an opportunity to participate

Life is not about that which is commonly sought after but is an opportunity to participate in a unique yet universally available experience. Here we are with the innate yet generally ignored ability to sense the presence of the divine within ourselves and the whole creation and instead we chase after fame, fortune and power. We busily pursue the offerings of a man made world thereby losing the sense of mystery and awe which makes it possible for us to commune with the creator and the creation. Instead, we wind up worshipping the “reality” we make and thinking it is life.

We fall into a man made trap, the vanity of God made in our image. We fall into a pit dug by our arrogance, our conceit that the creation, the universe exists for our domination. The simple truth of our being born into a world over which we have little control and in which we could not survive except for the graciousness and self giving love of countless generations of ancestors is quickly forgotten if acknowledged at all.

Perhaps if we could envision the process wherein the one without ancestors poured self into the creation dividing and differentiating into everything that is, while remaining whole and present in every part of it, we could appreciate the magnitude of the gift we have by virtue of being alive, awake and aware.

And being aware of the gift of life and the presence of the one who is self giving love in ourselves and in each and every other being, we could relate to the divine mystery in each with clarity and wisdom born of the knowledge of our interdependent existence. Perhaps this is an awakening from the illusion of power over that upon which we are utterly dependent. Perhaps this is the humility which would allow us to relate to each other in terms of mutuality, common good and the welfare of all life. Perhaps this would quicken the light of love and compassion in everything known and unknown which is capable of such feeling and emotion. Perhaps we could learn to dwell here and from here.

Like a Stranger and an Immigrant

Having grown up in this nation where I feel like a stranger and an immigrant, I don’t feel I am of it or it is of me. When I was a child and a young man I believed what I was told and acted as though I were a part of it. But I stopped wanting to be at home in this civilization, in this culture and society as I learned the truth. I wanted to be another way, a way that spoke to the deep places within me. I am a human being, an Earth man.

I have entered into relationship with Earth and Heaven against the civilizations and cultures of her oppressors and destroyers, the cities of the dominators and colonizers, the dominions of the man gods. I cast my lot and hope with Mother Nature, with her waters and soil, her dark humus, rocks and stones, and that which worms and wings it blessing through her. I choose in favor of what breaks the willfulness of the destroyer to destroy.

The Creator plants the seed of light in the darkness that violence and fear might know their ways lead only to their end. All things pass away but the one that lives in life as life itself. This one who pours love through individual human beings to transform the moment and redeem the time shall not be undone by empires or legions of believers. This one who nurtures and coaxes, who enflames the human spirit to rise and take its place in the community of life will not be denied the sweetness and joy of our very human awakening.

Though we rise and fall and rise again, though we forget who and what we are and then again remember, though we have no clue who calls and what for, we shall be as intended when we so intend. It is an act of faith this death to fear and death itself. It is a letting go, a surrender of all the weapons and armor we use to fend off our fears and to control the other. It is the Buddha consciousness, the mind of Christ, the beauty way.

Wishing each other a Thanksgiving

People are wishing each other a happy Thanksgiving and expressing their gratitude for life. The images of thanksgiving make some of us sad even though we are grateful for life. We think of the indigenous people of all lands and what the dominator cultures and societies did and do to them and we are sorrowed. At Thanksgiving some of us are sorrowful for those who are oppressed and exploited by the dominator predator model of thinking that operates in the world. We feel great connection to the people, the imprisoned, the wounded and abused, the left out, the meek of the Earth, the chosen, the faithful ones of the Great Spirit for the powerful of the world grind us to dust.

We remain grateful for life for it is a gift from the Creator no matter how damaged or distorted by our unconscious acts. We are grateful for the opportunity to enter into relationship with God through the creation. We are grateful and give thanks for the consciousness we have and the light we are given to nurture. We are grateful the Earth feeds our bodies and spirit with hers and that we journey as part of her in the universe.

We are grateful for the Spirit of life which teaches us to laugh as well as weep. We are grateful and give thanks for the Beloved and all the forms the Beloved takes. We give thanks for our bodies, minds and spirits and for those of the others to whom we relate. We give thanks for feelings and that within each of us which feels its way to the wisdom that surpasses understanding.

We give thanks for the truth though we may not yet know it fully. We are thankful that it exists and is the source of all life and makes itself known, here and there, now and then. We are grateful and give thanks that none can possess the truth but that we may be lifted by it.

Finally, we are grateful for the light that breaks into our darkness leads us on the way that is life eternal. We give thanks for friends and family, the stranger and the other. We ask you, Beloved Spirit of life, to create in us a holy place where we may drink from the spring of love and wisdom that flows from your presence in the creation.

The Thunder Dreamer

Dreams tell me the way of violence is coming to an end.
We are left with a crippled home to care for as though it is ours
though we may not be of the world that made it thus.

We are the aliens, the outsiders, the strangers, the dirt people.
We are the poor and the oppressed. We are the raped and wounded.
We the maimed and broken have nothing but God’s promise.

We are the beloved of Mother Earth yearning for justice.
We are the creation becoming conscious on the way.
We are the awakening and the turning.

Dreams tell us it is happening even as we sleep.
The empires of man are falling beneath the weight
of their shadowy arrogance and they are afraid.

The dreams tell us to come out of their clutches, beloved.
Let them die in peace. Ease their going for they fall prey
to a disease of mind and soul. A heart rot leaves them empty.

The dreams say it is time to set right what we can,
time to tend our relations. The Creator is in the creation.
The fall wind strips dead leaves and limbs from trees.

Winter draws us tight to each other and spring waits on us.
This man’s world comes to an end and heaven and earth
are one. That is what the dreams say.

Father Creator if we ask you to reveal

Father Creator if we ask you to reveal our cracks and shadows, do you do it in a way we can understand and accept? Will you help us to see the log in our own eye, the place of our denial? Help us to see what it is in us, in me, which prevents healing. Heal our separation from each other. Help us to understand what it is we need to do this time around to be consciously aware in your presence each moment. Help us see where we put the blocks to your presence in the moment.

Beloved, we want to relate to each other as though you are present in each of us knowing full well we may have forgotten who we truly are. We forget we are your light taking form. And in the forgetting we become frightened children fearful of the spirits we create in our forgetting. Yet most of the creation knows it is you taking form, Beloved. Most of the creation lives in union with you. Not separate from but integrated into the expression of your love.

But many of us do not yet know this in our souls and still delight in the distinctions that make us better than the other, whether the other is a coyote, a pine cone, a granite outcrop. We define ourselves by comparison to whatever is seemingly other and reinforce our sense of separate self as present and accounted for and more valued than these small wonders. Perhaps the judge must suspend all judgments so the Great Mystery has room to operate and the time of control returns to the forces of nature and departs from the hand of man. After all a judge can only judge by human law and the law of humans is flawed for we have made ourselves into gods. While the truth is if we think we are god or act as if we are god or could be god we are far from the way.

Our minds are unique gifts from the creation to itself and to each other for it is the creation which produced this mind, body and spirit from the creative energy of the Creator burning within it. It is the energy which is never consumed but always transformed into greater and greater complexity and differentiation. It is written in the bible that the Great Spirit can create children to Abraham from the stones of the Earth. Children to Abram, inheritors, heirs to the Great Spirit’s blessing of the way, the truth and the light.

Oh Christ, can you imagine Buddha meditating, sitting still while the cosmos revolves and evolves. Empires rising and falling while the light of Malcolm and Martin, Gandhi and Black Elk shines through their fog and darkness like beacons of hope in a sea of unconsciousness.

A well meaning and sincere man asked me what this communion would look like, this consciousness of communality. I answered he should talk to God about it and look for the answer there. He told me he did not like my answer but later apologized because his wife suggested he may have offended me. I was not offended by him saying he did not like my answer. I thought of another way to answer the question. Many want to know what heaven will look like before they will choose it and in the meantime we exist in man made suffering and denial, full of pride and arrogance building empires and cultures of dominance and greed. I have heard that it was Jesus who said seek first the presence of God. Sounds like the place to start and end every endeavor for the sake of all future generations.

The Creator and the world work at cross purposes. Please understand that the world does not mean the Earth for the Earth naturally follows the Creator's way. What I mean by the world is the human made systems which are overlaid on the Earth and it creatures. The world is created by the thoughts and actions of the dominant life form on the planet, Homo Sapiens. The Creator and the world each have their ways, but the true way to the Spirit's source and home is God's way, the Great Spirit's way. The holy ones know it and live it. The world denies and desecrates it. Jesus believes it and becomes it. Buddha lives it. Malcolm found it and is true to it. Black Elk prays it. Many are the holy ones who make the way their own through faith in the Great Spirit of all life.

The world and God work at cross purposes. God frees us to live while the world would enslave us so that it might become god to us. The world would like to capture and hold our attention. In fact, it strives to enthrall us as we accept its beliefs. The world would make us complacent participants in its domination of all forms of life. The world of domination would like to have complete and absolute control over everything and each of us. Manipulation and control as tools of power over the other are hallmarks of the world's way. Individual life is meaningless and worthless to the world for it feeds on death.

All is not lost, though it seems bleak and full of despair for the interdependent web of life at this moment in the human story. The God of life/love has planted the seed of transformation in each being and illuminates the way. Each of us finds the way. Sooner or later the light dawns within each of us, whether we are willing or unwilling, and we recognize it. Though our lives seem like a moment in the life of the whole creation, we come face to face with the Spirit of life in that awakening.

Perhaps this awakening is influence enough to cause us to look here in the present moment for the presence of the Beloved. Now that we know the truth is so near perhaps we shall set aside weapons and defenses and invite the truth to come in and stay with us as long as it will. Perhaps we understand now that each is precious to the whole and begin to mend what is broken and heal the illness that destroys life. Perhaps we come to know who we are individually and collectively and become the ones for which the Earth longs.