 "Picking and choosing": how often did self-identified conservative Christians say, during years past, that one could not "pick and choose" and still be a truly committed follower of Jesus (and the Church)? Now that it seems that the shoe is on the other foot, these same folks have suddenly converted to spiritual diets of exactly that: picking and choosing... While it took me a long time to get with the "picking and choosing" crowd, I am really quite happy that I did so! My arguments with "the Church" run very deep: all the way back to the theory of Original Sin...
There is nothing very original about this theory whatsoever: and most importantly, about its practical application through the centuries: it's all about power: the power to dominate: especially, the power to dominate women and the Divine Feminine: our innate human tendency towards partnership, cooperation, and kindness (essential feminine qualities)... Burning women at the stake for "being witches" -- perhaps millions of women -- is just one example of the near-absolute pursuit and lust for domination and power that has characterized much of male / religious life, theology, and practice: in each of the Abrahamic religions... Of course, the desire for domination runs right-smack-dab into the person of Yeshua, the Peasant-Worker-Poet of Nazareth: "Whatever you do to the very least among you, you do to me" and "Beautiful are you poor" and "A new commandment I give to you, love one another as I have loved you": this rEvolution is neither buried nor forgotten! The "Original Pickers and Choosers" picked the possibility of a brand new religion as a means to extraordinary power and control: domination: a religion of the "Christ": significantly divorced from the inspiration of Yeshua... And yet and yet... Even as "right faith" became the clarion call, an underground stream of a rising consciousness flowed: gnostic and wisdom centered teachings yet thrived in the caverns of "Deep Earth": desert fathers and mothers dispersed and then gathered to pray for their interior conversions: women and men both strove for sanctity and the gifting of love to all the human community and Earth-Being: like St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, and on up to modern mystics and teachers like Thomas Merton, Leonardo Boff, Matthew Fox, Joan Chittister, Margaret Starbird, Riane Eisler, Michael Beckwith, Ellen Grace O'Brian, Ram Dass, and Andrew Harvey... The Spirit is Alive, Free, and Still Flowing! Would it lessen Christianity if we were to drop the "salvation" line and turn instead to the radical purity of identification with Yeshua and the pursuit our mutual liberation? You may very well ask, "Liberation into what?" Identification is the key to the meaning and deep possibilities in "liberation": "A new commandment I give to you, love one another as I have loved you". Here it is! It's as clear as the nose on my / your face: the dominator version of Christianity wants a stone monument erected in every town square etched with the Ten Commandments: not as an invitation, but as a promise of, for most of us, our eventual crushing! When was there a first time that you read of a band of Christians wanting to put up a monument to the "New Commandment" of Yeshua? You haven't. Why? Because those who identify, in a humble way, with Yeshua are more interested in recipes of soup for the hungry in their cities... And so there is now a Pope named Francis who seems intent upon turning all of us towards identification: oh, a turning that does not yet include equality and the priesthood for women, recognition of the need for contraception, and LGBT rights: but still the beginning of a turning: which is no small thing... Take a read through some recent words of Pope Francis: "A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty, as Lincoln did; when it fosters a culture which enables people to 'dream' of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton..." "In these times, when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed were inspired by the gospel, her faith and the example of the saints..." "Now is the time for courageous action and strategies, aimed at implementing a 'culture of care' and an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature." "The goods of the Earth are meant for everyone. And however much someone may parade his property, it has a social mortgage. In this way, we move beyond purely economic justice, based on commerce, toward social justice, which upholds the fundamental human right to a dignified life." Do you see? None of this is about the construction of a shrine to the Ten Commandments: it is all about the New Commandment and Yeshua's invitation to love as he loved: love in the way you breathe. Love in the way you love your partner and family. Love in your economics, in your culture, in your politics: love by means of your identification with Yeshua in your heart: love by means of practicing love in the community of liberation... This is the glorious news of a radically renewed life in the vision of Yeshua!
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 "Autumn Morning: when the wind carries away the silent candles of the Psalms:
I sit, and then I walk, into the curiosity of leaves underfoot and prayers left unsaid..." Two lines from my most recent poem, "The Invitation of Autumn", have provoked in me an ongoing rumination on the "writer's life": a curious blend of marriage and monasticism... The writer reads and writes: but more, the writer allows for the rooting of word in the core of her being: germination must take place to effect a transfer of word to reader... so too, in monasticism and marriage both, the condition of "time" is essential: every rooting occurs in secret, in the dark, and in the silence... The monk reads that which is proclaimed to be the Word of God: and waits... and waits... He shows up for his appointed tasks, such as chopping potatoes or washing dishes: he works in remembrance of the Word... Just the same, in marriage, a partner kisses a partner and holds the partner dear in every possible embrace... and still, there is always a waiting... for it is impossible to remain in an "isolation of two" for any great length of time: work calls (living calls): but that work, whatever it is, never leaves behind the remembrance of the Word of Love that is their Home... Monasticism and marriage both seek to "enlighten" the "neutral zone" of daily life with a means for accessing "Home": the place of one's possibilities for bliss... A writer's life is the provocation of "homelessness": the spirituality, if you will, of a certain "precarious emptiness" so as to access the "human condition" of life between the poles of bliss and suffering: every marriage, as in monasticism, is the radical acceptance of the cultivation of practices that might place one in the proximity of wisdom, grace, happiness, and truth be told, of bliss... the hinge upon which this door swings is remembrance: the Word is every word: when there is no difference between the two, there is Home... The secret competition of marriage and monastic alike is the remembrance of kindness: doing and being are one in the everyday of kindness... The "homelessness" of the writer is the understanding that for each one of us, there is a certain pendulum swing between happiness and suffering -- and for a very great many of us, there is mostly suffering... Is this why the Word the Christian knows as the Christ said, "I was hungry and you fed me" (or not), and "Whatever you do to the least human among you, you do the same to me"? Reading the writings of John Steinbeck, of Robinson Jeffers, of Jack Kerouac, of Walt Whitman, of Malcolm X, of Dorothy Day, of Fyodor Dostoevsky, of Alice Walker, of Kathleen Norris (of course, from among many others) is a sort of "baptism of fire": the fire of the human condition: life fluctuating between the poles of bliss and agony: now one and now the other... The writer, whether married or monk or any other "possibility", is the exploration of all that it means to be alive... The writer doesn't write: whether through direct experience or direct imagination, the writer bleeds soul upon paper or keyboard... Listen: "And the rain pattered relentlessly down, and the streams broke their banks and spread over the country... Huddled under sheds, lying in wet hay, the hunger and the fear bred anger. Then boys went out, not to beg, but to steal; and men went out weakly, to try to steal." (Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath). Here's Dorothy Day describing one moment in a House of Hospitality: "I had to deny this woman a bed, and when she asked me to kiss her I did, and it was a loathsome thing, the way she did it. It was scarcely a mark of normal human affection." And, finally, here's Olav H. Hauge, "I stand here, do you understand. I stood here last year too, do you understand... I stand when I eat too, I do that, do you understand. And throw the plates at the wall." The writer's life is the final emptiness of words and the emptiness of waiting: and the stillbirth of rejection... and still the waiting... and then, once more, the inevitable pregnancy of another Sacred Word: with the trepidation of bliss, finding its place upon a page: and the writer, if lucky, finding a place in someone's -- anyone's -- heart...  "God is our father, and above all God is our Mother..." -- John Paul I
While it might seem a tad bit strange to title these thoughts "Sacred Pleasure" -- and the have a painting of the Black Madonna with Black Christ Child -- along with a quote from Pope John Paul I... it does make sense to me! For all three, title, Black Madonna, and quote, have been selected to advance a particular intention... or, I might say, a specific mission: the return of the Divine Feminine in our practical spirituality... The recently posted article -- Deep Sensuality -- on this website, was written to explore something of our need to reconcile our "being-ness" with the sum of its sensual and spiritual nature. The many-centuries long division of spirituality from sensuality has done great harm to all of us as individuals and then together as peoples: a plague of violence, oppression, and injustice is upon all of us and upon this precious blue Planet: too many people use religion to incite hatred and violence -- especially upon women... too many people use their access to power to prey upon and dominate individual persons and entire regions, religions, and nations: and then, of course, there is our rapacious attitudes and practices in regards to Mother Earth... I believe that the root cause of what we see around us is the practical elimination of the Divine Feminine from our hearts, lives, and societies... Is it shocking to think of the Mother of Yeshua, the Poet of Nazareth, as a black African Woman? And what of Yeshua himself as a black man? Would white Christianity have practiced black slavery for centuries if it had reverenced the Christ as Black? Would white Christianity have concluded that "black lives matter" long ago if it had adored a Black Christ? Would Christianity -- and generally speaking, all religions -- have practiced and advanced the liberation and equality of all women if it had seen in all women living images of the Divine? Would Christianity -- and generally speaking, all religions -- have recognized the spiritual and creative and social and political insights of women if every woman had had equal access to economic, political, and religious decision-making and power? As with the above mentioned questions, so too with "sacred pleasure"... the catastrophic division of "sacred" from "sensual" really gave birth, if you will, to the notion that "Woman" was the cause of the "Fall" of Man: and the penalties associated with that "Fall". Is this notion really essential to the liberation inherent in the wisdom teachings of Yeshua? This is where "sacred pleasure" begins: "Love one another as I have loved you"! Now that was an "orgasmic thrust" -- if there ever was one -- upon the consciousness of humanity! So why are so many Christians wanting to erect stone monuments to the Ten Commandments instead of building shelters for the homeless Christ? Why is war and violence so thoroughly and effectively practiced -- by all the children of Abraham -- instead of the obvious "sacred pleasure" held out as an invitation to us by the Poet of Nazareth? Perhaps the radical image of the Divine as Black Mother and Black Child might nudge us closer and closer to the Real Reality of the essential holiness of being human: here and now, with no one either left out or left behind... perhaps too, we need images of the Divine as "illegal immigrants", as lesbian lovers, as Muslim Woman and Child, as, well, perhaps even as Donald Trump with a Ted Cruz Child on his lap... What do we need to liberate our "sacred pleasure" in "Love one another as I have loved you"? |
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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