Poverty Dolls
Ah, is there anything more wonderful than those times when a poverty doll shows up at your Soup Kitchen and you personally give her something to eat? The satisfaction can be overwhelming! The sidewalks though, are a completely different story: the undeserving poor lurk out there: with their smells, addictions, manipulations, and potential for violence. In here, in your Soup Kitchen, you can strive to maintain the cleanliness of your hands and your soul: and keep your heart from any sort of radical attachment: this is really enough (you are telling yourself)!
The "you" whom I am writing about is: who? It might have been me at one time (and probably was). It could also be you (although that is unlikely -- and not necessarily because you are not working in a Soup Kitchen). But it is actually for you... and just maybe you are going to be reading this... And this is also for Boards of Directors who never understood or bought into either the vision or the mission statement: everyone loves a good non-profit feeding the hungry!
Every founder dies: look at Yeshua or Mahatma Gandhi. Many founders are moved aside or upstairs: like Francis of Assisi. Some become debates about canonization like Dorothy Day... while still others simply recognize that it is time to move on and let others take the lead... and, of course, not a few are trampled underfoot by either time or "someone who knows better"... To be sure, there are many possibilities -- and many very good possibilities -- for transitions: after all, life itself is the great and constant transition! But these thoughts are going to focus on, not the transitions, but the temptations to choose the poverty dolls over the radical requirements of a solidarity practice and spirituality... And this is not really meant for the big shots -- they in all likelihood will not be reading this -- but it is for me and you! We need to ponder the meaning and purpose of our lives well before we approach our last breath... And we need to consider how we go about living and how we might re-commit our lives, organizations, and communities to the radical adventure of freeing ourselves to love and giving ourselves permission to be happy...
Facts
What might some of the "poverty dolls" of Western Culture be? This is important because this is not just about us as individuals: so what are those things to which we are, collectively, attached to? To whom or to what have we surrendered? I can think of a "big three": 1) We are best defined by our opposites or our "oppositions". This is seen everywhere: conservative / liberal, us / them, Christian / others, civilized / terrorists, white / brown or black, good / bad... 2) Islam, terrorism, and immigrants: or objectified others. 3) Free market or predatory capitalism: the rights of property and profit trump every other right. In point of fact: this is the religion, politics, economics, and culture of Western Civilization: and most especially, of the United States of America. [Note: each of these "big three" can be turned completely around by any grouping of people: dualism, objectification, and greed are "worshipped" by "all" as the means to power: and power for domination.]
Example: a Soup Kitchen, oh, say in Chinatown-Salinas, might give witness to its surrender and attachment to each of these "big three" poverty dolls by quickly sending out an email to donors and volunteers that they support the storm troopers and overhead helicopters stealing the vehicle of a homeless man (his home), arresting patrons of the Kitchen, pointing rifles at others, "sweeping" the street, and generally just intimidating anyone and everyone as a practical solution to poverty: why does the Kitchen support the "sweep": because "they now stand for safety and peace" in the neighborhood. Not only is this more than a theoretical example, but it is also exactly to the point: as both individuals and institutions we are always at risk -- without forethought -- of becoming our own spiritual executioner.
Is it true that the core common to our human existence is this "big three"? Is it true that the process of acquiring whatever we can of power, through dualism, objectification, and greed (or consumption), is the "best" or defining factor of Western civilization? Is it true that our individual meaning is to "get" whatever we can of power -- even if that power is limited to a job that we hate, a remote control to our entertainment system, and a submissive partner to jump whenever the itching needs a scratch? Is this the inevitable and "purposelessness" of human history? [If so, no wonder so many people are attracted to fundamentalist / extremist religion!]
Against this seemingly relentless flow of history, is the real radicalism that has been injected into our DNA by the Divine Consciousness Itself: our nature is One, loving-surrender is our life / civilization process, and Love is our ultimate destiny. There is no radicalism that cuts as deep and true as this: through flesh, bone, soul, and all the way through to Real Life: the two hands that wield this "sword of enlightenment"? Solidarity and Liberation: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One". You and I, as persons (and only as persons), are the only ones capable of lifting and using this "sword". There can be no "salvation" without everyone and all of history brought to the fulfillment of the renunciation of every power or desire to dominate: or the need to see others hurt... can you see now where this is going?
Real Facts
What is your poverty doll? Is it your job -- or lack of a job? Is it your family -- your lover? Is it your secret story -- the one you have kept hidden from everyone? Oh yes, truly, I have been exactly there! There is no fact so real as a heart in living distress -- perhaps praying for a stroke: for anything to free oneself from the dread of this or that without end... That which this boils down to is our self-definition: choosing or accepting a self-definition of "victim" and as essentially powerless to change or alter our life-circumstances or fate is one heck-of-a poverty doll! The point?
How often do the "real facts" of our lives do little or nothing to offer us the least bit of hope? Now take a look at "the news": in the play of our newsworthy humanity, what would your assessment of the life stories be? Would you call it a parade of victims? Did the stories increase your happiness in any way? If the news that you watched was international in scope -- like the news that I watched -- it would appear that we, as a species, are choosing to embrace catastrophe... Or perhaps...
Perhaps we are, instead, on the precipice of a massive cultural shift! Perhaps the ancient myth of a Father-God, beneath Whom we live and to Whom we must offer our complete obedience, must itself surrender to the even more ancient myth of the Original Dreamtime... The Australian Aboriginal culture remembers a time before time when human consciousness was experienced as One: not conscious and unconscious. This "One" dreamt by means of a Rainbow Serpent the unfolding of Creative Energy... beneath our incredible clothing fashions, we still walk around and live naked... beneath the blue dome of sky we still can engage the One harmony in direct relationship... beneath the appearance of separation, we can still experience the Oneness of the Divinely Human: our aspiration of Unity with Mystery is as simple as one humble breath in awe before the Rising Sun...
The one, essential, real fact of our human condition is this: we can choose to set down our poverty dolls, whatever they might for us be! We can choose to deconstruct the myths that we are living by: from "I am a victim" to "I am divinely human!" From "I am suffering in my poverty" to "I am co-creating infinite possibilities!" From "I wish they would just stop killing" to "I am going to build peace with my every breath!" In all things and in all ways we can choose a self-definition that has within it the seeds of my /our ultimate transformation: you and I both are One with the Original Dreamtime: so what's your dream?
Really Real Facts
"Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it." -- Emily Dickinson
"To pre-Christian eyes, the earth and all created things were alive." -- Ralph Blum
"The whole power of magic consists in love." -- Marsilio Ficino
"Our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its being may rise again, 'invisibly', in us." -- Rainer Maria Rilke
"I believe that the recovery of beauty is important as a movement toward healing the wound in the modern psyche caused by the separation of appearance and being." -- Ronald Schenk
"What does God do all day long? God lies on a maternity bed giving birth." -- Meister Eckhart
"God feels great delight to be our Mother." -- St. Hildegard, Doctor of the Church
What do you think of these "Really Real Facts"? The Spirit of the One Love moves as a Breath over and through the waters of life, into and out of the atoms that give form to the Divine Energy: within and without each and every one of us: who knows where a spark of illuminating wisdom might light? What is the Mother birthing in you, in every aspect of your life?
Love in Action: Love Unleashed: Love without Limits: for This, you have been born! Greed requires, not attachment, but domination: ah, so it is not the poverty dolls that trap us after all! Yes, you read that right! Our attachments are meant to be as Divine Icons: the windows through which we might gaze upon and love and serve the Infinite! Love makes use of our attachments to incite a riot in our imaginations: Love is the Being and Action of Divine Passion for Infinite Possibilities: Love desires us to see Her in the "poverty doll" coming to eat in our Soup Kitchen... Through that seeing and serving, our vision is expanded and expanded again and again until we recognize the Divine Possibility within us to Mirror the Love without Limits!
Loving your lover without manipulation, coercion, or domination frees Divine Delight within you... loving then the struggle to love becomes not only possible but delightful: how else do you think it was possible for Yeshua the Poet to love without end? For the Ragged-Man of Assisi to kiss the leprous wounds of his lovers? For the Buddha to cry his tears upon the flowers and become endless compassion? For Dorothy Day to live in a House of Hospitality for nearly fifty years? For Nelson Mandela to radiate forgiveness after 27 years in prison? For Mahatma Gandhi to bless his killer with the Name of God? For Mother Teresa to give her life to walking the slums of the world to lift up the broken and shattered? Where, if not from this Place, did the poems of Rumi come from? So love your lover, love your work and co-workers, love your community, love your farm, love your village, love your city, love your country with a little bit of your love for everyone, everywhere... without greed: without manipulation, coercion, or domination...
We can choose to lift up, embrace, and kiss our poverty dolls: at first, it might have been her brown eyes and shy smile that made you honor and adore her -- even as you recognized her poverty and gave her a plate of food along with your heart... and when you watched her walk away, back into the hidden life from which she came, your heart broke open just a little bit more... and you let it break... you said to yourself, "There will be no healing for me. I am going to just keep breaking until there is nothing left of me." This is why and when we back up and turn away: who the goddamn hell wants to break without end until they disappear? This is why non-profits hunker down into "service" and forget "justice". This is why religious fundamentalism is so attractive to so many people. This is why we can justify predatory capitalism, ignore the evidence of global climate change, oppress women, deny civil rights, kidnap children, rape the earth, violate every ethical imperative, and justify the use of violence without end!
But wait! You may not have realized this as you were backing and turning away from your breaking heart, but as you disappear: exactly to the degree that you disappear, you are reborn! Holy Moly! Oh, wait again! There is a catch, though: when you are reborn, it will not be you coming back "as you were", but as "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One"! No longer clinging to the poverty doll of you, you can become who you really, really, were all along: Original Oneness! Flowing, creating, serving, and always, always, re-creating, evolving, rising into more and more of the sublime Unity: and bringing Everyone, Everything, and All of Creation along with you... And like the Mother, you will give birth...
[Come on guys, don't be afraid! And women, rise up, and lead us!]
The "you" whom I am writing about is: who? It might have been me at one time (and probably was). It could also be you (although that is unlikely -- and not necessarily because you are not working in a Soup Kitchen). But it is actually for you... and just maybe you are going to be reading this... And this is also for Boards of Directors who never understood or bought into either the vision or the mission statement: everyone loves a good non-profit feeding the hungry!
Every founder dies: look at Yeshua or Mahatma Gandhi. Many founders are moved aside or upstairs: like Francis of Assisi. Some become debates about canonization like Dorothy Day... while still others simply recognize that it is time to move on and let others take the lead... and, of course, not a few are trampled underfoot by either time or "someone who knows better"... To be sure, there are many possibilities -- and many very good possibilities -- for transitions: after all, life itself is the great and constant transition! But these thoughts are going to focus on, not the transitions, but the temptations to choose the poverty dolls over the radical requirements of a solidarity practice and spirituality... And this is not really meant for the big shots -- they in all likelihood will not be reading this -- but it is for me and you! We need to ponder the meaning and purpose of our lives well before we approach our last breath... And we need to consider how we go about living and how we might re-commit our lives, organizations, and communities to the radical adventure of freeing ourselves to love and giving ourselves permission to be happy...
Facts
What might some of the "poverty dolls" of Western Culture be? This is important because this is not just about us as individuals: so what are those things to which we are, collectively, attached to? To whom or to what have we surrendered? I can think of a "big three": 1) We are best defined by our opposites or our "oppositions". This is seen everywhere: conservative / liberal, us / them, Christian / others, civilized / terrorists, white / brown or black, good / bad... 2) Islam, terrorism, and immigrants: or objectified others. 3) Free market or predatory capitalism: the rights of property and profit trump every other right. In point of fact: this is the religion, politics, economics, and culture of Western Civilization: and most especially, of the United States of America. [Note: each of these "big three" can be turned completely around by any grouping of people: dualism, objectification, and greed are "worshipped" by "all" as the means to power: and power for domination.]
Example: a Soup Kitchen, oh, say in Chinatown-Salinas, might give witness to its surrender and attachment to each of these "big three" poverty dolls by quickly sending out an email to donors and volunteers that they support the storm troopers and overhead helicopters stealing the vehicle of a homeless man (his home), arresting patrons of the Kitchen, pointing rifles at others, "sweeping" the street, and generally just intimidating anyone and everyone as a practical solution to poverty: why does the Kitchen support the "sweep": because "they now stand for safety and peace" in the neighborhood. Not only is this more than a theoretical example, but it is also exactly to the point: as both individuals and institutions we are always at risk -- without forethought -- of becoming our own spiritual executioner.
Is it true that the core common to our human existence is this "big three"? Is it true that the process of acquiring whatever we can of power, through dualism, objectification, and greed (or consumption), is the "best" or defining factor of Western civilization? Is it true that our individual meaning is to "get" whatever we can of power -- even if that power is limited to a job that we hate, a remote control to our entertainment system, and a submissive partner to jump whenever the itching needs a scratch? Is this the inevitable and "purposelessness" of human history? [If so, no wonder so many people are attracted to fundamentalist / extremist religion!]
Against this seemingly relentless flow of history, is the real radicalism that has been injected into our DNA by the Divine Consciousness Itself: our nature is One, loving-surrender is our life / civilization process, and Love is our ultimate destiny. There is no radicalism that cuts as deep and true as this: through flesh, bone, soul, and all the way through to Real Life: the two hands that wield this "sword of enlightenment"? Solidarity and Liberation: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One". You and I, as persons (and only as persons), are the only ones capable of lifting and using this "sword". There can be no "salvation" without everyone and all of history brought to the fulfillment of the renunciation of every power or desire to dominate: or the need to see others hurt... can you see now where this is going?
Real Facts
What is your poverty doll? Is it your job -- or lack of a job? Is it your family -- your lover? Is it your secret story -- the one you have kept hidden from everyone? Oh yes, truly, I have been exactly there! There is no fact so real as a heart in living distress -- perhaps praying for a stroke: for anything to free oneself from the dread of this or that without end... That which this boils down to is our self-definition: choosing or accepting a self-definition of "victim" and as essentially powerless to change or alter our life-circumstances or fate is one heck-of-a poverty doll! The point?
How often do the "real facts" of our lives do little or nothing to offer us the least bit of hope? Now take a look at "the news": in the play of our newsworthy humanity, what would your assessment of the life stories be? Would you call it a parade of victims? Did the stories increase your happiness in any way? If the news that you watched was international in scope -- like the news that I watched -- it would appear that we, as a species, are choosing to embrace catastrophe... Or perhaps...
Perhaps we are, instead, on the precipice of a massive cultural shift! Perhaps the ancient myth of a Father-God, beneath Whom we live and to Whom we must offer our complete obedience, must itself surrender to the even more ancient myth of the Original Dreamtime... The Australian Aboriginal culture remembers a time before time when human consciousness was experienced as One: not conscious and unconscious. This "One" dreamt by means of a Rainbow Serpent the unfolding of Creative Energy... beneath our incredible clothing fashions, we still walk around and live naked... beneath the blue dome of sky we still can engage the One harmony in direct relationship... beneath the appearance of separation, we can still experience the Oneness of the Divinely Human: our aspiration of Unity with Mystery is as simple as one humble breath in awe before the Rising Sun...
The one, essential, real fact of our human condition is this: we can choose to set down our poverty dolls, whatever they might for us be! We can choose to deconstruct the myths that we are living by: from "I am a victim" to "I am divinely human!" From "I am suffering in my poverty" to "I am co-creating infinite possibilities!" From "I wish they would just stop killing" to "I am going to build peace with my every breath!" In all things and in all ways we can choose a self-definition that has within it the seeds of my /our ultimate transformation: you and I both are One with the Original Dreamtime: so what's your dream?
Really Real Facts
"Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it." -- Emily Dickinson
"To pre-Christian eyes, the earth and all created things were alive." -- Ralph Blum
"The whole power of magic consists in love." -- Marsilio Ficino
"Our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its being may rise again, 'invisibly', in us." -- Rainer Maria Rilke
"I believe that the recovery of beauty is important as a movement toward healing the wound in the modern psyche caused by the separation of appearance and being." -- Ronald Schenk
"What does God do all day long? God lies on a maternity bed giving birth." -- Meister Eckhart
"God feels great delight to be our Mother." -- St. Hildegard, Doctor of the Church
What do you think of these "Really Real Facts"? The Spirit of the One Love moves as a Breath over and through the waters of life, into and out of the atoms that give form to the Divine Energy: within and without each and every one of us: who knows where a spark of illuminating wisdom might light? What is the Mother birthing in you, in every aspect of your life?
Love in Action: Love Unleashed: Love without Limits: for This, you have been born! Greed requires, not attachment, but domination: ah, so it is not the poverty dolls that trap us after all! Yes, you read that right! Our attachments are meant to be as Divine Icons: the windows through which we might gaze upon and love and serve the Infinite! Love makes use of our attachments to incite a riot in our imaginations: Love is the Being and Action of Divine Passion for Infinite Possibilities: Love desires us to see Her in the "poverty doll" coming to eat in our Soup Kitchen... Through that seeing and serving, our vision is expanded and expanded again and again until we recognize the Divine Possibility within us to Mirror the Love without Limits!
Loving your lover without manipulation, coercion, or domination frees Divine Delight within you... loving then the struggle to love becomes not only possible but delightful: how else do you think it was possible for Yeshua the Poet to love without end? For the Ragged-Man of Assisi to kiss the leprous wounds of his lovers? For the Buddha to cry his tears upon the flowers and become endless compassion? For Dorothy Day to live in a House of Hospitality for nearly fifty years? For Nelson Mandela to radiate forgiveness after 27 years in prison? For Mahatma Gandhi to bless his killer with the Name of God? For Mother Teresa to give her life to walking the slums of the world to lift up the broken and shattered? Where, if not from this Place, did the poems of Rumi come from? So love your lover, love your work and co-workers, love your community, love your farm, love your village, love your city, love your country with a little bit of your love for everyone, everywhere... without greed: without manipulation, coercion, or domination...
We can choose to lift up, embrace, and kiss our poverty dolls: at first, it might have been her brown eyes and shy smile that made you honor and adore her -- even as you recognized her poverty and gave her a plate of food along with your heart... and when you watched her walk away, back into the hidden life from which she came, your heart broke open just a little bit more... and you let it break... you said to yourself, "There will be no healing for me. I am going to just keep breaking until there is nothing left of me." This is why and when we back up and turn away: who the goddamn hell wants to break without end until they disappear? This is why non-profits hunker down into "service" and forget "justice". This is why religious fundamentalism is so attractive to so many people. This is why we can justify predatory capitalism, ignore the evidence of global climate change, oppress women, deny civil rights, kidnap children, rape the earth, violate every ethical imperative, and justify the use of violence without end!
But wait! You may not have realized this as you were backing and turning away from your breaking heart, but as you disappear: exactly to the degree that you disappear, you are reborn! Holy Moly! Oh, wait again! There is a catch, though: when you are reborn, it will not be you coming back "as you were", but as "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One"! No longer clinging to the poverty doll of you, you can become who you really, really, were all along: Original Oneness! Flowing, creating, serving, and always, always, re-creating, evolving, rising into more and more of the sublime Unity: and bringing Everyone, Everything, and All of Creation along with you... And like the Mother, you will give birth...
[Come on guys, don't be afraid! And women, rise up, and lead us!]