Conjectures of a catholic Worker Renegade...
A mere thirty years in a Catholic Worker House and Community -- and four plus years in sabbatical and reflection -- does not necessarily mean anything of any particular importance: perhaps, though, the two million meals served to the marginalized and homeless of Monterey County in California during my years there, might qualify these somewhat random thoughts for consideration... Perhaps, too, the many broken lives I encountered, and with whom I / we fell in Love, might serve as a further qualification: other than that, I have nothing to recommend me and my suggestion for a "catholic Worker reformation": hence, these confessions of a catholic Worker renegade...
Books: perhaps if my reading list had stopped with the Jerusalem Bible, the Seven Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton), and the Long Loneliness (Dorothy Day), I would still be a Big C Catholic... but I kept reading, meditating, and pondering... Loaves and Fishes (Dorothy Day) inevitably led me to Liberation Theology and Liberation Theology led me to Feminism, and all along there was Gandhi ("the Rat", according to Ira Sandperl)... How could one read the poetry of St. John of the Cross and of Rumi and not know that there just had to be more to the story than what Bible commentaries and Papal Encyclicals could provide? How could one be "visited" by St. Hildegard, Meister Eckhart, Paramahansa Yogananda, Neem Karoli Baba, and Saints Francis and Clare and not come to the awesome awareness of the One being absolutely enraptured with us? How could one read When God Was a Woman (Merlin Stone), The Chalice & The Blade (Riane Eisler), and Sacred Pleasure (Riane Eisler) and not feel as if centuries of pond scum was suddenly washed from one's eyes? God-damn-it! This Universe and this precious blue Planet is so far beyond the pitiful metaphysical presentations of the orthodox perceptions that are always and inevitably linked to privilege, profit, and power: everything is one endless, ecstatic, "Holy Moly"!
Be Here Now (Ram Dass) came thundering back with Be Love Now (Ram Dass too): Rev. Matthew Fox turned out to be an Original Blessing and Creation Spirituality is still essential reading with which to lift one's skull right off the top of one's head, for Leonard Cohen was right "Everything has a crack in it, so the light can get in"... Merton turned out to be right: he took in everything and became a sort of Universal Man who was catholic: Catholic, Buddhist, Hermit-Monk, Lover, Poet, Artist, Sufi, Indian, Pagan, and No-Doubt Other Things As Well... Feminism is for Everybody (bell hooks) is a baptism of hope for equality and gender reconciliation: I am You, You are Me, and We are Altogether: One... Prayers of the Cosmos (Neil Douglas-Klotz) is simply stunning, and then there is a deeper step with his The Hidden Gospel... Andrew Harvey in Dialogues with a Modern Mystic and The Hope elucidates the requirement of a new opening into the Divine Feminine as the Essential Power of Transformation: nothing less is required of each of us in this, our moment in time... Vandana Shiva and Jean Shinoda Bolen are sure guides into a 21st century worth living and working for: in other words, with our hearts broken open by applied and activated love, and our minds shattered by a mystic-activist conviction that the grand vista of history is always an open invitation for us to participate in co-creating a new history: and to become Workers who are interiorly embraced by the joyful grace of the catholic mind and heart...
Yeshua the Poet: this is the Point of a new beginning: not "Jesus" and not the philosophical / super-metaphysical "the Christ": and not a virgin birth and not a virgin life: but a fully incarnated divinely human life: certainly a "magical mystery tour", but more... perhaps not even a "reality", but certainly a Mystery Archetype of both the Holy One and Every One: Poem / not Word: not a witness to a marriage, but the Bridegroom himself: winemaker, lover, mystery-man who loved the lost, lonely, and broken in all the hidden places of the world: friend and lover of women: friend and lover of the LGBT / Whatever: farm worker, peasant, and just plain worker: maybe also a cook in a skid-row soup kitchen (as well as guest in the skid-row soup kitchen)... perhaps with ear rings and tattoos, dreadlocks, and dirt under his fingernails... and he never did just look at a sunset, but he licked his lips after he tasted it... and need I say that if he doesn't make you squirm in discomfort -- or perhaps abandon yourself to wild passion -- you've never met the man...
Does "power" always get to decide everything? Must we forever bow our heads before Constantine's Sword? Will the circle of terror endlessly swirl about our very fragile human lives? Until our political, religious, economic, and cultural leaders begin to seriously and honestly deal with these questions, we should all refrain from granting them our allegiance, our votes, and our money: why not demand more? "Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things, which, if we only stopped to think about them, are the opposite of what we were made for." (Thomas Merton)
Whom do you read? Is it the Bride of the Song of Songs? Are they the words, perhaps, of Yeshua the Poet? Are they the words of Lao-Tzu, Krishna, Rumi, Mirabai, Kabir, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, or Gandhi, ? Do you read the Quran or the words of Siddhartha or of Mary Oliver or of Alice Walker or of Vandana Shiva? Whomever you read of those with a deep spiritual practice and insight, do they not say "Love one another as I have loved you"? Do they not say "Love the Holy One with all the deep ardor of your secret passion"? Are not these holy words the direction our lives, economics, religions, and politics should take? Then how is it that men like Trump and Cruz can have the serious allegiance of any thinking / believing / or even doubting person? Mercy, compassion, and the pursuit of justice for everyone are the sure "vital signs" of a living being, religion, or democracy: if one is not a Passionate Progressive, one has not an engaged heart and mind and soul: you have no excuse! Compassion and justice need globalization: not endless profit and weapons! Stop making your goddamn guns and bullets! It only makes sense to conceal and carry your shit for a proper dump in a toilet or latrine: but your guns and your worship of violence is obscene and a pornography of soul that defies everything that is true, good, and beautiful...
The Presidential campaign for the 2016 elections are in full-swing. On the Republican side, a rabid frenzy is dominating every corner: everyone is trying to out-conservative every other: Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Fiorina, and company: while often making a show of "Christian" values, what exactly is the evidence? Tell me, just when did Yeshua / Jesus advise his followers to adopt violence, hate, privilege, profit, or power? How could this radical Jewish rabbi become a conservative darling? Oh, I see! It was when faith became a thing of the "head": and right belief began to "trump" discipleship -- which is always a thing of the heart and, here's the key, of identification... Few Christians, truth be told, actually identify with Jesus / Yeshua: forget that stuff about "love your enemies" and "give away your belongings to the poor" and "woe to you rich" and "love one another as I have loved you". We've effectively thrown out the Prophet with our politics! And isn't it kind-a funny, that it is the Socialist Jew (Sen. Bernie Sanders) who most closely mirrors the words of That Other Socialist Jew!
Just a few short years ago, it was the predatory greed of capitalism that caused a catastrophic economic meltdown -- and yet it is socialism that still has a bad name... when life results in some sort of catastrophic meltdown, do we blame that which makes us healthier or more secure? Be that as it may, do you see the link between socialism and contemplative prayer? I would say that they are, as it were, flip sides of the same coin: what is the Great Commandment according to Yeshua the Poet? Isn't it to love the One with all the strength and gift of one's being? And isn't the "other half" of this commandment to love one's neighbor as one's very self? Contemplative prayer is an opening into the Mystic, the Mystery, which surrounds and penetrates every fiber of our being, through and through... "socialism" is the concentrated struggle for justice, equality, fraternity, harmony, and peace here on Earth as it is in "Heaven"...
There will be no peace until the profit has been removed from war.
Patriarchy is the root justification for the male addiction to violence.
What is the role of art in the modern world? Some complain that art has become the celebration of the ordinary, referencing a now famous can of soup. Others insist that art must assume a technology of perfection in order to keep up with the times. Still others, the free spirits, are into an "indie" approach to everything: graffiti, free, bohemian, tattoo, found, body, resistance, rebellion, and imagining G-d as brand new... Abstract expressionism from the 1950's was the rage and then it supposedly lost its critical fire: and yet, for me, it comes closest to the emptying of soul / self that is contemplative prayer: abstract expressionism is raw, nude, sensual -- a cry into the Dark Night of the Human -- a protest against the emptiness of form -- but also a re-integration of soul into the perceptual madness of the dominator paradigm...
How can human relationships, cultures, and societies be re-imagined with us "part" of nature and not as "masters"?
How can we live within the ecological and resource limits of nature, applying our knowledge in the service of energy efficiency and equality?
How can we guarantee the rights of non-human species and protect the diversity of life on the planet?
How can we encourage people to commit to lifestyles that promote equality and the common good of all people?
How can we develop an educational system that effectively teaches academic skills within the context of service learning, social responsibility and engagement, ecological wisdom, cultural diversity, and personal transformation?
How can we respond to personal and group breakdowns and conflicts in creative and constructive ways that would minimize the possibility of crisis: violence, drug / alcohol abuse, homelessness, suicide, etc.
How can we re-imagine community / social institutions and insist they prioritize the human person in all decision making?
How can we re-imagine community / social / economic / institutions and insist on basic human priorities: the full development and liberation of every person, "take it to your limit" educational opportunities for every person, food and water as human rights, shelter as a human right, and work with a living wage for every person?
How can we re-imagine community / national / international relationships to include respect for cultural and religious differences?
(To be continued...)
But now a break...
Prayer is a wistfulness... an opening in the midst of the Sacred Mundane... expanding, effortlessly, into a silence that is sustained by an awe... an overwhelming awe... this Earth is a living Being... the entire Cosmos is alive and breathing... and in the heart of this Cosmos -- in the Nothingness of the Atom's center -- there is the Will to Experience Love: this Will is most commonly referred to as "God"... but perhaps this Will is more accurately referred to as either a Marriage Bed or a Birthing Bed... both signify the Desire that is the heart of the Cosmos: the Bliss of a Recognized Union and the Expansion of that Union into New Possibilities...
Oh, and now it appears very likely that the Republican Party -- the Party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt -- is going to nominate as its candidate for President of the United States, Donald Trump: a genuinely despicable man: arrogant and weak at the very same time, like Richard Nixon... a braggart like George W. Bush... and twisted like Dick Cheney... It seems that our nation's hope rests with the around 70% of American women who have expressed in polling a dislike of him! Senator Bernie Sanders has but a glimmer of a chance for the Democratic nomination, which likely means a fall campaign of Trump versus Secretary Hillary Clinton: now that looks like it will be a terribly filthy campaign -- an American embarrassment before all of the world. Meanwhile the 1% will be snickering in their bank vaults...
(To be continued, again...)
A mere thirty years in a Catholic Worker House and Community -- and four plus years in sabbatical and reflection -- does not necessarily mean anything of any particular importance: perhaps, though, the two million meals served to the marginalized and homeless of Monterey County in California during my years there, might qualify these somewhat random thoughts for consideration... Perhaps, too, the many broken lives I encountered, and with whom I / we fell in Love, might serve as a further qualification: other than that, I have nothing to recommend me and my suggestion for a "catholic Worker reformation": hence, these confessions of a catholic Worker renegade...
Books: perhaps if my reading list had stopped with the Jerusalem Bible, the Seven Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton), and the Long Loneliness (Dorothy Day), I would still be a Big C Catholic... but I kept reading, meditating, and pondering... Loaves and Fishes (Dorothy Day) inevitably led me to Liberation Theology and Liberation Theology led me to Feminism, and all along there was Gandhi ("the Rat", according to Ira Sandperl)... How could one read the poetry of St. John of the Cross and of Rumi and not know that there just had to be more to the story than what Bible commentaries and Papal Encyclicals could provide? How could one be "visited" by St. Hildegard, Meister Eckhart, Paramahansa Yogananda, Neem Karoli Baba, and Saints Francis and Clare and not come to the awesome awareness of the One being absolutely enraptured with us? How could one read When God Was a Woman (Merlin Stone), The Chalice & The Blade (Riane Eisler), and Sacred Pleasure (Riane Eisler) and not feel as if centuries of pond scum was suddenly washed from one's eyes? God-damn-it! This Universe and this precious blue Planet is so far beyond the pitiful metaphysical presentations of the orthodox perceptions that are always and inevitably linked to privilege, profit, and power: everything is one endless, ecstatic, "Holy Moly"!
Be Here Now (Ram Dass) came thundering back with Be Love Now (Ram Dass too): Rev. Matthew Fox turned out to be an Original Blessing and Creation Spirituality is still essential reading with which to lift one's skull right off the top of one's head, for Leonard Cohen was right "Everything has a crack in it, so the light can get in"... Merton turned out to be right: he took in everything and became a sort of Universal Man who was catholic: Catholic, Buddhist, Hermit-Monk, Lover, Poet, Artist, Sufi, Indian, Pagan, and No-Doubt Other Things As Well... Feminism is for Everybody (bell hooks) is a baptism of hope for equality and gender reconciliation: I am You, You are Me, and We are Altogether: One... Prayers of the Cosmos (Neil Douglas-Klotz) is simply stunning, and then there is a deeper step with his The Hidden Gospel... Andrew Harvey in Dialogues with a Modern Mystic and The Hope elucidates the requirement of a new opening into the Divine Feminine as the Essential Power of Transformation: nothing less is required of each of us in this, our moment in time... Vandana Shiva and Jean Shinoda Bolen are sure guides into a 21st century worth living and working for: in other words, with our hearts broken open by applied and activated love, and our minds shattered by a mystic-activist conviction that the grand vista of history is always an open invitation for us to participate in co-creating a new history: and to become Workers who are interiorly embraced by the joyful grace of the catholic mind and heart...
Yeshua the Poet: this is the Point of a new beginning: not "Jesus" and not the philosophical / super-metaphysical "the Christ": and not a virgin birth and not a virgin life: but a fully incarnated divinely human life: certainly a "magical mystery tour", but more... perhaps not even a "reality", but certainly a Mystery Archetype of both the Holy One and Every One: Poem / not Word: not a witness to a marriage, but the Bridegroom himself: winemaker, lover, mystery-man who loved the lost, lonely, and broken in all the hidden places of the world: friend and lover of women: friend and lover of the LGBT / Whatever: farm worker, peasant, and just plain worker: maybe also a cook in a skid-row soup kitchen (as well as guest in the skid-row soup kitchen)... perhaps with ear rings and tattoos, dreadlocks, and dirt under his fingernails... and he never did just look at a sunset, but he licked his lips after he tasted it... and need I say that if he doesn't make you squirm in discomfort -- or perhaps abandon yourself to wild passion -- you've never met the man...
Does "power" always get to decide everything? Must we forever bow our heads before Constantine's Sword? Will the circle of terror endlessly swirl about our very fragile human lives? Until our political, religious, economic, and cultural leaders begin to seriously and honestly deal with these questions, we should all refrain from granting them our allegiance, our votes, and our money: why not demand more? "Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things, which, if we only stopped to think about them, are the opposite of what we were made for." (Thomas Merton)
Whom do you read? Is it the Bride of the Song of Songs? Are they the words, perhaps, of Yeshua the Poet? Are they the words of Lao-Tzu, Krishna, Rumi, Mirabai, Kabir, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, or Gandhi, ? Do you read the Quran or the words of Siddhartha or of Mary Oliver or of Alice Walker or of Vandana Shiva? Whomever you read of those with a deep spiritual practice and insight, do they not say "Love one another as I have loved you"? Do they not say "Love the Holy One with all the deep ardor of your secret passion"? Are not these holy words the direction our lives, economics, religions, and politics should take? Then how is it that men like Trump and Cruz can have the serious allegiance of any thinking / believing / or even doubting person? Mercy, compassion, and the pursuit of justice for everyone are the sure "vital signs" of a living being, religion, or democracy: if one is not a Passionate Progressive, one has not an engaged heart and mind and soul: you have no excuse! Compassion and justice need globalization: not endless profit and weapons! Stop making your goddamn guns and bullets! It only makes sense to conceal and carry your shit for a proper dump in a toilet or latrine: but your guns and your worship of violence is obscene and a pornography of soul that defies everything that is true, good, and beautiful...
The Presidential campaign for the 2016 elections are in full-swing. On the Republican side, a rabid frenzy is dominating every corner: everyone is trying to out-conservative every other: Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Fiorina, and company: while often making a show of "Christian" values, what exactly is the evidence? Tell me, just when did Yeshua / Jesus advise his followers to adopt violence, hate, privilege, profit, or power? How could this radical Jewish rabbi become a conservative darling? Oh, I see! It was when faith became a thing of the "head": and right belief began to "trump" discipleship -- which is always a thing of the heart and, here's the key, of identification... Few Christians, truth be told, actually identify with Jesus / Yeshua: forget that stuff about "love your enemies" and "give away your belongings to the poor" and "woe to you rich" and "love one another as I have loved you". We've effectively thrown out the Prophet with our politics! And isn't it kind-a funny, that it is the Socialist Jew (Sen. Bernie Sanders) who most closely mirrors the words of That Other Socialist Jew!
Just a few short years ago, it was the predatory greed of capitalism that caused a catastrophic economic meltdown -- and yet it is socialism that still has a bad name... when life results in some sort of catastrophic meltdown, do we blame that which makes us healthier or more secure? Be that as it may, do you see the link between socialism and contemplative prayer? I would say that they are, as it were, flip sides of the same coin: what is the Great Commandment according to Yeshua the Poet? Isn't it to love the One with all the strength and gift of one's being? And isn't the "other half" of this commandment to love one's neighbor as one's very self? Contemplative prayer is an opening into the Mystic, the Mystery, which surrounds and penetrates every fiber of our being, through and through... "socialism" is the concentrated struggle for justice, equality, fraternity, harmony, and peace here on Earth as it is in "Heaven"...
There will be no peace until the profit has been removed from war.
Patriarchy is the root justification for the male addiction to violence.
What is the role of art in the modern world? Some complain that art has become the celebration of the ordinary, referencing a now famous can of soup. Others insist that art must assume a technology of perfection in order to keep up with the times. Still others, the free spirits, are into an "indie" approach to everything: graffiti, free, bohemian, tattoo, found, body, resistance, rebellion, and imagining G-d as brand new... Abstract expressionism from the 1950's was the rage and then it supposedly lost its critical fire: and yet, for me, it comes closest to the emptying of soul / self that is contemplative prayer: abstract expressionism is raw, nude, sensual -- a cry into the Dark Night of the Human -- a protest against the emptiness of form -- but also a re-integration of soul into the perceptual madness of the dominator paradigm...
How can human relationships, cultures, and societies be re-imagined with us "part" of nature and not as "masters"?
How can we live within the ecological and resource limits of nature, applying our knowledge in the service of energy efficiency and equality?
How can we guarantee the rights of non-human species and protect the diversity of life on the planet?
How can we encourage people to commit to lifestyles that promote equality and the common good of all people?
How can we develop an educational system that effectively teaches academic skills within the context of service learning, social responsibility and engagement, ecological wisdom, cultural diversity, and personal transformation?
How can we respond to personal and group breakdowns and conflicts in creative and constructive ways that would minimize the possibility of crisis: violence, drug / alcohol abuse, homelessness, suicide, etc.
How can we re-imagine community / social institutions and insist they prioritize the human person in all decision making?
How can we re-imagine community / social / economic / institutions and insist on basic human priorities: the full development and liberation of every person, "take it to your limit" educational opportunities for every person, food and water as human rights, shelter as a human right, and work with a living wage for every person?
How can we re-imagine community / national / international relationships to include respect for cultural and religious differences?
(To be continued...)
But now a break...
Prayer is a wistfulness... an opening in the midst of the Sacred Mundane... expanding, effortlessly, into a silence that is sustained by an awe... an overwhelming awe... this Earth is a living Being... the entire Cosmos is alive and breathing... and in the heart of this Cosmos -- in the Nothingness of the Atom's center -- there is the Will to Experience Love: this Will is most commonly referred to as "God"... but perhaps this Will is more accurately referred to as either a Marriage Bed or a Birthing Bed... both signify the Desire that is the heart of the Cosmos: the Bliss of a Recognized Union and the Expansion of that Union into New Possibilities...
Oh, and now it appears very likely that the Republican Party -- the Party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt -- is going to nominate as its candidate for President of the United States, Donald Trump: a genuinely despicable man: arrogant and weak at the very same time, like Richard Nixon... a braggart like George W. Bush... and twisted like Dick Cheney... It seems that our nation's hope rests with the around 70% of American women who have expressed in polling a dislike of him! Senator Bernie Sanders has but a glimmer of a chance for the Democratic nomination, which likely means a fall campaign of Trump versus Secretary Hillary Clinton: now that looks like it will be a terribly filthy campaign -- an American embarrassment before all of the world. Meanwhile the 1% will be snickering in their bank vaults...
(To be continued, again...)