 Yogananda
As a seventeen year-old high school student, I would frequently browse the biography section in our local library. Already, due to my reading of "Daybreak", the autobiography of Joan Baez, had read something of the Indian sage and liberator, Mahatma Gandhi, so I was interested in all things India. It was at this exact moment in time that I happened upon The Autobiography of a Yogi... hmm, I thought as I pulled it from the shelf... My "hmm" turned out to be a life-long interest and, one might say, a life-long passion as well. Mahatma Gandhi wrote and spoke and lived as if there was no doubt that God was real... And having been raised on Billy Graham sermons and summons on broadcast television, God was an easy assent for me. But this Hindu stuff was wild! The Saint With Two Bodies, A "Perfume Saint", The Tiger Swami, The Levitating Saint, and the Blissful Devotee and His Cosmic Romance, colored the first eighty-two pages of the Autobiography... and then on into Yogananda's years in his Master's hermitage, experiences in cosmic consciousness, an outline of Kriya Yoga, and Yogananda's years of teaching in the West and his eventual founding of the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, California... Autobiography of a Yogi has been on my bookshelf for all these many years: I keep multiple copies in case someone who visits might have an interest... And just two days ago, another African-American man was murdered on the street just forty-five minutes from my home here in River Falls... perhaps you've seen the video of the killing? It is stunning and difficult to comprehend: the utter and complete opposite of either "union" or of "bliss"... When he became a monk of the ancient Swami Order, Yogananda chose that exact name as his own: with the intention of promoting and of teaching the genuine possibility of reaching that condition of being: a living union which facilitates bliss... Of course, African-Americans arrived on these shores in the cargo holds of slave ships: those first slaves and their descendants built the economic wealth of the Southern States and contributed mightily to the over-all wealth and advancement of the entire United States: but, obviously, we are not yet united... Racism continues to raise its ugly head everywhere in this country: now even encouraged by a racist President: as if this is normal! As if centuries of injustice and oppression are the natural order of things! The police "officer" who killed his victim, in photographs of him in his spare time, wore a hat stating matter-of-factly Make Whites Great Again... What has Yogananda have to do with murder on the streets of Minneapolis? Factually, a lot! Yogananda visited in Minneapolis and established a small church community in the City... One could also say that the murder also involved St. Francis, St. Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus Christ as well... and, of course, our nation's founders like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and other Presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt: in fact, we are all involved in this latest killing in Minneapolis! Yeah. You read that right! We are all involved precisely because we have failed to hold each other accountable to our national and faith ideals! Collectively, we shit on the very idea of America and the Face of Jesus Christ by our absolute refusal to create the conditions necessary for "union" and "bliss" to became fact instead of "religion" and "politics". WE elect a white nationalist idiot to the White House. WE segregate whenever we pray. WE lock up children in cages. WE rape and pillage the environment solely for profit. WE have more guns on our shores than people. WE sell billions of dollars of weapons to scoundrels all over the world. And WE give vapid lip-service to whichever interpretation of the Divine that pleases us... On the other hand: it is not yet too late! It is not yet too late for a change of heart and mind! We can change! We can open our hearts and our hands to become lovers and givers rather than deceivers and takers. We can build, with intention and imagination, new communities of sacred activists to help with facilitating, however bizarre it might sound, a loving-one-another revolution... We need to really realize that mothers caring for their children is the norm. That fathers playing ball with their kids is the norm. That uniting in faith and service is the norm. That empathy is what we have been wired for. That equality is a happy thing. That diversity is reason for celebration. That kindness matters above all else. That justice and peace is everyone's moral imperative. That regenerating the Planet is our sacred obligation. It is not yet too late for this Love rEvolution! Dear Yogananda, Francis, Rumi, Siddhartha, Hildegard, Dorothy, and Saints of all Religions, pray for us! And may all the artists, singers, musicians, dancers, film makers, lovers, doubters, bohemians, scientists, doctors, teachers, daily-grind workers, and imagineers light up our minds with a daily passion for possibilities as yet unimagined!
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 Years and years ago, I read something to the effect that, during the normal course of most lives, most people tend to become more and more conservative as they age... In my particular case, or rather life, it has been the exact opposite course for me... There's a line in the Tao Te Ching that goes like this: If you want to become whole, first let yourself become broken... I didn't set out with the intention of this... but brokenness ambushed me along the way, and whole has now come to mean radical to the roots... of necessity to approach the Living Truth...
Only a broken cup can hold the Universe... Only a broken heart can embrace the Divine... I became a Catholic because of St. Francis of Assisi, with generous assistance from Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day... Along the way of living, I started a Catholic Worker House and also became a professed Franciscan: my cup was whole. And then I began to fall in love, not just once, but over and over and over again... An old man with the brightest blue eyes you could ever imagine, Junior Mann, was first. He was an ancient, ragged-to-the-bone, alcoholic... Preston was next: his hands were so enlarged and twisted from arthritis that I'd have to carefully wedge his sandwiches into them as he'd turn to limp away... Then there was Stephanie, a prostitute with three kids and a husband who was her pimp... And Eleanor showed up at our Kitchen at about this time... Only a broken cup can hold the Universe... Only a broken heart can embrace the Divine... Time and time again, I shattered... the worst shattering was always when the love that was given was not returned... and when abandonment seared my identity... There is not a single thing romantic about ego-annihilation... but it is precisely here, in this particular moment, that the Universe bends toward the breaking when It hears "I just want to Love"... This bending is sort of like the Miracle Story of the Master Poet feeding thousands of people with just a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread... Emptiness creates the needed space for the Presence of the Divine... It is both as simple and as complex as this... In every religion, there is the institutional: the creeds, dogmas, the practices, the symbols, the right thinking that makes for cohesion... to be sure, there is some value to all of that... but, on the margins, usually on the outside looking in, is the living experience, the faith-that-is-not-faith, because only a broken heart can embrace the Divine... The Tao Te Ching (No. 22) continues: If you want to become whole, then first let yourself be broken, they weren't using empty words... There is a Mystery here. The master's words were not empty, precisely because their hearts had already leaked out, all over the place... This is the example of St. Francis of Assisi (St. Clare even more so). Francis lived his I just want to love as best he could, by kissing lepers on the mouth, by working in the fields with the working poor, by wandering the backroads of obedience to faith... which left him broken, abandoned by most of his friends as he was abandoned by his dreams, abandoned even by his eyesight... lying naked on the ground, harassed by scampering mice, and with nothing left but his burning tears... he became a living cup to whom the Universe bent It's ear... And what did this broken, empty, man do? What could he say with his broken mind and heart in hand? What would you do, if brought by life to the very abyss of nothingness? What would you say, with nothing left to say? For Francis, his mind descended further... descended into the broken abyss of his broken heart... and he sang the song of dawn... he sang with the secret, sudden, knowing of the Transcendent alive with the Immanent, of the Sacred Unity of Creation and all things / beings created... It went something like this: Holy Moly! You are beyond my imagination! You are praise, wonder, beauty and every blessing! All good, every kindness, is your shining And your Name is the secret of creation! I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light in dear Brother Sun! He brings the day to enlighten our hearts! Brother Sun is beauty shining Shining as your Holy Moly sign! I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light in dear Sister Moon and Brilliant Stars! In the sky they shine Brilliant, precious, and beautiful! I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light in dear Brother Wind! In every movement of air and cloud In every movement in delight you Shine! I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light in wonderful Sister Water! She is so precious and humble in accepting the kiss of our lips! I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light in robust Brother Fire! He is so vibrant and bold to hold back the night for our praise! I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light in our sacred Mother Earth! She holds us to her breast, She lifts us up in our weakness, She gifts us with fruits, flowers, and herbs, in her embrace we are held by you! I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light in all persons who know the beauty of a bended knee, can ask for forgiveness, and who can lift up the harmed in the beauty of peace, for it is in this living of peace, that is the crown of lasting Light and the wonder of an endless Holy Moly! I guess that you could say that this is the Song of St. Francis of the Tao... because he lived a re-definition of the Gospel: from religion to Way... from institution to the experience of immersion in the Mystery of the Transcendent in-filling the Immanent... it is possible is the beginning...  How does the human heart awaken?
And isn't it also important to ask, "What are the signs of an awakening heart?" In the very midst of a global pandemic, and the deepening of our already fractured divisions, are not these two very important questions? I would, in fact, say that these are the two most important questions any citizen or person of faith needs to ask... Opinions are clearly a dime a dozen, as the old saying goes. Everyone has one about nearly everything. If one were to take only Facebook as an example, opinions galore dot everyone's home page: right / left, progressive / conservative, believer / unbeliever, and so on. And, of course, I participate. I have opinions. But, into this mix, for me, I generously add my influences. I think this is important! Who influences your opinions and beliefs? How do you recognize fact from fiction? And to what are you rooted? The root-of-my-root are my experiences in relationship with the homeless and marginalized. Thirty years in a soup kitchen will surely fry anyone's brain and break every heart, over and over again: that is exactly what it did to me: for me! For sure, this difference has made all the difference... Should I be more specific? Skipping the examples, I will plunge ahead: roots grow down and outward. In terms of what I am writing about, down means the dark, rich, soil of humility, and outward means, simply, that it isn't about you... it's about everyone, every other... Perhaps more than any other "insight" that comes to us by way of the mystics, especially from the Franciscan charism, in defining roots as growing down and outward would be this: the most authentic form of Christian life consists precisely in being Christ... The Christian mystic empties herself completely (day-by-day) so that Christ may be completely her... Saints Francis and Clare referenced their daily lives by the example of Jesus in the Gospel: was he poor, was he kind, was he generous, was he loving-in-action? Awakening is, then, the daily action of becoming, by-little-and-by-little, living mirrors of the Christ-Event, continuing throughout time... And what are the signs of this becoming? Here's how St. Francis put it in his Letter to all the Faithful: "We are his mothers when we enthrone him in our hearts and souls by love with a pure and sincere conscience, and give him birth by doing good." Being and doing are, as it were, the left and right hands of the new Divine Life expressing itself in and through you. Simone Weil put it like this, We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. So, we attune our minds to the living example of Jesus (Yeshua bar Alaha), and to the examples of saints who likewise became mirrors of the Divine Life: Hildegard, Rumi, Francis, Clare, and Theresa (obviously including many others) and also the examples of more contemporary people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Wangari Maathai, Fr. Bede Griffiths, and the Berrigan Brothers... Resistance and Contemplation become the motif of awakening... and awakening necessarily implies becoming a living sign of contradiction... In a world mad with a lust for privilege, profit, and power: the Christian, the mystic, as a sign of contradiction, stands beside the humble crib of the Infant Christ: the nonviolent revelation of the Divine Consciousness, and commits herself to the struggle for justice, peace, and the liberation of all peoples, as another Christ... Service and Solidarity are an outgrowth of the awakening of surrender to the Divine Beloved... In a time in which even bees are an endangered specie: putting @risk all life on the planet: awakening is our single most important task! And of course, then the living of that awakening by action, in and through compassion and nonviolence... I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat. I was separated from my family and locked in a cage, and you assumed I was happy. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a black man shot while jogging, and you assumed my wife happy in becoming a widow. I was a stranger, and you didn't welcome me. Oh and so much more! Everyone you could have helped and didn't, you did the very same to me... I didn't die just once years and years ago: I die everyday that you put privilege, profit, and power before the needs and dreams of real people... my people...  I became a Catholic because of St. Francis and Thomas Merton. I became a Catholic Worker because Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin took the monastic idea, liberated it from the confines of walls and vows, and gave it away freely, along with soup and bread. Finally, I "left" the Church because I was not "up to par", even after running a Catholic Worker House for thirty years and hundreds of priests were literally caught with their pants down...
Of course, these words are an over-simplification of the "stuff of life", and of particular interest to me, of my life and the 87th Anniversary of the Catholic Worker Movement. A whew is due to all who have been, are now, or will be at some point in the future, Catholic Workers. I remember sitting at a table in the dining room of Dorothy's Place Hospitality Center in Salinas. Across from me was Mia, dear friend and a co-director of Dorothy's. We were in the midst of a deep conversation when a tall gray-haired man entered and asked if he could volunteer. We pointed him in the direction of the Kitchen... and continued talking... About an hour later (yes, our meetings could continue indefinitely), and he walked back to us and asked if he could volunteer again. "Yes! Of course we would love to have you!" He handed us his card and promptly left. This was always the way it was at Dorothy's. Mia and I looked at the photo on the card. "Oh, my God! That was Bob Fitch!" Bob Fitch, of course, was the photographer of "the movement": he was "the" photographer of Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, Daniel Berrigan, Joan Baez and David Harris, the Hippies, and of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. It was Bob who took the above photo, the last time that Dorothy was arrested. On a following volunteer visit to Dorothy's, he brought a large, framed, copy of this photo which we proudly hung on the dining room wall... This little story of our introduction to Bob Fitch is a, sort of, summary of 87 years of the Catholic Worker. The grand has a way of happening in the midst of the very ordinary: and it is precisely in and through those little moments, or cracks in the ordinary, that the grace of Mystery, like water, just seeps through, almost without notice... This, more than anything else, is the meaning and purpose of the Catholic Worker: oh, yes, there are Kitchens, there are shelters, there are farms, there is political resistance, as there are newspapers and appeals for the steady supply of emergencies... But it all happens in the midst of very ordinary days... there is always work to be done and seldom enough happy and willing bodies to do it, yet somehow, the days just flow, each one into the next... Books of St. Francis, Teresa, Merton, and Hildegard are with others about Dorothy, Peter, Helen and Scott Nearing, MLK, Cesar Chavez, Russian spirituality, the Tao, the Gita, Celtic and Creation spirituality, and poetry and art and, well, books are essential for the heart, not just the mind: we have a very fine home library! Oh how Dorothy loved books! She would love to see Dostoevsky on our shelves! Have any of you ever read his short story The Dream of a Ridiculous Man? You could come over and read it sitting right there on our sofa... Quite a few people are excited about the coming day when Dorothy is declared an official saint of the Catholic Church -- in spite of her protest that she did not want to be dismissed so easily! Dorothy Day remained a faithful member of the Catholic Church from the moment of her conversion to her death. The Church didn't deserve her then and even less now. How many billions of dollars have been reluctantly handed over by the Church to the victims of sexual abuse? And to lawyers defending the Church and others defending the children? Cardinal Dolan glad-hands with Trump... Burke wears reams of flowing silks as if a living God... and still women are not good enough to be priests... To my knowledge no one ever referred to Dorothy Day as a priest, but wasn't she, though? The potatoes that she peeled for the soup-of-the-day were holy indeed: the trembling hands of the alcoholics in the soup-line received holy communion from this simple, strong, and very holy woman: worthy, I say, of any altar anywhere... I can't and won't bring myself to enter a Catholic Church again, even if I will always, like Dorothy, be a Catholic. I don't think of myself as a rebel any longer, that takes too much self-congratulation and energy. It's just that Dorothy, and the real saints that I admire, simply loved as well as they could in the ordinary ways of their ordinary lives. I think that this, and this alone, is reason to honor, and celebrate, 87 years of the Catholic Worker Movement: the ordinary is always good enough. Anyone who tells you something different has something to sell... or is himself looking to be canonized someday, when all that matters is loving the person right in front of you, person-by-person: this is the revolution of Dorothy Day... Anyone can do this, one day at a time, one moment into the next... Love happens, over and over again, when you least expect it... |
AuthorRobert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in California. He is living now almost within shouting distance of the Twin Cities. He is a poet, artist, writer, and long-time Companion of the Way still dreaming... Archives
May 2022
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