 A Welcoming Home...
There is a simple beauty to a welcoming home... "Home" is a sort of "workshop" for learning what it means to "live" -- and to do that living in relationship with a community. While lifestyle fashions change -- not often enough for advertisers and big business! -- a welcoming home should aim for an environment that concerns itself with essentials: bareness perhaps reflects a certain monastic discipline: but "home" normally means the occasion of children: as such, an "ordered chaos" is part of the essential. Color, games, plants, pets, and books cultivate the essential... Here, in this home, the Divine Presence is not separate from gathered dust balls of dog hair, soup cooking on the stove, music on the radio, and the humble bliss of good conversation... Simple living is a closer opposite to poverty than is gaudy wealth. Simple living is the epitome of good taste: if it ain't tasty, then who the hell is doing the cooking? Good taste recognizes the beauty in "things": things such as photographs of contemporary heroes and saints, like Dorothy Day, Nelson Mandela, Amma, and Ram Dass serve as inspirational models for children and adults both. An altar looking out a west-facing window, if such window exists, is another essential: perhaps adorned with a figurine of an ancient Goddess, perhaps with icons of Yeshua the Poet of Nazareth, the Little Brown Lady of Guadalupe, St. Francis and St. Hildegard, or other personal / family favorites, along with a smattering of special found rocks, wood, and potted plants... A welcoming simple beauty inevitably leads to contemplative moments: for simple living is a sacrament of the Divine Beloved: always present... Our vision is steadily focused in an environment of a welcoming home. The members and guests of this household might steadily awaken to their living radiance: "what if?" is the first step in transformation... inevitably followed by "why not?"... A welcoming home has within its very walls the seeds of artful possibilities: beauty and kindness are the growing plants -- the vigorous vines -- in the souls that are in the care of this home... The inexpressible speaks volumes in the welcoming home... The location of the walls of a welcoming home are not as important as the removal of the walls bordering the hearts of those who live there. Is this welcoming home out in the country? Is it in a little town, or in a big city? The location is incidental if those who live there are living in remembrance of the Divine Beloved who is as near as their in-and-out-flowing-breath... A living spirituality sees no separation in the secular and the sacred: this "no separation" makes the family table an altar: this "no separation" makes the sexual a mirror of the cosmic bliss: this "no separation" becomes the simple living declaration of a world and universe pregnant with the Divine... Finally, a welcoming home, becomes for each member a little school of love, where the daily curriculum is love, where the homework is love, and where there is neither a "pass" nor a "fail", but a simple celebration of "Ah..." All of this, and more, is in the simple beauty of a welcoming home...
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 "Today it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself without precedent." -- Simone Weil
"The saintliness demanded by the present moment..." What is "this" present moment? Perhaps, this present moment can best be defined as a time of "great division": it seems that the "I" is no longer emergent: it is fully entrenched as "righteous opinion": everyone has one: the "I" is now "Opinion"... And! It is worth fighting over: separation without end! Rich versus Poor, Right versus Left, Religion One versus Religion Two, White versus Black and Brown, Male versus Female, Here First versus Here Later, Heterosexual versus Homo / Bi / Inter / Whatever-sexual, Mine versus Yours, Not Climate Concerned versus Climate Concerned... Afraid versus Not Afraid... and On and On... Is this not "the present moment"? If "division" is the fundamental problem, wouldn't the solution then be the celebration of the differences? By dwelling on the differences, aren't we actually amplifying them? And doesn't this amplification, in a profoundly shocking way, become for us "our" reality? We are all guilty of privatizing reality: as if we are the only "I" that matters in a universe of "I's"... It is as if we are all de-volving into the proverbial self-oriented teenager: stuck in an endlessly repeating "Groundhog" day (see Bill Murray's "Groundhog Day")... "The saintliness demanded by the present moment..." Besides an adult ability to honor and celebrate differences, doesn't this present moment require of each of us an unparalleled turn towards the practice of active compassion? This, more than anything else is what turns us from "self-oriented teenager" into an adult: becoming an adult is really not about going to college, getting a job, making money, having sex, or buying things: an adult is one who can "walk a mile" in his brother's shoes: an adult is one who sees in her sister her very self: it is this very precise miracle that marks us as an adult: we have learned the supreme value of every single "other": this, and really only this, is the "saintliness demanded by this present moment: anything else will only be, in one way or another, more of the same: compassion is the "difference maker" that insists there be "no difference", no "separation": we are all worthy of the very best: we are all worthy of love and loving... Who first? Why not you and I together?  Every person who lives in the Mystery of Faith, to some extent, lives in the solitude of an "Interior Garden"... Each moment of gentle awakening, as it were, plants a seed in one's consciousness: when those seeds are "watered" by sacred reading and meditation, by intentional compassion, one can increase the likelihood of that garden becoming a thriving oasis of beauty...
To what are the Sources that you turn? Do you hear the daily call to Remembrance? Do you remember and practice the Sabbath? Do you pocket a Scripture sacred to you as you go about the business of your day? Do you have on your wrist a mala, or a string of prayer beads around your neck? Do you listen to Gregorian chant at your desk or listen to the kirtan sung by Krishna Das? These question-promptings are a gentle nudge to consider the meaning of your daily life: for it is precisely out of our "ordinary" days that we either encounter the Divine Beloved -- or fail to... It is only by cultivating our intention to cultivate our Interior Garden that it will be fruitful... To whom are you cultivating a tender, loving, devotion? Neither you nor I can pretend to be lovingly devoted to the Divine Beloved if we are not similarly tender, loving, and devoted to the human beings in our daily midst. Literally, if we spit in the face of anyone, we spit in the face of the Divine: no difference, no separation! It is exactly to the degree that we love the person that we love the least, that we in fact love the Holy One: no difference, no separation. Sure, most of us can smugly profess, "I have never spit in anyone's face!" But it is only the "smug" in us that can make such a profession: the ruggedly honest person can't. We spit every single time that we judge or hate or harm another. We spit every single time that we vote for people who foster bigotry, intolerance, hate, disrespect, and violence in order to get elected. It is always fear that makes us live as strangers in this world, just as it is always love that waters our soul garden and gives us the courage to love others as we say that we love the Holy One... Many people do not have partners in their lives with whom they can practice loving kindness, and so they live "separate" even if married... Many people are profoundly lonely even in the midst of a crowd... Many people are so empty and hopeless in love that loving has become for them an impossibility: fear and anger then become their operational principles: and so their gardens are overcome with the thorns of hopelessness -- which then becomes a justification for "becoming" hate... Unfortunately, most of these folks are also not "talkers": neither priest nor therapist ever hears their real story and feelings... On the other hand, we have all been Divinely Constructed to be "containers" of Infinite Bliss: "We have been created by love, for love, to become love." (Simone Weil) The solution, as Dorothy Day taught, is community: a community of sisters and brothers with whom we can "water our gardens" and practice love by loving... Isn't this the Divine Way of Yeshua the Poet of Nazareth? Cultivating the "feminine" characteristics of listening, humility, gentleness, tolerance, kindness, and compassion -- whether one is male or female -- is essential to awakening. Cultivating devotion to the Divine Feminine: to the Little Brown Mother of Guadalupe, to the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kuan Yin, to the Holy Wisdom of the Source, Sophia, or to the Divine Beloved as Mother Herself is a sure way to feed one's Interior Garden... One need only to watch either CNN or Fox News to see that everything that we are now doing as a specie is not working! We need to change our minds before it is to late for all life on this precious blue Planet! Finally, everyday we must return -- several times -- to our Interior Garden to feel and adore the hidden presence of the Divine Beloved. We need to work there as we need to rest there. Can there be a better analogy than that of human lovers? Read the Song of Songs! That is the "true" story of both Creation and Re-Creation! As we kiss and lick our lover's back, chest, and genitals we breathe onto her / his skin our breath of adoration... As our bodies merge in wonder and bliss, we breathe out into the Universe the Mystic Song of Redemption: this kiss here and this kiss there is the Holy Mantra of Surrender: truly, truly, "We were created by love, for love, to become love"... You cry that you have no one to kiss? There are many different ways to kiss! Surely you could volunteer somewhere! Surely someone, besides you, is in need somewhere near you! Is there a hospital, retirement home, school, homeless shelter, animal shelter, or soup kitchen anywhere near you? Volunteer! Do you eat? Skip a meal and send the cost saved to a charitable organization! Our Interior Gardens become havens of contemplative bliss as we practice loving others -- even as we are learning to love ourselves... Every breath is as holy as it is going to get: so why wait? |
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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