Celebrating The Sacred....

"The sacred, I shall say, is that which acts as your partner

in the search for the highest and deepest things:

the real, the true, the good, and the beautiful."

- Brendan Myers

It took me over four months to compose my last blog post, which was quite a disappointing, frustrating and new experience for me: I've rarely had writer's block.  And so many reflection-worthy developments occurred during that time: it was hard to be unable to capture my perspective on them.  And yet it's taken me just a day to produce this piece because upon reflection, the re-reading of that blog post, conscious appreciation of the numerous kind comments about it on FaceBook and a perusing of several of my friends' FB posts, it hit me: I was disheartened and disoriented by my perception of the loss of the sacred.  More simply put, what has kept me from writing is that I'm wounded spiritually and psychically by the turbulent and tragic world in which we live and the dismayingly deteriorating American society of which I am/we are a part.

It can be summed up simply in a question:

 

What's become of us?

 

As I asked myself this question for real, not rhetorically, for the umpteenth time, from that quiet space and place in my soul where God abides, the answer emerged softly yet powerfully: I ache because I believe that we've lost the sense of the healing, steeling sacred in our lives, that appreciation for the mysterious gift of life that make us humane and loving toward ourselves and our fellows.  Whether it's the atrocities abroad or the injustices at home, each of these disturbing and immobilizing developments chips away at that part of us - or at least of me - that risks to live ever more fully, abundantly and lovingly.

 

This being said, I accept that my calling and God-given command are to be a gift to this world (and, in effect, a re-gift from the Lord to those He/She/It privileges me to touch in and with my life).  And yet so often my gift, imperfectly given as always, seems too small to matter in the great sea of our miasma and mayhem.

 

One way that I could react is to give up and in to the pervading negativity and, ultimately, nihilism ... but I know deep in my soul that this isn't the way.  Certainly it would be a less painful choice in the short-run, but ultimately it would lead to disaster: if we have nothing to live for we can easily loose our self-selected constraints and compulsions to humanity.  If everything's awful anyway, what does it matter that I don't make an effort, try my best, care?  If the world's going to hell in a handbasket anyway, shouldn't I/we just have fun before the arrival?

 

And even though I know that a negative answer to this negative proposition will be costly (and supremely so at times), I feel compelled - and called by the God who created me and us all - to make the more difficult choice: to resist the powers of evil and negativity and fight mightily to share and spread light and love.

 

So how does one do this in such a too-often dark world, spread light and love?

 

One answer that I've discovered comes from a spiritual mentor and fellow Christian 'heretic' whom I'm proud to know, Bishop John Shelby Spong.  As I noted in a previous installment of this blog in a reflection on the lives of some friends who've left me/us too soon this year:

(I)n reality, if death has any lesson to teach us in life, it's that we must live life to the fullest now.  In the words of the incomparable Bishop John Shelby Spong, we must "live fully, love wastefully and be all that (we) can be."

What the Bishop's wisdom and perspicacity have helped me to understand is that we honor God and the gift of life by living fully, fearlessly and lovingly in the present moment (which does not mean to live only for the present moment, but in it).  Tomorrow is not promised, so I/we should both enjoy, live fully and love wastefully today and in a way that we can do so even more meaningfully and impactfully tomorrow (if we receive the blessed gift of that day).

 

So, how do I/we do this?

 

As I've pondered the answer to this seemingly simple (but profound) question, I've come up with a few answers, one of which I'd like to share now:  In order to live fully, love wastefully and be all that we can be, we are called to know The Sacred in ourselves and others and to honor this as much and well as we can.  If I love myself, (one of things that) I'll know (is) what's sacred to me ... and nourish and celebrate this.  And if I love others, I'll get to know what's sacred to them and support and join them in nourishing and celebrating it (provided, of course, that it affirms and enhances life).

 

What's sacred to me?

 

Sharing via this blog has certainly become so this year.  (Of course, the kind comments that friends and family members have shared in return have heightened my appreciation for this experience even more.)  And quiet moments reading have always nourished my soul, especially challenging inquiries into theology or sociology or biography or, once a decade, historical fiction.  So, too, the austere, contemplative grandeur of an early morning spoken word church service, which moves me almost every time and leads me to contemplate the Great Mystery of Life always.

Sacred, too, are crazy-busy weekends with the kids, who've taken to our blended/Brady Bunch family like ducks to water.  And family movie nights together on the couch invariably stir the soul as they delight the heart.  This new phase of my life as a parent, when my children are teenagers who are largely self-directed and thus pursuing new adventures in addition to still valuing family time, is also a blessing: I've been able to parent appreciably while also reclaiming a bit of my personal life and time (while they're off exploring the world).  It's nice to be able to focus on oneself a bit while caring for the young adults who are no longer your babies physically but will always be so emotionally.  And yet I savor the memories of them from back in the day even as I know that the next time there will be babes is when those children are their own....

And deliciously, delightfully and unexpectedly sacred is the love that I've found in mid-life (after having been a party to two failed marriages).  Not that I didn't believe in love - I have always been and hopefully always will be a hopeful romantic - but I didn't expect to find it again in such a different and better form.

When I was young, my values were different and so, too, were my choices, including those of mates.  As I've aged - and, likely, matured - I've come to appreciate what I consider a more realistic and workable model for relationships, especially committed ones.  Simply put, when I was young, I underrated the value of niceness and overvalued external considerations.

Now, I realize that the essence of any strong, positive, lasting relationship is true friendship and companionship.  Now, I realize that money can be earned and lost and earned again, but, in itself, it offers little beyond the temporal.  Now, I realize that where you go and what you do is always secondary (and often ancillary) to with whom you journey.  Ah, how costly those middle age 'Duh!'s can be....

Now, I appreciate fully that love and proactive kindness can heal, ennoble and embolden the soul beyond measure.  And nothing is ever more sacred than the opportunity to give love in ways that are meaningful, both to those whom you love and to those whom you may not and who cannot ever repay you.  Yes, it's a good thing to be loving to those we love and who love us in return.  And yet, it's a different and wonderful thing to be loving with those whom we may not know, especially those who can never repay us, because such love is truly altruistic (if it's motivated solely by the desire to pay one's myriad blessings forward).

So, in an effort to experience the sacred every day, I try to be loving - proactively so - with my loved ones and even with those whom I don't know.  I realize that my salvation has come from reveling in, celebrating and acting on the opportunity to express my gratitude by giving.  Yes, the world is troubling and too often ugly ... but within this, there are always opportunities to create and experience beauty.  By refocusing myself on expressing gratitude for my still myriad and ever abundant blessings, I have regained possession of my soul and found my voice again.

It turns out that what had me out of rhythm was that I'd forgotten that one can and should always start small and work from inside out.  I forgot that re-claiming The Sacred is really about sharing it, even - or perhaps especially - in those times when I feel less able to do so.  It turns out that The Sacred is always one loving kindness away ... and the awareness of this is in itself an experience thereof.

So, I share a lesson that I've had to learn again and have learned again: to reclaim The Sacred, give of yourself lovingly and thereby make your experience of the world real, true, good and beautiful.  The Sacred is never "out there" waiting to come in; it's "in there" waiting to get out ... so let it out.  No, the world won't change overnight, but your/our experience of it will.  And therein lies The Sacred, to experience the real, the true, the good and the beautiful in every moment, even amidst the chaos....

In Living Color....

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."



-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

The world we live in is a troubling place indeed.  Syria.  Iraq.  The Ukraine.  New York.  Ferguson.  South LA.  The first three of these are international geopolitical hotspots, the latter three are domestic ones (where, sadly, unarmed Black men have died at the hands of local police in just the past few months).  While I am troubled by the seemingly endless string of international challenges, truth be told, the domestic ones are consuming ever more of my focus (and disaffection) of late.  There will always be challenges among nation-states as they attempt to follow their respective manifest destinies in a culturally diverse world ... and apparently the same is true with the citizens of our republic.  In a society in which we've seemingly enshrined selfishness and fear of The Other as cardinal values over the years, we are now reaping the bitter fruits of these efforts: our communal relations are fraying, especially across color and socio-economic lines.

Yet I cannot help but wonder what Rev. King would make of this world and of our society, both of which seem to be moving away from the Beloved Community that he envisioned and in pursuit of which he died.  We seem to be increasingly dismayed by our polarizing and polarized community relations and yet unable to acknowledge that we are the cause of (the majority of) the problem.  Why are we (so) surprised?

For example, generally speaking, we have a fundamental problem with being able to acknowledge the (continuing) challenges of race and (enduring, ever-present, especially institutional) racism in our country.  So many want us to be "post-racial" ... which, in reality, for (many/most) Blacks means that we're tired of being on the proverbial short end of the stick and wish our society would become more fair, equitable, inclusive and authentic (as in living up to its supposed creeds) and for (many/most) whites means that they're tired of hearing about it and want us to pretend that we're living in a color-blind society so that they don't have to address the legacy of the problem (that, in fairness, most of them didn't create but inherited along with the privileges that accrue thereto...).

To put a finer point on it, it's stunning that in the second decade of the 21st century, there would be both a need for and such a vehement reaction to Nicholas Kristof's recent and excellent 3-part "When Whites Just Don't Get It" New York Times editorial series.  In essence, what Kristof does so brilliantly is to acknowledge the realities of present and continuing racism (of both the institutional and individual varieties) and the Black disenfranchisement and resulting anger and white privilege and resulting insouciance that pervade - and in many cases preclude - our ability to have a collectively beneficial dialogue about this or to develop a shared commitment to solution-seeking to address it.

[As I so often do now at mid-life, I find myself shaking my head and wondering how we can begin to address our problems if we can't even acknowledge the reality of them.  For example, (most/many) Blacks' and (many/most) whites' divergent reactions to President Obama are instructive here: most Blacks are disappointed with him, too, but acknowledge the unprecedented obstruction that he's faced from a literally do-nothing Congress (and the thinly-veiled racism that seems to undergird and sustain it), but whites blame him for virtually everything to the point of parody.  Now ebola is his fault.  Before this it was ... (fill in your own blanks here).  Yet few voices have credited him with the clear successes during his administration including the economic recovery (which, given that it has disproportionately benefited the wealthiest among us would seem to elicit at least some acknowledgment and appreciation from them if not fervent praise), the recent dramatic reduction in oil/gasoline prices (though the President was widely blamed for their record increase a few years ago), Obamacare (because, despite the asinine and insane demonizing of a program to provide basic healthcare to millions of our least advantaged fellow citizens, the predicted apocalypse has not come and, even better, more of us have lived [not] to see this), etc.  I mean, can anyone really imagine a white President who had the nation's most prominent enemy eliminated - in our case this being Osama bin Laden a few years ago - not being lauded profusely and in an extended way as a hero/savior?  Funny, but I don't remember much fawning from the right (and typically more national security-obsessed) side of our political spectrum or its 'news' and policy organs and I've come to expect the tepid and temporary responses of the cowed and cowardly center-left and their media outlets and pundits.  The point is that to a far greater degree than ever before, this President is blamed and not credited ... and yet so/too many of us refuse to acknowledge that race has played some (if not a determining) role in this.  Obviously we won't be able to solve a problem that too many of us either pretend doesn't exist and/or don't want to do the collective work to address....]

Or, what is to be made of the heightened role of religion in our society currently?  Certainly this country is dominated by Christians - its most populous religious group - and also disproportionately influenced by the sub-segment of conservative/fundamentalist adherents thereof.  And yet in our society the most prevalent strain of this belief system supposedly derived from an illiterate, itinerant Jewish sage and faith healer two millennia ago most often contrasts with its patron's behavioral and spiritual example.

Was not Jesus, in effect, what we've come to describe as a socialist?  Did He not advocate a fairer distribution of the resources of the unjust society of His day?  Did He not advocate on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised to be treated more compassionately - indeed, humanely - and included more meaningfully in the society of His day?

Does not the modern Christian Right seem to stand in direct opposition - and, in reality, contradiction - to this example today?  Is it not in fact aligned with the rich and powerful such that it joins in and extends the exclusion and oppression of those whom Jesus served and elevated in His earthly time?  Could the modern-day Christian Right be any more unChristian (to borrow a term from Dave Kinnaman, one of its own contemporary chroniclers)?

And our politics reflect this dissolution and disaffecton:  To consider just one example, in this election year, what is to be made of the on-going campaign to restrict access to the most fundamental of American and democratic rights, that to vote?  For a variety of reasons - and most often under the guise of an attempt to address the effectively non-existent problem of voter fraud by instituting onerous voter ID requirements - there has been a consistent effort to disenfranchise ever more of our fellow citizens in the past half-dozen years.  And it's not partisan but an acknowledgment of objective fact to note that the vast majority of this effort has been led by and for the benefit of the Republican Party.  Further and sadly not shockingly, those most affected and likely disenfranchised by these successful efforts are those who are less likely to vote Republican (like People of Color, the poor and the working class, the elderly, etc.).  When added to the craven gerrymandering that has occurred in the last decade under a mostly Republican-controlled House of Representatives - to the extent that some have estimated that Democrats will have to earn in excess of five million votes more than their Republican counterparts just to be as successful/prevail as often in congressional races - the pattern is clear: rather than compete for votes honestly and ethically, Republicans have chosen to win the old-fashioned way, by suppressing their opponents as much as possible.

And yet this suppression oppresses us all: as political analysts have noted for years (if not centuries), an overtly favored and inherently incumbent party that's not worried about losing elections begins to diverge in its leadership from the interests of the electorate.  Which is a really nice way of saying that a party that has the game rigged in its favor and that isn't particularly beholden to or concerned about the interests of its ostensible constituents will begin to govern in ways that reflect this.  Or, to put it even more bluntly, the result of disenfranchising literally hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of voters is the modern Republican Party: morally bankrupt, overtly classist and slavishly attentive to the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

[And don't even let me get started on the myriad negative impacts of our allowing our political system to become awash with special-interest money.  Let's just consider the following briefly to illustrate the point and then move on: what would Washington be like if K Street (i.e., the lobbying industry) were eliminated?  Perhaps not nirvana, but certainly more responsive to us regular citizens to a far greater degree than it is today....]

So, returning to Dr. King and his vision of the Beloved Community: we are almost compelled to ask if this is a dream that we can or do share today.  Do we really want a society in which the diverse interests of its diverse citizens are considered and reflected in the delineation of the boundaries within which we live and the values by which we live?  If so, what are willing to do - which really means what sacrifices are we willing to make - to achieve this?

Or, following the oft-brilliant and trenchant satirist Stephen Colbert, should we just acknowledge that this is (too) hard and we just don't want to do it?

At a minimum, what is imperative is that we realize that this is indeed a choice.  Too often we shrug our collective shoulders and absolve ourselves of responsibility by asking rhetorically, "What can you do?  That's just the way it is...."

And yet this isn't true, and that's the point: we have made this mess - or, in most individual cases, allowed it to happen on our watch - and thus we can unmake or refashion it into something preferable.  We can educate ourselves.  We can engage in constructive dialogue.  We can empathize and behave compassionately and inclusively.  We can disagree agreeably and focus on developing ever more common ground.  We can engage more fully in our local and national societal/governmental life and processes.  We can vote.

Or, to follow the ever-prescient Dr. King, we can accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope, especially by acting in ever more humane, constructive and inclusive ways....