Month: June 2018

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psalm 31

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“Turn Your ear to me, rescue me quickly.  Be a rock of refuge for me, a stronghold for my deliverance.” PSALM 31:3 TLV

 

These are days when I feel the center of my soul is suffering a major earthquake.  Dishes fall off the shelves, bottles rattle, the floor trembles.  My faith is shaken by worldly events which depict savagery, oppression, hatred, injustice.  Run!  Run!  Run!  Run for cover.  And there is but one place to run – deeper into He who sustains and protects.

Further into the arms which wrap in comfort and protection.  “Take this world and give me Jesus; this is not where I belong.”

“So when the walls come falling down on me
And when I’m lost in the current of a raging sea
I have this blessed assurance holding me.
When the earth shakes
I wanna be found in you
When the lights fade
I wanna be found in you.”
BUILDING 429 “WHERE I BELONG”

 

 

 

 

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a mustard seed

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”  JIMI HENDRIX

It starts with me, it starts with you, does it not?  Christian writings tell us that a tiny mustard seed of faith, MATTHEW 13:31-32, can move mountains of self-doubt, fear, and uncertainty bringing the faithful to an absolute trust in a power greater than ourselves.  We know that spark of faith which ignited early in sobriety pulled us deeper and deeper into a fellowship that became our lifeline to sanity and understanding.  Some labeled it Higher Power, some called it Allah, some chose to name it Jesus, the Christ.

Just as a spark of faith tiny as a mustard seed can restore man to his heritage with the God of his understanding, a seed of love can lead to a national movement of equality and justice.  The young people of Parkland initiated MARCH FOR OUR LIVES, Bishop Curry leads the JESUS MOVEMENT, William Barber organizes the POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN, Tarana Burke used the phrase ME TOO in 2006 leading to recognition of the rampant sexual harassment and assault in the world.  That seed, that spark of love is the universal One we call upon as a  power greater than ourselves.   That tiny mustard seed matures into a powerful force which restores broken lives and fills hearts with peace and understanding.

Those of us in recovery endured our own personal hells in our addictions.  Our hell was filled with delusions of abandonment and desolation.  It was a devastating isolation from family and community.  It’s intention was to lead us to insanity and death.  Many times hell was successful in its conquest.

Today we know that we are never alone in our battles and our victories.  We are now part of a much larger fellowship of brothers and sisters who suffer that same abandonment and isolation which afflicted us in our addictions.  They are victims of abuse, assault, bigotry, and intolerance.  Just as our demons in substance abuse controlled us, the lives of millions are controlled by earthly powers intent upon destroying the dignity and self-worth of the marginalized among us.

Those powers gain control by the use of derogatory names and labels which diminish and categorize according to race, gender, sexual identity, creed and socio-economic status.  Humankind is a brotherhood/sisterhood of souls created in the image of a God whose name is love.  Love is blind.  Love cannot discriminate nor see distinctions.

We have choices today because we are sober.  It is our choice to be a voice of love or a force complicit with fear.  Which will it be?

“We must always take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”  ELIE WIESEL

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social justice 101

“………use their political power to murder…….mistreat their elders, disrespect their parents, take advantage of foreigners passing through, and treat orphans and widows with contempt……citizens lie and give false testimonies at capital trials…… murder is for hire, exorbitant interests and profits are taken from the poor, neighbors are oppressed for personal gain…..officials are like a pack of wolves tearing apart their prey. They kill innocent people and ruin lives just to get what they want! ……..people are full of wickedness: they are bullies and thieves; they have abused the poor and helpless; they have taken advantage of foreigners and perverted justice. 

What society might the above paragraph be addressing?  It certainly sounds like probably a third world country with rampant poverty and a despotic government.  It could be any one of a number of dictatorial powers in our world today, could it not?  In many ways those words describe what is happening in America. Here is the final sentence of this reading:

I will give them what they deserve.  So said the Eternal Lord.  Ezekiel 22

What appears to be a contemporary commentary of our society today is actually attributed to the words of the prophet Ezekiel in the Judaic writings dating to a time period 2600 years ago.  Whatever credibility we assign to these writings, one point is clear.  Mankind has not truly evolved much since 600 BCE during the times of Ezekiel.  Technologically, our progress has been astounding; however, spiritually we seem to be at a standstill or possibly in a regressive mode.

Social justice, historically, has been a matter of arbitrary convenience for the controlling powers.  Great advocates of justice for the world’s poor and oppressed have been ostracized, assassinated and murdered.  Jesus the Christ was crucified.  It’s what we have been as a species.  Peace and enlightenment will grace our souls when we all strive to achieve social justice and equality for the totality of mankind.

CANDLE

 

 

 

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honoring Divinity

larry6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Namaste : the divinity in me honors the divinity in you.

First, I must recognize the divinity in me.  Do I do that?  Do you?  Do we believe that God, whatever our conception of God may be, dwells within?  Jesus and his band of mystics thought that to be the truth.  “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”  LUKE 17:21

Whether or not you or I follow the theology of Christianity, this idea of God living within is not a revolutionary idea.  Verses of Judaic and Christian scriptures support the premise of ancient and contemporary mystics that the entity which we call upon as God does not dwell apart from us in the celestial skies or in the far reaches of the universe.  No,  that spark of divinity, according to those scriptures, is not only indwelling, but also an exact image of the spiritual essence lauded in Genesis as the Creator of humankind.  “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  GENESIS 1:27

You and I created in the image of God?   Wow, mind-boggling!  The book of John in the Bible’s New Testament tells believers that God is Spirit.  “God is Spirit; and those that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.” JOHN 4:24  God does not have a physical appearance. So, if we are created in the image of God, then our God essence is spirit, it is within, and each member of mankind has it.

David, the famed King of Israel and supposed author of the book of Psalms, wrote:  “Don’t throw me from your presence, and don’t take your holy Spirit from me.”  PSALM 51:11.  King David feared losing that indwelling Spirit.  Can we lose the Holy Spirit?  I don’t know, but I do know I have ignored that holy presence, I have not practiced “namaste”, honoring the divinity within me and within you.  Every time I saturated my brain with alcohol, I profaned the indwelling Spirit.  Every time I acted out with other addictive behavior, I profaned the holiness within.  Every time I used another “imaged” child of God for selfish purposes, I profaned God within.

Buddhism says that the perfection of being is within.  Understanding the 4 Noble Truths and directing life according to  MAGGA, the 8 fold pathway, will bring enlightenment or NIRVANA, “accepting the world as it is”.

There is no theology associated with Buddhism.  It is a lifestyle which focuses on an inner enlightenment and an outward display of compassion toward all of creation.  The word namaste is of Hindu origin.  When one bows with folded hands and extends the greeting “namaste”, Pranamasana has occurred.  It is an act of respect shown to others.

Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism offer great insights to my recovery program when taken as foundational principles of Good Orderly Direction, G.O.D.

 

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FOREIGNERS

“Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.”orange tree

“Live simply so that others may simply live.”

This well-known quote attributed to Gandhi was a bumper sticker on the aged and worn automobile of one of my heroes whom I was privileged to know during the 1980s.  Father Bond was the priest at the Episcopal Church which hosted 20 AA and NA meetings weekly.  While that church social hall witnessed innumerable miracles of recovery, the sanctuary hosted a number of sober marriages.  Father Bond ministered faithfully to his parish and to his wayward flock of recovering drunks.

What is it for me to live simply?  For many years it meant a personal commitment to reducing material possessions to minimums.  It meant being an environmentalist and a steward of God’s creation.  In later years it also manifested by minimizing  theology and doctrine, bringing it all back to basics.

Father Richard Rohr in today’s comment “BE PEACE AND JUSTICE” writes:

“When you agree to live simply, you do not consider the refugee, the homeless person, or the foreigner as a threat or competition. You have chosen their marginal state for yourself—freely and consciously becoming “visitors and pilgrims” in this world, as Francis put it (quoting 1 Peter 2:11). A simple lifestyle is an act of solidarity with the way most people have lived since the beginnings of humanity.”

Francis (1182-1226) and Clare (1194-1253) of Assisi lived life understanding fully what Jesus the Christ envisioned – a simple lifestyle outside the system of production and consumption (the real meaning of the vow of poverty)  Therefore, assuming a vow of poverty does not mean living in filthy hovels with no running water or sewer systems.  It does not necessarily mean hunger and starvation.  For most of us a vow of poverty would mean a commitment to jump off the insane cycle of incessant material accumulation and depletion of the earth’s resources.

With today’s screaming calls to bring social justice to the world’s oppressed perhaps we can find guidance in these further words of Father Rohr regarding a conscious identification with the marginalized of society:

“In this position we do not do acts of peace and justice as much as our lifestyle itself  is peace and justice.” (underlined emphasis are mine)

Like many of you, I would like to fix every single episode of social injustice, but in wanting to do so I will undoubtedly make myself quite insane because that fix is unattainable.  Just as Father Bond walked the path of Francis and Clare, we also can be advocates of social justice through simplicity by speaking our truth kindly, by identifying with the marginalized,  and by being living examples of Christ’s teachings.

Look at the world around us.  Living “marginalized” is the norm, not the exception.  We are all in some way a refugee, a foreigner, a visitor and a pilgrim.  Our validation as a nation of ethics and values is currently under severe testing because of governmental actions regarding immigration.  Our strength and our salvation rests not in our criminalization of those who are marginalized, but rather in our solidarity with them.

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.  You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.  I am the LORD your God.  Leviticus 19: 33-34

CANDLE

 

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equal justice initiative

“If you want peace, work for justice.”  POPE PAUL VI

 

AMERICA, IT’S TIME TO END THE SILENCE

As we enter yet another period of American soul desolation with racial divisiveness and immigration policy leading our moral free fall into the abyss of social turpitude, we must remember our violent past and the transgressions of that past.  Those acts of oppression against the least of these, our brothers and sisters, cannot be buried.  They must surface to America’s consciousness, be reconciled, and corrected.  Only then can we say as a nation that we are great among the nations of the earth.  O God, have mercy on us and deliver us to our destined role as home of the brave and land of the free.

Justice: Week 1 Summary

https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/

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Parousia

larry6

eschatology : a body of religious doctrines regarding the soul relating to heaven, hell, death, and judgement

It is not my desire to be a promoter of any religion’s eschatology.  Life is far too short to argue about doctrines, tenets, and beliefs.  But, recently I came across a word which I had encountered many years ago and then retired to my brain’s back burner – Parousia.

The second coming of Christ is, for some believers, the entire reason for the season.  It is faith on steroids.  It is the carrot on the stick, the arrival of Santa Claus only a million times better.  Parousia is that for which many Christians live, and, unfortunately, that for which some Christians will attempt to destroy the world.  The second coming of Christ – Parousia.

My childhood concept of this event instilled the fear of God into me.  Be ready or be left behind.  Be good or burn in hell.  Be waiting with oil for your lamp or spend eternity in darkness.  Christ could come at anytime and being unprepared was not an option, especially for a little boy wanting to go to heaven and sit with Jesus.

I cannot diminish those “little boy” ideas because in the end all of them could be the truth.  But that eschatology doesn’t work for me today.  In my faith walk, deity lives within and connects to a universal sanctity called Love.  Love is the energy propelling the evolution of human spirit.  It is the divine force which always was, always is, and always will be. Love is eternity and infinity.

One of my daily favorite reads is Father Richard Rohr.  In a recent post, he challenges his reader to consider that all the hullabaloo concerning Christ’s second coming could be not so much a physical happening in the future, but rather a point in the future when all members of humanity have finally evolved to a Christ standard within.  In that Parousia, Love takes center stage and transports humankind to the perfection which we attribute to Jesus the Christ in our scriptures and theology.  The second coming might be personal internal transformations of global proportions effecting worldwide evolution to the peaceful co-existence envisioned by man’s scriptures and by God’s messengers.

It’s just a thought which gives the little boy in me a reason to hope for a better world dedicated to social justice and equality for all.  Childhood eschatology has failed to provide that hope.

CANDLE

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GENA TURGEL

NAMASTE       

 

“Truly I tell you that whatever you have done to the least of my brothers and sisters, you have also done to me.”

Chapter 25 in the book of Matthew shows humanity a blueprint for us to follow into a world dedicated to compassion and peaceful co-existence.  The lives we live can be a powerful testimony to the one we call Lord or they can be complicity with a world run amok.  It’s our choice, yours and mine.

Gena Turgel died on June 7 in London, England.  She was 95.  As a survivor of the Holocaust, she witnessed Nazi horrors at the death camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen.  She said at a tribute recently in London’s Hyde Park:

“Maybe that’s why I was spared – so my testimony would serve as a memorial like that candle that I light, for the men, women and children who have no voice.”

She once told BBC of her time providing comfort to 15 year-old Anne Frank dying from typhus:

“I washed her face, gave her water to drink, and I can still see that face, her hair and how she looked.”

What is my testimony today?  Would it be pleasing to the one I call Lord?  So much that is happening in today’s world is abhorrent and evil and it is so easy to feed into the hatefulness and violence that we see everyday on the news media.  But, it is also happening next door, in my neighborhood, in my community.  The horror of homelessness and hunger is not a distant problem in a foreign country.  It is a daily struggle for people living in the woods down the street.

Drug abuse is rampant.  My county is termed as a “rural area”, yet it has the 2nd highest drug abuse problem in the state.  Poverty and absence of job opportunities feed this drug use.  Good men turn to illegal activity in an effort to support a family.  Addiction does not discriminate.  It accepts the poor and wealthy, men and women, illiterate and educated, gay and straight, black and white.  Unfortunately, jails fill with men and women who don’t really have a drug problem.

It is a heart problem from which they suffer.  Empty, bitter hearts need to be filled with something.  For many alcohol and drugs are the solution.  The recovery fellowships which bring addicts and alcoholics to a better way of living are filled with stories of forgiveness and redemption.  Mine is one of them.

But is my sober testimony adequate recompense for the miracle allowed to me by the grace of a Higher Power?  Perhaps Jesus would say, “Depart from me, I knew you not.”  Gena Turgel believed she was spared from death at the hands of the Nazis in order to tell the world again and again and again what happens when good people don’t care enough to protect and nurture the “least of these”.

The least of these could be you and I someday.  In a tumultuous world society, we don’t know when we could be the next target of racism, bigotry or hatred.  I see my life as a day-to-day blessing from God.  I am not assured that I will have food tomorrow or a roof over my head.  I do not know that my freedoms of today will be here tomorrow for me to enjoy.  But I do know that what I do unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, today will have eternal consequences.  How about you?

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was it good for you?

“Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.”

smiley-face-2I would like to think that I am the guy who always keeps a cool head, always speaks kindly, always responds in a civil manner.  But, I am not.  I stammer, spit, and sputter in moments of anger or disgust.  In my mind I am able to read to you the riot act when I feel I’ve been maligned.  Don’t you know who I am?

In the previous paragraph “I” or a form thereof was used 8 times.  That is the problem.  “I” sometimes becomes the dominant pronoun used in thought and conversation leading to a severe case of me,me,me which almost always excludes “you”, “they”, and even “we” from any dialog.  It becomes a one-sided conversation which clearly clarifies my position, but simultaneously bars you from taking part in the interaction.  Great ego stuff for me, not much fun for you.

The world is like that, is it not?  Tact, civility, and compromise have all but disappeared.  Conversation consists of pointing accusatory fingers, pumping personal ego, and demanding respect where respect is undue.  “My way or the highway” has become the norm in political discourse separating your party from my party and forcing one of us to be the boogeyman.  In a candidate debate for elected office, the debate often turns into a tit-for-tat assault on personal integrity.  Oh, never mind that children in America are starving, that violence is escalating alarmingly, or that we could be nuked tomorrow.  You, candidate A, are a scumbag and I, candidate B, will let our constituency know all your lurid details.  Really?  Do you think the homeless veteran scrounging for a meal in the dumpster really cares what candidate A did?

It seems that we take our cues from celebrities, the rich, and the famous.  As they do, we want to do.  As they speak, we speak.  Twitter and Facebook have made it too simple to assail, insult, assault, libel someone we probably don’t even know without any threat of accountability.  No need to fear blackened eyes or missing teeth from a physical one-on-one confrontation.

Personally, as I have confessed, I still go there sometimes.  The verbal barrage, the unkind thoughts, and the judgmental attitudes can swoop down on me in a heartbeat.  But, when the emotion is spent and the brain is engaged, I find myself saying to a beleaguered me, “Was it good for you? Did that tirade make you feel better about yourself?”

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my friend, Carol

“Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.”orange tree

I often start a new page, sit and stare at it for inspiration, and 15 minutes later realize my mind has wandered to chores needing to be done, yesterday’s conversation at the grocery store with another shopper, politics, injustice, and what to cook for supper.

Distractions!  I look at a greeting card (yes, some people continue to exchange greeting cards) setting on my desk.  It says:

“There’s a place you can stay as long as you like – it’s safe and you never have to pay rent.  It’s my heart.  I’m here for you.”

What a sweet sentiment from a dear friend dating back to high school days.  Not many people enjoy a 55 year friendship.  We lost contact for many years but then reconnected just as if life had always held our hearts close even without a letter or a phone call.  Carol also loves Jesus.

I picture Jesus being that way.  His heart is always a place where I can dwell.  It’s safe and it’s rent-free.  I often write about my acceptance of the universality of different faiths’ God concepts.  When the great religions are studied, the core of their belief is a messiah which instructs humanity in paths of peaceful co-existence and compassion.

But my home base is Jesus, his life, and his teachings as recorded in the Gospels.  My faith lies not so much in the theology surrounding Christianity but in the completeness and ethic of the Jesus story.  In my times of confusion and turmoil I turn to favorite verses for strength.  When past demons rear their heads, I retreat to a favorite chair for time alone with he who strengthens me.  When the world and its affairs becomes too disturbing and confusing, I know the one who has the answers.

His heart is always open and welcoming regardless of where I have journeyed and what I have done.  My favorite parable, of course, is the prodigal son.  Check it out in LUKE 15:11-32.  It’s my story.  Jesus always says, “Come home, I’m here for you.”

Special thoughts today to my friend Carol, a comfort in late life and to MIKE , always an inspiration for my early morning reading.

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