Sitting Still

For the last 20-something years, I've been in the habit of sitting still with my eyes closed for 20 or 30 minutes each morning. Sometimes longer, sometimes not so long. It seems to be getting longer as I get older.

I clear my mind and count breaths, or repeat a word or phrase, or think about a serene setting, or just stay in the squirrel brain I woke up with.

Sometimes I can actually quiet my mind -- for a few moments anyway. Sometimes I tell myself to rest in the Divine. Just sit and be still and rest in the Divine. Sometimes I'm an ocean of gratitude. Sometimes I get distracted by some long fantasy that's like reading a book I can't put down.

Sometimes I’m needy. Sometimes I'm angry (which usually means my feelings are hurt). Sometimes a grief or fear or pain is too much, and I end up bent over and dripping tears on my feet. Sometimes I ask questions because they come to me unanswered.

Sometimes an inner door swings open, and light floods in, and I see what I hadn't seen before, and I'm stunned into silence. Then I laugh out loud. Or weep. Or both.

All from just sitting still.

Pour Love on It

I think I'm fascinated by fear. My own fear. The fear I see in others. It's a deep-rooted thing, fear -- like love. They both go deep. Maybe they both grow out of the same seed way down inside us. They're both deep and vast. I know that.

Fear comes out of my sense that I stop at my skin. There's me, and then there's everything and everyone else -- all that isn’t me. My goal is to keep myself alive in this universe of everything else. And if I fail, I die. I cease to be. I disappear.

That's what fear teaches.

Love reminds me that even though I'm separate, I'm not separate. Love wears away the walls I build to protect myself from The Other, no matter how thick I make them.

Love is an odd dance partner for fear, but they do balance one another out -- at least here among what Lao-tzu called the ten thousand things.

Here's something else I've learned: Fear is useless in battling fear. Fighting fear with fear only creates more fear. The way to overcome fear is to pour love on it.

Where Morals Come From

Trying to live a spiritual life is not the same as trying to live a moral life. It’s not the same as trying to live a good and decent life. It’s about trying to live a life of awareness.

Awareness teaches me to see. The more I see, the more the rest of my life begins to take care of itself. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be a better person. It means I’m going to see those places where I can help, and if I don’t help when I can, I’ll feel the loss of not helping.

Awareness teaches me to help the next time. To smile the next time. To say hello the next time. To be patient the next time. To care the next time. To be kind.

Sentimental or Not

Love.

Such a sentimental thing -- so easy to parody and diminish. But it's a deep word if we let ourselves dive down into it. An ocean with no floor.

Here's my take on love these days. We talk about love and hate. Love and hate. The opposite of love is hate. To me, the opposite of love isn't hate. It's fear. Hatred is just a manifestation of fear. Fear is at the bottom of everything we see as evil or bad -- hatred, violence, greed, meanness, pride, racism, intolerance, exploitation. It's a long list.

Love, on the other hand, dissipates fear. Things like kindness, generosity, acceptance, helpfulness, compassion, patience, mercy, grace. Another long list.

Where sentimentality fits into all of this, I don't know anymore. I just know I want to shed as much fear as possible, both inside and out. If love is the way to do that, then give me love, sentimental or not.

A Little Kinder

Before he died, Aldous Huxley (the author of Brave New World) was quoted as saying, "It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'"

Great advice, and I try to follow it when I think about it. But I don't think about it as often as I'd like.

It'd be nice to remember to be a little kinder to the grocery clerk, for instance. Or to the woman behind the counter at the post office. Or to the knot of teenagers taking over the sidewalk as if they'd bought it with their own money.

Try to be a little kinder.

One of my good friends (I'll call him Steve) told me years ago that his father always tried to leave people happier than they were before they encountered him. I like that. It makes me wonder what the planet would be like if we all did that.

Journeyless Journey

Last summer during one of the "spirituality discussion group" conversations we have at church each month, one of the members said he had a problem with the whole idea of a "spiritual journey." If I remember correctly, he made the point that ultimately there is no "journey" because there's no "there" to journey to. We're already there.

I'll call him Mark. Interesting guy. I like him. Tall guy. He's an attorney and an ordained Presbyterian minister. His wife is a Presbyterian minister, too. Makes one wonder what their dinnertable talk is like.

But back to this idea of there being no spiritual journey. I agree with Mark. There is no "there" we have to migrate to -- or even toward. We're already there. When it comes to our spiritual life, we're already home.

On the other hand, I disagree that there's no journey. I can honestly say I've been on a journey -- what many would call a spiritual journey -- for more than half a century. At the same time, though, I've come to see it less as a spiritual journey and more as a journey of awareness.

After all, the "spiritual" is always with us, whether we realize it or not. If we seek it, we find it. If we don't seek it, most of the time we don't find it. Sometimes it forces the issue, but most of the time, we find what we seek. We find what we expect to find.

This is why faith is so powerful. And so dangerous. And so critical.

Spirituality Quote of the Week*

Really hearing a bird sing or really seeing a blue sky, we touch the seed of the Holy Spirit within us.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh


* For the last seven years (almost), I've been sending out what I call my spirituality quote of the week via email to a list of friends. I also post it on my Facebook page. (That's pretty much the only thing I do on Facebook, btw.) And now that I'm back here again, it seems only fitting that I should post them on here, too. I hope you find one you like every now and then.

Community Church

I don’t go to church for theology anymore. I go for community. I’ve been saying this since the 1990s. If I were going for theology, I’d probably have to start my own church. A church of one. Not much community in a church like that.

Resident Taoist

When I finally left the Church of Christ in my late 20s, I went on what I call my first religious sabbatical (meaning that I took my first extended leave from all things religious). I always knew I'd end up back in church at some point, though, and sure enough, eventually some Presbyterians took me in.

Almost three decades later, I still go. It’s a nice little Presbyterian church tucked in a neighborhood in an aging part of town. I like it. I like being a member there. The people are good folks -- like most people -- or at least they want to be.

And they seem to accept me as their resident Taoist, which I appreciate, although most of them wouldn't think to call me that.

Not that Jesus

With a title like "Christian Taoism," there's a good chance Jesus will come up in these posts from time to time.

I should note, though, that the Jesus I'm writing about isn't Jesus the savior. He isn't Jesus the messiah. He isn't Jesus the sacrificial lamb. He isn't Jesus the Son of God.

There are already plenty of people writing blogs about that Jesus.

The Jesus I'm writing about is Jesus the mystic. Jesus the Taoist. Jesus the Sufi. Jesus the finger-pointing-at-the-moon. Jesus the enlightened. Jesus the Bodhisattva of the Kingdom of God.

Let there be light.

A Life of Labels

As I mention in my profile, my journey of awareness led me out of the rich subculture of Christian fundamentalism that I was born into and brought me to the more spiritually satisfying land of mainline Protestantism in my 30s.

But my travels didn’t end there. I kept asking questions and looking for answers. Christian Gnosticism. Buddhism. Taoism. Jump forward a few decades, and now I tell people I’m a profane Presbyterian Zen Taoist.

What I find interesting is that when I tell people this, they don’t ask me about the Zen part or about the Taoist part or even the Presbyterian part. They ask me about the profane part.

The Prodigal Returns

At the beginning of 2016 after more than six years of keeping this daily blog, I decided it was time to let the fields lie fallow for a few seasons.

A year and a half later, I'm back and starting to plow again. No telling what will come up in these rows this time.