Opening up new possibility is packaged in a new choice.

“In situations where you feel stuck in a dark, spiraling malaise for some prolonged period of time, when you finally acknowledge that you know that you messed up (with no further attempts to avoid, blame, or deny), and you know how you messed up (clear about the nature and impact of your mistake, oversight, wrongdoing, or wrong thinking), and when you know why you messed up (clear about your fundamental ‘wrong belief’ and/or your circumstantial ‘poor choice’ in response to some situation), and you admit it all honestly, openly, without self-condemnation, but with very specific repentance, then anything and everything becomes possible again. Be aware that, as an adult, if you hadn’t messed up in some very specific way (which is never the same as being messed up), you could not and would not be stuck in your particularly unsavory situation. And if you insist that you haven’t, while being stuck, then you are compounding your dilemma by ‘choosing stuckness’ again and again and again, and you will stop when you have suffered enough through your continuing choice, and you will free yourself to choose again, and God will be waiting patiently and cheering for you, inviting you back into His truth about you and about your inherent freedom.”

-- Yours Truly

“You are today where your previous beliefs, perceptions, and chosen feelings, thoughts, and actions have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your newly chosen beliefs, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and actions take you. In the process, you will become as small as your controlling desire or habit; as great as you dominant aspiration.”

-- James Allen

So, we get to richly "feel" (a beautiful, delicious, earthly human experience), based on our natural human bodies and emotions, and we get to powerfully "create" (a detached, profound, heavenly spiritual experience), based on our supernatural commitments and dreams (having little to do with our bodies and emotions, and that are all about conscious, intelligent, co-creating with God), and we get to relish and savor all of it. What an extravagant feast, for which a little emotional and physical pain is an infinitesimal price. Here's to you dreaming and living your enchanted life to the fullest, where you are co-creating all of it with Him, while basking in His love and leaning on His ability to turn any "stones thrown at you by life or the world” or “inconsistent (with who you are) choices made by you” into rich food and fuel for transformation.

And for a beautiful example of this process, here’s an excerpt from The Shack, by William P. Young, with Mack talking to the “symbol” for the Holy Spirit - the character, Sarayu:

"'I am afraid of emotions,' Mack admitted, a bit perturbed that she seemed to make light of it. 'I don't like how they feel. I've hurt others with them, and I can't trust them at all, it seems. Did you create all of them or only the good ones?'

'Mackenzie.' Sarayu seemed to rise up into the air. He still had a difficult time looking right at her, but with the late afternoon sun reflecting off the water, it was even worse now. 'Emotions are the colors of the soul, its very language; they are all spectacular and incredible. When you don't feel, the world becomes dull and colorless. Just think how The Great Sadness (his 4-year 'stuck' response to his daughter's death, which is only shrinking his own life) reduced the range of color in your life down to monotones and flat grays and blacks.'

'So help me understand them,' pleaded Mack.

'Not much to understand, actually. They just are. They are neither bad nor good; they just exist. Here is something that will help you sort this out in your mind, Mackenzie. Paradigms power perceptions and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are simply responses to perceptions - what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false or based on falsehood, then your emotional response to it will be false and misleading too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that keep checking the truthfulness of your paradigms - what you believe about yourself, other people, and the world. The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly, vs. distract or impede you. But even then, you don't ever want to trust them more than you trust me.'

Mack allowed his oar to turn in his hands as he let it play in the water movements. 'It sure seems like living in relationship - you know, trusting and talking to you - is a bit more complicated than just following rules.'

'What rules are those, Mackenzie?'

'You know, all the things the Scriptures tell us we should do.'

'Okay ...' she said with some hesitation. 'And what might those be?'

'You know,' he answered sarcastically. 'About doing only good things and avoiding evil, being kind and giving to the poor, reading your Bible, praying, and going to church. Things like that.'

'I see. And how is that working for you?'

He laughed. 'Well, I've never done it very well. I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation for very long.'

'Mackenzie!' she chided, her words flowing with real affection. 'The Bible doesn't teach you to follow rules. It is a picture of Jesus - who he is and why he is. While words may tell you what God is like and even what He may want from you, you cannot do any of it on your own. Life and true living is in him. My goodness, you didn't think you could live the righteousness of God on your own, did you?'

'Well, I thought so, sorta ...' he said sheepishly. 'But you gotta admit, rules and principles are simpler than relationships.'

'It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep questions of your heart, and they will never love you.'

Dipping his hand in the water, he played, watching the patterns his movements made. 'I'm realizing how few answers I have ... to anything, really. You know, you've turned me upside down and inside out or something.'

'Mackenzie, religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right. But I am about the process that takes you to the living answer and once you get to him, he will change you from the inside, and nothing else will matter. There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brains because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. So really, how can their answers be right even if they are right, if you understand my drift?' She smiled at her pun. 'So even though they might be right, they could still be wrong.'

'I understand what you're saying. I did that for years in seminary. I had the right answers, sometimes, but I didn't know you. This weekend, sharing life with you has been far more illuminating than any of those answers.'

They continued to move lazily with the current. 'So, will I ever see you again?' he asked hesitantly.

'Of course. You might see me in a piece of art, or music, or silence, or through people, or in Creation, or in your joy and sorrow. My ability to communicate to you is limitless - living and transforming - and it will always be tuned to Papa's goodness and love. And you will hear and see me in the Bible in fresh new ways. Just don't look for rules and principles to be your guide; look for relationship - a way of coming to be with us in order to more effectively be with yourself and others.'

'It still won't be the same as having you sit on the bow of my boat.'

'No, but it will be far better than you've ever known, Mackenzie. And when you finally sleep in this world, we'll have an eternity together, face-to-face.'

And then she was gone. Although he knew that she was not really.

'So please, help me live in the truth every day, with all of my emotions, not getting stuck in any of them' he said out loud.

'Maybe that counts as prayer,' he wondered."

-- William P. Young, in The Shack

Standing for marriage in the midst of the bloodshed, having already bled out.

A repeat for couples in crisis (whether right before – or so it might seem - or right after divorce), with a full-out call for reconciliation with Him and whatever that brings in our lives and relationships, trusting the reliable goodness of that. We don’t know what we’re doing (isn’t it so obvious). He does knows what He’s doing. And it’s so obvious, yet so often missed, Who should be in the middle of and running our relationships, all the time. Our efforts and knowledge are futile and worthless. Thank God that there’s so much more than technique and tactics available.


TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2008

To remember, for when the sword flashes ...

"Couples are no longer together just for the re-generation and survival of our species through the bearing of and caring for children (or so it often seemed the case in previous generations), but we have developed and grown to where there are multiple beings being (re-)generated, not just children. Couples are now longing for ongoing interactions at a deeply emotional and spiritual level that supports the emotional healing and ongoing spiritual growth of each individual as well as the partnership as well as the family, where our partner is not there to be dominated, enslaved, navigated, or objectified, but is there to challenge, grow, and stretch our capacity to love, and children are not viewed as unruly little objects to be controlled, managed, or manipulated into compliance with our desires, or moral obligations to be patiently handled as a way of looking good, but are actually welcomed and included in the natural process of life experience and life-long learning and radical loving that their parents are going through, bringing their awareness, curiosity, exuberance, and intensity right into the mix as essential ingredients."

-- Gary Zukav, in Seat of the Soul

"There is, either hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes until an entire marriage, over a lifetime together, reconciles them. ... Marriage heals and grows us through great confusion and suffering. Jointly two become fully human, then fully ONE. 'In the image of God created He them.' Thus, by a bizarre paradox, this carnival of sexuality, marked by passionate desire and largely stereotypical roles, leads us out way beyond ourselves and our desires, beyond our respective sexes and gender roles, into a first challenging and then blissful spiritual union."

-- C.S. Lewis, in A Grief Observed

"The whole challenge and the greatest pleasure of marriage is that it is in a state of perpetual crisis that costs all that we are (and needs all that He is) to transcend."

-- "David Copperfield," Chesterton on Dickens, 1911

In spending time with so many couples in impossible crisis, in the midst of their melting down all over the place, or with individuals trying desperately to be in a couple in any way imaginable, it totally amazes and baffles me how many people still think that "relationship" is designed and meant to serve, please, and fulfill YOU as "the individual."

Relationship, especially marriage, which is the total commitment to surrendering to the emotional and spiritual needs of relationship, requires a "letting go" of all personal ego wants (as the driving force, at least) so that you are able to hold onto the rigorous process of being first crushed, then cultivated and grown as a lover, for your benefit and the benefit of another and possibly others (children and family). Relationship is more about you (the ego you) being broken and you (your spiritual self) being re-built than it is about you being rightly taken care of or treated fairly. It is not about fairness or justice at all, but is about unity and wholeness, which requires a breaking down of both you and your partner so that you can be put together and grown together in a particular way, His way, a way that has love and wholeness at the core of it, a way that bears rich spiritual fruit that affects generations, not just more needy bodies and minds caught in an endless spiral of selfishness, frustration, disappointment, and despair.

I am crystal clear that I never even had a glimpse of the meaning of marriage or the purpose of the pure love of God until after the total destruction of my marriage and the devastation of my divorce, and while now being in the process of being crushed again and re-formed every day as a remedial student of marriage, so who am I to get arrogant and haughty about this crazy-making dilemma. Forgive me for what might seem like self-righteousness - it is far from that, more like a deep cry from the depths of my soul. And after having just read C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed for the 3rd time, I'm clear that he didn't really know love's purpose or fully experience God's design of things until after he lost his Joy to Cancer and completed his mourning. He was dead a few short years after.

This is a very, very short time here, folks. We are mostly just confused and don't know what we're doing. He has things to accomplish through us, for the primary benefit of us and ours. It's best that we lay down our petty complaints and desires and let Him do His thing, let Him have His way with us in our relationships with others. Everybody wins that way. We only know isolated and isolating self-destruction, even after fooling ourselves for decades, if not for an entire lifetime. Yes, we can do it our way. He lets us. We even can get the occasional fleeting illusion of victory, but it lasts about 30 seconds. Our way really sucks, and it bleeds all over the place, producing nothing of lasting value, if we're honest, and there's no reason not to be honest anymore, is there?

When we’ve suffered enough and have accepted our defeat, then and only then are we finally ready to listen and obey, which turns out to be for our own good.



A reading from a wedding I had the privilege to participate in a few weeks back:


Kahlil Gibran on Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Cling to the illusion of busyness, or be an insult by dropping out.

“The man who has nothing of real substance to do often will appear the busiest.”

-- French Proverb

“When we get too caught up in busyness, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.”

-- Jack Kornfield

“When the fire of contemplation, introspection, and prayer goes out, the barrenness of busyness often takes over.”

-- George Carey

“The feeling of being hurried and late all the time is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is, on the contrary, born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we know we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest and most desperately lost people in the world.”

-- Eric Hoffer

“It is one thing to decry the rat race...that is the good and honorable work of moralists. It is quite another thing to quit the rat race, to drop out, to refuse to run any further -- that is the work of the bold individualist, the inner revolutionary. It is offensive, because it is totally impolite; it makes the rebuke oddly personal; the individualist calls not just his or her own behavior into question, but mine as well, by the simple act of so radically changing it.”

-- Paul Gruchow

"So, it seems that life is best lived in totally appreciative and 'comfortably conscious disturbance mode' (a paradox - in the form of a creative tension between two seeming contradictions), where we proactively 'slow down and pay attention' - being fully awake and very thankful to be alive, being aware that we are busily and constantly at work destroying ourselves when left to our own unconscious devices, and being on the lookout for God's signals for growth and new life at every turn."

-- Yours Truly, from a journal entry in 2005

“If busyness is an emotional complex, then it's likely that when we are busiest, we are doing the least. We can be extremely active and quite connected and constructive without being busy and hurried - busy without accomplishing anything real - possibly even being destructive. It is possible to be feverishly engaged in some task and yet not be truly focused on the matter at hand at all. The job may be merely a means to accomplish some other unconscious goal: to make money to survive or appear successful, to impress others with our gravitas, or to prove oneself to others through our accomplishments. Our busyness may be a way to avoid difficult emotions, relationships, and thoughts, or we may simply believe that it's important never to waste time. And yet our distracted busyness IS a waste of time, when it distracts us from the most important thing, and this is so prevalent that when someone stops the craziness in their life to deeply genuinely tend to the most important thing, it can feel downright annoying, insulting, maybe even threatening, and therefore dead wrong.”

-- Thomas Moore, in The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

"What is the real basis of our security? When we start thinking about that question, we may give many different answers: success, money, friends, property, popularity, family, getting the big and good things done, useful connections, ample insurance, and so on - all about checking the right boxes and getting the right things done, on time and under budget. We may not always think that any of these forms the basis of our security, but our actions or feelings may regularly tell us otherwise, if we slow down enough and pay closer attention to them. When we start losing our money, our friends, or our popularity, or we feel totally out of time to get it all done, our anxiety level often reveals how deeply our sense of security is rooted in these things. A spiritual life is a life in which our security is based not in any created or man-made-up things, attractive and feel-good as they may be, but in God, who is everlasting love and true and lasting peace. We probably will never be completely free from our many attachments to the temporal world, but if we want to live in that world in a truly free and genuinely effective way, we'd better not belong or be a slave to it. "You cannot be the slave both of God and of money" (Luke 16:13). And if we choose such a life of real and true and total focus on Him (even within a church or religious setting), we must be prepared to face daunting resistance.”

-- Henri Nouwen Society, in "The Basis of Our Security"


Yes, folks, we are “sold” what is “good,” by a man-made “machine,” which can often include church and religion, and then we will be scorned, marginalized, or ignored when actually living it beyond what is “socially acceptable” or deemed practical and responsible (I really love that argument). Count on it, and don’t bother complaining about it. It’s wired in. Enjoy and celebrate it. He let us know in no uncertain terms that following him will cost us everything, and will not be deemed polite or popular. Believe it, and bank on it with your whole “payroll.” The return (true life) is certainly worth it.

“And why? Because of Christ himself. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing him as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace him and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of (religious or societal) rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ himself—God's righteousness.”

-- Philippians 3:7-9 (The Message)

The bridge that crosses from the land of naive, casual attraction to mature, committed connection crosses over a rollicking river of rejection.

Everything in life seems to go through three stages, and it is so interesting how totally consistent this is. This rule applies whether it is regarding the three stages of life itself (e.g.; dependence, independence, interdependence), the three stages of vision attainment (initial personally-held vision, personal vision dashed, vision restored and fulfilled by God bigger than could be originally imagined), the three stages of love and marriage (chemistry, the rocky road of self-discovery, blissful union), the three stages of parenthood (initial elation, joy destroyed by either calamity or exhaustion, joy restored and love fulfilled by God bigger than originally dreamed), and even the three stages of faith (naïve, emotional faith, faith shattered by harsh circumstances, mature, obedient faith). And in each of these cases, there is a bridge that crosses from the second stage to the third that forces one to face, endure, and quite often fully express total rejection of what (and sometimes who) went before, in order to be made new and made even more complete than ever imagined. This was even true of the life of Jesus, as the gift from God he was, in that he came in innocent, fragile beauty, became a powerful teacher and miracle-worker, and was then brutally and completely rejected, before the great gift could be made complete and fully receivable. We don’t like to contemplate overt rejection as a necessary component of anything (given our cultural norms and rules within “polite” – yea right - society), but it so often is, as is further evidenced by the brilliant piece of writing below about the nature of the spiritual life, written by Robert Augustus Masters, and with which I wholeheartedly agree.

And remember, when you feel beat up, fed up, riled up, and ultimately used up, that is not the time to give up, but instead the time to stay and endure and commit to “wait on God with joyful expectancy,” because that is the time when He is about to do something really amazing. What this culture tends to see as the symptoms of the end of things, where it’s time to fix or leave a particular situation, usually only marks the beginning of Kingdom Life.


When Spiritual Life Really Begins

When your honeymoon with spirituality ends -- and it will end, marked by the arrival of STDs (spiritually-transmitted disappointments) -- and when your affair with being spiritually correct and spiritually in-style runs dry, you may say so long to spirituality, but it is a premature goodbye.

Disillusionment with spirituality is not only inevitable but also necessary, so that spirituality might be thoroughly deglamorized. When that disillusionment has had its say--cynicism's couch now being no more than a pain in the butt--and when your fear of re-entering the spiritual no longer frightens or disturbs you, your spiritual life really begins for real.

Most of the popular books will be gone; the ones that remain will feel like old friends you don't tire of revisiting, even if only for a page or two every couple of months. Most of the practices will also be gone; the ones that remain will feel as natural to slip into as your favorite jeans or T-shirt, at ease with both being worn and being worn out. Most of your aspirations to be spiritual will also be gone; the few that remain will feel less like aspirations and more like unforced inhalations...

Whatever disciplines we take on will result not from one aspect of us dominating the rest, but rather from a core recognition of what is needed...Instead of being at war with our weaknesses, we bring them into our heart. Instead of trying to get rid of what we don't like about ourselves, we develop a better relationship to it. Intimacy thus becomes more our path than transcendence.

Seeking will become supplanted by living a deeper life. Questions will still arise, but will ask for something more real than answers. Alignment with the Real will become the ground rather than the goal. Details will cease being just details. Focusing on might be will yield to focusing on what's here now; that is, hope (nostalgia for the future) will be replaced by faith (radical trust in the now)....

Your longing to be fully awakened will still be present, minus the desperation and ambition that once characterized it. Where once you were in a hurry to get it, now you are not rushing or pushing, having accepted the fact that you are in it for the long haul. Then, even when you are off track, you are on track.

Life after spirituality is the beginning of authentic spirituality. No fireworks, no applause, no pats on the back from the important ones, no need to present oneself as someone spiritual. This is the beginning of true nobody-ness. It is not annihilation, but revelation. It is at once bare yet sentient openness, and also the beginning of true individuality.

For every question that arises here, Silence is the answer. Put another way, everything supplies the answer. Nothing is explained, everything is revealed. Beyond knowledge, Wisdom; beyond paradox, Truth; beyond self, Being; beyond everything, Everything....

Life after Spirituality is committed apprenticeship to What-Really-Matters. All that happens is the practicum. Every situation offers the same fundamental opportunity. The teacher is everywhere. There is no freedom from our Freedom. No escape. The implications of this froth then still the mind, awaken and release the body, ground and expose the soul, unraveling all our dreams, breaking us open to what we were born to do and be....

Life after spirituality is a constant dying. Emerging from our own ashes becomes no big deal, but just the way things are in each new moment....

-- Robert Augustus Masters, in his May 2006 newsletter

Yes, a dying life vs. a living death – where one is “ruined forever for normal.”

Relationship with desires and needs

“It is the nature of desire never to be fully satisfied, and yet most men live (and in an exasperating sense of futility) only for the full pursuit and gratification of it.”

-- Aristotle

“Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only one that is never satisfied with enough.”

-- Henry George

“The wise man will simply love and keep on loving; all others will desire that some precondition be met.”

-- Afranius

“One must desire in order to be alive, but only desiring the right thing lets you truly live.”

-- Margaret Deland

“He who is enslaved by his desires is always poor.”

-- Claudianus

“Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Rule over desires.”

-- Lao-tzu

I have discovered the following simple truths:

1) we all have needs and desires – it’s a natural part of being alive,
2) we must learn to clarify, distinguish, and express them – directly, honestly, and appropriately,
3) we must be prepared for our desires (vs. our deepest need) to not be fully met in their initial or even revised subsequent forms,
4) we must be willing to surrender, obey, and invoke Him in order for our deepest need to be met in the fullest way, His way, the only true and lasting way,
5) miraculously, mysteriously, wondrously, we discover that there is only one real and most basic need we ever had, and it lies way underneath and at the core of every other desire, that we might discover and experience that He is not only real, but that He really does adore us and have our best interests at heart, in every way, all the time.

So, in a deeper reality, it takes these five to be fully and truly alive!

Here’s an example of the above, as it relates to my daily messages:

1) I have a strong desire that everyone who wants to be getting these messages does in fact receive them.
2) I have been explicitly clear about this with Anne and with you and with everyone who will listen.
3) I am prepared to be stymied by technology and by other forces beyond my control.
4) I am asking Him to be sure that whoever needs to receive them, will, and just in time, through His means, not mine, and in the meantime I will just carry on loving, not needing things to be “working out” or “efficient” first.
5) I trust that His way works far better than my way, this time and every time, and I am relaxing into my obvious imperfections, which clear the way for His not-always-so-obvious perfection, knowing that He is the only “right” desire and “true” need, and He is teaching me way more about freedom through this process than I am teaching anyone else, and I sure do need this lesson and how He brings it, which is through my writing, not others’ reading.

God, please help me not confuse people (starting with myself) with what they (and I) can seem to desperately want, but instead, like You, to infuse them with what they genuinely need – to know that You are real and at work in our lives in the most compassionate, forgiving, guiding, and loving way – in other words, as living water, and always just enough. We only tend to drown in our other desires and excessive wants, and there never seems to be enough. Please spare us this insufferable indignity at our own hand.


glub, glub, glub … enough already!

Objectivity is buried underneath our subjectivity - we all must take our own path to it, putting our own pieces together.


Today’s message puts some important pieces (some scientific and some spiritual, some biblical and some cultural) of an even more important puzzle picture together for me. It’s all part of a stunningly beautiful and very important collage that is my unfolding understanding of my life. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that it makes sense to you.


“Most of us are unable to sort out reality, because we can't distinguish between a thing and a symbol for that thing. This springs from several causes. One cause is that we are isolated from the natural world (by the way that we live) where the distinction between a thing and a symbol for that thing becomes more obvious. Another cause is our educational system, which simply reflects the intellectual laziness of the society in which it is embedded. A third cause is resistance on the part of vested interests — for if we could think boldly, creatively, openly, we would be much more difficult to govern, and advertisers would have to appeal to reason and vision instead of undistinguished emotions.

We see the effects of this confusion of symbol and thing all around us:

- We seek ‘marriage’ as though that quasi-legal institution were the same thing as a worthwhile, intimate, committed human relationship.

- We seek ‘education’ as though knowledge could be injected into us like a vaccine without any investment on our part. Failing at this, we then trust the statements of people who possess white, rectangular sporting event trophies called ‘diplomas.’

- We seek ‘religion’ as though any worthwhile answers to fundamental spiritual questions could be delivered in encapsulated form, outside the direct experience of nature, life, and God.

- We trust the findings of ‘science’ as though science's principal value could be meaningfully delivered to people who don't understand science (it cannot).

- We trust the wisdom of ‘government’ as though, without direct participation by all of us, government could be anything but a dumping ground for aging juvenile delinquents.

There are many other examples. The solution to the problem is to cast away a basic precept of modern times — that wisdom can be bought and sold as though it were a toaster. It can't be bought — it must be acquired through direct personal experience.

As to the question of training people for meaningful, skilled, successful lives in the modern world, educators must begin to impart thinking skills. This means training students to know facts, but also to know the ideas behind those facts. To say it another way, educators must stop teaching what to think and start teaching how to think. This means forming a partnership with students, so the latter realize they are the most important part of the process.

There is another way of saying all this, although a somewhat darker way. As a species, if we decide that facts are good enough, if we abandon our pursuit of ideas and learning through experience, we thereby replace the human intellectual adventure with a system of fixed beliefs, and all genuine human progress will cease. Eventually nature will deal with us as she deals with all inflexible species — we will vanish from the earth.

As an individual, relying only on facts in any realm of human endeavor assures that you will be marginalized — and left behind. If you think the world is just fine the way it is, then you may become a ‘fact consumer’ and no one will notice. If, instead, you want to make a personal mark on the modern world, you must have bold, if not totally revolutionary ideas and experiences to share — experiences and new ideas are the fuel of modern times.

When it comes to a choice about personal values, ‘the meaning of life,’ the acquisition of wisdom, no one is an expert (which means everyone is, which means you are). There is no simple technical, scientific, or religious solution to the problem of shaping an individual human being — all an honest teacher can do is make a list of obviously flawed methods, say ‘these don't work in and of themselves,’ and then silently point toward the horizon of all known experience and suggest that we venture forth. Our past and present lie about us in comical repose, and our future lies beyond that horizon in the vast unknown within each of us."

-- Paul Lutus (scientist and naturalist)

"While never denying the objectivity of truth, Bernard Lonergan claimed that most religious people have 'an exaggerated view of the objectivity of truth' and especially their 'capacity to understand it.' It is a humorous paradox that in a faith that speaks about the 'journey' of following Jesus, so many Christians claim to have total and absolute truth from the beginning, while scientists, who are supposedly largely atheists and agnostics, are quite willing to work for decades knowing that their theories and hypotheses are merely provisional.

Lonergan taught that the only real way to find and grasp objective truth today was to help people identify, clarify, and heal their subjectivity through kindness and love. Lonergan gave a very old-fashioned word for that new process - 'conversion.' He believed and tried to demonstrate that the 'process' of 'conversion' was itself the great clarifier and was the healing of our own deep woundedness, neediness, and egocentricity so that 'true seeing' could be possible, insofar as it is possible. He sounded a bit like William Blake when he said: 'All we need to do is gently cleanse the doors of perception, and we shall see things as they are - infinite.'

Authentically converted people would see truth, as far as humans are able and would see it in a way that could be shared, at least with other converted people. I know how 'safe' and energized I feel when I am sharing even my most offbeat ideas with the truly holy or loving people of this world - or really good counselors and therapists. Perhaps you know this feeling as well. You know they will understand what you are searching to say, or at least they will give you the listening room to wrestle with it with them. Among antagonistic, insecure, or dualistic people, you always feel unsafe. Lonergan moved from searching for and arguing about airy abstractions to 'changing the seer' himself or herself. This was his 'new foundation' for truth-seeking. And this was a remarkable breakthrough for the West, in my opinion, and in part he learned it from scientists, who knew the connection between the seer and the seen.

Jesus, not accidentally, sent his apostles to 'fish for people.' We have spent much of our history instead clarifying and defending concepts, campaigns, and organizations - fishing much more for 'right ideas' than for people. Lonergan boldly says that 'conversion is the experience by which one becomes an authentic human being.' My assumption would be that human beings attract other human beings to the same level of awareness - just by 'being,' as St. Irenaeus put it, 'fully alive.' This inherent attraction, and not the promotion of my ideas versus your ideas, is how we are to 'fish' inside of religion."

-- Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now

“Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can't believe that, believe what you see — these works. The person who trusts me will not only do what I'm doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I've been doing. You can count on it. From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I'll do it. That's how the Father will be seen for who He is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I'll do.”

-- John 14:11-14 (The Message)


I’ve stopped chasing societal symbols of success (whether worldly or spiritual) and claiming others’ beliefs about truth as my own (regardless of their religious popularity), and instead have gone deep inside my own experience, where I found and met Jesus, and that is now all that matters - what he has to say, underneath how I used to hide from him – while avoiding, denying, or even promoting him (the cleverest way to hide from him I have discovered). I’m now fully committed, fully recognizing that “following” has cost me everything, and it’s been a really great deal.


“God's kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for many years and then accidentally found by a trespasser. The finder is ecstatic — what a find! — and proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise the money to buy that field.”

-- Matthew 13:44 (The Message)



Andy Dufresne: Red. If you ever get out of here, do me a favor.
Red: Sure, Andy. Anything.
Andy Dufresne: There's a big hayfield up near Buxton. You know where Buxton is?
Red: Well, there's... there's a lot of hayfields up there.
Andy Dufresne: One in particular. It's got a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end. It's like something out of a Robert Frost poem. It's where I asked my wife to marry me. We went there for a picnic and made love under that oak and I asked and she said yes. Promise me, Red. If you ever get out... find that spot. At the base of that wall, you'll find a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. Piece of black, volcanic glass. There's something buried under it I want you to have.
Red: What, Andy? What's buried under there?
Andy Dufresne: [turns to walk away] You'll have to pry it up... to see.


What’s buried underneath that rock is merely a symbol – what really lies waiting for Red on a distant shore at the end of a grand journey within himself is LIFE!

Modelling life

Why are we always so quick to criticize or abandon each other? It happens all the time, and just as much in our churches as anywhere else, and that seems kind of odd, but maybe not. Above all, we criticize or leave others behind or downright reject them because we have not learned to love unconditionally, as God loves us, and we have clearly not learned to “be with” the full impact and broader ramifications of that. I hear many who criticize, and I see many who get left or feel rejected, but few who genuinely love and accept, allowing for growth and learning and maturing of a relationship over time through many diverse relational experiences. It’s so much easier to criticize or leave or reject than it is to support and stand with a person, which can feel dangerous and strangely lonely sometimes, for the more openly needy a person appears to be in this culture, the harder he or she is to love, it seems, but our apathy or harsh judgmental response frequently just points to our own immaturity, lack of love, pride, and/or selfishness, which reveal themselves inevitably and naturally from a desperate lack of feeling loved.

There is only one answer to this problem (the only one there ever is) and only one Source of the solution (the only one there ever need be). We must turn back to our Heavenly Father with gratitude, humility, and openness. Just like in the purely human realm, a father/child relationship that works well fuels much happiness for both (see visual of this below). And when it was clear that the job of life and the seductions of this world were clearly too much for us, and we were getting fully and frantically and fatally frustrated, our Perfect Father came as His Perfect Son and showed us how to live, by simply living right and true among us, and by dying for us, and at our own hand, thereby sealing the deal for all time, and we are now asked to live the same way for our sons and daughters, and for all gentle, trembling souls who would look to us as a father figure, and to show them vs. just tell them about it.



“Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him Dad!”

-- Lydia M. Child, in Philothea: A Romance (1836)

“He didn't tell me how to live, ever; he truly lived, and he let me watch him do it.”

-- Clarence Budington Kelland

“Henry James once defined life as ‘that predicament which precedes death,’ and certainly nobody owes you a debt of honor or gratitude for getting him into that predicament. But a child does owe his father a debt, if Dad, having gotten him into this peck of trouble, takes off his coat and buckles down to the job of showing his son how best to crash through it, lovingly and reassuringly.”

-- Clarence Budington Kelland


And here you go - a long one, but good one, to drive the point home - if you have a little extra attention span.


"'Now learn today's lesson well, children. For when I am no longer hear to teach you . . .' Leaning forward slightly, he reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a strand of nine diamonds, fondling them with his hands as if he were shuffling each gem carefully, 'make my lesson today, this . . . the lesson, the MASTER LESSON to tie all your other lessons from your father into one necklace. A necklace of DIAMONDS that the Lord God has filled with all the colors of the rainbow for your spirit eye to reflect itself within. Master this one lesson, children, and you master all the lessons. You master them all.'

He paused and shook his head, looking over at his wife, as if pondering a mystery known in secret between the two of them (this is true). Then he turned to us once more, gazing directly at us.

'For your mother and I do not care, nearly as much as you now believe, if you have the best grades in school. Or the best anything, as you move ahead in your lives. Did you all know we cared so little?'

Heads shook, NO DAD!

'Your mother and I do not care if you become ditch diggers or President of the United States.

Your mother and I do not care if you become famous or if you are largely unknown by others.

Your mother and I do not care if you become rich or if you are poor materially.

Your mother and I do not care whom you may choose as your friends.

We do not care if you are popular, or if you are unpopular.

We do not care where you choose to live.

We do not care which lifestyle you choose.

We do not care if other people laugh at you or if they applaud you.

We do not care how you make the choices you make.

We do not care about most of the things you may think are important to us as parents, or that YOU believe we care about.'

He flashed a smile at us as he looked up from the nine diamonds in his hands to his own necklace of nine diamonds from the hands of the Lord God.

'And most of all, we do not care if you please us. If you try to please us. If you do things to please us. If you act to please us. If you speak to please us. If you think that we care . . . that you PLEASE us. We do not care about this selfish idea, children. We simply don't care! And it's not what you THINK when I say that.'

'But mark my MASTER lesson, my sons and daughters, because there is something that we DO really care about. There is something that we care deeply about, so much in our CORE, that your mother and I would give up everything we have in life to teach even ONE of our children this ONE magical LESSON in LIVING LIFE FULLY.'

'We would give up our homes.'

'We would give up our cars.'

'We would give up our friends.'

'We would give up our jobs and the things that we love.'

'We would give up all these things, and so much more, for only ONE of you, just one child among our nine, to learn this lesson of lessons.

'Children,' as he stood, he had a full, authentic command of authority in his voice and every gesture, 'I want you to know what your mother and your father DO want for their children in this life. Children, your parents MOST desire for you to simply live in this life as naked as life makes us all . . . as alone as life keeps us all . . . as afraid as life holds us all. We ask in our most SACRED prayers, children, the prayers that mothers and fathers who worship their children as expressions of God pray at night, holding hands together, in our deepest care for this one idea. Yes, your mother knows full well, that before I die, what I WISH MOST for our children, is that I may see each one of, and IN all of you, that you have made in your life the choice to truly live . . . the single decision, the one true choice you will make between you and God. The core belief choice you make when you choose . . . to LIVE your LIFE in the SUN!''

I ask that you embrace your precious life and that you each choose to RUN (vs. getting totally frozen in fear of the past or partially paralyzed in indecisiveness about the future). I ask that you each hear the footfalls of your brothers and sisters in each moment. That none of you cling to a tree of safety even for a single moment in your life. That none of you live your life as a MAYBE. That none of our children would stop and sit and become FROZEN . . . not even one . . . And that you EACH . . . EACH ONE OF YOU,' and here he stood to his full height and gestured toward the last of the fading orange fireball in the sky, 'CHOSE to live your life in the fullest LIGHT.'

'That you live as you were born to live your lives, my children. For you were each born to be RUNNERS, running for the sunlight. Your mother and I have only seen you as RUNNERS . . . never anything but RUNNERS.'

'And we ask that when faced with all your choices in life . . . choices we can't make for you, or even stand beside you when you choose . . . that before all the great choices in your life, you will pause, and return in your mind to this magic grotto. And once again you will FEEL the tall, ancient wisdom of these primordial redwood forests, and you will be still, my children, and you will listen, first to the sounds of the forest, before you make your decisions. And that you will refuse to CHOOSE in life from the advice of the MAYBES or the advice of a spirit that lies FROZEN in these woods.'

'And that you CHOOSE to take ALL your advice - advice you apply when you CHOOSE your life and CHOOSE in your life - ONLY from FELLOW RUNNERS.'

'For they alone WILL UNDERSTAND YOU!'

'For they WILL BE YOUR BEST COMPANY.' And here, with great gestures to the heavens, he exclaimed,

'Now, RUN, my children, RUN.' And we did."

-- Bernhard Dohrmann, in an excerpt from the story "Let Them Be Runners," (referring to a memory of his father, from the collection of short stories entitled, Perfection "CAN" Be Had!)


(photo entitled “running into the light”)