I woke up this morning, and per my usual, just wanted to linger in holding Michelle... However, the clock inevitably continued its march into the day, and as I have learned, every minute past 5:15 am, puts a strain on my morning chores... Something similar could very well be your morning experience, am I right?
I'm unsure as to where I came across the above comic, although it looks like something from the New Yorker... in any case it always makes me chuckle... but, I jumped from that chuckle into a distubing thought: time is the rapist of our life... I knew many women (and also some men) who had been raped: quite a few as kids, and many more as young adults, and even some among the elderly... One can never make light of this horrible invasion of personhood... As I age, there is the inevitable slide into feeling one's age and with it the cultural temptation to accost time with the accusation of having stolen from me, my life...
And yet, my heart is telling me a very different story: nothing has been stolen from me: I am not a victim of life... rather, I am knocking on the door of sacred timelessness... And no, I'm not going to play some sort of spiritual game like "just believe in Jesus and when you die you'll wake up in heaven!" Theologies that justify all the deep and flying shit of life as the required pass or fail course we all have to take in order to qualify for an eternal life of endless adoration are selling a salvation distortion... That they are deadly serious, puts me so far out of their salvation circle that I can only grab my hat and walk away as an always outsider...
Never mind that Jesus said the kingdom of God is within you... and, of course, there are the parables like the one in Matthew 25 that comes with an entry fee for the kingdom, which turns out to have little to do with salvation theology and instead everything to do with revolutionary action: whatsoever you do to the least person among you, you do the very same to me... I other words, there will be a lot less deep and flying shit if we really just love one another and practice justice... Look around you! the kingdom of God is right here, right now! so one could easily imagine the Master proclaiming as he walked around, as he took on odd jobs to pay his rent, and as he shared food, stories, poems, and songs with his friends...
Jesus was an outsider. Buddha was an outsider. The Song of Songs is all about mutual adoration and great sex in the woods. Mohammed was an outsider. Krishna herded cows and goats, outside of course. Lalla the Ecstatic Poet danced naked outside. St. Francis stripped in town and walked outside the city walls naked. Rumi spun and spun until he was drunk on ecstasy and poetry flowed from his mouth like wine from the lips of the Beloved. Peter Maurin slipped across the Canadian border to enter the United States: and Dorothy Day and Peter began the Catholic Worker, cooked soup, agitated for peace and social justice, and lived for years in tenement buildings as outsiders...
More than a thousand years ago a Chinese Zen master wrote a poem: Magical power, marvelous action! Chopping wood, carrying water... (from Zen Forest, translated by Soiku Sigematsu).
This very little poem takes us into the very heart of the matter! As an outsider, nature becomes the first Holy Book that we must read: we study the wind, the clouds, and the trees. We listen to the river speak. We value the birds and animals as spirit beings. Indeed, when we turn around and look again, everything that we had at first thought of as inanimate, they are each and all alive as repositories of great spiritual energy: do you doubt that crystals can sing? Instructed by nature, intuition and imagination ignite the stirring flame of reverence for beauty, for the benevolence of the Universe, and for the holiness of life: right here and right now...
Leonard Cohen wrote some great poetry and songs: a wonderful line of his is this one: God is Alive, Magic is Afoot... Magic is Alive, God is Afoot... Outsiders know this experientially. Outsiders begin to awaken into the mystery of flow, of energy systems, and of the sacred soul that dwells within everyone and is, at the same time, united with the Oversoul (as Emerson put it) that is the pansacramental reality of everyone, everything, all of space, matter, and yes, even of time! Sacred timelessness is the now of Yeshua, the Poet of Nazareth. Sacred timelessness is the experience of the sacred in the very midst of -- not separate from -- our every day lives... This dwelling place is the fountain of youth -- not agelessness or slick marketing -- but the absolute certainty of existence, bliss, and consciousness: unlimited and without prescribed definitions... sort of the child-life of always born... chopping wood, carrying water... magical! marvelous!
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