The God Who Becomes

We are all different. God created a diverse bunch. Physically, we all come in different sizes, colors, and shapes. Emotionally, our demeanor and outlook, is equally diverse. In our lifetimes, we change constantly -- never the same from moment to moment. Even at a cellular level, change is happening - fast.

So if we are created in God's image, why do we portray the creator of the universe as static? Most people want a God who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. They cling to a God who they believe can make all the fast changes stall around us as if our life is a storm and we must hold tight to the mast -- the only way to survive. Nice image right? God the immovable when there is spinning all around.

But what if we are supposed to let go of the mast to seek out God in the storm of pain, hunger, debasement, joy, happiness and suffering? What if God is not the mast but the change? God sure likes to create but with the immovable God, creation is done. It happened a long time ago. With a God who changes, creation is on-going and we are participants in it. God and us are not has been but becoming.

Heart, Soul and Mind?

Those of us who embark upon the spiritual journey long to experience an inner peace so extraordinary our zen-calm outer self can't help but to elicit these types of comments from others: "she's got game," "he's arrived" or "she's comfortable in her own skin."  No matter what hits us, like the Dalai Lama, we are cool and calm. Our skin is Teflon.

But most of us eke out an anxious style of spiritual living: sometimes inner peace, sometimes white knuckle endurance, sometimes ripping our hair out, or the worst -- the gravity of heartbreak pulls us to our knees and we weep in pain begging our God to relieve our suffering.

Aging brings even more losses our children grow up and don't need us anymore; careers stall; friends and family members die; and our bodies break with the minor -- constipation, hair loss, wrinkles, fat redistribution -- and the major -- arthritis, back pain, cancer, dementia, and heart disease. Diminishment, if not death looms like a cloudy day. So it begs the question: how can we be comfortable in our own skin when our "skin" keeps changing?

Over the years, I've facilitated many grief groups and counseled countless people who have endured painful loss. Widows and widowers are often the most heartbreaking. To listen to them for any length of time conjures images of someone who is missing essential parts of himself like an arm or a leg. S/he is no longer whole. The widower perceives himself as halved. His fingers fidget in his lap; his lover no longer there to hold his hand.

But to a person, every one makes this claim: they wouldn't trade a single moment of the love they shared then for all the pain they endure now. It is attachment, love and relationship, and not withdrawal which brought them fulfillment. Love is the path to enlightenment.

Can the most healthy of our intimate relationships provide the template for spiritual love?  Template comes from both the word "temple" - a house of worship and "templet" - the horizontal piece undergirding a beam. Our calling is to love God at least as much as the person we love most in the world.  This kind of abiding love, a love than undergirds your being, can take you through a whole host of troubles.  Love of God and God's love for you can give you the wholeness you seek.

The goal of the spiritual life was never to be comfortable in our own skin but even in our anxiety, excitement, contentment or loss to bind ourselves to God through love.

"Love the Lord, your God with all your Heart, Soul and Mind . . . ."

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Tissue Prayers

When I was in fourth grade at Bowie Elementary School in San Angelo, Texas, I kept a messy cubby. My teacher at the time called it my regurgitating locker with papers, pens, spiral notebooks, homework assignments, math sheets and colored pencils struggling to work their way to the edge and out onto the floor. It represented my mind too full of ADHD, daydreams, equations, words, God and deep sadness even as a ten year old. Out of this mess, I wrote poetry, played guitar, hummed and then sang folk music and wondered about God. I was Shiva the Destroyer breaking down my mind and creating from it. Not much has changed in forty years.

My house is relatively neat except for one corner. In my den behind the couch, a regurgitating miasma waits for my full attention; two baskets of paper bills, a world globe, a sewing machine, stacked clear plastic containers of quilting fabrics, a fishing tackle box of beads and beading supplies, photos and the albums they should need to go into, and a fabric cutting mat -- muscle for space in front of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of crafts, theology, fiction and gardening books.

The problem with the past is we perceive it as a regurgitating space of disorder, random experiences, joyful surprises, creative bursts and shameful moments. The past will always encroach on the present and future and it must; the past is who we were and in a universe of constant becoming, the past is along for the ride. Sure I could shove all my clutter under the table in my den, but like the past, shoving dust under a rug only masks it and doesn't solve the issues. And the future? Worry. Always worry.

The Buddha is right, one must concentrate on the present moment to explore one's divinity or from my own religious tradition, the Christ within. But what about the pesky past or the anxious future? They're always getting in the way.

A few years ago, I developed a spiritual tradition called "Tissue Prayers." Finding a comfortable position in a chair (meditation does not have to be painful to be successful!) I write on pieces of paper my joys and heartbreaks, hopes and fears, and I place them in a baggie or paper sack. Like tickets in a raffle, I shake them up. At this point I either stand and walk in a circle similar to the Labyrinth discipline or I remain seated and pick out each item one by one. I cry over it, maybe clutch the paper to my heart and when I have honored and accepted every feeling, asked for forgiveness if needed, and offered them up to the Divine Healer, I discard the paper just like a tissue. I have also been known to burn the tissue prayers and on one occasion, I buried them. Either way, my gesture serves one function; I am done with this for now. I perform this prayer discipline at the beginning of every retreat so my mind and heart can be in the present moment -- ready to receive healing in the present for the past and future.

If ever you need to clear the slate and open up your heart to healing and divine love, tissue prayers will get you there.

Proof of Heaven

Even at 50 years of age, my default approach upon meeting an elderly person assumes s/he cannot contribute equally to me in cognitive depth, wit or speed. I am in my prime and life has passed them by. In another words, an elderly person cannot keep up. Like all prejudices, I am guilty of committing them even before I can consciously rebel against my stereotypes. These are just some of my assumptions about old people: can't hear, can't see, slower to process information or respond to it, dismissive of current popular culture, physically slow, and disagreeing with them means disrespect. They are the fragile, precious vase you put on a pedestal and treat with care or you might break it. I fight these prejudices but I have not conquered them.

Just the other day at a luncheon, I sat next to a gentleman in his 80's. The forty pounds plus he had lost a year ago when he had nearly died remained absent from his frame. His suspenders drooped over his shoulders like the the slender branches of a weeping willow. He is frail by any measure and he is old. I've known him tangentially for a few years in what I call an "across the room" friendship; I know something of his past, I cheer his successes, and speak my sorrow for his trials, but beyond this, I have the thinnest of connections. Like the vase, I have politely but dismissively regarded him from afar.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what happens after death. Well-written, intriguing and impossible to put down.