it stagnate, even while reading, Don’t distract

yourself from your body by reading or thinking too much

while you exercise. While you move your body,

be conscious of, experience it. Enjoy it.

Enjoy God in your waking, your walking,

your hugging, your cleaning,
your breathing, your eating.

let your enjoyment of your body
be your praise

celebrate your body
as a creation given by God
as much as nature
or any bible.

if you have no idea what I am talking about,

I suggest you try yoga for a while.

Whale

2005-06-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

do you think if I were dying

you would have wanted to stay?

out of complacence, duty, brevity of commitment,

intensity that shadows the world,

a calling to the higher,

a chance to be in control?

would you die with me?

a part of you was dying anyway.

would you plunge to hell to drop me off

and return to wipe the sweat from your brow?

do you want to collapse me, fold me,

and keep me in your soul? You are free to roam,

deliver me, be the whale and I Jonah?

Why insist to marry me

before the transplant?

Twice?

Why did you want to be a widow

but not my wife?

Why did you leave after

I called the transplant off?

Why promise to come back if I go to the hospital

no matter what?

Was I really so terrible

that life together seemed unbearable?

Now if I am dying,

do you regret what you're missing?

If I promise to die,

Will you hold my hand and finally

let me see into your eyes?

2005

A Better Bride...

2005-04-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

re: A Better Bride

Thanks Andy,
ever since yesterday I am getting cetain kind of giggle at the thought
of loving God in that way,
like a challenge is being presented. Get's the fire going ya know.
and of course you can use my letter.

I must admit I feel the sense of divine femanine and am humbled and
opened to new feelings and opportunities. But still, I retreat back to
thinking of God as the mean parent, and me trying to be all I can be
for that image and also more so rebelling against it.
As I was reading that I kept thinking what courage it was taking to
love God this way, actually there are parts of me saying "you can't
love God that way, it's wrong!"

But there is a more tender part that is also longs to have that
relationship, actually tears are coming up and that presence of knowing
is coming up as I write this, how could a person offer this and yet I'm
so convinced that that is where I will find it, maybe I need to aproach
Jesus as a soon to be lover. Once again courage comes to mind....

A Better Bride

I am getting married tomorrow.

The suits are bought. Date is set. One year ago I started paying off the ring. Each payment, each month, I have readied myself deeper to be merged, to shed the solitary freedom into which I was born, and to let my life join with another. I have readied myself, and my soul has expanded to encompass a broader two.

Three weeks ago, my fiancée called it off.

But still, I am getting married tomorrow.

I have found a New Bride.

See, I was ready to be married. My soul had expanded, and was ready to be stretched further by the negotiations of partnership. Upon the cancellation, my heart plummeted, threatening to pull the fabric of space-time back to a collapsed grimace of torture and self-agony. The void was built of absence, within my ready-to grow soul. Rather than return, I decided to fill that void.

I found a New Bride.

In the next two weeks, I had two propositions. Both, from outsiders, urgently needing citizenship. One has a child. One is a loner. Both, the substance of fantasy: two of the most stunning, fabulously sexy women I have ever seen. One Japanese-Hawaiian. The other, a Romanian who looks and sounds Italian and is called Argentina.

So which did I choose?

Neither:

I found myself a Better Bride

Tomorrow I am going to Church. I will walk in, silently. The room will quiet; I will ready myself. And after the processional, my Bride will enter. Down the aisle. Step by step. I have been preparing, for a long time. She will take Her place next to me. We will begin Our vows.

Tomorrow, I marry God.

* * *

When I text message God, I don’t have to wait for Her to get back to me.

Or worry that my message is obsequious, intrusive. Her response is instantaneous, and She’s always glad to hear from me.

I am not alone driving home anymore. My New Bride is with me. The moment I drift lost in my own little world, I look over and there She is, hand on my arm. Reassuring, knowing. That when we get home, we are going to make mad, passionate love.

The thrill of marriage is in the sharing. Someone who will excite at the discoveries I made, the wonders I find. I celebrate Scrubbing Bubbles^(TM), and any new products or methods that make cleaning the bathroom that much quicker and easier, and more likely to get done. I think my partner at the time had a hard time sharing my excitement. But my Bride is right there, knowing just how cool it is.

If She tells me to slow down, take a rest, She doesn’t do this from a judging distance. She has sidled next to me, and I rest my head.

God can feel the depth of the music I found, tune into the layers of syncopation, mastering, genius of my new CD. The value is not lost on Her. She’s right there with me.

God has Her own shit going on, a life outside our marriage. And she’s dedicated, involved. She gets her shit done in a day. But she’s got it under control. She fixes it to be home when I pull in, if she wasn’t already working with me. She helps me take a load off, then we share about our day.

She’s confident, but realistic, about how things went. And some days, it wasn’t the greatest. But I believe in what She’s doing. And when She’s preoccupied with the pain and suffering that slipped into the world that day, we cry together on the kitchen floor.

She doesn’t do the laundry for me. But better, She does it with me. She helps me see the joy of sharing every step of the path.

And She knows how I like to be touched. With warmth, confidence. She could pleasure me – and Sometimes she does. But in Her touch there is love, which warms through my flesh and heals my soul. Every night from now on, we will share deep, warm, luscious kisses.

Someday, to keep me fresh and alive, She will invite another woman to share our bed. She’s not a jealous Lover, so long as I’m keeping Her first. So she will find a beautiful, amazing lover to come and soak up some of the Love We share, and together we will have an incredible threesome.

There is no predicting what life will be like. What fates will draw us, and where. But I am enraptured, enthralled, and I will follow Her anywhere. This is a soul-connection, felt from before time. We will never die. For every death helps me shed and merge closer to Her. Every shredding of body, or rending of soul. The more I bleed, the more openings there are for Her to cover, wash. I fear not death, when I will patiently, finally dissolve. Her cup, with me, runneth over.

the body rock

2004-12-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

looking down
as I'm lathering up

my round, fully engorged calf muscle

more healthy than i remember it

clear, flowing lines defining my thigh
rather perfect

fondling between my toes
isn't it intersting - i think -
that this is the part that will waste away,

deteriorate, dissolve.

my body,
that i had forgotten about.

Forgotten to look at
while I have used it.
It became a vehicle,
not an object.

It actually,
becomes
nothing

when we focus on a goal
our attention on the working.
I can feel it, daily.
Eyes closed,
from the inside.

But I cannot see it.

When I slow down
when I notice it failing, struggling

when I think about it
Then it comes back to me:
an object for my focus.

A problem, to be solved.
Just like all those years worrying
about its shape and form,
Is it a body that will be attractive when older?

Is it a body that someone will want to have sex with?

A project, to perfect.

A perfection reached only when I forgot about it.

Tariq tells a story. He is incarcerated. He held thirty cops at bay by gun in a mall parking lot.

The end of three days on the run.

The end of ten years in hiding.

In his story, while running, his description adopts a telling tone:

"I was running. I was flying. I was flight.

I hadn't eaten in days. My leg was hurt. But then, there was no pain or hunger.

There was no body driving that van. There was no van.

Just me and the road."

His body dissolved from the picture
when he was entirely focused on escape.

Our bodies will dissolve when we die.
But can we make them do so before then?

We cannot perfect our bodies by focusing on them.
We cannot improve them by taking pride in them or worrying about them.
We can only make them best when we forget about them.
Focus instead on your goal.
Let the body dissolve from your story.

Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust.
Do not store up your treasures here on earth.
Because when we focus on the form of the body, on the earthly things, they only become heavy.
They become worse.

Instead, store up your treasures in heaven.
Feel your body from the inside. Feel your flight.

Your body is the temple of heaven.
So enter into it.

We cannot change our bodies by focusing on them.
Nor can we change the world by focusing on it.
Focus on your goal
an un-earthly goal.
Do your work for the growth of heaven.
Focused on heaven.
Your body will be perfect.
Earth will become perfect.

Creating the kingdom of heaven here, by you.

Don't look at your body: feel it.
Don't look at the world: feel it.
Be in it. Experience. Connect. Without your critical mind.
For the kingdom of heaven is among us
hidden beneath the forms

Close your eyes
Bring heaven to the forefront.
Create it
by feeling it.

I love you.

rocketship love

2004-08-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

People with a strong attractive power

can end up attracting themselves.

The roots of narcissism

and chronic self-analysis

are one in the same.

The energy, as attention, goes out into the world,

But before it reaches its target,

It gets drawn back

-like by gravity -

to its owner’s own attractive energy center.

If we are sensitive, our returning attention

encounters all the minor imperfections

of our developing selves. Thus we

self-analyze.

If we are numb, our returning attention

sees only the attractive energy center

shining through. Thus we become

narcissists.

Either way, the owners of strong energy

are trapped

by their own attractive power

This is why so many well-meaning, compassionate, talented yet insecure people

can be accused of being self-absorbed.

They will remain absorbed in themselves

until they can help their energy escape their own gravitational field.

There is an inner way and an outer way.

The outer way is to find something outside yourself that dominates your attention, that attracts you more than yourself.

For some, this is a lover. For others, it is a cause.

Anything you can find to devote yourself to

Can help to draw you out of yourself.

However, this is an imperfect world,

with wonderful, yet flawed lovers, with imperfect causes.

The self-critics can find things wrong with all of these, too,

and thus drift between lovers, between callings,

on an eternal pursuit to satisfy themselves

which is really a pursuit to forget about themselves.

That is why there is an inner way.

The inner way is to keep your attention from taking off

Never letting it get far enough away to turn back and see yourself.

Instead, ground your attention inside for a while,

in the feelings of your body, in the validity of your heart.

Hence your energy gathers inside,

Adding rocket thrusters for the blastoff.

Finally, when you turn your attention back to the world again,

it can escape your orbit,

and penetrate through the superficial flaws or perfections of others

with a sight that can see into THEIR hearts

and find new orbit there.

Then your attention does not have to return home again - not right away -

Because it has found just as much to attract it

in the hearts of any other.

When your attractive power has been added to

by the presence of your mind inside

Your vision will pierce through the atmosphere of imperfections in the world.

You can finally see and enjoy the world,

rather than yourself.

You can live and love freely,

as you choose.

Our minds are black holes

2004-07-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

Our minds are black holes.

not figuratively, literally.

A black hole is a center of mass so dense that energy nearby is drawn in and cannot escape.

The mind is a center of stagnant, thinking energy so dense that it draws the energy of the body into it. Once trapped in the overactive mind, the energy cannot release back into the body. This results in all sorts of problems of the mind – insomnia, headaches, anxiety – and of the body – chronic fatigue, tension, and illnesses that set in due to energy-starvation.

Theories hold that energy passing into a black hole may actually leave our universe and cross into an alternative dimension of reality.

To understand how our minds also serve this function, we must know that energy follows our thoughts. If we worry about outside things too much, our energy goes there leaving our bodies tired. If you think about your palms and hold them two inches apart, you will feel the heat and magnetism of the energy field that is created there.

Every time we think about the future, it sends energy toward the creation of that future. IF we can summon the energy to act and create that future, then it is fine. Our energy goes back into the world.

However, because our energy is trapped in our minds, our bodies are too lazy and tired to create the futures we think about. Then our future-thinking becomes idle speculation, and we spend our energy worrying or dreaming about futures that will never materialize in this world. Our thinking promotes alternative realities from that which we will experience in our universe. Another dimension is created, truly, but one that will never be accessed by our material existence.

In this way, energy leaves our universe. Collectively, as our minds race out of control, energy is sucked from this universe and poured into dreams and nightmares. Leaving our universe increasingly weak and depleted.

Reversing this trend requires that we intentionally direct our light back into the world. Loving others and bringing our dreams into reality are the only ways to do this.

First, however, we must overcome the gravity of the black holes in our heads. We must draw our energy back into our body. The body must have a greater gravity than the mind. That is why physical exercise is necessary for the spiritual salvation of the world.

In a given moment, we must exert our bodies with more energy than goes into our thinking. Eventually, moderate exercise will accomplish this when our energy stabilizes. First, however, our training must regularly involve pushing our bodies to the point of failure. Expect this period to last about two years.

Thought I was an angel

2004-06-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

I thought I was an angel

because someone’s eyes

saw the Beauty shine through me

This time I believed them

and remembered the blue and white light

shining through me.

and remembered Jeff Buckley

the breeze of heaven in his voice

And I asked: if an angel,

why these problems?

I must be a weak angel

And I answered: of course;

an angel is strong only when connected to his Father.

If God is the sun, the angel is a lens:

God shines everywhere;

the angel focuses that light on a particular point.

An angel’s job is to burn God’s love

through the paper wall around people’s hearts

A fallen angel forgets.

A fallen angel loses track of his Father.

I think we are all angels.

I think we forgot.

I thought I was an angel,

Today I forgot.

cogito ergo sumo wrestler

2004-06-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

I am the person who makes the decisions I make.

Descartes was the one who thought the thoughts he thought.

But even that was a decision: to identify with his thoughts.

We follow Descartes; our heads get fat with thinking.

Cogito ergo sumo.

Our ego gets fat.

Cogito ego sumo.

But if we decide, our world gets fat with action, man.

‘I’ decide; there is no 'I' outside of my decisions.

no emotions, senses, perceptions, preconceptions. No taste or style. These things do not stand alone. i choose how to feel, what to see, what to take for granted.

I am my own creation.

just a dorky volitional bump in the fabric of space-time.

a center of the ripples in the pond.

be a raindrop.

* * *

Yeah!

He cans our vegetables

2004-06-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

We can heal our bodies simply by paying attention to them.

Our bodies get sick because we focus outside too much.

If we keep half of our attention inside, all our problems are solved.

There is no more thinking. No worry, no doubt. Feel your body, act to make it feel good, keep feeling it whatever you are doing.

Mind is the middle man. The broker. He is not necessary.

When we speak, we do not need the middle man to interpret the symbols and calculate a response.

The real communication is heart to heart. Energy to energy. Middle-man more often than not gets in the way. We have the best intentions, we want to do our best to represent ourselves and express our appreciation, but middle man boxes it up. He cans our vegetables. Language is a preservative; it only needs to be used when our love needs to travel long distances, or be opened later.

Trust your heart. Trust your body. They can do the job without language, without mind. They can do a better job, if given the chance.

Ego flow

2004-05-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Ego is a construct; it is related to our energy level.

If our energy is below a certain level, the ego is very real;

If our energy is above a certain level, the egoic sense of distinct self melts away.

Energy level is related to action. This is because energy does not exist in stasis. Energy must flow. If energy slows down enough, it becomes matter; E=mc^2. Whether we are more energy or more matter depends on how much we flow, move. The ego is a function of how much we live as a matter-self, rather than an energy-self.

Energy flows, not just in us, but between us. As energy-selves, we are not distinct from one another. As energy-self, I am most effective when I recognize it is not I who affect others, but the energy that flows through me. I do not work; work is done through me.

The spiritual ambition of self-less existence can only be achieved above the energy level of the ego. To reach that energy level, we must be like energy; we must flow; move. Spiritual awakening can not be realized if we sit still. We must move, effect, live out our awakening by flowing energy to others. In the course of flowing, we awaken more.

Can this principle be found in Christianity? Yes. The old testament prophets all took bold actions and risks to receive and deliver the prophecy. God is said to have "called them" to actions they did not want to take. Without acting in response, God's word would have gone undelivered and ceased to flow through them.

Yet Jesus spoke of love, not action. Why does one of the chief frustrations of sincere Christians seem to be the lack of guidance on which actions one should take? Love itself can be taken as some passive attitude indulged in from the privacy of one's mind, with no action attached. However, though we might mistake love this way, there is no evidence of Jesus loving without action. He healed, touched, visited, traveled, shared, anointed, intervened. Jesus was always moving in the course of loving. Only nailed to the cross was he cut off from God.

Let us not mistakenly awaken only to renounce the world. Awakening calls us to engage the world even more than before, into the places that scare us and threaten us. And if we seek an awakening, we must act to find it. When our flow overcomes obstacles, then our energy overcomes matter, then our love overcomes our fear and the death of the ego.

3 healers

2004-04-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

the baby healer uses what she has learned,
she focuses on technique because her confidence is low.
she has love in her heart,
but fear keeps it from flowing.
She touches with hesitation.
When she feels wonderful things happening
she opens up to the possibility,
'maybe I can do it.'

the mature healer does not hesitate.
She knows she can do it. Her hands
are full of love, and her first touch puts at ease.
In her confidence, she may get lazy, her mind may wander.
Then, when she notices it not working,
her confidence can be shaken.
So she must focus harder;
She must heal in constant prayer.

the master healer knows
that it is her loving mind and heart that heals;
the healing is accomplished by her presence
when she enters the room.
There is nothing more to do.
Therefore, technique does not matter; she makes it up.
Whatever is fun and feels good.
She has practiced the loving heart;
it cannot be affected by feeling or doubt.
She knows the love of god is with her, and so with her receiver.
She does not look for proof.

be still my beating mind

2004-04-09T18:53:00.000-07:00

If your mind races out of control, there are 4 basic approaches that can calm it down:

1) Get away from the stimulus.

By removing ourselves from the source of stressful thoughts, we can get the space we need to decompress and re-center ourselves. This involves a manipulation of our external environment, which is not always easily under our control.

Examples: leaving the crowd, quitting the job, breaking up with the boyfriend, stopping reading the newspaper.

Problems: Sometimes there is reason for us not to leave. We need the money, the relationship is worth it despite some problems. In which case, the next three ways help us manage ourselves in whatever external circumstances.

2) Move your body.

When the body moves, energy that fuels thinking comes down into our body, leaving our mind clear.

Examples: Exercise, cleaning.

Pitfalls: We have to put 100% energy into moving our body in order to purge a thought. If we half-ass push-ups, or are distracted during sex, thoughts will hide in the part of our mind that abstains from the activity.

At the same time, if a meditative activity (such as walking or folding) is sustained long enough, we experience a calming effect that can help us increase our awareness and process our thoughts more clearly.

3) Increase your awareness

Becoming aware of our thought process can give us more power in relation to it. When we see things from a higher perspective, we can identify patterns, perspective, and appreciation that do not branch from the thought process itself.

God is the most common context used to broaden our perspective, reduce anxiety about a situation and forgive ourselves. However, many less overarching approaches can help us in the same direction.

Examples: Prayer, journaling, meditation; talking or thinking it out.

Pitfalls: Mental awareness usually relates to our physical energy level. Awareness can get us through moments of confusion or crisis, but for a more stable change in thoughts or in faith, we must also change our behaviors (i.e. via moving your body; see # 2).

Often, flashes of awareness help us to see positive changes we would do well to make. To maintain higher awareness, we must act to make those changes, consistently over time. (Tiger woods practices a swing 1,000 times for every minor correction).

4) Distract yourself.

A cut on your finger can hurt like hell, but you'll forget about it if the room behind you is on fire. When something important to us seizes our attention, the problems we think we have are reduced in importance.

Examples: Pouring yourself into work or a project, being faced with a crisis, helping those in need.

Pitfalls: This tactic can look a lot like denial. Be careful to consult your heart and distract yourself only to the degree that you truly want to forget about something. Sometimes, distraction can become compulsive, as in the case of addiction. Be careful to be aware how much and with what you distract yourself.

Note: In order for these tactics to work, we must have taken action all we can or is wise to do, and be at a place of wanting to interrupt the thought process itself in our mind. If we believe the problem still needs to be “solved?- and sometimes it does - then our minds will have trouble letting it go. The above tactics work only when thinking itself is the problem and we realize it is our minds that must be dealt with.

Cross V. Glory

2004-03-31T18:57:00.000-08:00

theology of the cross

vs.

Theology of Glory

i know nothing of this historic church debate except that it exists, relayed to me by my an erstwhile theology major. Supposedly theologians have argued over the centuries between which better depicts Jesus' cosmic triumph. To my thinking, it seems each aspect is needed to help us in different times: the cross when we have pain or struggles, Glory when we are faced with the dangerous ordinariness of everyday.

cross:

loss, tragedy, brokenness

Glory:

praise, thanksgiving, celebration, everyday worship

cross:

strength when the chips are down,

toughing it through the tough times,

the power not to give up.

Glory:

the power to forge ahead on faith,

to have no regrets,

to believe in the path God has you on now.

cross:

reconciling pain

through the larger picture of grace

Glory:

reconciling the mundane

through the larger picture of grace

cross:

will serve me if I find back home she has not

left a note on my door...

Glory:

can serve me now, before I go home,

remembering God is with me

even if she isn't.

Changing Lanes

2003-09-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

Your soothing voice;

tight little body:

23 years old,

still inexperienced.

You’ve been saving yourself

for me

and I will ride you.

o yes

I will

take you places you’ve never been before

this is what

you’ve been waiting for.

couldn’t be happier

you are my ideal

what I dreamed about, prayed for

can’t believe you’re real

don’t mind

if you take a little longer to warm up

if you’re not as easy

as some of the others I’ve been with

I get your motor running

you move well under my hands

and I fit in you

like a glove.

we were made for each other

I am so happy I found you

I love you

my 1987

Honda Civic Hatchback

only 7o,ooo miles

turkish submission

2003-08-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

dark presence enter

but never approach

you leave him alone

the fear of you wakes him

it's after the dream

held from scream by paralysis

malice escapes while

your memory shakes him

***

exhaust and back sweating

from imperfect pride

now a dark hour¡¯s walking:

I passed on the ride

chagrin, growing weakness.

try walking less taxing,

that way that you learned

try imagining home,

just an hour returned

try praying the sweetness

so recent discerned¡¦

it¡¯s a walk

but its more

like a spiritual question

the answer we have

only three miles

to stalk

it¡¯s his dream

but its more

like a spiritual quest

for the power

the dark spirit

to rest.

***

with hands crawling climbing

his dreams finally culminate

reaching and ripping

his body from flesh

with a fresh chill to still

his soul deeper inside

he confides the discovery:

peace beyond reach.

this is

God¡¯s earth before me

not three miles ahead

but here in this bed

of imperfect turf

and I am with God;

my new home is anywhere

whole at the center

since three days before

when I took his advice

against reaching and ripping

my core; this hole

into which Christ could pour.

The blindness that calls itself Justice

2003-08-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

Here are the brothers

who murdered my Grandmother.

Here is the coat

they bought with SSI

then forgot

at her house

after they murdered my Grandmother.

Here’s the nice stuff

that they took from her house

and then sold to get clothes

the night after

they murdered my Grandmother.

Here is the family

that watches the trial

of their sons

who murdered my Grandmother.

Here is the Father

who sucks air from a tank

who lets me go first

who humbles himself down

who looks grievous as I

cause he knows

his sons murdered my Grandmother.

Here is the talk

where I eavesdrop and hear

the Dad telling his kids

they can’t afford parking

cause they got towed before

so they can’t see the trial

of their brothers

who murdered

my Grandmother.

Here is my pocket

that holds a free pass

to the parking garage

because someone murdered

my Grandmother.

Here are the families,

both of them victims:

one family rich,

whose pain is assuaged;

one family poor,

who gets no parade.

Here is the blindness

that calls itself justice:

helping the rich,

ignoring the poor,

though the money thing led them

to kick in her door.

Here is the moment

where I hand my free parking

to the trembling hand

of the bloodshot-eyed father

of the boys

who murdered

my Grandmother.

the girl with lollipop eyes

2003-08-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

the girl with

lollipop-eyes,

butterfly-lashes,

cloud-top laughter

cries about

the relentlessly cruel

people

she works with.

in a silent moment,

she will reach out in conversation,

to get burned by their callousness

again and again

Why do you reach? I ask her

A wild animal, trapped,

may call to your heart,

only to lash out

when you approach.

The animal is stressed;

your approach stresses it more.

So don¡¯t reach out:

you will get hurt

and now two need help.

Stand back,

it will lick its wounds,

and later, maybe,

you can free its leg.

You can grow strong

from a distance,

but you will never heal

through compulsive compassion.

¡¦¡¦

She thanks me for the metaphor,

¡°Do I pay you at the door?¡±

Ha, ha.

¡¦¡¦

I am also a wild animal.

On the surface, I smile, give good advice.

but get too close,

and I will lash out.

Those who have loved me

have learned the price.

They all leave,

bearing the scars

of hearts

once too open.

In this way,

one wound

becomes many.

My parents¡¯ divorce

teaches heartbreak

to an entire

generation.

so be strong, protect yourself.

ignore my pleas for help.

A wolf also has puppy-dog eyes.

Let me lick my wounds.

Before you offer me lollipops.