Responding Quietly

Cool morning. A very light rain falls in the half-light. A large construction vehicle floods the Temple garden with noise though it’s not yet five thirty in the morning. Birds sing sharply, adding the descant to the rumbling bass.

The nasturtiums in the corner wiggle ever so slightly in response. Is it the sonic vibration or the unseen breeze that moves them? It you didn’t look carefully, you’d think they were still. Easy to miss this subtle responsiveness of all things to each other. Now that I look closer, I see each round leaf and each golden blossom moves independently—each one positioned and shaped to dance with the winds of its unique life. One plant with a multitude of separately sensing lives.

I feel tired and slow this morning. The great winds of conviction and inspiration that sometimes blow through me are quiet. I try not to panic and cover over. I trust something smaller. I wait and listen louder. I begin to sense the zephyrs that move silently and leave only the slightest trace.

I look around me and try to find my way into where I am. I sense my place. My weather app said ‘foggy’ this morning. I didn’t realize it was talking about my inner weather. Curriculum this morning: moving slowly in the fog. I may not be thrilled about it, but it’s better than pretending.

I started up the weed-whacker yesterday for the first time this year. The gas-powered noise-maker started right up. I was so excited to have it when I first bought it ten years ago. But I like things fairly disorderly here in the garden so I rarely use it. I can’t tell whether it’s because I don’t like noise and hard work or it’s really an aesthetic choice.

I appreciate formal gardens with nothing out of place, but I don’t find them relaxing. When nature is used for show, I appreciate the mastery of the gardener and the work of those who maintain it, but it doesn’t help me cross the space between me and the natural world. The plants and paths are used to express the pattern in the gardener’s mind. It’s simpler, more geometric and sometimes easier to understand and appreciate, but rarely inviting to my soul.

I like the wildness of things to be a full partner in the design. Of course, the wildness of life is present within even the most formal garden, all you have to do is look close enough. The branching of each of the row of carefully trimmed shrubs is actually quite different and each of the blossoms of one hundred tulips is a different slightly different shade from its neighbor.

But I like it to be more obvious – where you sometimes can’t tell what is intentional and what just happens and aren’t quite sure who’s really in charge. This feels more encouraging to me—this intertwining of plans and actual life. So much of the content of our lives comes from the billions of actions that have come before this moment—ours and others. The past fully invades the present to constrain and guide what is to come. And each moment invites us to participate fully. Each action creates the world that we move into.

What we choose to do and what we choose to pay attention to joins with all that has come before in an interactive feedback loop that we call a life. Each moment is wild and constrained at the same time. Not a problem.

The leaves of the nasturtium like to bounce and jiggle. Their morning exercise in the twilight waiting for receive the photon packets of light later to power their green factories. I bounce and jiggle in my mind, learning to be still enough to catch the small breezes of delight that pass through.

A two-inch hummingbird comes by on her morning rounds. Buzzing like a small diesel, she carefully sips the nectar from one or two golden blossoms then wheels away. I sit still, then go on tapping on the keyboard.

Personal Practice – Sit still for a few minutes with your eyes closed. Let your mind go dreamy. Now open your eyes. Look around notice what catches your attention. Whatever it is, spend a few more minutes just looking carefully at it. Notice its shapes and colors, textures and sounds (if any). Let yourself sense the qualities of what you see. Imagine yourself as this object. What does it feel like from the inside? What might the wisdom of this thing be? Imagine that it has some tip for you today. What is the wisdom tip this object has to give you? [aka ‘flirts’ from Process Work and Arny Mindell]

Shaving as Spiritual Practice

1. It’s getting harder
to shave. My arms
and hands work
fine still but
my face is hollowing
here and folding
there caught in its
downward glide
toward full repose.

2. My vanity insists
I do my best
to avoid the old
man’s shave—
the tufts of stray
white whiskers
that appear unwanted
on the neck or under
the nose or by
the ears—unseen
by the bearer and
slightly embarrassing
to the viewer
who must overlook
the natural oversight.

Stretching patches of
face and neck I
momentarily regain
the smooth surfaces
and familiar contours
I took for granted
over decades of daily
dragging and scraping
the expected and
ever-changing contours
in the mirror.

3. At the end of
his life, my brother
shaved his father-in-law.
Hands of the doctor—
always willing to
be helpful even
through the inevitable
criticism and irritation.

4. My brother and I
began shaving
with the first excuse
of facial hair. In
the smell and excitement
of it all we began
enacting our appointed
roles of manhood
competing and complete
with our barely conceived
dreams of soft romance
and hard adventure.

5. Now, how many
shaves have there
been? Even my
current lax standards
require two or three
sessions per week.

I stand with myself
and look in the mirror.
I try to see more
than my father’s hooded
eyes and slack skinned
neck that appear
before me—all included
in the karmic legacy
that continues this day
through this face and these
countless and determined

whiskers.

Truth and Reconciliation

In early June, a little publicized piece of legislation was announced:

‘Congresswoman Barbara Lee [Oakland, CA, Dem.] announced legislation calling for the establishment of the first United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT). The Commission will examine the effects of slavery, institutional racism, and discrimination against people of color, and how our history impacts laws and policies today. 

The legislation – supported by a broad coalition of members of Congress and community partners – will be officially introduced Thursday, June 4. The full text of the resolution can be found here. 

“The murder of George Floyd and the current COVID-19 crisis illustrate once again the painful and dangerous legacy that white supremacy has had in our country, and the desperate need to fully acknowledge and understand how our history of inequality continues today,” Congresswoman Lee said. “This inequality is at the heart of every crisis we’re dealing with right now – the crises of police brutality and mass incarceration, the COVID-19 public health crisis which is disproportionately affecting communities of color, and the crisis of poverty excluding so many minority families from the American Dream. This is a matter of survival for countless Americans. Only by understanding our past, and confronting the errors that still haunt us today, can we truly move forward as a people and a country.”

On July 2, Suffolk (Boston) County District Attorney Rachel Rollins announced she was joining with DA’s from Philadelphia and San Francisco to create Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commissions to hear from individuals who feel they have been victims of violence or prosecutorial misconduct.

Some people might say we shouldn’t dredge up old stories and we should start fresh. But our past is always with us – ignoring the pain and violence that are woven into our American history does not make them go away. A fresh start means coming clean. We must look beyond the self-serving myths of freedom and equality into the sometimes invisible systems of preserving privilege that have actively worked against so many.

Jesus said: ‘The truth will set you free.’ ‘The truth’ can only be uncovered when we begin to listen to all the voices—not just the ones of the educated and the powerful, but the voices of those who have been silenced. While Christianity has been used to justify terrible violence and oppression in this country and others, it also has been an inspiration for generations of sisters and brothers, priests and lay people. They have sought the truth by standing with the poor and powerless (as Jesus did) against the systems and the people in power.

May we too be inspired to use our voices and our privilege to hear the voices and the stories of all of us. Given the hidden barriers of privilege, unless we actively seek out and create new systems and relationships, we will not hear these voices. The status quo is stacked against the connections and the truth that many of us say that we seek. Let us all vow to live out our values more fully as we intentionally listen to hear what has been silenced and to energetically look to see what has been hidden.

Personal Practice – Curiosity. Find out something new today. Begin by being curious about the people closest to you—your family, friends and neighbors. What are their truths that you may have been blind to? The stories of their inner lives that they have felt they needed to hide? Then see if you can find a story on line or in a book of someone who has a radically different life from yours. Listen or read and notice what you have not noticed before.

On the Positive Function of Shame

The great Japanese Zen Master Hakuin taught that shame is one of the necessary conditions for progressing on the spiritual path. I have often been bothered and puzzled by this teaching. Shame is such a painful emotional state that seems to leads to a state of fear that narrows our lives and inhibits our growth. So what is the positive function of shame?

I think it has to do with our perpetual human blindness. We are naturally subject to greed, anger and ignorance. Though most everyone I know has good intentions, we all do things, sometimes terrible things, that hurt each other. The history of humanity is filled with ruthless violence. We humans act collectively through armies, laws and police power to subjugate and violate other groups of humans we see as different or lesser. And these systemic acts of violence are most often carried out under the delusion of high ideals – a perfect society, a democracy, God’s true and perfect kingdom.

Each one of us, though we have most likely not killed or physically beat someone personally, is inconsistent, blind and defensive. We don’t always act in alignment with what we know to be true. And when we realize that we are in the wrong, our first impulse is to deny, attack or simply disappear.

From this perspective, shame is what arises when we come face-to-face with the pain we have caused by our blindness or by our willful acting out of our worst impulses. We feel our natural human connection to the people we have hurt and we see how our actions have hurt others we truly care about. If we are lucky, we feel shame and remorse.

Shame and remorse are a power that can allow us to transform some part of our ancient habits of self-centeredness and separation. These impulses of greed, anger and ignorance keep us locked in a world of delusion. The little self that asserts its fundamental independence from others is painfully misguided. Pretending to be autonomous, it rejects its place in the mutuality of all life and lives in fear and endless struggle. Though it can be very painful to wake up to the degree of our self-delusion, it is the only path toward a life of connection and true freedom.

For me, these moments of shameful realization often feel like a kind of death. This is the necessary death that is an ongoing part of growing in love and understanding. When confronted with the unskillfulness and meanness of our actions, we realize that we are not the good and perfect person we wish to be. The death of this image of ourselves is very painful. Our old certainties of the moral high ground and specialness are stripped away. It is this dying of the old self that creates the space for transformation and true change.

Shame is part of the process of waking up. I don’t like it one bit, but I am learning to accept it and trust its power. I can’t fix it or fix me or fix anyone. But if I can stay still and keep my eyes open long enough, shame has the power to help me move toward my true place in this wondrous, confusing and precious world.

Personal Practice – How does shame operate in your life? What have you done and do you do that you most regret? What embarrasses you most about yourself? Can you explore these areas without trying to fix yourself or others? When you turn to these places, is it possible to simply feel the shame or regret without falling into despair or self-justification? Go gently and see if it can be enough just to bring compassionate awareness to these areas.

No Way Forward

Sometimes there is no way forward.

Situations arise within and without that we cannot fix and we are powerless to change. From the American perspective of constant progress and perpetual improvement, these moments are to be avoided at all cost. These times of stuckness are, however, the ways that individuals and systems grow and change beyond the confines of the bubble in which they have been operating. Carefully hidden secrets come to light. Old strategies and identities no longer suffice. While denial and defensiveness are our instinctive reaction, these are times of life-giving change and possibility. They almost always feel terrible.

We are facing such a moment in our society with the casually sadistic killing of George Floyd and our subsequent growing awareness of the brutal and overt racism embedded our system of policing. But policing is not the root problem, it is a manifestation of an intentional pattern of American aggression against black bodies for the last four hundred years. Many of us good white people have been doing our best to live good lives and to avoid having to look too closely at these terrible injustices that are at the foundation of our supposedly enlightened democracy.

President Trump has been a big help in bringing awareness to these (and other) important issues. His words and actions are so transparently mean-spirited and self-centered that many of us have been shocked out of complacency. Trump is a twisted and perfect realization of white American manhood. He’s ruthlessly out for #1 and proudly denies the mutuality of life. He only cares about appearing powerful and takes no responsibility for the consequences of his actions. But Trump would not last another day in the White House unless he was held in place by a system that supports and encourages this kind of behavior. The oligarchy of the wealthy needs protection from the consequences of their actions and Trump is just our man.

In the exaggerated mirror of Donald Trump, some of our country has begun to wake up to our hidden secrets and injustices. Beginning with the Women’s March on DC at the inauguration and to the #MeToo movement and now to Black Lives Matter. Trump’s negative example has inspired many of us and called us into action—challenging us to go beyond our comfortable lives and to own the power we have to create a world that includes truth, justice and opportunity for all.

So how do we move forward when we are at the impasse—the impasse of a pattern of inequality and racism so profound that it is easy to feel powerless to do anything productive? Flowery words and superficial apologies are of little use.

A colleague of mine at a gap-year school where I worked used to say to young people who had run afoul of our minimum standards of participation: ‘You can’t talk your way out of a situation you have behaved your way into.’

Chinese 10^th century Zen Master Hongzhi gives us this advice ‘abandon stratagems and take on responsibility’.

In these painful times of awakening, we come face-to-face with realities we would rather ignore. Our natural inclinations are defensiveness, avoidance and helpless collapse. But we are encouraged to see if we can begin to learn what it might be to take responsibility for our situation in some new way.

Taking responsibility begins with accepting that there is no quick solution for the pain and confusion present. Our actions and the actions of all who came before us have led us to this moment. In opening our eyes and ears and hearts, we can begin to let this moment change us. By staying right where we are without offering explanations or solutions—by looking and listening and feeling—perhaps the situation itself can begin to teach us what we need to know and point its own way forward.

Personal Practice – Think of some area in your life where you are feeling stuck. It could be in a personal relationship or in some part of the larger social issues we are all dealing with. Or it might be some place you are stuck within yourself. Whatever it is, turn your attention to the situation itself. Can you notice your tendencies to fix or to turn away? What would it be like if you gave up trying to ‘solve’ the problem and just let yourself be stuck? Allow yourself to feel and see and listen. What if this place has something important to teach you?