Between men and women

"In the sex war, cruel thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, cynical vindictiveness of the female."

-- Cyril Connolly

"It takes a man way too long to get it, and a woman way too long to forgive."

-- Yours Truly

"A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions."

-- Cyril Connolly

"A man's desire to be considered good, right, and true (especially when he's not) outlasts all his other emotions."

-- Yours Truly

So, what has to happen for peace to return to the land? or for possibility to exist or to stay alive for ultimate transformation of a relationship between a man and a woman? Well, it's simple (yeah, right). One (and the man is invited to lead the way - and not because he's better - and even while the woman is equally capable) has to give up 100% of their desire and their nature and their staunch position first, and the other will naturally follow. Trying to battle out a negotiated settlement in the "ginormous gap" is futile, if not funny in its fruitlessness. We are way too different; we are way too human; we are way too obstinate; we are way too willing to wallow in self-pity, while blaming the other. The only way a supernatural, transformational result is ever possible is to consciously choose to put down our weapons in the moment of battle, to consciously choose to completely die to the total ridiculousness and self-destructiveness of ourselves, and to consciously choose to fully surrender to letting Him do it in us.

Bamboozling our refusaling


"Buckminster Fuller once calculated that if all the wealth of the world were divided equally among its citizens, each and every one of us would be a millionaire... The things that get in our way are our feelings of lack, despair, and confusion; and the inability (and refusal) to master the marketplace of life, that starts inside each of our hearts, with the way we over-value or de-value ourselves."

-- Stuart Wilde

There is no lack of anything on this planet or inside us, only the mental perception of lack, which drives and sustains the perverted "agreement reality" of this world, which causes our stress inside and our mad scramble outside, along with such overwhelming disparity (and the corresponding global "despairity"). Certainly, we must work together to fool our brains in order to follow our hearts, and we must be prepared to feel a little crazy for a while, which would, in an insane world, be a sure sign of our awakening and returning to sanity.

There is enough food, enough intelligence, enough love, enough money, enough natural resources, enough space, enough clean water, enough of everything, more than enough God, if we learn to work together cooperatively to share all of it in an equitable fashion (i.e.; following His instruction). The odd thing about all of this is that we tend to get too busy chasing after, acquiring, accumulating, hoarding, and protecting our things (while ignoring Him, even while paying lip service to Him) primarily in order to get or give love (which is never the same as love). It is based on wanting what He asked us to be and do, while going about it the most bass ackwards, insane way imaginable.

We believe fundamentally (and incorrectly) that we are not enough ourselves, and never can be, so we make up that we must chase after and provide things to those we choose to love, and try to do it better than any other could, so that the objects of our affection will behave a certain way, either choosing us or at least not leaving us, even while we are behaving intolerably or are completely unavailable. This is ancient, barbaric, ridiculous stuff, no longer necessary.

What if we could stop all the nonsense and simply apply ourselves to what we really want, instead of chasing our tails, faking it? What if we could simply live for the giving and receiving of love with God, ourselves, and others while living for a purpose bigger than us? What if we could all own our own struggle with our old and no longer useful paradigms, and put our hearts together in prayers of thanks. What an amazing thing this would be to watch. Until then, I choose to do it for myself and my family and boldly "be the change I wish to create."

Someone sent me a Gandhi quote the other day that I want to modify ever so slightly and share, and as you read it, you can guess what I changed to make it the whole and inescapable truth. Here goes:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then He wins."

Breathing under water


Dedicated to those of us who are trying to breathe under water today, whatever our present conditions, feeling like we are drowning in the swamp of modern society, eager to wake up to be fully born into life and love. Enjoy this whole message in its entirety, as a stunning mosaic that I watched get pulled together so beautifully within the fabric of community:

"In the New Testament, whenever Jesus eats with or encounters the rich he always, without exception, challenges them to come beyond where they are. Yet he never accuses them of malice or evil intention. He instead simply shows them their blindness. Always the fair judgment is blindness: The rich man just can’t see the plight of Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). The rich man is not evil, he didn’t cause the poor man at his gate to be poor. He simply wasn’t aware. He just couldn’t see. That spiritual blindness is the primary sin.Spirituality is simply about waking up. Eastern religions know this. The word Buddha means 'the awakened one.'

Spirituality seems to have come upon hard times in the West, where legalism so often takes over that we think we don't need spirituality. We have lost the spiritual disciplines and tools to know how to remain awake. We have lost the disciplines that show us what’s really happening, what human relationships really mean, the effects of what we do to one another in our relationships.

The Church and all spiritual communities must continually be taught by the desperate and the poor. Those who are oppressed and kicked around, those who are not connected, plugged-in beneficiaries of the system, always hold out for us the greatest breakthrough-truth and the greatest wisdom. In mythology they are imaged as blind beggars who in fact are true seers. The same is true inside ourselves. That part of ourselves that we most hate, that we are most afraid of and most reject, is the poor, oppressed man or woman within. That hated person within holds our greatest gift. We must hold out a preferential option and treatment for our own poverty. Our poverty has the key to our awakening; it offers the breakthrough moment for us to wake up. It’s the 'hole in the soul,' that place where we are radically broken, where we are powerless and therefore open to possibility."

-- from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

"Read Romans 7 sometime, to live with the agony of Paul and to see that he’s just like every one of us. 'Why do I do what I don’t want to do? I hate myself for doing it. And I don’t understand myself, woe is me.' Paul says, 'Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?' There you can feel a man almost tortured with self-hatred, trying to get out of his own body. Haven’t all of us, at some point in our lives, disliked the person we’d become?

Church people set out to be clean, neat, nice people, or at least to appear that way. Yet, in our moments of honesty, we know much of our soul is not of God: We have negative, destructive, even violent and vengeful thoughts toward other people all the time. It sickens us to the point of distraction.

Romans 7, thank God, is followed by Romans 8. St. Paul leaps to the most ecstatic chapter in the New Testament: 'This I know, in Christ there is no condemnation' (8:1). What allowed Paul to jump out of the immense self-hatred of Romans 7 into such immense hopefulness? Whatever it is – grace? enlightenment? conversion? powerlessness? surrender? – it’s the most important thing in our lives to pray for: 'Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil.... Thy kingdom come ... on Earth as it is in Heaven.' God will answer that 'Our Father' and deliver us from Romans 7 to Romans 8 every time. Depend on it. We are unable to do it on our own, and until you prove that to yourself, I hope you rage gently with yourself and others, until you're on your knees with each other crying out to be heard and healed."

-- from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

Having written these two down yesterday morning, yesterday afternoon a new friend brought me a CD as a gift, and when I checked it out, this was the first song that came up on my random play in my car CD player. I looked up the lyrics, and then looked up the CD information on-line, and here is what came immediately to my attention:

"He tackles topics most Christian artists wouldn't dare. His song 'War Inside' nails Paul's struggle in Romans 7."

Go to the website and listen to a sample of this powerful song at:http://www.amazon.com/Better-Questions-Todd-Agnew/dp/B000R7I3LO

War Inside---Todd Agnew

Do you feel the tension, do you?
Do you feel the grind?
Do you see the battle ‘tween this
Flesh and soul of mine?‘

Cause there’s a war inside of me
Between who I want to be
And who I am

I do what I don’t want to do
And don’t do what I mean
I end up chasing all my nightmares
Abandoning my dreams

Who I am is not who I want to be
Shackled like a slave when I know that I’m free
Wrong and right, truth and lie, death versus life
Everything in me is choosing sides
And the showdown begins

Do you feel the tension?

Written by Todd Agnew,
from his "Better Questions" CD

And then another song was passed along by another new friend, reflecting how we all get to be there and help each other in this bitter struggle inside ourselves, within the rich context of community life, all looking to get out of being "stuck in square one," and we find the answer together, by simply being there to hear and hold each other in our gentle raging, and to look to Him for the perfect relief that has already been given inside us, and the musical message for this morning was complete. We are expanding, groaning, and sighing together so beautifully.

Square One---ColdPlay

You're in control
Is there anywhere you wanna go?
You're in control
Is there anything you wanna know?
The future's for discovering
The space in which you travel in

From the top of your first page
To the end of the last page
From the start in your own way
You just want
Somebody listening to what you say
It doesn't matter who you are
It doesn't matter who you are

I said I'm on the top, I can't get back
Whoa, whoa, whoa
Whoa, whoa, whoa

The first line in your first page
To the end of the last page
That you...
From the start in your own way
You just want
Somebody listening to what you say
It doesn't matter who you are
It doesn't matter who you are

You just want
Somebody listening to what you say
Oh, you just want
Somebody listening to what you say
It doesn't matter who you are
It doesn't matter who you are

Is there anybody out there who
Is lost and hurt and lonely too?
They're bleeding all the colors into one
And a few come undone
As if you've been run through
Some catapult who fired you
You wonder if your chance will ever come
Or if you're stuck in square one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek8z8QIk6Rg&feature=related

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
-- Romans 8:22-28 (The Message)

Love your enemies!

"Fear is the major barrier to the emergence of great faith and great-souled people. To enter into the mystery of forgiveness, we must first recognize our own deep-seated fears. Most of what (and who) we hold in unforgiveness we stay away from in fear and dread.

I was given the impression, when I grew up in the Church, that the real problem was doubt. And so all our teaching was 'head education.' Teach people up here how to get the right answers about God and then they will have great faith. Show me where head information alone has created great-souled people, prophets of great desire, freedom and courage for the Church!

God speaks to us, heals us, and frees us at another level, at the level of our deepest emotions and fears. He approaches and engages us through our actual experience, when we have gotten out of our heads and busy schedules. Until you actually have this experience, allowing God to address your fears at their core, you’ll never even recognize them yourself and you’ll undoubtedly be trapped in them for a long time, living an unconscious defensive response to them in your daily life.

As we grow in faith, we move beyond the need to exclude others in any way (he, she, they are the enemy). We gradually move into that place where we can risk letting would-be enemies in to muck about as they will. And then begins the ways of wisdom. We find ourselves capable, at last, of obeying what is the greatest of Jesus’ commandments, the most radical of all of his teachings: Love your enemies! (and following him there will be plenty)

How many of us find access to love for those other people who criticize us, doubt us, kick us around when we're down and feel we least deserve it, those who make it really hard for us to 'be right' and 'look good'? When we can't find it, we haven’t yet fully internalized this commandment of Jesus. Scriptural language, though, is both introverted and extroverted. If we haven’t been able to love our enemies out there - for example, as a nation, if we still think the Russians or Iraqis are the problem - it’s probably because we haven’t first discovered and loved the enemy within. And if we haven’t forgiven the enemy within, we will never know how to love and forgive the 'enemies' without."

-- from The Passion of God and the Passion Within

I have had numerous experiences lately of feeling "enemies" lurking, with some even seeming to take some pretty nasty pot shots at me, and these experiences were accompanied by a feeling of total injustice, or of grossly unjust attack and criticism. All this tells me really is that there are things to look at inside me that would have me feel this way at this time - in other words, that there is an enemy lurking within planning some mayhem. I am in the process of doing a thorough internal inspection of that right now. It is a very good and healthy process for me, with no victimhood warranted and no winning necessary. As I forgive myself for my own arrogance, ignorance, over-seriousness, and pride, at those times when I get overwhelmed and scared by the weight of my calling, forgiveness of others pours out of my heart like gentle rain. I really love the feel, sight, smell, sound, and taste of that rain. It is soothing, lubricating, and liberating, and I feel back under his very light yoke.

"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." -- Matthew 11:28-30

It's amazing to realize how I used to cringe at the very thought of seeing, let alone using such imagery to make a point, and I would never even think to share such an image in the past, not because of who he is or what he did or experienced, but because of who people who either hated or idolized the imagery were in my past life, and what they did with it, and how I felt used and abused by it, either way. Now I only see (with my heart's eyes) his light yoke (while following his teachings) and the total freedom (from all ego burdens) waiting for me on the other side of self-crucifixion every time (the willingness and surrender to letting go of hate and fear and death that lives only inside my head), and there is absolutely no melodrama surrounding any of it anymore. In fact, it's actually kind of light and breezy. His voice does not sound like any of the voices I used to fear and dread and run from - in other words, the enemies I didn't understand or want in my life. It is accepting, gentle, kind, loving, relentless in its truth and wisdom - definitely worth listening to, really hearing, following, especially in doing this hardest work.

Spirituality of subtraction - what I sometimes wish I didn't know

"The notion of a spirituality of subtraction comes from Meister Eckhart, the medieval Dominican mystic. He said that the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction of things nonessential (and so much of what we stress over, strive for, and worry about these days is actually nonessential) than it does with addition of things nonessential. Yet I think Christians today are involved in great part in a spirituality of addition - we must have more of everything, even including more Christians.

The capitalist worldview is the only world most of us have ever known. We grew up in the midst of it, not even seeing the color (green) of the lens through which we see the world. We see reality, experiences, events, other people, things – in fact, everything – as objects for our consumption, for which we need more money. We can't help ourselves. The nature of the capitalist mind is that these things (and often other people!) are there for me. Finally, even God becomes an object for our ravaging consumption, as do non-Christians that we can bring to Him.

Remember the bumper sticker 'I found it'? The Holy One becomes 'it,' a pronoun, a thing. Even the Lord becomes a consumer object that I can privately acquire and possess and then mass distribute for others' consumption. Now that is surely heresy in any religion. You almost wonder if true spirituality is even possible in this culture. Everything gets turned around so that we’re somehow in the driver’s seat: God, the Bible, the sacraments, the Church, people, and prayer - all of these things are there to foster my own ego and its need to feel good about itself."

-- from a Lecture Series by Father Richard Rohr, called "Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction"

"Conscious is when you are aware of something really significant and conscience is when you wish you weren't."

-- Unknown

No more to say here, really, other than "Damn!, I wish that weren't so confoundingly clear!"

I am learning to let go of excess or nonessential anything and everything. It is very hard, after much training and practice in wanting and pursuing what I want. It will be quite a journey, this learning by unlearning and stripping away. I am learning that I don't need mass approval or support in this crap-stripping endeavor, that it isn't ever a worthwhile goal or motivation. I am learning to be still and remember who He is, and to move in rhythm with His voice in my own heart.

A friend sent me this amazing video yesterday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sknEaZHHbhc), and as I watched the dog in it, and the way the dog looked up and followed its master's every move, I saw how little it needed and how happy it was in its single-minded, outrageously determined focus, and it made me cry with deep understanding and a powerful longing for such simplicity. I've always said that if I were an animal of some kind, it would be a dog, and this is the kind of dog I would be and can be as I follow Him, as His reflection here on earth. Hmmm... dog spelled backward is ... ?

Taking important things too lightly - leading to transformation

"For anybody who is on a spiritual path of any kind, it will be obvious that a real transformation costs something - in fact, in so many ways it costs everything that was previously held dear in the old paradigm. It can be brutal, it can be fierce, it can be very, very difficult - in fact, it can be downright agonizing. If you are going to choose transformation as your path, you are going to have at some level to choose an extraordinary ordeal that will not only cost you, but break you down. I think we are a very selfish race, very superficial in our understanding of our emotions, addicted to surface-level pleasures based on circumstances rather than deepest joy based on conscious choices. It shows in our treating very lightly of the great sacrament and great spiritual possibility of marriage."

-- Andrew Harvey

“What happens in the deepest relationships is that everything that is unhealed in the self comes up for healing, because it can be only healed in the deepest and most committed relationship of true love. That eruption into consciousness of unconscious trauma, the dread of intimacy, the sheer terror of merging selves, the rage at anybody else's imposition of themselves upon one's own agenda, all of that has to be dealt with head-on in the marriage relationship. You have nowhere to escape from it. In more trivial or superficial relationships, you can always hide from the full onslaught of your shadow, but in a marriage, especially in a marriage undertaken for spiritual reasons, there is absolutely nowhere to hide from your own shadow or the shadow of the other. Only a very, very sincere and humble spiritual practice can give you the strength to first endure and then to thrive."

-- Andrew Harvey

How do we do this humbling spiritual work when we're living in a culture that says (no, make that, SHOUTS!) - just be comfortable and have some fun, go get better or more, in fact, why not have it all, succeed at all costs, try harder, work harder, and while you're at it be sure to work the system to your advantage?!!! There is only one way - we must continuously and relentlessly surrender to the ongoing personal breakdowns that lead to breakthroughs. We must become addicted to only one thing - the powerfully deep and personal transformations that lead us from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, and that is harder than the hell we're living in now, so it requires great courage and tenacity. We must internalize that life is not about finding the easier path, or making it easier for others to bail us out or help us win. It is about making the most important things the most important things, no matter what.

Taking lots of short-cuts, which we are always wanting to do, is, quite ironically, the fast lane to a breakdown and the breakthrough of transformation. Choosing the right path because it's right, without the life-stopping tragedy that tends to be the eventual, natural consequence of self-indulgent choices, is much harder, but even more rewarding. A life lived consistent with what's believed and espoused, albeit impossibly difficult at times, is the only life worth living. The schizophrenia of its opposite is only sustainable for so long before it quite literally runs you over. You will know it has done so by the degree and magnitude of either your malaise (lack of inspiration and utter joylessness) or your seemingly pointless and unbearable suffering, regardless of what you show others in your "presentation" on the outside. That "presentation layer" is always very fragile and weak, anyway, and often breaks apart in our every interaction with those someones to whom we've given power over us, and when it does, it is really ugly and makes miserable messes that tends to be very hard to clean up.

Staying clean on the inside (instead of polite and smiling on the outside), no matter what the process of ongoing transformation costs, is always the best approach to life and to protecting your spiritual integrity, which tends to be, at least over the long haul, your most important, most reliable, and most valuable asset. It is the source of your every real "experience" of God in your heart and of your every true Kingdom experience here on earth. In the end, there are no other reasons to be living as a human being than to cultivate faith, hope, and love everywhere you are, and to have as many of these miraculous experiences as you can. I often get barked at, cursed at, hated, ignored, ridiculed, stiff-armed, and/or threatened with violence for holding onto such crazy beliefs on behalf of everyone I come into contact with, but I am honored to carry that temporary load for those who have not had the radical experience of God at work in their hearts and in their lives and in their most difficult and usually most important relationships. In fact, bring it on! It is great practice - to continually speak truth in the face of fear, and then let it go.

Finding company on the path

"When you find the way, others will find you; you won't have to look for them.
Passing by on the open road, they will be drawn to your door.
The way that cannot be heard will be echoed in your voice.
The way that cannot be seen will be reflected in your eyes."

-- Lao-Tzu

"Relax, my child; stop chasing the work; I will bring it to you when it is the right time.
I made you as a well, not as a fountain; they will come when they are thirsty.
Speak the truth, then let it go. Let your life speak clearest and loudest.
There is nothing else to do but live and share all on your path."

-- God's voice in my heart in 2002

When times get harder, for any reason, it is so much easier to go chasing after the solution with my body and mind than to let Him keep digging me deeper and deeper into my spirit's connection to Him, but deeper I go.

Oh well (pun intended), as I am reminded above, I am His creation, not my own, and it is time to surrender to the path inward once again.

From a message I sent out last October, along with a link to the website that inspired it:

"Life in Reality, at the very core of our existence, is indomitable, irrefutable, undeniable, unstoppable, even in its total vulnerablity in the face of the world of dark illusion. Jesus lived a life that showed us that this is true, that we can walk straight through the world's and our own darkness into pure light. It makes no sense and seems so impossible, but Thank God it's true! True life and real love are the only 'Realities' worth knowing and living!"

http://home.earthlink.net/~grharmon/conquest.htm Enjoy the ride (if you choose to go there).

By the way, speaking of "company on my path," I have the best, and I am always "going there," in the midst of the only Reality worth Knowing. Also, I must say that Houston is getting pretty cool these days (or Jake would say "really tight"), having "discovered," and spent yesterday morning with the kids at, the new Discovery Green Park in the downtown area (see below) that just opened last weekend. What a "really tight" Saturday morning ritual this will be. (Sorry, no photos here.)