How does our self-love "bend" our following of "Love one another as I have loved you"? How might our particular gender, religious, socio-economic status, or political identification justify our twisting of the words of Jesus (Yeshua, in the Aramaic language which he spoke) perhaps into the very opposite of love? What if a narrow self-interest, whether personal or national, has completely "warped" our vision, to the point that we have become incapable of genuine spiritual insight?

It is my sad contention that love is not love, indeed, that it is no longer even capable of recognizing that it is without the capacity for recognizing its spiritual impotence. Look around, if you still have eyes with which to see! Greed controls the levers of government in virtually every Western democracy. Violence is extolled and justified from every religious and political angle. A pathological liar occupies the White House and his primary base of support is Christians! The Jewish state of Israel is daily dismembering its Prophets as it constructs an apartheid fortress! Islam, which birthed Rumi, shreds its holy and mystic heart for idiotic quests for power instead of Unity! The interests of privilege and profit bury both intelligence and science simply to maintain power -- even if it means the extinction of tens of thousands of species and the possible viability of life on this Planet! Guns have more rights than women and there are men, both religious and secular, who claim that it is the duty of women to submit to the will of men (of God): even if that will is forced through complete domination and rape! Violence against immigrants, refugees, racial and sexual-identification minorities, and even "liberals", are justified and endorsed by many on the streets and in the public medias! And the Catholic Church, once recognized as an international beacon for spiritual benevolence and social solidarity -- and a consistent moral vision -- is mired in a sink-hole of obfuscations for its hypocritical sexual idiocies and policies! Madmen, of Right-Wing "populist" movements, threaten the thread-bare international mores of "civilized" behaviors and institutions!  And! And where are the voices and movements that remind, and call us forward, into a sacred compact with our meaning and purpose as human beings? (Of course, I can think of many, such as the Catholic Worker Movement, the Findhorn Community in Scotland, and the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment as a few examples. What are some examples especially important to you?)

​Yeshua bar Alaha (the famous Jesus Christ) summarized his Teaching with "Love one another as I have loved you". These words are completely devoid of meaning if we are not totally revolutionized by them! We have got to stop playing the Christian game of believing in Jesus: if it means that our intention is to escape into salvation! Relationship with Yeshua must come to mean a living hunger -- a yearning or longing -- to enter into his poetic-life. "Blessed are you" must translate into the practice of "Beautiful are you" and "Welcome Home!" Our gender-identification, greed, and violence is an everyday-rape of our Sacred Consciousness as human beings: as for us, so too, for this entire precious blue Planet! 

Is there an "escape route"? Is there a path forward into our sacred possibilities? First of all, I think that we need to renounce religion, in order to recover our sanity. We are clearly insane! But to "renounce" means something other than to "turn away" from. Rather, to "renounce", must come to mean to "announce" the heart of religion, the heart of gender, and the heart of our humanity... To "renounce", means to "announce" the truth of the very Heart of the Divine Beloved (erroneously called "God"). What is that truth? Simple...

​Knowing this truth is not unique to me. Yeshua knew it: the ancient Shaman-Mother knew it. The Prophets knew it. Sages knew it. Blessed Muhammed knew it. Poets knew it. Mystics of the world knew it. Lovers knew it. Nearly every Mother knows it. What is it? How to explain? Here are some examples: what does water do? Doesn't it always seek the lowest place? What does light do? Doesn't it seek out the cracks? What does a Mother do when she sees her Son in agony? She never experiences that pain from afar: she takes it on, she shares that pain, exactly as if it is Her own. Love is not love if it is not energized by compassion. The radical truth of Yeshua bar Alaha insists that relationship with and in Him means our identification with the will to see and act in the world as agents, as instruments, of compassion-let-loose-upon-the-world! Compassion is our authorization to feel and act, finally!, as liberated human beings!  

Yeshua's parable of the "Good Samaritan" illustrates our authorization to feel and act as instruments of compassion. You can look it up for yourself (you can find it in Luke 10: 30 - 37). The operative phrase is "go and do likewise". It is probable that most of us will never meet up with a man on the road, beaten up by a robber, and left for dead. But everyday corporations, billionaires, and governments rob everyone when they prioritize their profits, privileges, and power over the common good. So, how you vote and what you buy directly and specifically reveals your "go and do likewise"... or not! We have, as the Christian religion and as a self-proclaimed Christian nation, decided to honor and worship Jesus... while, as a simple matter of consequence, our theologies and justifications have constructed for us a "comfortable Christ"! This emasculated "Christ" wants only our alleluias and hosannas: wants our grateful salvation-line: neither of which leads anywhere but to a mansion of mirrors filled with images of ourselves!

On the other hand, the "go and do likewise" of compassion means a radical change of mind and heart: we are supposed to live, vote, buy, and decide from the sacred perspective of compassion: what is best for the poor, the marginalized, and the desperate, first: the well-being of all life, of every eco-system, on this Planet and the well-being of the children who will be living here long after we are gone: and what is best for everyone -- both genders with an equal voice -- every class, every nation, and every specie. "Go and do likewise" is as sacred, and as religious, as it gets.

This Yeshua bar Alaha is the Divine Icon revealing our true identity and sacred purpose as human beings! Sure, put him on the altar of your life -- but make damn sure that he is striding forth, side-by-side with you, into the altar of your radicalized daily life! We can't let billionaires worship money, screw the Planet, and at the very same time pretend that we are worshipping God! The Unholy Trinity of Privilege, Profits, and Power is not capable of serving either Human Beings or this Planet! We need to practice and announce the Unity, and Unifying, Energy of Compassion!

"I stopped waiting for the world to improve and exercised my right to intervene in that world." -- Vaclav Havel  

A computer on every desk and an i-phone in every hand: low-cost robot teachers facilitating employment replacement opportunities for eight year old children... and don't forget to put on your oxygen mask before going outside for your five minute recess... But, on the other hand...

Students can meet in the regenerated forests of the world, sit on hand-made bamboo or hemp mats, meditate to begin their day, and graduate into a world that holds out the daily promise of "Welcome Home!"

Of course, it is not an either / or situation that we are in. It is though, one of primary importance. One could go so far as to say that it is the most important question of the times in which we live. Will technology and wealth serve the full development and liberation of every person and the regeneration of this Planet, or will it serve only to benefit the few above  and before the many and the Planet? This is also the most religious or spiritual question that we could ask. It cuts to the core of every issue, opinion, or theological positioning. 

The Power-Paradigm that rules the world would have us believe that their technocrats and political operatives will successfully "innovate" and discover the means to survive the potential hazards of war, climate change, economic marginalization, and religious violence. Of course, they will ignore the simple fact that is is their centuries-long abuse and misuse of power that has disrupted all of the natural systems of the Earth and cooperative systems of the "average" Joe, Jane, and the suffering poor. They are counting on our conspicuous consumerism (with a steady supply of new and improved trinkets-for-entertainment). They are counting on a willful stupidity on our part to maintain their endless-profit designs.

One possible response to the Power-Paradigm is the renewal of our collective human spirit: the cultivation of both soul and imagination. This possible New Renaissance might just become the rEvolution that all of us desperately need! "The full development and liberation of every person" will be one essential aspect of this New Renaissance, but more, so will play, meditation, the regeneration of forests and soil, educational systems that honor and serve "the whole person" and charts pathways for art, community farming, social service, and a study of gracious systems of philosophy...

Ultimately, we all just need to want to fall in love as lovers and servants of one another and of this wonderful Sacred Planet that is home home...  

"Listening to the silence" is not a common refrain, at least, not one that is heard very often deep in the "normal" chaos of 21st century life... but should that fact negate the value of a cultivated silence? Catherine Doherty, a Russian writer and mystic, who founded the Madonna House Apostolate and profoundly influenced Thomas Merton, wrote in her book Molchanie, The Silence of God, "Silence is the key to the immense Furnace of Love -- the heart of God". So, what should we make of this "silence"? Besides, who really wants to get burned?

Let's begin by looking at the question of a cultivated silence from a different angle. Let's look at it through the lens of young lovers (or passionate "old lovers" as well). What does it mean to be a passionate lover? Or better yet, how many are the ways in which lovers make love? A truthful answer to these questions is quite simple: passionate lovers never stop! 24 / 7 sex is not possible (though worth the failing effort), but there are an unlimited number of "variations" on the one essential theme of a conscious cultivation of "oneness": conversations, holding hands while walking anywhere, playing games, sneaking kisses in libraries... if one is awake and breathing, one can get seriously close to a 24 / 7 love-life... Isn't this hunger for "close encounters of the loving kind" with one's partner the single-minded intention of "young lovers"?

Or have you forgotten? Or worse, have you never had access to this incredible bliss? Sadly, there are no guarantees when one enters life as a human being: but, if one nevertheless is at least "potentially" awake, being kind, gentle, and interested in others will increase one's opportunities for positive relationships. But let's say that you've got things moving in "your direction". Let's say further, that you've read a few "spiritual" books: there on your coffee table is a book about the Dalai Lama, you've read a hundred pages of Deepak Chopra (although you can't find that book right now), and you just purchased Autobiography of a Yogi. This could be the start of something, right?

Well, yes, but there is more! What do lovers do? Lovers, or couples who yearn for intimate relations with the person of their desires, look for ways to further or deepen that relationship. She will seek more time with that person. He will seek moments of aloneness  with "that one". She will touch and kiss. In other words, lovers will consciously cultivate opportunities for intimate encounters. Anything is a possibility for lovers! The most human of dramas is the root of the hunger for the Divine Beloved... 

Like lovers, the person who yearns for an awakening to her divine possibilities will intentionally cultivate opportunities to engage with the Beloved. Human lovers lose all track of time in an embrace of deep kissing. And so it is when one listens to the silence... when one hungers for a near proximity to the Divine Beloved, he will put aside time, and open his heart to a contemplative gaze upon his Beloved... when one has awakened to the One Reality of Love as one's true identity, she will desire to live in the meaning of that awakening... The same (but different) is what it means to live "lover-to-lover", and "lover-loving-the Divine Beloved"... Living the ecstasy of loving is in every way and in every thing the difference-maker...  This is the gift and the lesson of listening to the silence...

Reading the life of St. Francis, one discovers quite early on, that there is nothing at all subtle about him. "Extreme" and "explicit" are two words that easily apply to him, to the life that he led, and to his relationship with the Divine Beloved. His marriage vows to "Lady Poverty" reveal as much about us, as about him: "extreme" as his devotion to holy simplicity was, our "horror" in considering the requirements of justice place us "extremely distant" from the teachings of Master Yeshua (Jesus).

"Lady Poverty" and a radical simplicity is one thing, easily glossed over because, after all, Francis was a "saint", so we should expect a definite degree of weirdness. But what is most stunning and intimidating in the life of Francis is his very "explicit love"! Now, we usually apply the word "explicit" to movies, books, art, and song lyrics that "explicitly depict or describe" naked human bodies and human sexuality. We barely bat an eye in reading that Francis, early on, strips off his clothing, drops them in front of his local Bishop, and strolls through Assisi, heading who-knows-where, stark naked. "Free", in every sense of the word, and poetically "as the breeze." This scene is more than a hint of his "explicit love"...

St. Francis lived in a lovers' union with the Divine Beloved. He was not content with the "legitimate worship" current in his day. His insight into the Sacred Story of Yeshua compelled a radical identification with him, but more, it was the identification of lover-to-lover: not as a theological virtue or a comfortable trick. Perplexed, if you will, with the evident absence of Jesus in the Church, in the marketplace, and in the ordinary lives of the ordinary faithful, Francis rushed to the distant margins of both society and sanity...

What was at the margins? Why, of course, it was "Good Lady Poverty" evident in the hideous, rotting, stinking bodies of the leper poor. Francis proceeded to hold them, care for them, and caress them as to his bride: as to his Divine Beloved, Yeshua, revered as Jesus, as Brother... as Lover... From this point of contact, Francis jumped "whole-hog" as it were, into a wild and "explicit love". Preaching, garbed only in his underwear, in the Cathedral: why not? Rolling naked in the snow and building a "snowman" family of wife and children: why not? Preaching to birds and wolves: why not? Everyone one and every thing were embraced by Francis in his ever-expanding heart: wouldn't you agree that his was an audacious "explicit love"?

If we give any attention, these days, to one such as St. Francis of Assisi, that attention is most often in thinking of him as a comfortable, middle-class, garden statue. (Such a statue stands in our garden!) But confining the meaning of Francis to a garden statue confuses his very sacred example. To understand Francis requires that we contemplate, very intentionally. We might begin with this quotation from Simone Weil: "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love." This is exactly it! In other words, the witness of St. Francis is the continuing challenge to first expand, and then to finally remove, the limits we place upon our love: looking to the margins, we can find our way into the spirit of Francis, living still, in the homeless, the migrant, the oppressed, and the forgotten... 

St. Francis attached his flesh, his blood, and his bones to the self-emptying love of his Divine Beloved. And that is why he continues to be so very dangerous, especially to the people who want to build walls around the limits they assign to their imaginations, their possibilities, and to their love... How we resolve these staggering limitations could very well decide the future of both the USA and to this precious blue Planet...