Welcome to the Divine One's Neighborhood

Double rainbow in my neighborhood

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law?How do you read it?”He said in reply,“You shall love the Lord, your God,with all your heart,with all your being,with all your strength,and with all your mind,and your neighbor as yourself.”He replied to him, “You have answered correctly;do this and you will live.”  Luke 10:25-27

 In today's first reading from Ephesians, Paul cautions strongly against deviating from the original message of Jesus which Paul received directly and which he delivered to the Ephesians.  No matter how much theology I read, I need to always return to the scriptures and test my understanding against them.  I am of one mind with evangelical Christians in this regard.  I do understand that not all human knowledge is there and that the scriptures are not authoritative when it comes to science.  But science is not what saves; the teachings of Jesus do.

So in this case, Jesus is speaking about loving the Divine One and loving neighbors as yourself.  The Jewish scholar then asks the key questions, "Who is my neighbor?"  The short answer is that a neighbor is anyone who lives in my neighborhood.  So where is my neighborhood?  Neighborhood is generally understood to be a relatively confined geographic area where people have frequent, face-to-face interactions.  In other words, neighbors are people you know personally although with varying levels of intimacy.  Almost by definition, someone you don't know cannot be a neighbor.

Again Jesus turns this everyday understanding on its head with the story of the Good Samaritan which he tells in response to the question.  It turns out that everyone is my neighbor.  Everyone.  Perhaps a more precise formulation is that I am called to treat everyone as though they were my neighbor, as though I knew them, as though I lived with them on a daily basis.

This is an example of Paul's admonition.  Whenever we try to think about how we live in the world as Christians, we need to go back to the fundamental messages of Jesus and use those to inform our thinking.

More faith?

Los Angeles Cathedral

But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a poppy seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it. Luke 17-6  Translation from The Message

When the apostles came to Jesus and asked him to give them more faith, this was his answer.  The familiar translation uses "mustard see" instead of "poppy seed" but we get the point.  The size or amount of faith is irrelevant.  In other passages, Jesus uses yeast as a metaphor for faith.  Even the tiniest bit of yeast is enough to transform dough into what seems like a living thing.  As the dough rises, there appears to be something alive that in turn animates what was before just bit of flour and water.

So it is with faith.  It changes us because it is a principle of life that works a change in our very being.  Faith is a relationship with the Divine One.  As Paul points our in today's second reading,

We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it.  2 Timothy 1:9.

We cannot somehow increase our faith because it is a gift.  In the history of Christianity there has from time to time been confusion about who is offered this gift.  The truth is simple:  everyone is offered this gift.  In fact, everyone has this gift already incipiently if not explicitly.  The Divine One is in each of us, all of us.  We don't deserve that and there is nothing we can do to increase or decrease that presence.  All we can do is simply accept that presence and let it shine through in our words and actions.  It is the yeast of our lives meant to transform us in our own consciousness of who we are as children of the Divine One.  But, no matter how we respond or what we do, we are, always were and always will be children of that Divine One.

Nothing can change that but we can let that reality change us.  I can only let that reality change me.

Can it really be that simple?

Fall mushrooms in Mendon Ponds Park

At that very moment he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said,“I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,for although you have hidden these thingsfrom the wise and the learnedyou have revealed them to the childlike. Luke 10:21

And exactly what are these "hidden" things that the wise have difficulty accessing but the childlike can easily see and hear?  We know, of course, of those basic prescriptions of Jesus:  Love the Divine One and love your neighbor.  But these two seemingly simple commands become overly elaborated and complicated by rules and practices.  Once that happens, the spirit seems to disappear and we are left with compliance rather than love.

The simple truth is that all we need to do is simply to be...fully who we really are.  Paul writes a lot about the flesh and the spirit.  He makes clear that the spirit of the divine one is at the core of each of us.  We don't have to do anything or be anyone other than who we are.  We just have to let the spirit be fully alive in us.  When that happens, our life unfolds as fruit appears in an orchard:  naturally.  All we have to do is be fully aware of ourselves, others and the world around us.  It appears to be the case that human nature presents roadblocks and distractions to that simple act of being.  It is only by accepting the spirit of the Divine One that those inclinations and obsessions can be muted so that our true nature can emerge.

It is ironic that the more we try to fix things ourselves, the worse they can become.  Relaxing into the reality of the Divine One's love for each of us is the simple truth.

Joy in the midst of disaster and suffering

Unity Village in Less Summit MO outside Kansas City

For though the fig tree does not blossom,and no fruit appears on the vine,Though the yield of the olive failsand the terraces produce no nourishment,Though the flocks disappear from the foldand there is no herd in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD and exult in my saving God.  Habakkuk 3:17-18

The passage above is not from the daily lectionary readings but quoted in a book by Walter Brueggemann,  Reality, Grief, Hope:  Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks.   This is a book I highly recommend.  Christians have typically understood the Hebrew Scriptures in light of the Christian revelation.  Of course, the authors of these books were about something very different.  They were writing about the action of the Divine One in the life and reality of the Hebrew people.  Thus they have a meaning and a significance quite apart from a strictly Christian interpretation.  As a leading Old Testament scholar, Brueggemann has labored his entire professional life to reclaim that original meaning and share it with Christian believers.

This passage struck me because it expresses a theme that I have found recently in the lectionary readings.  Our sense of being blessed can be based on the circumstances of our life only at our own peril.  Whether things go well or ill for us, for me, I can still find a sense of blessedness and joy.  As challenging as that may be, it is an ancient sentiment of the long Judeo-Christian tradition.  In my own overly affluent world, it is all too easy to become confused on that point and focus on the goods and security I enjoy as though they are evidence of the Divine One's love for me.  It is only a small step to the conclusion that the Divine One loves some of us more than others and from that flows a poisonous stream of violence and persecution.

The danger of a wistful backward or forward glance

Chapel at Clyde Motherhouse of Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

 “No one who sets a hand to the plowand looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.”  Luke 9:62

These words of Jesus were spoken to those who wanted to accept his invitation to follow him but needed to attend to family business first.  The traditional meaning is simple:  Entering into the new life of the Spirit and announcing the Kindom of the Divine One requires a complete conversion, a turning to a new life and walking on a new path.  There cannot be any halfway, part time commitment here.

Perhaps because I am reading Richard Rohr's The Naked Now,  some other meanings arise for me.  It is easy enough to understand that looking back to another time can be distraction for the work of the disciple.  It is not just because it consumes energy not focused on the mission but because it splits our attention between now and then.  Thinking about how things were--no matter whether good or bad--takes us out of being presence to the way things are right now and that seems to one of the central features of an authentic spiritual life.

But it is also true that thinking about how things will be in the future can take us away from being present.  Think of a discussion in which you are always thinking about what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.  It is impossible to listen to what is being said while doing that.  Much as we would like to believe otherwise, our brains are not wired to do more than one thing at a time.  What we call multi-tasking is really just constantly switching from one thing to another and back again.  We actually become less productive, not more.

Our role in the kindom of the Divine One demands and requires our full presence to whatever reality is ours at the time.  No wistful glaces backward or forward.

Indifference does not mean lack of suffering

Sunset on Manhattan Beach, CA

Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.Job spoke out and said:
Perish the day on which I was born,the night when they said, “The child is a boy!” Job 3:1-3

The impression from yesterday's reading from Job was that he remained somehow indifference to his losses and continued to see his life as blessed the Divine One.  Today it is clear that his indifference did not mean that he didn't suffer grievously from these losses.  Here he wishes for death as the only peace he can possibly achieve.  Importantly in the previous chapter and in this one, he refuses to curse the Divine One, which is the whole point of the contest between the Divine One and the devil.

The Christian life not one in which I achieve immunity from suffering and pain but that I fully experience them without losing faith and hope in the Divine One.  This is what Job was able to do and what Jesus did in his life.  The reading from Luke begins the story of his "heading resolutely to Jerusalem" where he will experience death, suffering, humiliation as well as resurrection and ascension.  When the people of the Samaritan town reject him and his followers, he does not respond in kind in deed or even in word.  He must have fully experienced that rejection as he would the terrible rejection in Jerusalem but he was able to place it in perspective and did not allow it to divert him from his vocation.

As I have written elsewhere*, I have used a "passionate and involved indifference" to describe this stance.  It does not mean avoiding the pain and suffering of human life but rather placing it in proper perspective so that the pain and suffering does not govern my words or actions.  Clearly this is possible only with the grace-filled life of the Divine One.
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* Here is a link to that writing on the Goal and Purpose of Life from the Ignatian Exercises.  This is a restatement of that prayer of Ignatius which I wrote as part of that spiritual journey and then revised five years later.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NMpHu9LQJEX7Nmv9xtDOxKby4QvU5FPdW7pIgHghgMw/edit?usp=sharing 

The Great Reversal and Indifference

Apple harvest ready at Hurd Orchards

“Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb,and naked shall I go back again.The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;blessed be the name of the LORD!”  Job 1:22

In the immediate aftermath of Job's hearing about the loss of his property, his herds, his children and their families, he blesses the Divine One, the source of all he has and has now lost.  In the gospel reading from Luke, Jesus gently rebukes the disciples arguing about who is the greatest with another expression of the great reversal in the Christian view of life:  The one who is least is the greatest and the one who is greatest is the least.

How difficult it is for me to separate the "blessings" in my life from the fundamental blessing of life.  Typically when I or others in my life say we are blessed, we are referring to all those aspects of our lives that make us feel comfortable, safe and secure:  health, financial resources, regard from others, education, leisure, loving relationships, etc.  What if all those and more were taken away?  Would we still feel blessed?  Would we still feel that the Divine One is a loving source of our very life?  How difficult that would be!  It is difficult to contemplate but it is almost impossible to conceive until we do in fact lose all those things, which we ultimately do.

To the extent that my sense of being blessed is based on the circumstances of my "fleshly" life, I am walking a path of deception and delusion.  My struggle is to come to terms with the fact that I am blessed with life--no matter its circumstances.  By virtue of luck and chance, I live an affluent and comfortable life but that is a deception if I think I am blessed with that life.  In many ways that life can be a curse because it can so easily distract me from the fundamental reality of life.

I struggle to live a life of engaged and passionate indifference in a culture that is drenched and dripping with marketing and media that urge ever greater consumption of material things.  It even goes so far that immaterial things--knowledge, love, happiness--become transformed into things to be consumed.  Prayer is the only way out of this.  Spending time with the Divine One in whatever way that is possible for me is the path to a life of true blessedness and non-delusion.