Desperation of Women - another great repeat, leading into Mother's Day Weekend

From back in May, 2006, and re-dedicated today to some amazing women out there whose naked, trembling hearts move and inspire me:

The desperation of God; a reflection on the feminine desire for relationship

"If you ask five women to talk about desperation, you will hear five different stories. A few will tell painful, poignant stories from childhood playgrounds or junior high slumber parties. Others will whisper tales of horror from dungeons of addiction or torture chambers of abuse. All will tell stories of relationships that went badly and usually died painfully - stories filled with shame and stigma - told with shoulders slumped and heads bent down.

This is an essay written by one woman to all women about the 'soulmates' of desire and desperation for relationship. This essay is also written for men as a window into the souls of their wives, mothers, sisters, and friends. The desperation of women is much different from that of men. Men work to escape or silence the desperation of their women, fearing an abyss that might swallow them completely. Sadly, women acquiesce to avoid their men's withdrawal and contempt. Courageously breaking the silence allows women to confess the reality of their desperation, and it allows men to enter into a woman's world, if they're brave enough, to inevitably experience their own desperately unexpressed hearts. Fully-expressed desperation becomes an unlikely ally in the deepening and strengthening of these relationships. Breaking the silence also invites both women and men to hear the desperation of women as an echo of the heart of God for deeper, more intimate relationship with us.

The stories of God in scripture beckon women to hold their heads up high, to look in the mirror and face desperation, because facing it will result in what Pascal describes as the 'disruption of the beliefs that isolate us from others and from God.' When women bring their desperation to the hermeneutic process of interpreting God's stories, they will have a richer reading of the text, resulting in a less obscured view of God and a new understanding of all relationships.

Pascal writes that understanding and properly valuing despair comes from experiencing it radically. We must first peer into the eyes of desperation and see its reality - its anguish, its frantic activity to alleviate the heartache of relationship, before we can see its reflection of the image of God more clearly. Radical experience of desperation begins with seeing it in the stories of women and then seeing its reflection in the image of God. Only then can desperation be experienced most radically as it is expressed in any act of extravagant, overwhelming love.

... Desperation accompanies women as parents and mates, but it most often frequents women in isolation: the wife of the busy corporate executive who is addicted to antidepressants or pain pills; the young mother who forages the cupboards and eats voraciously after her children are in bed; the single forty-year-old woman who has not dated in more than ten years and yet reads stacks of romance novels. All fear the face of desperation as it taunts us, 'You are alone.'

Finally, there are the soccer moms, the militant feminists, and the good church women who claim they are not acquainted with this creature, desperation. But there are moments that catch even these unaware: loading the dishwasher, waiting to make a lefthand turn, reaching for the mail, or the moment just before sleep steals the day, when a vague uneasiness flits before the eyes and desperation winks, whispering; 'If you let your guard down, everyone will know I am the secret you keep hidden even from yourself.'

But God does not shrink back from the desperation of women in His stories. He weaves it throughout His narrative. Consider the stories of infertile Hannah, confined Esther, unwed and pregnant Tamar, widowed Ruth, outcast Rahab, virgin mother Mary, thirsty Samaritan, sick and grasping ragwoman, frantic and grieving sisters, sentenced adulteress, weeping and clinging prostitute. God tells their stories, in part, because their desperation is a reflection of His own for closer relationship with us."

-- Sharon Hersch

I am slowly learning to ask for, and then to sit quietly in awe and "be with" the desperation of the incredible women in my life - starting with my wife, my mother, and occasionally my youngest sister, as well as the so many others of you out there who are clients, friends, and/or partners in my life's mission, women who so poignantly remind me of one or more of those closest women in my world, and it is such an extreme privilege to do so. You are heroes in my world who in the past I thought I had to save, and now I know I only need honor and love, because you are a part of me that I could never accept or understand. The shocking surprise, a bonus that I never expected, so beautifully reflected above by Sharon's words, is that I was not only doing this to be a good husband, son, and brother - simply "putting up with it" so as to get a "gold star" in those manly roles - but I was really doing this to see and feel God's hungry longing for deeper relationship with me (imagine that), and to meet my own desperate longing for Him in the depths of that grief. And in that place, face to face with the anguish I feel so often and work so hard to cover up or manage, I find a connection to others that is peaceful and real, way beyond my understanding. It is becoming clearer to me these days how and why we need each other so desperately, why we push each other away so violently, and why we are willing to stay and keep on fighting our own inner demons to ultimately get closer to God and to each other. From the bottom of my heart I say THANK YOU to my courageous sisters out there who are showing me the way in this amazing journey of discovery. Your quiet and sometimes not-so-quiet desperation both scares me and beckons me into closer contact with all that matters.

I stand in awe and am totally amazed at how much I am learning from my own writing, very clear that it was all divinely sent for me to chew on and digest over the years as I dive into the deep, dark mysteries of human existence and relationship with people, guided by this stunning Light of Him beaming over my shoulder.

Happy Mother's Day tomorrow to all of you amazing Moms out there!

Thank you for accepting your crucial role in all of our lives.

Oh my God, the meat is rotten, so let's get off the meat wagon and onto the right wagon


"It was only a matter of being willing to truly believe in a power much greater than myself, from a place of total helplessness, having filled up to the exploding point on doing things my way. Nothing more than this was required for me to make my new beginning."

-- William G. Wilson

At the first public reading (of the play), a man came up to us and said, “I knew Bill Wilson.” Hungry for details, we asked what he could tell us about him. “About Bill? Well, Bill was a man who could talk a hungry dog off a meat wagon!” The line is in the play.

-- Stephen Bergman, M.D. and Janet Surrey, Ph.D., about their play, "Bill W. and Dr. Bob"

Please read this fascinating and illuminating history, and search out the not too deeply hidden metaphor about our current situation unfolding in America today, and what a small handful of us are doing together in the face of it:

http://silkworth.net/religion_clergy/01101.html

As a nation we are filled up to exploding with rotten meat, and it's time to get off that meat wagon and onto the right wagon, and we need each other desperately for our own healing (even while it is so hard to even see and feel each other), where the helpers always get most helped (the nature of healing and learning), and we need to find others to tell our stories to all around the world (they will not be hard to find), from a place of courageous humility and total openness, because we are clearly dying, stewing slowly in our own juices, totally addicted (to the point of utter helplessness) to the shallowness of the American Dream, after having globally exported it everywhere.

I hope we're ready for this global movement, because I strongly believe that the next leadership opportunity for America is deeply spiritual in nature (the materialistic joy ride proving itself to be a sham), and it's time for a new kind of leadership to lead the way in this new kind of revolution - one that comes from having been totally defeated (by "excess everything") from within, and then redeemed and restored through a desperately invited God revolution at the very core of our being (just like Dr. Bob and Bill W.), without any requirements for external fights with or flights from anyone, because a Power much greater than ourselves is in charge now. The hallmarks of this new kind of leadership are "humility, detachment, and unconditional love" (see bottom of article in above website link).

Again, if this doesn't sound just like Jesus, ...

I look around. The screaming pain is everywhere, buried under smiling, empty-eyed facades. The numbness wreaks, as we wreak havoc on ourselves and each other. We are mindless and senseless as it relates to how often and how deep we cut each other. We so rarely touch and thank each other. It is a stinking pile of you know what, and I am ripping the covers off to dive in to help, knowing that I will be both resisted and transformed, ... again, ... as I hope to encourage and help ravenous dogs to jump off the meat wagon (because the meat is killing them).

Submission to mission with humility

"Submission is an act of humility based on our belief in God's love and goodness. Submission is choosing to let God meet our needs vs. managing things ourselves. We cannot experience love without submission, and without submission we lack humility. Without humility, we cut ourselves off from experiences of God's grace (1 Peter 5:5).

Humility comes from the Latin word humus, meaning 'fertile ground.' It is the fertile soil ready to receive the seed of God's Love. It accepts its low place and is ready to be used as a way for God to express Himself. Evelyn Underhill wrote that 'we mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to want, to have, and to do.' Craving, clutching, and fussing ... they only have meaning insofar as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb 'to be': and being - not wanting, having, and doing - is the very essence of a spiritual life.

Humility was Jesus's core characteristic; he modeled life in submission with a greater purpose (submission to his mission). To genuinely follow him requires the same humility, the same willingness to be like fertile soil for the use of the Father, the Master Gardener. He will grow His life in us, and we will find our joy in giving and loving and serving. As we do so, God will bless us - not through external results and rewards; the 'doing so' is the blessing."

-- Bill Hull, in Choose the Life

And speaking of humility and submission, and an intimate connection with God, here is a piece of pure art, divinely inspired, requiring no explanation, only deep feeling:

"Dein allererstes Wort war: Licht"

by Rainer Maria Rilke

(translated from German to English by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Your first word of all was "light,"
and time began.
Then for a long time
You were silent.

You second word was "man,"
and fear began, ...
which grips us still.

Are You about to speak again?
I don't want Your third word.

Sometimes I pray: Please don't talk.
Let all Your doing be by gesture only.
Go on writing in faces and stone
what Your silence means.

You be our refuge from the wrath
that drove us out of Paradise.

Be our Shepherd, but never call us -
for we can't bear to know what's ahead.

I absolutely love this poem, and the writing above it. And it's so obvious that "we can't bear to know what's ahead" by the way we so frequently (albeit often unconsciously) hide our feelings (and the stark reality) of our total and very naked vulnerability, instead acting out in total unforgiveness toward others, cringing in fear of "their" darkness, while fretting and stressing in our total self-centeredness, "craving, clutching, and fussing" for worldy comforts and pain relief, even while at the same time also desperately longing for deep spiritual truth in our utter loneliness. We love to "stew in our own juices," it seems, insisting that we are "dead right" about what "went wrong" with our lives (even while all we really are is just plain "dead") and it also seems that that is the only way we ever learn submission and humility, and the art of applying them within the context of a mission much larger than ourselves. Sometimes the best and only thing you can do for a person who is spewing blame, nonsense, pain, unforgiveness, and untruth, while feeling lost and alone, is to let them stew in their own juices for a while by themselves, without comment. We tend to get brittle, dried out, hardened, and toughened as we're fought against, judged, rebuked, or resisted by others, but we tend to really soften as we stew. Here's to enjoying (and taking full advantage in the end in choosing life) of your own very personal boiling pot of gooey nonsense. May it soften you quickly and well.

After just enough boiling and softening, and after all resistance is melted away, we can then jump out of the pot and get back to being fertile soil in God's hands, ready to support what He's doing, vs. desperately trying to do it, or just survive it, ourselves.

Worth repeating

Based on my day yesterday in the world of marriage partnership and intimate relationship, this repeat of a message from 6 months ago is so warranted and so worthy of repeating. Read carefully, ponder deeply, apply diligently, but ultimately, you must die to it.

Here's to the health of your marriage and family, ... as a factor in your own and our society's good health

"Considering everything else that we do, the way that we [men] treat our wives could well have the greatest impact on the character of our sons, and this impacts everything about the future. ... There is an urgent need in our society for fathers and husbands to respect their wives and treat them with sweet, sacrificial, tender love, fully appreciating their unique and extraordinary contributions to family well-being and holding them compassionately in their totally understandable moments of desperate longing for deeper connection."

-- F. Melvin Hammond

"A man can have no greater incentive, no greater hope, no greater strength than to know that his mother, his sweetheart, and/or his wife and family truly believe in him, have confidence in him, and love him dearly. And men should strive every day to live worthy of that love and confidence and belief, whether it is ever actually expressed or not, knowing that the reward for it is the experience itself, not any dutiful or obligatory affectation or reciprocation."

-- N. Eldon Tanner

"Among the most important things parents can do for their children is to provide them with worthy examples and with continuous opportunities for personal experiences of the divine - 'death and resurrection' experiences, requiring 'laying down of defenses,' forgiveness, and grace, being the most profound."

-- Dallin H. Oaks

"I am convinced that if we as a society work diligently in every other area of life and neglect the solidarity and unity of the family - the hardest work there is, by the way - it would be analogous to straightening deck chairs on the Titanic."

-- Stephen Covey

"A good marriage at age 50 predicts positive aging at age 80. But, surprisingly, low cholesterol levels do not as much."

-- George Valliant, MD, Harvard Medical School

"A good marriage is the hard-earned, joyful union of two committed and very experienced forgivers."

-- Ruth Bell Graham

I am learning some really powerful things about marriage and family life that I never knew before, and have rarely ever seen in real life. First of all, getting people - any people - to come together and live together and share space and time together over long periods, is not a natural state for human beings. We are cranky, distracted, grumbly, immature, needy, scared, and selfish creatures for long parts of our lives, especially when we're young and ambitious, after which we often get very cynical, disconnected, lazy, and just plain tired. This does not happen all the time, but it is "human being left to his or her own devices." To expect this gathering of such characters to just "work out" by itself, because, after all, we're "family," well that's just plain nuts. It doesn't work out; it acts out - often violently - sometimes artificially politely, underground, covered up and denied, the even deadlier version of such mayhem. The work required to surrender to fully cultivating and protecting family welfare is monumental, if not impossible, but what great training to be ready for the work required to surrender everything to God. As we work toward the health and well-being of family life, we are working "toward" our surrender to God (but it's not the same work as our surrendering to God, which, as we saw last week, was to give up even the "dependence" on family relationships), but it is worthy work moving in the right direction. When we work feverishly on the periphery of our lives, saying we are doing it for family or God, while ignoring both, we are moving away from Him, and dying a slow, agonizing death. Moving toward Him and the "dying life" requires constant dropping of our armor and weapons, giving up being right, unlearning worldly lessons (in which we are awash every day), fully accepting His love and His forgiveness of our constant, ongoing mistakes, and, from that place, constantly accepting, forgiving, and ultimately celebrating others, especially those closest to us who are seemingly "in our face" every day. The process of surrendering concern for or fixation on the outer realms of our lives as we move deeper and deeper into the inner realms of closest relationship is an ongoing battle, until the last battle, which is a surrendering of all concern for everything other than Him, which is the very best, make that only way to totally "be" love and to both genuinely and unconditionally care for your family's welfare, because of the "example" it gives, which is thankfully sustainable, rather than the "performance" it gives, which is unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, given the sophistication of His design) not. Long sentences in a long paragraph, I know, but, if unclear, please read again and chew well before swallowing.

Just a bunch of sick puppies we are!

The response to yesterday's message was exhilarating and fun (and I get that you really get me). And I got so many special little gifts from it.

Here is one: http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 Enjoy!

And here is another:

thought this would sing to you, brother!!

brilliant!

love,
anil

Relentless Building
Mark Nepo

Ecologists and civil engineers are discovering that a disturbing byproduct of urban sprawl is how the relentless building of roads, parking lots, malls, and condominiums is literally sealing off vast surfaces of the earth. Over time, we are learning that this is preventing rain from seeping naturally into the earth where it nourishes root systems and replenishes underground aquifers. The importance of this is that without water to feed root systems, the healthy magic of spring is stunted. When the rain can't replenish the aquifers, then rivers and streams cease to be fed, which chokes the life cycle of fish, which interrupts the natural food chain.

Furthermore, when the rain can't penetrate the concrete lining we are building, it has to go somewhere, and so it floods. Given this, we are seeing an increase in resources being spent to control flooding, which only diverts the much-needed water further away from the very land that needs it in the first place. In systems theory, this form of thinking is known as a doom-loop.

There is a startling parallel here to how we seal over the deeper nature of our human experience. The modern sprawl of noise and consumerism is forming an impenetrable lining of culture that diverts our experience from seeping naturally into the ground of our being. Our modern obsession with doing, buying, and having, with makeovers, fame, and celebrity, is creating a form of spiritual drought. Covering the earth with our diversions prevents experience from watering our roots. Then, when plain living has no way to enter us, it floods, and we start to believe that it's the experience of living that can't be managed or trusted. And so we avoid life more, diving further into our diversions, which are the problem in the first place. It's a damning cycle, a perceptual doom-loop.

Undoing the seal of our culture is an overwhelming task, but we can begin by saving our own lives, by putting down what linings we carry or wear, by letting our skin again be our skin, by restoring direct experience and letting the air and rain hit our lips, by singing and dancing and loving out loud.


It most certainly does! The revolution lives!

And finally, here is one more, with a full dose of glorious child-like humor, this is one of the things Jake asked me to read to him at bedtime last night, from Calvin & Hobbes ("It's A Magical World"), as Calvin waxes poetic about his parents:

MY MOM AND MY DAD ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.
THEIR DULL APPEARANCE IS PART OF THEIR SCHEME.
I KNOW OF THEIR PLANS. I KNOW THEIR TECHNIQUES.
MY PARENTS ARE OUTER SPACE ALIEN FREAKS!

THEY LANDED ON EARTH IN SPACESHIPS HUMONGOUS.
POSING AS GROWN-UPS, THEY NOW WALK AMONG US.
MY PARENTS DENY THIS, BUT I KNOW THE TRUTH.
THEY'RE HERE TO ENSLAVE ME AND SPOIL MY YOUTH.

EARLY EACH MORNING, AS THE SUN SLOWLY RISES,
MOM AND DAD PUT ON THEIR EARTHLY DISGUISES.
I KNEW RIGHT AWAY THEIR MASKS WEREN'T LEGIT.
THEIR FACES ARE LINED - THEY SAG AND DON'T FIT.

THE EARHT'S GRAVITY MAKES THEM SLUGGISH AND SLOW.
THEY SAY NOT TO RUN, WHEREVER I GO.
THEY LIVE BY THE CLOCK. THEY'RE SLAVES TO ROUTINES.
THEY WORK THE YEAR 'ROUND. THEY'RE JUST LIKE MACHINES.

THEY DENY THAT TV AND FRIED FOOD HAVE MUCH WORTH.
THEY CANNOT BE HUMAN. THEY'RE JUST NOT OF THIS EARTH.
I CANNOT ESCAPE THEIR ALIEN GAZE,
AND THEY'RE WARPING MY MIND WITH THEIR ALIEN WAYS.
FOR SINISTER PLOTS, THIS ONE IS A GEM.
THEY'RE BRINGING ME UP TO TURN ME INTO THEM!

I actually think the opposite is happening - he's bringing me up to turn me into him.

Fundamental positive change

For me, and for where I am right now, this is one of the most important journal sharings in years, in that it is most purely reflective of my current state, while it is also most totally shattering of my ego-mind, as well as most wildly inspiring to my heart and soul, as well as most joyfully uplifting of my spirit. This is the new frontier I'm boldly moving into, and it's staggering in its full implications and ramifications. The pieces below are all drawn from the same new book I'm reading these days called Choose the Life, by Bill Hull, given to me by a man who says that it reflects for him the life I'm obviously committed to and starting to live out loud. I have no comment on that, in that it stirs me too deeply for words. For those that would ask that I not talk about Jesus so much, I ask for your patient perseverance through the spirit of the sharing rather than get stuck on or distracted by the words that push your buttons. I understand these buttons very well, as you are well aware. For those of you who don't really believe there's a Satan, I ask the same tolerance and understanding, while searching for the much deeper personal meaning. For those who totally like the way what is said is said, please don't make that mean too much, either. The words are not the key here. The spirit of this offering is the key, and it is haunting in its deep emotional stir.

"Let this mind (attitude) be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation or special status, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient, to the point of death, even the death of the cross."

-- Philippians 2:5-8

"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

-- Matthew 20:25-28

"The most radical social teaching of Jesus was his total reversal of the contemporary notion of greatness. Leadership is found in being the servant - not the ruler, representative, figurehead, or controller of all or any. Power is discovered in submission to the mission. The foremost symbol of this radical servanthood is the cross ... He flatly rejected the cultural givens of position, power, rank, and status when he said, 'you are not to be called Rabbi ... neither are you to be called masters.' He took women very seriously and was always willing to meet with children, he took the towel and washed his disciples' feet."

-- Richard Foster

"If you want to bring fundamental positive change to people's lives and behaviors and attitudes, starting with your own, a change that will persist and influence others for generations to come, you need to first create a humble, loving community and culture around yourself and them where those new beliefs can be practiced, expressed, and nurtured out in the open, in an environment of grace in which each person accepts each other person exactly how and where they are in the moment, and celebrates how God has made them and what He's doing within them, and encourages each other to practice and train in going deeper into themselves and their relationship with Him."

-- Malcolm Gladwell

"Satan does not want us to have a renewed, transformed mind. He enjoys thwarting us with his own ideas and perversions of the truth. One of his favorites is: If God is in it, then a blessed life will be easy, fun, opulent, and things will always run smoothly, and if that's not so, He has somehow judged and abandoned you. Why is the most common prayer in Christendom, 'May the upcoming event go smoothly?' It joins the chorus of other ridiculous platitudes, such as: God's work done in God's way will never lack God's resources.' and 'God's blessing is in evidence in numerical growth, financial plenitude and stability, and a congregation free of conflict and other forms of mayhem.'

Try this stuff out on the church in Rwanda, where 75% of the pastors were killed in tribal genocide in 1994 and 15% more fled the country. The average income in Rwanda is one hundred U.S. dollars a month. They don't ever expect it to go smoothly. So why is it that these godly men and women don't have all the resources they need? Don't they read the right books and send money to the right televangelist? Satan loves it when we allow our culture to set the standards for the church. He wants us to believe in a Christianity built on Western capitalistic social structures. Jesus, however, promised difficulty and persecution, saying that we should be glad, because he will turn it all into good, whether we get to clearly and explicitly witness it or not."

-- Bill Hull, in Choose the Life

"I am attracted to the radical, but these things are so radical even I don't like them. I am a marginal iconoclast, but I enjoy breaking more than being broken. Brokenness before God means to relinquish all rights and dreams, to submit them to God's greater good and purpose for my life. This passage reminds me of Henri Nouwen's words that 'following Jesus means resisting the temptation to be relevant.' He wrote, 'I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.' Some might want to dismiss Nouwen as a brilliant nonconformist whose monkish tendencies created such crazy and totally impractical statements. But, then again, it could be that irrelevancy is the true road to global impact.

The gurus of the inner life have been preaching at us for hundreds of years: slow down, be quiet and still, kill the monster within that insists on being first, being noticed, being praised, that can be found preening itself atop achievement, while basking in its own glory amidst great publicity. Many have written them off as unnecessary reminders of an ancient life of contemplation and peace that is locked away behind the thick walls of boring and useless retreat centers. The prevailing evangelical mind says that what we need our soldiers charging into the battle mounted on the engine of technology, armed with strategic plans and organizational procedures. Could it be that we have been terribly wrong about all this? Have we ignored God and Jesus as our leader and chosen lesser gods? It very well could be that we should drop our laptops and iPhones and reconsider everything."

-- Bill Hull, in Choose the Life

I'm all ears and heart and ready hands. I see the moment-to-moment ramifications of that attentiveness and readiness. There's no wiggle room and no way out. Full throttle love, with all my heart and soul, here we go.

Love's servants we shall be!

"So it's a long and tortuous road that leads from the love we experience within our closest circle of friends and loved ones, to that larger LOVE which could bring peace to a fearful, war-torn world. But the journey of love (and LOVE) is one which each and every one of us is called to take. In fact, it is the only journey that really matters. For God is love, and we are called to Him.

Realistically, as we begin our journey, we must confess that love is not something we truly possess in most of our present moments. We do not have and carry with us such an abundance of love that we can spread it around like so many tons of surplus wheat to feed a love-starved world. In fact, love is not a thing we can ever possess at all. Just the opposite; it flows through and ultimately takes possession of us! It rises up in our midst despite our best efforts to stamp it down - often when we least expect it - when we have done nothing to deserve it. Love takes us by surprise; it takes us by storm; it strikes us to the root and core of our being, changing us forever.

The greatest of the saints have said it, from St. Paul to St. Francis of Assisi; from St. Augustine to Bishop Tutu. Love is not a virtue to be attained by diligent organizing and training on the outside; it's not an accomplishment to be achieved by fiat of the will, at the very bottom love is a gift of God's overwhelming grace, to which we are invited to surrender deep on the inside.

'All the world needs now is love, sweet love,' said the song writer. But how we are to move on out from that sweet song into this world of hard, bitter-sweet experience is neither simple nor easy. True love requires more than an outburst of feeling; it requires a disciplined and deeply internal application of energy and imagination, of belief and choice. Love requires an honest and real assessment of one's own strengths and weaknesses at the time - in other words, of one's current loving capacities - but more than anything, love requires total faith in action. Not blind faith, but a faith informed by all the knowledge and wisdom we can acquire in a lifetime of longing and searching.

We believe that God is love. And this makes all the difference in the world. For what the love of God requires, God empowers us to give. As God has called us to be love's faithful servants, love's servants we shall be!"

-- Charles Henderson

"I believe that the whole purpose of life is simply to grow in love. I believe that this growth in our capacity and willingness to love will contribute more than any other force to establish the Kingdom of God here on earth."

-- Leo Tolstoy

We are here to embark on a fantastic voyage. Not a voyage to some distant land, or to the depths of the seas, or to a remote planet in a galaxy far, far away, but a voyage deep inside the self, to the very core of our being. This is the last and greatest frontier, where we ultimately meet ourselves and Him, where we learn what love really is and how to live it in the Kingdom HERE AND NOW, and it can be so frightening that most will scoff at the notion for a very long time, maybe their whole lives, while keeping themselves way too busy and self-reliant to even contemplate such a crazy notion. But the journey awaits, anyway, patiently and relentlessly, calling us ever Homeward.

I remember asking a friend the other day this question, and it was a question I ask myself every day: "Are you willing to own and committedly work on, in every conscious moment, whatever there is inside you that is keeping you from being fully alive, fully connected, fully loving, fully purposeful, fully thankful?" This is a really big question that we must answer with a resounding "Yes!" to even have a chance at true life here on earth, and, yes, we have been offered just that - Heaven on earth, for a long and prosperous life (just not the way that we - in our egos - might want it). And without this yes, we are sadly and very simply committing ourselves to "robot, cog, zombie" status, plugged into a machine that keeps us feeling alone, blind, crazed, distracted, empty, fearful, greedy, hungry, ill, jumpy (you get the whole alphabet idea), and poor, no matter how much we think we have, and weak, no matter how strong we feel or try to look.

People often ask me what I mean about all of this spiritual stuff, as if I just started speaking a foreign language, or maybe have gone weak and wimpy. I know why this is so. And so be it. And it's not really about the way I'm speaking at all. Another good friend said to me a few days ago, "Thank you for continuing to speak the truth, even while being so widely misunderstood." I really appreciate that comment, even while I'm working diligently on the stuff inside of me that would have me even care about such things. Deep down inside me on the journey, I care about ONE thing, and it is growing the world's capacity to LOVE NOW, starting with me, and I care about it even while seemingly confusing people and incurring their wrath about it, knowing that that is what's growing and serving me in this moment, and it's totally OK.

OK, time for a funny story. A guy took me to lunch the other day to say thank you for the choices I make in my life. It was very cool and very appreciated. This guy is wrestling with his ego, trying not to need people to listen to him and value his opinion. It came time for our fortune cookies. There were two. I asked him to choose first. Here was how it worked out, and notice the perfection of it:

His: "People are drawn to you and look to you for advice."

Mine: "Stay away from the power position for one day."

Ah, the perfection! God (who is not mean-spirited, but totally loving) is always giving us exactly what we need vs. what we want. Thank God He's the one in charge here.

P.S. One final note. Jake and I went go-karting yesterday, and it was really cool.

No, that's not us sorry, photo not here). I wish I could be showing you a photo of me and Jake out on the track, but on the first turn, while I was trying to take a pictureof Jake's driving from behind him, only to discover that our memory card was full, and as I tried to put the camera back in its case - you guessed it - I dropped it on the track, and, yes, you guessed it again, it got run over by another car that was behind us. So, I am showing you a stock photo from the place's web site to give you an idea of our experience yesterday.

So, after crying the financial blues a few weeks ago, I get a speedingticket on Thursday and then a camera destroyed yesterday. I hope it doesn't really "come in three's." Happy Anniversary to us, anyway! And don't worry, folks, I'll get over it. So, go-karting, Jake's baseball game,and our anniversary date all went OK, anyway, in spite of all the unbelievable, unpredictable shenaginans. We have no camera, Jake's team is winless, and I spent too much money on too much rich food. But Anne and I had a few quiet moments together, and a chance to remember why we're doing all this, and it was real and good.

Hooray! LOVE WINS again! No matter what life dishes up.

I am love's servant, and serving is what I'll do.

... and while still in a poetry mood

For one human being to truly and deeply love another, that is the most difficult of all our tasks,
the ultimate, the last test of proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Advice to a Girl (applies equally to us boys)

No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;

This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are all alone

And gaze into the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be richly blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.

Sara Teasdale


Alchemy

I lift my heart as spring lifts up
A yellow daisy to the rain;
My heart will be a lovely cup
Altho' it holds but pain.

For I shall learn from flower and leaf
That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
To living gold.

Sara Teasdale



The Impossible

What am I
A paradox or a lie?
Telling the truth to you
That only what one sees is true

You may see nothingness
And yet remain the same beingness.
Gazing upon perfection
The impossible brings reflection.

Aaron Hobart

Another jolt of amazing poetry, two by a contemporary of Rilke, and one by a blossoming artist among us.

On the eve of the 12th anniversary of my marriage with Anne, I reflect on some simple truths about life and love and pain and pleasure. I've never met anyone more "worth possessing" than my amazing wife, Anne, and I've never met anyone more totally "unpossessable," and I totally adore her, and it is a truly magnificent dilemma. In the midst of the pain of my life's longing and neediness, I have learned to genuinely love without need in this relationship, and that is a fabulous gift, and the greatest pleasure of my life, and while I have been "reflecting on its perfection" over the years, "looking long and becoming richly blessed," I have become a devoted student of "love's alchemy" everywhere, the gentle art of "turning grief into gold," of "turning fear into love," and it is a beautiful mission, truly beautiful beyond words, but thankfully there are some that can begin to touch on it.

Thank you, Sara. Thank you, Aaron. And thank you, Anne, my beloved and my friend, as we approach 12 years.


Alchemy is the process of transformation.

The medieval meaning of the word refers in particular to
the transformation of base metals into gold.

Here, the word refers to the transformative power of love.

Love is the heartbeat of life.

Love's alchemy transforms all that you fear
into all that you most cherish.

You are the alchemist!

What a wonderful and worthy pursuit, with such a wonderful and worthy partner! And what I see is true.