Theopoetics for the Human Family

It has been almost two years since my presentation "Theopoetics and the Human Family" was aired as part of Bruce Alderman's / The Integral Stage's Future Faces of Spirit series on YouTube. Thus far, it's been mainly folks in Integral circles, a few Facebook & Wild Contemplative Lady friends, and my sister Adinah who have taken a peek.  I have ... felt shy about sharing it. Part of it is that I was so exhausted the day it was recorded, and in the video it seems like I'm straining to NOT sound tired. 

In other words: Vanity. Appearances. Surfaces.

So I post this in the spirit of letting go of this kind of self-consciousness. This is part of my journey, part of how story spills out through me. So be it!

The Blues as Contemplative Opening

"The moan is the birthing sound, the first movement toward a creative response to oppression, the entry into the heart of contemplation through the crucible of crisis..." -- Barbara Holmes

Betye Saar, Frieze

This moan, I think, is where the blues comes from. The blues as an unstoppable cri-de-coeur, the heart breaking within the pain as God seeps through the cracks -- Christ who weeps with us -- Jesus who is close to the shattered. With that moan Spirit flows through and widens the heart  in ways that cannot happen through our small separate self willing it. Something beyond ourselves enters in through the wailing, silent or sung, enlarging our capacity for compassion and the broader reaches of love and care that stem from that. We cannot do this on our own. But we can join our moans with the moans of others, invoking the God of our weary years, and be brought to a strength and a "peace that passes all understanding." We might find that we are carried--or graced with a mysterious capacity to carry--"for my yoke is easy and my burden light." (Matthew 11: 28-30).

Diurnal and Nocturnal Impressions

Some writing mined and revised from my handwritten journal. Recently, I am capturing impressions of the hours and seasons. It is writing practice. It is also one of the ways that I pray. 

Before the storm: The charcoaled bellies of the clouds hang low. May midnight thunder rumble.

After the storm: All the crows and l'il brown birds pecking the rain-drenched ground! There is food to be found.

Spring, midmorning: The breeze is blowing through the trees, now lush with leaf and blossom. With the daylight streaming through the branches, dappled patterns play across the ground: a slow shimmering of shadow and sun. It is not a rare effect, but I have loved this dance of dark and bright, this gift of leaf and wind, since girlhood.

I linger in this moment. Like the tiny insects that hover a few feet above the ground, I remain there—floating, quivering—savoring the brief sweetness of the season.

*     *     *     *     *     *    

Summer, first unmasked walk through the neighborhood after a year of pandemic: 

It is twilight, the hour of rose-hued horizon and moon-flowering sky. I am lucky to live in a place that is often quiet at dusk, with paths largely deserted. I relish the evening chill on my lips; my unshackled nose takes in the spice of blooms that open when the day dims down.

How I have missed these walks. How I have longed for that moment as the light pauses before revealing its primal aura—oh liminal hour of celestial presence—when planets appear and owls’ wings unfurl. 

Somehow, hope retrieves me at this hour. Somehow, possibility returns. Of course, I am familiar with the sleight-of-hand that low light plays – softening the edges, warming the coolness, inviting invisible crickets. It does not matter. The unbraided edges of dreams can now trickle in through my re-opened heart and loosen the rigidities of the day. Soon, the sleep-breathing of mammals sweetens the air. Soon, the cocoon of night wraps us in its luminous expanse and lifts us out of the callousness of the day.

 

Prayer For When You Forget to Say Grace

I was raised to say grace before meals. Usually when I was called on to do so, my reliable and to-the-point prayer was "God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. Amen."

When it was my dad's turn to pray, his recitation was so fast that I never really knew the words to the prayer until I was old enough to look them up. It always came out as, "Bless us O Lord, and these thy gisswhissweroboutaceveshuthbounty, through Christourlordamen."

I got the sense that God might be a bit miffed if you were out somewhere, maybe at McDonald's with friends, and no grace was said -- not even your own little silent secret prayer (your default to keep folks from perceiving you as a goody-goody)...

Nowadays, I know that no scolding Deity in the Sky keeps track of such things and that Spirit savors authentic gratitude, however and whenever it is expressed. But I offer this prayer for all who might experience that sting of contrition when you eat and later realize you forgot to say spoken or silent grace.

Bless me O Lord

for what I just ate.

You know how I always

start praying too late.

I'm ever grateful

for the food I've received.

When my prayer is delayed,

please don't be peeved.

Amen.

O Holy One Weeping

O Holy One weeping

with us and through us,

widen our hearts

to receive your 

peace in the thick of this

chaos and pain

so that we turn to --

    not on --

one another,

becoming vessels of mercy

and wild tenderness

as we ride these storms

of our world

in transition.

Amen.

Addendum on Loving One's Enemies

Another take I’ve heard on loving one’s enemy [see my previous post] is to recognize, as Carl Jung suggested, that what you see out in the world as “enemy” is a projection of your own shadow: those thoughts, feelings, and impulses that we deny having within ourselves. One way to recognize our shadow is to take note of what triggers us in other people and begin a gentle inquiry into that; work on bringing what is hidden into the light so it can be integrated in a healthy way. This is valuable inner work. Yet it’s also true that there are objective, external enemies who are not solely projections of disowned aspects of our selves. This may seem like an obvious recognition, but I frequently see people advising others to “embrace your inner [fill in a despicable name],” as a cure-all -- as if reality is primarily subjective. No. Reality is messy, complex, inner, outer, personal, collective, perceivable and beyond perceivable. Overprioritizing the internal and minimizing the external—especially when faced with collective, global anguish—is a form of spiritual bypassing.

                                                    *  *  *  *

Brother David Steindl-Rast’s suggestion, from his Gratefulness.org site, invites a more spacious, expansive approach to seeing one’s enemy that might free us from hyperfocusing on an individual or on a current moment: “In cultivating compassion, it may help to visualize your enemies as the children they once were (and somehow remain.)” I found assistance in doing by reading a book about our leader that discussed the difficulties of his childhood – growing up in a loveless home, neglected, bullied, driven by pathological agendas – emotionally and spiritually stunted through no fault of his own. My reactivity starts to soften up as I receive this perspective. The enemy we see today is the result of what has occurred before, in the larger picture that spans decades and generations. Further, what is happening today has less to do with any individual “enemy” than with a long accumulation of sociohistorical and cultural enactments that are reaching a critical tipping point, with our current leadership arising more as symptom than cause. And like boats in a cresting river, we are all caught up in this together. 

One compassionate choice we can make at this moment, for friend, enemy, and stranger, is to peacefully (I hope!) remove unhealthy and abusive leaders from the roles they presently occupy, then continue the long work of healing, tending, binding together, sustaining…

Ponderings on Well-Wishing and Loving One's Enemies

 

Readers, behold --Todd Norman Guess's post from Facebook:

"Just a reminder for anyone who thinks it's appropriate to pray for the recovery of one with such vast amount of blood on his hands...

..Jesus, Pope Peter, Apostle Paul and King David all disagree. They quite clearly and boldly condemned such folks to hell and prayed for God to bring the hammer down.

Saints and sages of other major world wisdom traditions wielded such paradox as well.

Yes, even Divine love is big enough to discern when such things are appropriate.

Don't equate the wide variety of cruel condemnations of false Christians with the timeless voice of 'Lord, please deliver us!' "

I came upon Todd’s above post at a moment of witnessing my reactivity to the news that an oppressor is ill, and I am grateful for his thoughts here. Because frankly, I am not wishing our leader well. The same goes for the spiritual circles that I’m a part of – when we’re honest, we admit that our wishes and prayers have been more in the line of David, as he sings in Psalm 10: 

“Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—let them be caught in the schemes they have devised… their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression; under their tongues are mischief and iniquity… they lurk in secret that they may seize the poor… they stoop, they crouch, and the helpless fall by their might… Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed.”

David was a warrior, writing in lament for the beaten-down. His prayer is the voice of traumatized humanity, uttered in times of peril, grave injustice, and anxiety, denouncing oppression and cruelty, crying out for help. One of the wonderful things about the inclusion of books like Psalms, Proverbs, and Lamentations in the scriptures is that it embraces honest dialogue with God – shouts of anger, cries from the heart, beseechings, groans of grief. The implication is that when it comes to prayer, our naked sincerity has far more value than our edited, disingenuous blessings and well-wishes.

And needless to say: there is a world of difference between fundamentalist or disdainful, self-righteous prayer in which hurricanes, fires, & other disasters are welcomed as God’s punishment raining down on sinners and heathens – versus the cry of the poor who beg and deplore God for relief and for liberation from evildoers and those who mistreat widows, orphans, foreigners – the oppressed.

                                                *  *  *  *  *

In speaking truth to power, prophets frequently offer litanies of woes, as in Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 – “Woe to you rich! For you have already received your comforts … Woe to you who are full! For you will hunger.” Yet just a few verses later comes the direction to “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” This is the grand challenge. How are we to “love” those people, systems, principalities, and powers that abuse us? Church prayers for wretched or misguided rulers sometimes implore God to open their eyes to suffering and change their hearts: (in essence: prayers for a miracle). Then there is the request of Jesus on the cross: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Part of its beauty is that it is not Jesus (or, by analogy, us) volunteering to do the forgiving. It is an appeal for God to do so. In this, Jesus mercifully acknowledges human limitations. When an enemy’s injustice and abuse are ongoing and accumulating, most of us find it impossible to forgive. It is simply beyond our capacity. And thus it’s odious to cast shame on anxious, struggling people (as I’ve observed in social media this past week) for not wishing their enemy well … or for hoping that cruel, ignoble leaders are “caught in the schemes they have devised.” But – but: I might begin to grasp the truth of “they [the ‘enemy’] know not what they do.” This is not to absolve an oppressor of accountability, but to recognize that there can be great blockages to sensing the harm one is doing. Simultaneously, I can humbly accept the awareness of what I cannot do, at least not presently: forgive. This, paradoxically, is the trailhead toward authentic forgiveness.

                                                   *  *  *  *  *

But back to “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” I know many people who ask: how are we, really, to accomplish this? I think the question springs from a misunderstanding of how the word “love” is used in the gospels, especially in the koan-like parables and quotes of Jesus. Here, “love” is not intended to mean “adore, be attracted to or feel affection for.” Obviously it is impossible to have such feelings for one's enemies (though yes, relationships involving abuse can be a tangle of love and enmity...) Gospel love is more action and choice than sentiment or emotion. As author and retired Methodist minister Ted Loder says, “Love is primarily what we do, not what we feel.” The same goes for prayer.

When we make well-discerned choices to contribute to the greater good through our actions, small or large – to see the larger picture and do the right thing – this, I suspect, is how the Spirit prays and acts through us. Loves though us. When we turn our active attention to caring, providing, lifting and laying down burdens, uncovering wounds, healing, sustaining, listening, planting, tending, feeding …. We become a part of a mysterious movement toward restoration, even if we never see its fruition or know if, when, or how our actions had an effect. In a more interdependent and wide-hearted world, everyone benefits, even our “enemy.”  In fostering such a world, says the gospel of Matthew, we become children of the One Who Is, who “makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain down upon the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:45). We love and pray for our enemy by participating in the Mercy that sustains all creation, all people – be they friends, enemies, or strangers.

                                                   *  *  *  *  *

I’ve taken the time to write out something that may be obvious to some readers because I keep coming across people (of various spiritualities) who wonder and ask, “how are we supposed to love our enemy, really?” I think it’s mostly been a confusion about the use of the word “love” in the gospels. And writing helps me to clarify things – (at least for myself, lol, though I wish I had the gift of concision)--MW.

Note: There is now an addendum to this post.