I know the way you can get

by Hafiz

I know the way you can get,
When you have not had a drink of Love
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp,
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree,
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
that arrays itself against the world
and throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent,
And into one’s self.

Oh I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure from every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love’s Hands.

That is why all of the Great Ones speak of the vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being Playful,
and Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me, For I am a Sweet Old Vagabond
With an Infinite Leaking Barrel Of Light and Laughter and Truth
That the Beloved has tied to my back
Dear One,
Indeed, please bring your heart near to me,
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!

…

It’s time for the church to get serious about loving the poor!
It’s time for the church to be more inclusive of / welcoming to / connected with GLBT people.
It’s time to give women a voice!

It’s time for me to fess up about why these statements make me cringe.

I love the sentiment. I love the intention to include. I love the idea of people loving each other. Rich people loving poor (and vice versa), “straight” loving queer (and vice versa), men loving women (and vice versa).

But something about these pleas (It’s time for the church to get serious about loving the poor!) just hit my gut, and sits there, like a stone.

I think it’s because my church is a bunch of people under a bridge who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or whether they’ll have a dry place to lay their heads that night. Getting serious about the poor isn’t the advice I’d give them. (In fact, it’s nearly universal that when one member of this church has a bite to eat, they share it. When one has money, it gets spread around.)

And that’s ok with me. Not all advice needs to apply to all people. But the thing is, the statement about “the church” really assumes that “the church” is made up of a particular kind of person.

If I say “How can we be more welcoming to black people?” you know I am probably not black, right? And the people I’m talking to probably are not black. Probably, they are white people. So I’d really love to hear “How can we, as white people, be more welcoming to black people?” But to ask “the church” to be more welcoming to black people is to talk as though “the church” is the white people. To ask “the church” to be more welcoming of GLBT people is to talk as though “the church” is straight.

When someone says “How can we give women a voice?!” I think I’m not in that “we.” I don’t mind men getting together to talk about such things, but when it’s my group, and I think of myself as involved, to hear that just tells me I was wrong.

But now I’m reading his memoir, Broken Music. How that happened is this: I was looking up version of “People Get Ready”, and I found one that Sting sung with Jeff Beck on guitar. it was a weird performance… I wondered if Sting was upset or drunk or something. But one thing really stood out. Where all the other singers I’d heard said (regarding the “train to Jordan”, something to this affect,

There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner
who would hurt all mankind, just to save his own…
Have pity on those
whose chances grow thinner…

… Sting sang instead,

There’s even room for the hopeless sinner
who would hurt all mankind, just to save his own.
Have pity on me…

I searched (and searched, and searched) and haven’t yet found any other version sung that way.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Sting, since I heard him interviewed on NPR way back when Dream of the Blue Turtles came out. Terri Gross, I think, asked about “Every Breath You Take,” and he said folks write to say how the love it, and they play it at their weddings. He said he thought the song was creepy, and, of folks who played it at their wedding, he laughed and said, “Good luck with that.” I loved him a little bit right then.

Anyway, so this led me to his memoir. I was curious. I’m about 80% through it, and, though I’m enjoying the whole thing, there was one part right in the beginning that really got me.

It’s where he talks about his first (only?) mystical experience. His happened under the influence of an “ancient medicine,” in a jungle in Brazil, but it’s clearly recognizable as the sort of mystical experience that other folks report. And it’s remarkably similar to experiences I’ve had, albeit without the help of any ancient medicines.

I love the way he wrote about it.

Yet when we walk outside into the cool of the evening, the jungle is vibrantly alive, in fact disarmingly alive, and I have never felt so consciously connected before. I may be out of my gourd, but I seem to be perceiving the world on a molecular level, where the normal barriers that separate “me” from everything else have been removed, as if every leaf, every blade of grass, every nodding flower is reaching out, every insect calling to me, every star in the clear sky sending a direct beam of light to the top of my head.

This sensation of connectedness is overwhelming. It’s like floating in a bouyant limitless ocean of feeling that I can’t really begin to describe unless I invoke the word love.

Heh. If you know me at all, I’m sure you know how giddy I was at that point.

Before this experience I would have used the word to separate what I love from everything I don’t love—us not them, heroes from villians, friend from foe, everything in life separated and distinct like walled cities or hilltop fortresses jealously guarding their hoard of separateness. Now all is swamped in this tidal wave of energy which grounds the skies to the earth so that every particle of matter in and around me is vibrant with significance. Everything around me seems in a state of grace and eternal. And strangest of all is that such grandiose philosophizing seems perfectly appropriate in this context, as if the spectacular visions have opened a doorway to another world of frankly cosmic possibilities.

Wow. Isn’t that lovely? I was rivited. And then he talked about the implications he sees in that, and that last sentence, the very last one, really, really threw me.

I have to sit down on the steps of the church in dumbstruck awe at the beauty of the jungle and the stars above my head, but it is almost too much to bear. I lower my eyes to see a small gap in the stone steps, and there in the darkness, six inches down, at the bottom of the narrow crevice formed by the rough slabs of granite, grows an exquisite purple flower. It is like a forget-me-not, five petals of magenta radiating from the central mandala of a five-pointed yellow star, reaching bravely toward the light with an extraordinary life force and I am the sole witness to the courage of its struggle. In this moment I am led to an understanding that not only must such tiny, beautiful, and delicate living things be charged with love, but also the inanimate stones that surround them, everything giving and receiving, reflecting and absorbing, resisting and yielding, and I realize perhaps for the first time that love is never wasted. Love can be denied or ignored, or even perverted, but it does not disappear, it merely takes another form, until we are consciously ready to accept its mystery and its power. This may take a moment or an eternity, and there can be no insignificancies in eternity. And if this is true, then I must continue to remember my story and attempt to make some sense of it, to try to remake the drab prose of my life into some kind of transcendent poetry.

I have always had a sort of existential angst that I don’t know how to explain. Whenever I’ve thought there might be “no purpose” to life, or that the universe is a bunch of rocks that happened to spark life, but will just go back to nothing… well, that route it suicide for me. Literally, kinda. I have diagnoses to prove it.

And I had been thinking about this more lately (again). Trying to remember what I hold on to in order not to lose hope. And then I read this. It was one of several messages I got over as many days, but definitely one of the juicier ones.

And if this is true, then I must continue to remember my story and attempt to make some sense of it, to try to remake the drab prose of my life into some kind of transcendent poetry.

And, by the way, I’m still looking for anybody else who sings the love-grace-version of “People Get Ready.”

But our ways of reaching for freedom have diverged. Near as I can tell, he’s liking the Libertarian approach, whereas I look more like an anarchist of sorts. (The sort that doesn’t think anarchy will fix anything.)

All that is a preface, to tell you that Gene posted a quote on facebook that intrigued me.

“So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.” Ayn Rand

I read this and remembered how it felt to think that those were the only choices. It’s a feeling that has the comfort of familiarity. But I’m glad to be rid of it.

Another world is possible.

As a Jew, I heard something in Synagogue that blew me away. (I was lucky, in that I hadn’t grown up with it and become numbed to the message. An argument for not subjecting kids to religious education. But I digress.) Here is the message that electrified me:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

Because it’s about noticing what’s real and sacred, and sticking with it. It made so much sense to me.

And then I read about loving your neighbor as yourself. This idea isn’t original with Jesus. Plenty of Rabbis around the time he lived talked about this idea, and it’s found in the Hebrew Bible. (In Leviticus, of all places!)

But just when I thought got the whole message, here comes this part:

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

And somehow I knew, “Yes, that. Imma do that.”

But does love work?

I used to hear “Love will fix everything,” and I used to think it was naive. Then I thought maybe it was true. But what Jesus teaches me is that even if it isn’t true, I want to do it anyway. Even if it isn’t effective or the answer, I still want to choose love. And yet…

Love wins.

When I don’t see it as effective, it means I’m measuring by a yardstick that values other things over love, over beauty, over truth. I’m living out — embodying — values of money, security, stuff that’s subject to rust and decay and being taken away when I’m not looking.

That’s not really me. That’s not what I want to embody. I want the yardstick of peace. Or — no — I want to throw away the yardstick, and live in the world where Love wins. The world my teacher calls the Kingdom of Heaven.

Sorry, Ayn. Neither guns nor money open the door to that kingdom.

Other people wanted me to understand why they think the creed is a beautiful thing. “It’s poetry,” they told me. “It’s a symbol of our unity.” And “It ties us together through space and time as one body.”

That idea has been snagging for me for a long time. Today, I got clear on why. And as I got clearer, I felt the knot in my throat that forms around it grow harder. I felt the tears it provokes coming closer to the surface.

I am no longer so attached to my beliefs, so I’m not so worried about whether I “believe” it, or whether it’s true in either a literal or a metaphorical sense. I’m not looking for a creed I can recite because it contains my ideas about how God works. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the Nicene Creed is about authoritarian smackdown.

It doesn’t give me a sense of unity nearly as much as it gives me a sense of division. No, to be honest, more like a sense of horror. By reciting that creed, I’d be saying that I stand with the victors of history. What?! That’s not me. That’s not where I stand at all.

I stand, instead, with the folks who were killed for thinking something different. I stand with the unitarians, for whom the idea of a trinity smelled of idolatry. I stand with the folks who said Jesus was a human being, the “adopted” Son of God. I stand with the ones who interpreted talk of “hell” differently from how the powers wanted them to see it.

I stand with the voices who wrestled with this Kingdom that Jesus taught them about. I stand with the ones who wrote the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, of Mary Magdalene, of Judas. I stand with the ones whose writings we will never see, because they were destroyed by the authorities who created the Creed.

I stand with those who question, and I will not recite a creed that’s a monument to violence in the name of God.

I have become attached to my ideas. I have divided people into categories of friend and enemy based on their beliefs. Thinking of the times I’ve placed ideas over people, I notice and reconsider, I turn toward wholeness. Thinking of the times that I have used human power against beautiful, marvelous human beings, I notice and reconsider, and I turn toward light. God of love, hear my prayer.

If you’ve been around me much in person, you’ve probably heard my confession that I yelled at my mother a few weeks ago. (I’ll spare you the choice words.) This was a moment when I noticed I wasn’t loving her, but it was also a moment that helped me love myself more clearly. In my experience, self-compassion has to come first. I simply cannot love someone I find difficult unless I love myself first.

So it’s been a dilemma. I got into blame-space and anger toward her in that moment. Luckily, I was able to get out of that judgment-mind pretty quickly. But only by being away from her. And since then, I’ve been asking myself what kind of compassion I can offer her. Is the best I can do to simply avoid her? This question has come up over and over during my entire adult life. Can I maintain a compassionate relationship with her, or must I walk away?

Giving Up

Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that my mother is too wounded to be able to have an honest conversation about this stuff. She hurts so much. Because her sense of self-worth is so damaged, and for many other reasons, I concluded that she is not able to have the kind of mutually enriching relationship I long for. My shorthand for this was to think of her as having an illness.

Some folks don’t like it, but this perspective allowed me to be kind toward her much more easily. I imagined that she had something like Alzheimers or Schizophrenia or a developmental disability, and it was just no problem, then, to have compassion for her — and more importantly, to not need her.

But this prevented me from being honest with her. I don’t imagine I’d go up to a parent with Alzheimers and say, “You know, Mom, I have to muster all my courage before I walk into this room. Your yelling at me gets on my last nerve, and every time I talk to you, I go cry in my hubby’s arms.” This approach helped me cope with mom, but it didn’t really leave room for honesty.

Getting Real

This year for Mothers Day, my mom is getting honesty. She’s about to learn why I don’t call (because my serenity falls apart when she berates me), and about how I’ve tried to keep this from her by arranging visits when I can humor her, or only seeing her when I’m particularly strong. She’s about to learn how much her constant stream of not-good-enough messages puts distance between us.

This is the where my intention to love her meets with her need and pain and lashing out. This is where they come together, for now. It is always shifting, so I won’t say it’s where it will stay, but for now, it’s time to talk with her.

I’m excited, actually, because I have such peace around the upcoming conversation. I’ve finally exhausted all other options; honesty is what’s left, and some how it’s begun to look not just possible, but kinda beautiful.

But let me digress a minute.

I was driving through what I considered to be a “rich” neighborhood a few winters ago. To be honest, though, I’ve seen richer neighborhoods. This one was what the folks there probably considered middle class. But I was driving through and I was thinking about the folks living under a bridge downtown, and along the river. I was thinking how cold they must be, camping outside, and thinking How can these people just sit in their cozy houses with empty bedrooms and extra cars?! Don’t they care?! People are dying!

But part of my practice is to notice when my heart is closing, and to turn it. One way I do that is by taking angry-questions like “How can they do that?!” and turning them into real questions, like “How can they do that?” Amazingly effective, that trick.

So I asked myself, really asked, how they could do it. And I realized as I was asking that I live in a cozy house. I have spare floor space and a warm bed, even while other people freeze. Why do I do it? Oh, but I barely have enough. I don’t have all that extra.

And that’s when it hit me. They can live in their big cozy house with a spare room for the same reason I live in my little cozy house without a spare room. Because they think they barely have enough. They’re scared to give up what they have. Just like the rest of us.

Which has to do with energy how?

I’m thinking of this because I’ve been talking to friends, and lots of them tell me the same thing. They have dreams that are bigger than their energy and resources. The connection is that many of these friends (not all) look to me like people who have lots of energy and lots of resources.

And these friends are like the folks I saw as wealthy. Mostly, they don’t have chronic illness. Mostly, they are healthy, well-educated, mostly even white & male, for what that’s worth. Wealthy. They have plenty of energy, don’t they? Why would they be feeling limited?

Accepting, embracing reality. Being here & now.

I’m way into not just accepting, but being at peace with — in love with — the present moment, and the fullness of reality. For me, lately that’s meant merging my dreams, my highest vision, with a reality that involves me having an average of four hours a day of alertness. Not enough for a full-time job, or even a part-time job.

For years, I’ve wrestled with this. (And it isn’t consistent, so it’s hard to get used to a certain level of energy. Changes all the time.) Tried to match my ideas and excitement with the amount of energy available. It’s impossible! I don’t have enough!

Having enough.

Hmm. Again with the people I perceive as wealthy (though in health & resources, not money). They don’t feel like they have enough any more than I do. They have dreams they can’t find time or energy or money to pursue, just like I do.

So then I think maybe this is about what it means to have enough. And that maybe — bear with me here — that I’ve been given an amazing gift in this illness, in my wheelchair years, in my history and angst and pain and karma.

It just keeps coming back to this… Somehow, peace comes from letting go. I don’t mean giving up, but when I try to organize things so that there’s “enough”, there never is. That approach brings nothing but constant struggle. When I let go, then there’s hope of peace. Not a giving-up peace, but real peace, from… I don’t know… walking a natural path, a path of love, of curiosity, exploration, collaboration, friendship, hope… all kinds of beautiful things. What I imagine a Taoist might call letting what is be what is, or a Buddhist might call nonresistance and nonattachment.

That’s why I look back on the years I spent on a wheelchair as a blessing. (Except when I hate them and fear their return, of course.) That’s why I’m (sometimes) grateful for all the messiness that makes up this life. Well, and also cuz it keeps me honest — don’t have the energy to be phony.

I kinda think energy is both limitless and finite.

What do you do with your energy? Do you feel limited by it? Or is it abundant?

If following a “natural” path means noticing what we’re doing, being fully present with that, and then gently nudging toward our vision, then we need to be aware of what we want more of, and what we want less of.

Do you always have several projects going at once? Or is your life full of free time, sipping tea on the porch, building towns with your kid on the floor? Do you run out of energy, or do you get plenty of rest and start the day ready to do beautiful things?

More importantly, what would you like more of in life, and what would you like less of? Can letting go make life richer?

I was sad reading his piece, and a little frustrated. He misses so much of what I hold dear about the emergent Christianity. Misses it entirely.

Emergence is how the world works

Here’s the opening sentence from Wikipedia’s article on Emergence:

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.

Emergence, when applied as an idea to the church (the whole of Christianity) is an acknowledgement that systems, including theological ideas, social expectations, language, and ways of doing community, evolve, develop, and change over time. This is in contrast to much of recent Christendom, which has been based on entrenched power, and the fantasy that we have everything all worked out, that the truth is obvious and written down, that there are no questions yet to be asked (except by those who just haven’t been given the answers yet).

This so-called “emergent church” is what has made it possible for atheists (I’ve known several) and others who once rejected Christianity outright to see the beauty in the good news.

The other kind of church allows questioning, as long as it can provide the answers. The other kind of church is all for trying out new kinds of music, as long as the doctrine stays clear and consistent. But the emergent church — the church that’s about people exploring, questioning, doubting, changing their minds when new ideas look more promising — that church is alive! That church is interesting!

Criticism

I want to say a little bit about criticism. I don’t mean criticism of people — “you’re a dummy!” or “you’re the anti-christ!” I mean criticism of ideas. Part of this new way of looking at church involves subjecting ideas to criticism. It means being free to say “But ___ doesn’t really make sense to me. How can __ be true if __?” And out of conversations like that, we get better ideas. That’s what criticism can give us.

In a world where questions are “encouraged” only as an opening for experts to give answers, and criticism is not allowed, or is only given lip service, ideas do not improve.

Christendom is dead

The rule of the elite, with experts creating doctrine and the populace swallowing it, is gone. The emergent church is about thinking, feeling, experiencing the kingdom of God, and being free to see where that leads us. It’s beautiful, creative, and alive. And I’m so damn grateful.

The lesson I’m learning from this Good Friday is that some things are more important than staying alive, more important than self-protection.

What’s real is love, and love doesn’t die.

I sit down to write this post about unschooling, and a sense of burden settles over me. Ack! What’s that about?

Here’s what it’s about: I didn’t sit down to write some Introduction to Unschooling, or to take up the job of defending it. I just wanted to say something about my beautiful kids. And I guess I want there to be space for that.

Ok, pardon my introductory mind-clearing. I’m ready now.

Unschooling: a very quick definition

Unschooling is life without school. It’s connected with homeschooling, in that my kids are home during the day, when other kids are at school. It’s a “form” of homeschooling, but only because schooling is what’s expected. In our day-to-day lives, we aren’t schooling, or homeschooling, or even unschooling. We’re just living.

SuperKids

I remember when I was a new mom, reading stories about homeschool kids who were superstars. Went to Harvard at 15, won an olympic medal, four siblings who all became doctors… Those stories worried me a little. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid. And a parent.

But they aren’t the real measure of whether homeschooling “works”. The real measure is in the juicy stuff: beauty, love, joy, truth. And in creativity.

Creativity and Joy

So here’s what I sat down to write about my kids: Wow.

I am so amazed, so delighted. None of them are on an obvious track to the big leagues. But all of them are following their own real calling. All of them are creative in very specific, completely unique ways.

One is into systems. He’s a talented programmer, and loves math and science. He’s taken some college classes, and will take more, but his learning is very much his own. For example, he taught himself Calculus, rather than take it in school.

He also loves teaching, and has begun finding work as a tutor. He’s quite good at it, coming at it, as he does, with no sense of coercion or pressure, but instead with a deep love of exploring and understanding things.

He’s studying artificial intelligence, and is developing some serious mentor relationships that don’t depend on his having a college degree, or even being enrolled.

What’s most interesting to me is that he follows his own inner light. In other words, he’s a little obsessed. And out of that obsession comes brilliant, creative thinking. I love watching that!

The next kid is a visual artist. He has lulls occasionally, but mostly, he can’t can’t stop drawing. There’s that “obsessed” again.

His stuff is clever, interesting, and sometimes captures human experience in a way that brings tears to my eyes.

The younger one was humming tunes before he was six months old. I think he can play back every song he’s ever heard in his mind. His adoration for music is delicious, contagious. He loves to play with all kinds of instruments.

He’s really resistant to formal instruction. I’ve spent some time worrying that we “should” have pushed lessons on him from a young age. I imagine that he has the talent to be a celebrated performer. But I don’t think lessons would have helped. I think they’d have done more to dampen his passion.

As it is, he lives in a swirl of music, from when he wakes to when he sleeps. And like his brothers, he kneads and molds his experience into something that’s all his, not like anyone else’s.

Other unschoolers I’ve known have had their own passions. One is a dancer. Another has had a life-long love of horses, and wants to major in business so her horse business will thrive. Yet another has always loved cars. He became a talented mechanic, then decided to enroll in an elite BMW mechanics school.

Oh, and meanwhile, all of these kids are very close with their siblings. They would never consider doing something to hurt one another, hitting, name-calling, etc. They are best friends with their sibs, and with their parents.

Does that sound crazy?

Here I am, talking about unschooling, and maybe defending it. That’s not what I wanted to do.

What I wanted to do was to celebrate how grateful I am to live in the world with these kids, how beautiful they are, how excited I am to be a part of this beautiful, creative life. Maybe how grateful I am to be free from the whole schooling world.

I’m only just learning to live the way they do, in my mid 40s. Papa and I have spent the last few years really living this, and discovered that we also have the sort of calling our kids have. Turns out I’m a fiend for love & beauty. Thoroughly obsessed with it. I’ve discovered that I actually know things about how to increase compassion in the world. I know things about how to be less angry. I know about what love can do. And I’m learning more all the time about those things.

Papa is similarly obsessed with patterns. Well, not sure how to describe it, but the way to his heart is through a good fractal. He’s a functional programmer, a problem-solver, and a practical epistemologist. And if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry; He does. And I’ve seen it—even if I can’t do it, I can tell it’s beautiful.

Fireworks

So that’s what I wanted to say. w00t! Yipee! The world is beautiful, and I’m glad to be a part of it.

I’m grateful for freedom, grateful for creative juice, grateful for the love of my family, grateful for all the sparkly bits of life that appear when we get out of the way.

And, yeah, I don’t much like school.