Casting Stones and All That Jazz

Today is the last day of the Living School Symposium and I for one am sad to see it end.  For me, there was not much in the way of new material/ideas/senses(ations)  presented. For me what was/is joyful, hopeful, delightful, validating, comforting, challenging is being among 600 + people who are interested in one another as people, each of whom is open to new ideas and language knowing the "truth" that underlies all of this conceptualization.  All of us are free to share without feeling like we must adhere to some norm.  There is a fertility here that I have rarely encountered anywhere else.  I look forward to the continuing interchange while at the same time, sigh with a bit of a heavy heart as I anticipate the laborious process of "translating" traditional Christian language into, hopefully, close Buddhist counterparts, while I tackle the school's considerable reading list over the next two years.  (The divisive mind is still alive and well here :)

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On another note, I have been reading The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, (see below)........

Description

While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--and obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing.  But even years after the way had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place?

In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past.  Often surprising and always thought provoking, The Sunflower will challenge you to define your beliefs about justice, compassion, and human responsibility.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

..........and one theme keeps popping up in many of the individuals responses to Wiesenthal's question of "What would you do?"   This repeated theme is that the writer feels that in not being Jewish, or not having lived through the atrocities of surviving a concentration camp, or of not having lived during these WWII years themselves, that they, the writers, in some way were not qualified to judge Wiesenthal's or the Nazi soldier's actions.  In one sense this is true. However, the reality is that none of us can ever know what another's experience is like (experientially) even if we are identical twins experiencing identical moments in space and time, so in this sense, none of us are "fit" to render judgement on anyone else.  However, having said that, we can, by knowing ourselves, intuit empathically what another's experience might have been like.  When, in one of my previous incarnations as a psychotherapist, I was working with folks who had an active addict in their lives, I often spent a great deal of time trying to help these folks get a taste of what it must be like for the addict, what their experience might be like.  Many of the people I worked with would come into my office, feeling lost, befuddled, resentful, guilty and hopeless.  They had people in their lives who were behaving in such a manner as to destroy themselves and these addicts were spewing the pieces of their destruction all around on those who were close to them.  It made no sense to these onlookers how the addict could not see what they were doing and so they were left to try to explain this incomprehensible behavior to themselves.  These explanations often took the form of:

1) They are doing this on purpose.  They want to destroy
     a) me
     b) themselves
     c) fill in the blank

2) They are selfish and don't care about
     a) me
     b) anything but themselves

3) They are without values and morals

4) They are insane

...............and so on.  Most often these suffering individuals could not believe that their addict was unable to resist the compulsion to engage in whatever destructive habit they were addicted to.  When this was the case, I would invite the person to investigate their own lives and see if maybe there was  a "habit" that they wished they did not have, something like biting their nails, or procrastinating, or smoking, or taking on too much, - or talking too much :)  When the person was able to identify such a place in their life and they could drop into the "feeling" understanding of that whole cycle of compulsive behavior, they began to be able to relate to their addict from a place of compassion (feeling with) rather than condemnation, and suffering was lessened for both.  This is important for me, because I "believe", as human beings we come equipped with everything that makes a saint a saint as well as a mass murderer a mass murderer.  I remember one summer when I searched for the piece of me that enjoyed the pain of others, who would inflict pain on others for my pleasure.  This part of me was so cutoff, so denied, so buried that until that summer, I had convinced my everyday conscious self, that this aspect of some human beings did not exist in me.  Yet by the time I undertook this experiment, I had already lived through unearthing and reabsorbing parts of Karen which had been entombed for untold years in the cellar of being, and so suspected (believed) that this cruelty too must be me.  Eventually I found this piece.  It was a small piece to be sure, but existed in me, was me, and was the same cruelty as demonstrated by "heartless" sociopathic -psychopathic individuals as much as a drop of water on a leaf in my life, is the same water that will fill a glass in another's life.

So, to say we do not have a shared experience/history/culture in which to judge an other's behavior, while being true on one hand, can still be, at least in my life,  a cop-out and avoidance.  We must find those parts in ourselves where we can metaphorically step into the other's shoes.  Then we can know, at least in part, how the "other" feels/experiences, and when this happens, it has always been true for me, that compassion (feeling with) arises and any desire for retribution, punishment, etc. decreases to almost a vanishing point.  In the final analysis, one might still be compelled to lock away a sick and destructive human being to protect others, but it can be done with love and compassion for our benighted sibling.  As one of my Hindu mentors stated once about what to do with a mugger when they attack you, "Hit them over the head with your umbrella with all the love in your heart!"

Hallelujah!

More than ever knowing there was, or was not, a God - I always knew the truth of the song below:

Somehow I always knew that "joy" was THE thing - the only "real" thing and my life was a continual search for the "permanency" of such an experience.  Then Zen did its magic and the optic illusion of life flipped its flop and "joy" appeared as ground of being.  

Psalm 100King James Version (KJV)

100 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

2 Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

3 Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

5 For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

Or as another translation puts it:

Psalm 100The Message (MSG)

A Thanksgiving Psalm

100 1-2 On your feet now—applaud God!
    Bring a gift of laughter,
    sing yourselves into his presence.

3 Know this: God is God, and God, God.
    He made us; we didn’t make him.
    We’re his people, his well-tended sheep.

4 Enter with the password: “Thank you!”
    Make yourselves at home, talking praise.
    Thank him. Worship him.

5 For God is sheer beauty,
    all-generous in love,
    loyal always and ever.

Or as I say, "Rejoice oh you wave-ings of the immortal sea!"

Car Crash?

One early morning during rush hour, a tremendous thunderstorm hit and there was a multiple car accident involving dozens of cars.  Some of them crashed through a guard rail and ended up in a small to mid size river where the water was rapidly rising.  Most of the folks could get out and wade to the bank of the river, but one car, containing a mother and her 3 year old daughter were pinned in such a way as to prevent any of their car doors from opening.  Folks on the roadway and those on the river bank noticed what was happening.  Drivers on the road jumped out of their cars and into the river and folks on the bank turned around and went back into the river to help this mother and child.  Eventually, and happily, the crisis was averted and all managed to make it to the river bank where they sat down together to wait for the authorities to arrive and unsnarl everything.  As they sat, they began to talk about what had just happened.  The rescued mother started it off by saying,

"Thank you all for your help.  We might have died if you had not come to help".

One of the men who had participated responded, "Don't thank us, it was God who rescued you".

Another man said then, "What do you mean God?  There is no God - we were the ones who helped that lady!"

One woman chimed in then with, "It's just in our nature to help one another. Its the biological imperative of any troop species to protect its members".

Another stated, "I just couldn't stand the screaming".

And so the debate went on, eventually devolving into angry arguments and by the time the police arrived no one was talking to each other.

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Early tomorrow morning I fly to New Mexico to meet with all the other students of the 2016-2018 cohort of the CAC Living School and  I am a bit intimidated (?) as I read some of the bios of the participants.  There are long time ministers, missionaries, etc. and I wonder if I am the only Buddhist in the group.  This makes me weary when I think about it as it is colored with previous experience.  There is the generic being the Odd Man Out once again for me (I always seem to be the exception to ANY rule - or is that my selective memory and imagination? :)   Then there is the establishing of common vocabularies which is always a challenge even among folks trying to form a relationship based on similarities, (and I fantasize that the other folks in this program will not be particularly interested in my point of view/experience and in the finding of common ground as I am interested in doing).  Then there is the reality that to speak of a "thing" is not the "thing" and that is always frustrating for me when it gets too abstract (I mean really! How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?). And finally, my difficult history with "Christian" Fundamentalism is coloring everything already.  (It really is all closed mindedness I hurt with, not just "Christian", but while I do know some "Buddhist" Fundamentalists, somehow they don't hit my buttons like the "Christians" do.  Its got to be childhood stuff going on here).  One thing I think I can be pretty sure of, is that this school, and this program in particular, is based on, and is studying/investigating "Non-dualism" in the "Christian" tradition and that at least in theory I am more than welcome as there are even "Buddhist" segments in the program.  Another thing I am sure of, is that any "problem" I encounter on this journey, (emotional discomfort), will not be out "there", but is in "here" with my reactions and my reactions to my reactions, (remembering always that there can be no "outside" if there is no "inside" and visa-versa).  I am striving to set all I "know" aside and let everything in without resistance.  As we say in Zen - to have "Beginner's Mind".  

Thank God for Serpents!

One of the most difficult aspects of "Christianity" for me is this concept of "sin" - be it "original" or not........ and the dualism of "good" and "evil" it springs from, (or gives birth to).   My child's logic found this whole idea a non-starter - and at 65, I still do.  Here's why: 

If God is real and he/she/it/they made the universe and everything in it, and God is the source of everything, then everything has to be of God, made by God, from God stuff.  If there is a substance that is NOT God which God used to make us, then God is not the original source, not the everything, not the totality of life/being.  Today from my Buddhist framework I would place that kind of limited god into the category of the "Devas" (gods) on the wheel of samsara (world or life) - which by the way, is where I would today place all the "mythological" gods I had read about and wondered about as a kid like "Thor", "Venus", "Rama", "Ishtar", "Zeus", Osiris", "Bacchus", and my favorites, "Loki", "Hanuman" and "Coyote".  

I became interested in all these gods and their stories very early on and by third grade was reading everything about them I could get my hands on (my poor, dear parents had to go into our local library and give them written permission for me to check out mythology books which were in the adult section of the library).  I read and wondered, and one day I asked our minister the question, "Why is our God "real" and all the gods of other religions considered to be "not real".  Why do we call our stories "Truth" and their stories "Mythology"?  I remember getting a non-answer like, "Well, because WE know its true", (I'm sure it was a more sophisticated complete answer than that, but that is how it felt to me then - an unsatisfactory NON-answer). 

 "But what makes us different minister?" 

 "Well Karen, Jesus died for our sins, and rose again from the dead promising us eternal life."  

"What about Osiris and Bacchus then minister?  They rose from the dead too?"  

"Well, Jesus was different Karen he was the son of God"  

"But minister, wasn't Jesus god too?" 

*Sigh* - Growing up, I must have been a real trial for many people.  Let me apologize here and now to all of you - *bow*  Thank you for your patience!

Anyway,  let's get back to why I don't believe in "sin" as something inherently "bad" or "evil", something to be punished for.  My understanding of sin came from this same notion that if God is everything, then sin is God too.  If God is good, then there must be a "goodness" to sin as well.  I think this is why I immediately recognized and accepted the concept of "karma" when I first ran into it.  In karma there is not reward or punishment, only cause and effect. For example, if one places their hand on a hot stove burner, then there is pain.  The pain is NOT a punishment for the action of touching the parent's "Don't touch that!" stove top.  From this perspective I began to consider Adam's and Eve's "sin" of eating forbidden fruit from the tree of Knowledge and began to see the "serpent" as curiosity/wisdom ("Be ye as wise as serpents") and part of the whole "goodness" of creation. It was clear to my 8 year old self that without the "sin" of the  "serpent" and resulting "sin" of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, there can be no journey (this by the way is why Devas cannot be enlightened - no serpents in their garden  *grin*).  

Today the Garden of Eden story resonates for me within the framework of a Buddhist saying originally formulated by Qingyuan Weixin, later translated by D.T.Suzuki in his Essays in Zen Buddhism. 

"Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers."

In the same way I came to disbelieve in the sin of Adam and Eve, I came to disbelieve in the sin of Judas. I SAW that without Judas there can be no Jesus of the resurrection  no Jesus of the Trinity, so therefore, Judas must also be "good" and necessary - (I had a LOT of sympathy for Judas as a kid). This notion got me into a lot of trouble too!   

Okay, so far so good.......sin could exist in my childhood cosmology, but to be punished by God (go to hell), for doing/being something which had to have come from God in the first place, which had to be in the mind of God before he/she/it/they created us, which had to BE God in its very existence?  Well then!  That's no God of mine!  MY God wouldn't be so mean!!!!!   There is a psychological truth that one must be able to conceive of some motivation, intent or action in order to suspect someone else of that intent, motivation or behavior.  In which direction did this flow?  I ended up somewhere deciding the flow was circular, and therefore part of the whole, and being part of the whole, was "good" and necessary in some way I might not understand.  

I have more "sin" to chew on, digest, and pass on, but for today, I have run out of time.

In the meantime

:D

Consider the Lilies of the Field

What a delightful feel good movie!  I can see why I fell in love with it so many years ago.  Lighthearted humor mixed with real issue drama.... and not a bad rendition of a down home "go to meeting" camp song  :D  (I sang in the church choir my whole growing up life and ALWAYS preferred "gospel hymns" to the more "sophisticated" and restrained hymns of European origin)

This 1963 movie was tremendously important in changing the face of USA movies.  It was the first time (at least that I remember) a black person was cast in a leading role.  I can remember the sensation of the familiar being given a disrupting twist when the movie started and Homer Smith (Sidney Poitier) developed as the main character.  By the end of the movie, I no longer saw skin color.  It was an important Aha! moment for me at 12 or 13 as I got caught up in the underlying human stories beneath the skin of the superficial.  

Now, 53 years later, I can also see how this movie may have influenced my becoming a "hit and run helper" in later life, aspiring to pass through the world as the wind does, bringing relief to others from stagnant heat, being useful to them in the same way the wind is in drying sheets, driving windmills and sailboats, pollinating plants, etc., and finally disappearing, leaving no trace of itself, while all the while, just being what it is, (which includes sometimes blowing too hard and ripping shingles off roofs and killing trees).   I cried when Homer left the nuns he had shared part of his life with, but it felt "right" somehow .........and now, thanks to my Zen experience, I have a word to describe that "rightness" - non-clinging.  

Now - bear with me as I ramble through the rest of this.  

Part of what struck me as I watched this movie through again this time is the utter equality of all the characters.  There was no hierarchy evident even within the hierarchal composition of the sisters and mother superior. There was no submission by Homer to the "religious" (not having had the cultural upbringing to do so being Baptist?), nor, was Homer submissive to any white person in the film which was much more important in 1963. They all were just themselves - being the "role" they were. 

Then the most touching of all for me, was the coming together of folks in "good works", in their freely giving of themselves and learning to receive in equal measure, and in so doing, suspending/escaping for a while the usual self-centeredness of "what's in it for me?" fear and resulting behavior.  As Homer leaves, we know (or I do), that not one of the folks involved in this story has not been changed by their interaction with one another, (and being the "pollyanna" that I can be at times, I am sure that the changes were for the "better").  

The qualities demonstrated by various characters in the film that I value are:

1) faith (which for me translates into trust)

2) the various faces of humility demonstrated - from the Mother Superior's attributing everything happening to God, through Homer's simple factual declaration that he is a good man with heavy equipment.

3) flexibility and letting go

4) non-contentious standing of one's ground.

5) and of course, forgiveness of, and non-clinging to, slights - real and imagined

(I identify with both Homer and Mother Superior - the teacup and the skull cup  :)  And - I see myself in all the other characters as well)

And finally, when I go back and look at the communities in each of the 3 films I have talked about here in this blog, I see my clear preference for this one.  In Billy Budd, the community of the ship is formed by the need to make a living and each is under contract to be there in one way or another.    It is a highly regimented and law bound community and most of the individuals would rather be someplace else.  In The Nun's Story the community is created by folks aspiring to an ideal of seeking to perfect the individual, and therefore the community in many ways is incidental to the individual's search for the individual's sake, (which of course translates into benefit for others).  But in Lilies of the Field, the community of everyday folks is brought together by circumstance of the moment (chance). It is created by attraction and is held together by the process of being/doing together rather than the idea of the end product which many of the participants will never use,  This community is fluid and amoebic like - and as I fantasize about it, is ever-changing and the parts (folks) who split off do not die but continue in their amoebic way to live and pass on this immortal, ever changing aliveness in the same way the remaining "church" (both the physical edifice and the community of members) will be ever-changing in their staying. (Life has the property of, is the property of, mercury  :D

What is God?

I haven't had time to watch Lilies of the Field yet, (though it IS on my calendar to sit down and enjoy it before the end of the week). In the meantime, part of my routine here in Atlanta is to get outside before dawn every morning and walk an hour or two before the heat becomes totally debilitating.  Sometimes as I walk, I muse, and what has been surfacing the past several mornings is a question my Christian mentor asked me a couple of years ago.  "What is your theology? Or what would it be if someone asked you?"  I did not give much thought to this question when it was first asked other than to note that it was indeed an intriguing question! Over time, the question lost its immediacy and moved into the background of consciousness as I attended to the demands of the flowing here and now.  Now, having built some free time into my days, it has come forward once more - and I find myself heading down a sidetrack of "What is my problem with Christianity as it is taught or preached?" "What is this mild sense of resentment I feel when staying with what I usually gloss over?"  And the big one,  "If I believe in the "truth" of the Game of One and Two (and 3 and 4 and...), as I do, then what is this resistance?"

Let me take a small aside here to talk about the word belief as I have come to understand its dual meanings.  One way to believe is the way that results when we gather knowledge in academic form.  So for example, I can read about, see movies about, trace along a globe or map, the Amazon River. I then can believe that such a river exists and that it has the properties books, movies, pictures and maps have told me it has.  This is one kind of belief.  Then there is the belief based on floating down the Amazon River itself.  Hearing all the sounds, smelling all the smells, tasting the water that makes up the river, feeling the warmth or relative coolness of this water against one's skin depending on the time of day, and so on.  This is a different kind of belief which unfortunately can only be depicted in the first kind of belief I spoke about here if one tries to share their experience of the Amazon with another who has never been in the vicinity of this mighty river.  So the reason my big question is about the "Game of One and Two" is because this belief in the game sources from the second kind of believing for me.  Now - I am done with the aside.

As  I examine this "conflict" within, memories arise of moments of what must have been some import as they managed to make it out of short term memory into longterm memory. Here are a few of them.

1) There was a day, when after we got home from church, I asked my parents if it was true that animals had no souls as I had been told in Sunday School.  They affirmed what the teacher had said.   I then asked if that meant that there were no animals in heaven and they affirmed once more the validity of my teacher's statement and everything within me rebelled.  THIS was just wrong.......and if there were no animals in heaven then I wasn't going to go either!

2) Then there was the morning when after I had been allowed to attend big people's church and listen to the sermon, we came out onto the church steps and my parents chatted with other people.  I wandered around and ended up hearing fragments of many of the grown-ups' conversations and became very disturbed as I heard them gossip among themselves in what seemed to me, a mean way about others.  When I asked my Dad, he actually gave a pretty good answer when he said something along the lines of, "Church is for sinners, not saints".

3) Then there was the day when my materialistic little mind recognized the conundrum of, "If God made the world, what did he make it out of?"  The only answer I could come up with, was himself, and therefore we were the same.  Everything, including us were God somehow.  That one got me into a lot of arguments.

4) Presbyterians believe in Calvinistic Predestination which very simplistically says that one is already "saved" or "damned" before they are born.  I began to question this as I became more and more aware of the many "graces" in my life I had not earned.  For example, early on I realized that it was none of my doing that I had been born into a relatively wealthy family and wanted for nothing, and that this wealth allowed me all kinds of privilege which gave me unfair advantage in any kind of competition for place or status, (in the society I was living in).  I noticed that I spoke perfect English and never had to take grammar units in school because I always knew the proper usage of words, BECAUSE I had learned it by osmosis by people who spoke perfect English. This gave me "unfair" advantage over those who had NOT been born into such circumstances. I had a good figure, physical grace, a better than average mind and a pleasing face through no merit of mine.....and so on.  This just couldn't be - that salvation and damnation had nothing to do with the individual and accompanied the indignation I felt when confronted with  the notion that anyone who did not accept Jesus as their savior was damned, (my Catholic neighborhood girlfriends and I had many a heated discussion on this topic as they were enamored with saving little heathen babies  :)  I mean, how can one be damned for not accepting someone they had never heard of!!!!!  : D   The end result was that by the time I hit 13, I fully rejected any God who would stack the deck like this.

Neti, neti, neti.  Not this, not this, not this.  God was not this, and if he/she/it was, then I rejected this God. How can one love such a despot? Yet, even then, I knew somehow, that this "concept" was not "God" I knew this but felt great conflict/anxiety because I was being told it was true by my elders and other authorities, and that I must believe.  Hmmmm.......  maybe this is why I turned left and departed from the whole field?

Every-nun's Story

Finally found some time to watch Audrey Hepburn in the 1959 movie, The Nun's Story,  and it surprised me by being as powerful as I remembered.  It also surprised me (spookily so)  how vividly Audrey Hepburn's character portrays much of the desire and unnamed longing I have experienced for most of my life.  And finally, it really, really surprised me by how much of my own approach to life was shown here, or perhaps it would be better to say, by how much this movie shaped my internal unnamed longing into a life direction.  As I watched the movie yesterday, I watched my own life unfold.  This may be a conceit, but in so many ways inner experience was faithfully depicted (or foreshadowed) while the outer content was simply clothed in differing garments.

When I was a child, my family and I lived on a street which had a movie theater on the corner.  Oftentimes, if there was a movie acceptable for youngsters playing, my parents would allow me to go to the Saturday or Sunday matinee on my own.  This film was such a film, (as was Lilies of the Field - which I will watch and report on next).  

I was only 8 or 9 when I saw this movie and I remember even now, the earnest desire to devote my life to "doing good" which it inspired in me. (However, it might be more accurate to say the movie gave form, words and images to that which already existed within and which met the movie themes with recognition). 

I can still remember going home and telling my parents that I wanted to become a nun.  We were Presbyterians, so we had no religious orders such as the Catholic Church has, but, my parents, and therefore I, were quite involved with our church so my folks listened with respect and tried to support this awoken aspiration while channeling it into the more (for them) acceptable Protestant mainstream.  I can still hear them saying that I did not have to be a nun in order to be a missionary and spread the Good News" or to do other good works in the world.  I don't remember where the discussion went after this, but I suspect I just clammed up (a normal behavior for me in those days) as I did not have the skill at 8 or 9 years of age to express how it was not the preaching of the Gospel that had lit my fire, but the disciplined life the movie portrayed, the striving for selflessness, the silence, the warmth and the detachment, and most importantly I think, the unwavering love for all - and the forgiveness which is a result of such a love.  (Was this already a yearning to be/embody rather than know about?)

*SPOILER ALERT*

There is a scene in this movie where unwavering love is vividly demonstrated.  A nun, (not Audrey's character), is attacked and murdered by a man (who we find out later has been told by the local witchdoctor that if he kills a white woman he will be freed from the haunting of his dead wife's ghost).  As this nun is being repeatedly bludgeoned, she reaches out towards the attacking man with open arms, and as he backs away from her, she continues to walk towards him with openness. For me this is an embodiment of love and forgiveness, and as such, echoes a similar scene (in feeling) from the Billy Budd movie.  There, Billy (the "Christ figure" - the "innocent") is hung and as the noose is tightened around Billy's neck, Billy verbally blesses one of the characters who is directly responsible for his death. Billy sees, and knows, in his persecutors and the fearful bystanders, as well as in himself: humanness - suffering - helplessness - and compassion.   

What an aspiration to have, to never shut the door on another!  In my growing up years however, somewhere along the line, I lost consciousness of this desire and became deeply embroiled in all the usual activities spawned from fear: getting enough, being enough, doing enough, etc.  

Christianity and I had had a serious breakup in my early teens when I suffered a great disappointment resulting in an even greater disillusionment.  I do not know if I understood what was happening at the time of this disappointment, but I can now see from the perspective of greater years, that it was so.  (I will perhaps write about this event in another blog entry at a later date).  I turned my back on all of "it" without ever rejecting "it". (Does "it" mean "God"?  Does "it" mean the story of "Christianity"?  Does "it" mean the "teachings"? "Jesus"? I don't know).  I just shut the door somehow and no longer saw or heard anything from that quarter.

Then one day I read Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and the game was afoot once more.  I could hear and see the very same "truths" clothed in Eastern garb. One day I ran across an event recounted by the Dalai Lama which returned me to ground zero, awakening once more the desire to never stop loving. This is what the Dalai Lama had to say:

“In the Tibetan tradition, in terms of coping with adversity, victims are encouraged to cultivate forbearance and the first stage of that is to develop a sense of equanimity. Forbearance builds up resilience and protects you from giving in to disturbing emotional impulses. A senior monk I know spent 17-18 years in Chinese prison after 1959. In the 1980s he was released and was able to join me in India. Once, when we were chatting about his experiences he told me that there had been dangerous moments during his imprisonment. I thought he meant threats to his life, but he said, ‘No, there were times when there was a danger of my losing compassion for my Chinese captors.’ This is an example of practice in action. He has since been examined by medical scientists who found he has no post-traumatic symptoms. He has physical pains, but no mental unease.”

I wanted to be that monk.  He was alive and "real" in a way that Jesus and Buddha were not.  I had always wanted to be that monk.  I was that monk. And - I was the nun who walked out of the convent door as well as a man who could be hung without losing "love".

During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived - everyone except the Zen master, (he was old and would endanger the other monks if he were to try and run with them).

Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn't treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger.

"You fool," he shouted as he reached for his sword, "don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!" 
But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved.
"And do you realize," the master replied calmly, "that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"

"Father forgive them for they know not what they do"   -   Jesus of Nazareth 

Please Call Me By My True Names  - by Thich Nhat Hanh

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow-

even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving 

to be a bud on a Spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, 

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death 

of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing 

on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird 

that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily 

in the clear water of a pond.

And I am the grass-snake 

that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin a bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant,

selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,

refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean

after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,

my heart not yet capable

of seeing and loving.

My joy is like Spring, so warm

it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears,

so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up

and the door of my heart

could be left open,

the door of compassion.