The Heart's Religion...

                                                                              Fr. Bede Griffiths

                                        "The ultimate goal of humanity is a communion of persons in love."

Fear is indeed the mind killer (see Dune by Frank Herbert): but, fear does not simply kill the mind, for first, fear must annihilate grace in the heart... Death by fear working in the heart is most often a living death: a slow motion dying... but grace resists fear, and grace would replace fear with the icon of a smile...

It is simply not true that we are powerless: it is true, though, that death would have us shrivel up and die -- before our death! So what do we do? How do we cultivate grace? And why should we dare the dream of the saints and open our heart to loving without limits?

​As Fr. Bede taught, there is a space within us: a space located in our heart, in which the entire Universe dwells (yes, you read that correctly!). It is mystically possible to slide outside of time and space, into that still-point, into that pause between breaths, and to entertain Reality... Reality is really the cohesion of cosmic inter-being... wherein Consciousness mingles with the breath... 

The beauty we see in clouds, mountains, rivers, trees, birds... in the curve of breast... in the swell of muscles... in every part and particle of creation: but especially in the evidence of intelligence and the gathering of life-wisdom... This beauty is the revelation that we seek: the divine food for our very hungry heart...

​The Sufis teach that the core of that which is really Real is hunger: more specifically, it is the hunger, the yearning, implanted in every heart (indeed, in every part and particle of possibility) for the union of lovers: human being with Divine Consciousness: Divine Consciousness with every human being: and both embracing all sentient being and all matter into Oneness... All separation is transcended into a breathing Sacred Unity...

​Fear is the mind killer precisely because it seduces us into "thinking" that separation is Reality: to "think" there is even the possibility that there can be an "other"... Whenever one sees through the veil of fear, all that remains is radiance, is ecstacy... This Kiss is the Face of God... Don't think that I don't know what I am writing about!

Sometimes daily, occasionally weekly, and if grace was wild with blessing, it might have been a month between moments of knowing full-well that this moment, this breath could very well be my last... At first, with the first sixty-five sandwiches that Byron, Jane, and I took out the broken-glass strewn lot in skid-row Salinas, I was a do-good'er: high ideals completely untested (and un-taught) by life experience... and so it went, until...

​The day I had a migraine: a holy-hell of a migraine... and yet, I had soup and bread to serve... There was a long line of men, mostly men, with a few homeless women and kids in the mix waiting: I had the pot of soup on the serving table along with a bucket of sliced french bread... my head was reeling with agony... someone, as I dipped the ladle into the soup-pot, walked from the back of the line up to the front, demanding that he be served first... I simply muttered through my fogged-mind that he had to stand in line like everyone else: and to top it off, I added, "I'm not serving anyone until you go to the back of the line."

At that point, he puts his nose right next to mine and says, "I've killed before and I could kill you right now. Serve me first." All of the folks within earshot were backing up saying they didn't care and for me to go ahead and serve him first... I said "No." Grace obviously intervened: he walked out... Young and foolish, with migraine blazing, I kept hoping he'd come back to continue our confrontation...

​He didn't. So, after ladling about a hundred bowls of soup, I went outside to look for him: there he was! He was sitting on the sidewalk, with his back up against the faded yellow of the old building. I walked up to him. He spoke first (now here's your chance to acknowledge that there just might be a "God", a Divine Consciousness): he said, "I've been sitting here praying for our reconciliation." Well, if you've read this far, you can imagine the rest of the story... 

Pick your fear, pick your enemy: is it a Muslim, a black, a Mexican, a lesbian, a Christian, a Jew, a Democrat / a Republican, whatever / whomever... How are we supposed to treat others? There are no others... The heart's religion is the communion of love: it is for this that we have each and all come into being: nothing else! We increase our capacity for loving by loving! By serving and building justice, peace, equality, nonviolence and compassion into our lives, and into all of our social institutions, we are making ready the "way of the Lord"... The Lord is not coming with a raised sword in the clouds: rather, as a thirteen year old boy getting shot... as a man with an officer's knee crushing his neck... as an immigrant fleeing fear... as a trans girl despairing of acceptance...

​You see, the Lord is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end: as the beginning, so too, the end: it is always all about loving: becoming agents of our own transfiguration by practicing the Lord's Way: whatsoever you do to the least among you, you do the exact same to me... I was hungry and you fed me... Blessed are the poor... Blessed are the peacemakers... Go, and do likewise...