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Getting out of your mind

Getting out of your mind

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Man sitting on bench under treeI have heard multiple stories of Thanksgiving dinners being upended by this month’s election. Some people are so upset that they have dis-invited friends and family members from their holiday feasts because their political choices were intolerable to them. Doctors have reported a significant increase in patients reporting debilitating stress because of the election, some experiencing breakdowns. And there have even been reports of suicides with the victims saying they could not live with the political change they believe the election is ushering in.

In response, various websites and channels I follow have been providing advice and methods for coping with stress and despondency. Many people are taking matters into their own hands by simply stepping out of the fray. A few I’ve heard about are literally leaving the country. More common, and more practical, are those reducing or eliminating watching, listening to, or reading news and political commentary media. A couple TV networks have already announced significant budget and salary cuts in response to a drop in viewership. I think this latter option is the healthiest one, and actually a hopeful sign.

It’s been over 25 years since Eckhart Tolle published his mega bestseller, The Power of Now. Boosted by an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey TV show, the book has since been translated into more than fifty languages and read by tens of millions. Its seemingly simplistic assumption is summarized in this quote.

Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.

Why does that matter? Because where we seem to live is in our mind, and it focuses most of its attention on the past or future. That disconnect, Tolle believes, is the source of much of our misery.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

Most don’t realize that the past and present to do not actually exist. They are creations of our mind, just like our imagined self, our ego, which is obsessed with time. It’s occupied with reminiscing about or lamenting the past and looking forward to or fearing the future. What it can’t do is be in the present moment. That is the realm of our true self, our timeless conscious awareness.

Modern culture has mastered the art and techniques of getting into our heads. Political propaganda, commercial advertising, the entertainment industry, and media of all types tell us and show us what to believe, how we should think, how we should feel, what we should value, and how we should spend our money and our time. We are all manipulated far more than we realize or want to admit.

There is growing awareness of all this, however. Confidence in institutions of all sorts has dropped dramatically, often with good reason. Even sources of knowledge and information that used to be valued for their objectivity are now seen to be themselves manipulated or corrupted by outside political and financial interests.

In response, we cast about for new sources we can trust but usually come up empty handed. We do that because we have been mistakenly taught to distrust the one source we actually can believe in: ourselves. Our true self. Not the unending babble of conflicting voices in our head but the spirit that is our center, our conscious awareness with which we know ourselves and the world experienced through our senses.

The political world which seems to have taken hold of so many of us is a fantasy, a creation of our minds. None of us walk the “corridors of power” in Washington. Our experience of it is almost entirely through the media’s talking heads and other electronic or print sources. Such “experience” is then reinforced by conversations with others who mostly agree with our point-of-view. Our minds overflow with arguments and counter-arguments and the drama of conflict between our imagined political heroes and enemies.

When we turn off our TV and step away from our computer, we disengage from our mental turmoil and reality returns. The present moment, life here and now, beckons us to awaken to its truth and potential. As Eckhart Tolle says,

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.

Our minds are wonderful things but they have never been more vulnerable to being hijacked by cultural forces and nefarious actors of all kinds. Our mistake is in believing that our mind is who we are, causing us to identify with the thoughts, feelings, and images spinning inside it. But it’s not. Our true self is what is aware of our mind and is unaffected by it. This is the shocking truth we need to discover, that there is within us a calm center free from the mind’s turmoil. This is what Paul described as “the peace that surpasses all understanding.”

Tolle warns about the danger of misunderstanding the mind’s proper role.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly – you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.

As a result, our lives are deprived of the genuine and fulfilling experiences intended for all of us.

Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.

Spirituality is not about having esoteric experiences. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. Spirituality is awakening to our true nature and our true self. It’s coming back to reality from the imaginary world created in our mind. In doing so, we discover that our identity is not any transitory attribute or social label but the unchanging awareness we simply call “me” or “I.”

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

The dramas of life, including political ones, are very enticing. Our ego feels so good being right and being on the right side. But these dualistic conflicts—whether political, at work, in our family, or in our community—often, and quickly, balloon out of proportion to their real importance. The “combatants” become trapped, unable to disengage because they believe that their self-worth and sense of identity is now at stake in the outcome. But they’re not.

Our value is inherent in our timeless being, our “I am-ness”, which we share with everyone else and all other beings. The more aware we become of our being, and the more we center our sense of self in it, the more secure we feel and the more compassionate we become towards all who share it with us. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” this is what he was pointing to. Our neighbors are, in fact, extensions of our self, because they too embody the Being of all reality, just as we do.

There is certainly much to be done and much that needs to change in our world. But as is obvious today, the political tempests of battling egos accomplishes little. To be of genuine benefit to others and to our planet, we must be grounded in our true self, which acts not out of fear or competition but the peace and compassion which recognizes our oneness with everyone and everything.

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

 

 

 

 

Voting in peace

Voting in peace

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Row of people at voting boothsThe media is full of stories about people in distress anticipating the results of today’s elections. Some can’t sleep or can’t get out of bed. Others are upping their meds. One doctor’s post I read said he had never seen so many patients with anxiety over this year’s election. Some act out in their driving or with other antisocial behavior.

Of course, our political rhetoric promotes this. Opposing candidates are demonized so that we are encouraged to imagine the worst possible outcomes if they are elected. Calamities of all sorts are feared if the candidate we support doesn’t win. And then there are fears about the electoral process itself—technical breakdowns, violence, endless recounts, lawsuits.

From anticipation and imagination come anxiety and fear. And so, the blessing and curse of the human mind appears again. One of the great advantages of our brains is that it allows us to predict the future with some degree of accuracy. This allows us to make plans to take advantage of good circumstances (rain and sun means plant crops) and prepare for difficult ones (cold and snow means grow enough crops to store for the winter).

But our ability to predict the future is actually very limited, often much more so than we realize. We can never anticipate all that the natural world will send us, including weather, disease, earthquakes, and the stray comet collision every few hundred million years. For a variety of personal reasons, including past experience, our imaginations can conjure of wildly unrealistic expectations about the future.

The primary factor in our distress about the unpredictable and uncontrollable future is, of course, our ego. This is the self we imagine our self to be. It lives somewhere inside of us, peering out through our eyes and registering neural inputs through our other senses. It talks to itself incessantly in our minds with our thoughts. A popular and simple definition of this self is our body-mind. It comes into existence at our birth, evolves and changes over time, and comes to an end at our death.

But let me just drop here a very different understanding of all this. It’s from the Anglo-American, 20th century philosopher, teacher, and entertainer (his word), Alan Watts.

You don’t really exist. That is, as an ego, a soul, a separate will. When you realize this, you’re liberated. Ego is an abstraction…. So is one’s self. There’s a happening, but that’s not you. By dying to yourself, finding you don’t exist, you’re reborn. Forgetting yourself, the universe flows on.

Watts is usually thought of as a Western interpreter of East Asian philosophy and religion. But he grew up an Anglican and was ordained in the US as an Episcopal priest. While what he says here may sound Hindu or Buddhist, in fact, it also reflects one of the most profound but usually forgotten (or ignored) teaching of Jesus. In all four gospels, Jesus tells his disciples enigmatically that they must lose their life in order to find it. He says in Luke, for instance:

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.

Watts also echoes the famous dialog between Jesus and Nicodemus in John.

Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.

By implication, in order to be born again, whatever was born the first time must come to an end. It’s in Paul, however, where this notion is expressed most explicitly. For Paul, this is the meaning of the cross, as he says in Galatians.

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

Paul’s experience of the risen Christ meant the death of his “I”, his ego, so that now Christ, the Spirit of God incarnate, was recognized as his true self.

But wait—didn’t we start all this talking about election anxiety? How did we get sidetracked by Bible and theology? It’s a sign of the sad state of religion today that this is seen as taking a sidetrack. For at their core, all of the great religions are concerned with this question: Who am I, really? And they all seek to expose the imposter in this quest, the ego.

There may be no other place where egos are more on display than in an election campaign. Modern campaigns promote the person of the candidate far more than their position on issues, and denigrate the person of their opponent. And this clash of egos then drags in the egos of the candidate’s supporters.

Our egos are inherently insecure because they really don’t exist! One consequence is that we easily attach ourselves to other egos we admire, seeking to somehow claim their attributes as our own. This is the force behind the celebrity culture that has exploded in modern times. And politicians are now, essentially, celebrities, along with TV and movie stars, musicians, athletes, social media personalities, influencers, the “royals”, and anyone media outlets think can be used to attract “eyeballs” to their productions.

It’s not today’s political egos that concern us, however, but our own. Our anxiety over the results of today’s elections needs to be seen for what it is: fearing the defeat of our candidate as our own personal “defeat.” Because our ego is a product of our imagination, it easily spins fantasy worlds in which to exist, 99% of which are in the past or in the future (living in a fantasy present is usually called psychosis).

Our increasing dependence on the media with its inevitably artificial view of reality, and our growing frustration with our circumstances and fears about the world in which we think we live, leave us increasingly susceptible to manipulation by leaders of all sorts. They play sometimes upon our hopes but mostly upon our fears, to draw us into a worldview in which they will protect us and deliver us from disaster.

The ego loves the past and future. It has great difficulty living in the present. Tomorrow and each day that follows, and whenever the election results are known, we will wake up and go about living our lives. Much of it will go “according to plan” but often it will not, as has always been the case. We may rejoice over or bewail the election results, but their consequences for our lives will also be largely unpredictable and almost certainly not what we have imagined.

These days I keep coming back to Jesus’ simple teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6.

Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? … Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

Our anxious ego spins out countless fantasies of doom and disaster in our minds, which keep us unendingly entangled. Living in these fantasies, however, blinds us to the reality of the here and now, including the beauty of the lilies and countless other attributes of the world around us.

The world isn’t all lilies, of course. But as Jesus goes on to say, by ignoring the “troubles” of our fantasies, we will be able to handle much better the problems we actually encounter in the here and now. Because then we can respond out of “the peace that surpasses all understanding” of our true self, which only exists in the present moment, rather than out of the obsessions and anxieties of our imaginary ego.

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

A God of silence

A God of silence

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Hurricane Milton image from spaceIn the days before Hurricane Milton made landfall, I saw multiple Facebook posts appealing to God for protection from the storm. They often were not for personal protection but for some specific location or the whole state, and often in very assertive language. One such post said,

In the mighty name of Jesus, we believe that Hurricane Milton will dissipate and cause no harm to the state of Florida. In the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.

The post had a graphic with a set of praying hands amidst swirling clouds over the Gulf, next to an image of the state of Florida. Similar posts had pictures of Jesus calming a stormy sea from a boat or on shore. The post quoted above had over 800 likes and over 200 responses, the largest number being simply “Amen”, often with one or more hands-together emojis. (In the US, most assume they are “praying hands” but, having been created in Asia like most emojis, they actually represent the gesture accompanying the Hindu Namaste greeting.)

A few responders expressed skepticism about the prospects of any divine intervention. Some of them in turn got surprisingly strong, often judgmental push-back for their lack of faith. A common theme of the posts I saw, as well as many of the comments, was the notion of “claiming” supposed divine promises of protection. Many responses to the skeptics included citing biblical stories of God saving or protecting people in danger. He did it before, so he will do it now.

I recognized these assertive “claiming” prayers as common to a certain strain of evangelicalism, often of the megachurch and Pentecostal variety. They are based on the conviction that believing strongly enough some presumed biblical promise will result in God fulfilling it. The strength of your belief, and the numbers who share that belief, will determine God’s reward.

In a worship setting, such prayers are a combination of “positive thinking” and group-think, and are often used to bind worshipers together. That’s the reason these posts got so many affirmations and why the naysayers were so firmly reprimanded. The skeptics disrupted the group cohesion of the post.

When Milton initially seemed to be behaving in a less destructive way than predicted, posts appeared claiming this was in response to people’s prayers. But as the actual extent of the damage and suffering became apparent, those posts disappeared. Less storm surge was accompanied by damaging winds, flooding rains, and (surprise) fatal tornadoes.

During the heyday of his 700 Club TV show, televangelist Pat Robertson once claimed to have “prayed away” a hurricane threatening his Virginia Beach headquarters. This was quickly slapped down by critics pointing out that the hurricane’s turn simply resulted in suffering and destruction happening somewhere else.

On the flip side was the assertion by Jerry Falwell and others the Hurricane Katrina was punishment for New Orleans’ debauchery, especially its hosting of an annual gay festival. The fact that the vast majority of victims had nothing to do with their city’s supposed depravity was ignored.

The idea that God punishes the wicked and protects and rewards the righteous is found throughout the Bible and is common in the Bible-based religions. This belief is especially prevalent in the Psalms, which probably explains their continuing popularity.

What is often ignored, however, is that such a belief is regularly challenged by other biblical writers. The prophets, especially, reject the notion that God will automatically give his people protection if they ask for it. Going further, wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes reject the notion that righteous living and piety will result in God’s blessings.

The Bible never resolves the issue. An overarching and unanswered question of the Old Testament is why God’s chosen people suffer so much. The New Testament continues that conversation by embracing suffering and death as the path to eternal life. But even there such a notion is never fully satisfying.

To put it bluntly, the biblical tradition struggles with the question: What good is a God who doesn’t help us, and in a predictable and reliable manner? Evangelical “claiming” prayers seem more like magic than faith. Say the right words and get the desired outcome. They also seem to be trying to manipulate God. You said You would protect us, so You have to come through for us when we ask.

Why do we appeal to God for help? Crying out when we are in distress or danger is a natural and automatic response, though not necessarily to God. John Shelby Spong quotes a woman who didn’t believe in God but in a time of great suffering cried out to the Universe for relief. The effect for her was probably the same. It expressed her distress and deep desire for her circumstances to be different.

So is God like a therapist or close friend, listening and nodding as we recite our problems, responding when appropriate, “I feel your pain”? In the progressive Christianity of mainline churches that seems to be the case. Even though prayers are said during weekly worship for the world’s problems and the needs of members, no one can explain what they believe will result from those prayers. Some will say that such prayers make us more aware of others’ needs and perhaps motivate us to act in some helpful way. That may well be true, but what has God got to do with it?

God as a Supreme Being far above us yet watching over everyone and everything is no longer credible for most people, including many religious people. Yet progressive churches have done little to help their members imagine, let alone experience, God in a different way. Countless numbers of theologians of the past two hundred years, Protestant and Catholic, have done valuable and productive work in this regard. Yet their own churches, often while saying affirmative things about them, have largely ignored their insights when it came to reshaping their beliefs and practices.

But it seems now that theology is not the way to move Christianity forward. Rather than more words, it is silence that is opening the way to a new understanding and experience of the Sacred. And some theologians themselves have recognized this.

One of the primary theologians of Vatican II, Karl Rahner, said that Christians of the future will be mystics or they will not exist at all. The great 20th century German American theologian, Paul Tillich, declared that God does not exist, but rather is the ground of existence. This was an idea he derived from the preeminent medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart. God is not a being but Being Itself. Such an understanding has support in many places in the Bible but probably the most well-known is a saying attributed to Paul in the book of Acts: “God is the one in whom we live, and move, and have our being.”

The essence of the mystical experience is not the God far off, out there, somewhere. Rather it’s knowing God right here, right now, within and all around us. In times of distress, we don’t appeal for God’s help so much as center ourselves in the sacred presence that is at the center of our being. By a life of “practicing the presence of God”, as Brother Lawrence described it in the 17th century, we come to know our essential security by our oneness with God and all things.

And this is primarily known in silence. As the Psalmist says, “Be still and know that I AM God.” This is how we experience what Paul describes as “the peace that surpasses all understanding.” It is a peace not of the mind but of the heart, not of words and ideas but of the boundless, silent Awareness that is our True Self. In the words of Meister Eckhart,

The Word lies hidden in the soul, unknown and unheard unless room is made for it in the ground of hearing, otherwise it is not heard. All voices and sounds must cease and there must be pure stillness within, a still silence.

Making room in our overfull lives and silencing the chatter in our minds is today’s spiritual challenge. Only then will we realize that we don’t need to cry out to God to come closer, but rather awaken, again quoting Eckhart, to the God “who is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.”

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

The problem with stories

The problem with stories

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Flyer for event promoting Israeli and Palestinian understanding and peaceThis past Monday evening I attended a public event at the local United Church of Christ congregation, which was co-sponsored by a Reform synagogue. The worship space was filled with some 300 registrants. We had come to hear a presentation by two representatives of an organization called Roots, which promotes reconciliation among Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank. (You can find an account of the event in the Santa Fe New Mexican, from which come the quotations below.)

The speakers were Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, an American born émigré and Israeli West Bank “settler”, and Noor A’wad, a Palestinian peace activist and resident of Bethlehem. Schlesinger did most of the talking (A’wad said he couldn’t compete with a rabbi) but they both told powerful stories of their “conversions.” Each stressed how most Israelis and Palestinians have no contact with one another. In recent years, legal restrictions have made such interaction almost impossible, which makes Roots so remarkable. The organization’s main goal is to create opportunities for both groups to discover each other as human beings.

Both men also said that for most Israelis and nearly all West Bank settlers, Palestinians simply do not exist. That is, they are a “fake” people. There is no Palestinian state and never has been. They are Arabs who need to move to one of the other twenty-some Arab countries to live. And they need to leave because the land belongs to the people of Israel. For that reason, most Israelis also say there is no occupation. How can you occupy your own country? Israel is in the process of resettling its own land.

Schlesinger began by saying, ““We are here this evening to offer solutions — social, spiritual, educational and also political. We are here to light a candle in the darkness, the deep, gloomy darkness.” But the darkness of the chasm between Israelis and Palestinians described by Schlesinger and A’wad seems impenetrable.

Schlesinger was especially blunt in describing the situation. In his view today, both Israelis and Palestinians are peoples with legitimate claims to this ancient land. Until now, of course, both sides would have rejected such an interpretation, and most still do. In that understanding, one people can legitimately claim the territory as their homeland and other needs to get out.

Some time (probably not enough) was spent telling of Roots activities and programs, and its successes in creating new understanding and relationships between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. The realization Roots is seeking to create, as Schlesinger described his own experience, is to realize that “as glorious and legitimate as your story is, your people, your identity, there is another story out there, another people out there. And to mistake your story for the whole truth is very close to falsehood.” In the words of Ali Abu Awwad, who co-founded Roots with Schlesinger ten years ago, “You have to find a way to fit two truths into one heart.”

Despite the presenters’ best efforts, I left the event more pessimistic about the prospects for resolving this decades-long conflict. But perhaps that isn’t quite right. Rather, my appreciation of the intractability of this conflict was deepened by having a better understanding of what it was about. Bringing people together for mutual understanding and reconciliation is always of value. That doing so will lead to enough people learning “to fit two truths into one heart”, however, seems highly unlikely.

It was as Rabbi Schlesinger talked that I began to see the impossibility of his vision. A native of Brooklyn, Schlesinger is an unapologetic Zionist. In his view, Jews are a people of the land: a thousand years of residence followed by two thousand years of exile. And now they have returned. But—oops—someone else is already there. He has now recognized the injustice of just kicking these people out. Somehow, Israelis and Palestinians have to figure out a way to share the land and live in peace with each other.

But where does Schlesinger’s “story” come from? And why should everyone else accept what is essentially the story/belief of one religion? The story of Judaism is about as complicated a one as you will find. And it has only grown more so thanks to modern historical research. Much of the Old Testament tradition has been called into question. The two-thousand-year spread of diaspora Jews across Europe, Africa, Asia, and into the Western Hemisphere resulted in Jewish “identity” being a knot nearly impossible to untangle. To say modern Jews are “a people” only has meaning for those who claim such a designation.

But my point isn’t to criticize Jewish identity, or Palestinian, or anyone else’s. Rather, this week’s talk caused me to question again the purpose and value of the stories we tell about ourselves and the identities we claim based upon those stories.

As we all know, history is filled with accounts of wars, genocides, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, holocausts, and other kinds of destruction and slaughter inflicted by one “people” upon another. In most cases, those histories tell of divisions inflamed by power-hungry and self-serving “leaders”, often among groups which previously had been living with each other in relative tolerance and peace. Generational memories of evils committed by one group upon another can still be manipulated and stoked for political gain, as in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, India, and Rwanda, to name a few recent instances.

But where are these identities? Science can’t find them. There are no genetic markers for race, let alone ethnicity or nationality. And where are these stories? Only in our heads, implanted in our minds by our elders and by the culture in which we live.

National and ethnic identities are fast becoming a “luxury” the world can’t afford. The rise in global population means there is little if any vacant land for one group to go in order to avoid or end conflict with another. Similarly, many natural resources are becoming scarce, exasperated by the growing impact of the climate crisis.

Managing those shortages and ensuring fair distribution of resources becomes impossible when groups compete with each and rekindle past rivalries and animosities. It is acknowledged by many analysts, for example, that an underlying cause of much of the turmoil in the Middle East today is actually the shortage of water. National, ethnic, and religious rivalries distract from the actual problem and prevent its resolution.

As I’ve said, none of this is new except that such divisions are being dramatically intensified by our shrinking planetary home. Armed conflict today is too likely to spin catastrophically out of control for it to be a solution. But neither will diplomatic negotiation accomplish the compromises and cooperation needed so long as human separation is taken for granted.

One of the most startling quotations of Jesus is this portion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Many say that, however noble, this is Jesus at his most unrealistic. But that is because this statement and others like it are viewed as moral pronouncements. Jesus was not about creating a new moral code, however, though it is one of the most common ways of interpreting him. Rather, Jesus’ objective was to spark a new wave of human transformation through spiritual rebirth.

To claim to be a child of God has become an almost meaningless cliché in Christian circles. And while its pious overtones are now an obstacle for many today, Jesus meant it quite literally, as have countless spiritual teachers of all traditions down through the ages. Our true identity is divine. We are each one with the Source of all reality, the Ground of Being. Therefore, all human divisions are artificial and unreal.

Jesus says “love your neighbor as yourself” because it is literally true. We are one with all people. For the same reason, Jesus says here to “love your enemy,” because all our enemies are neighbors, as well. This, Jesus says, is what it means to live as children of God. And to drive the point home, he adds that God ignores the human labels of good and evil but pours life’s blessings on all people equally.

To the egoic self, wrapped in titles, roles, stories, and identities, all this is outrageous nonsense. But to our true self, the silent and formless Presence at our center, our conscious and peaceful eternal Awareness, such wisdom is the meaning of life: an eternal experience of grace and our union with the whole creation.

Is this really the path to peace in the Middle East? I have no idea. I do know that religion’s path of sin and guilt, law and morality, has not gotten humanity very far. It has tamed humanity’s worst inclinations but its capacity to do so in the future is in serious doubt. We don’t need more and better rules, commissions, and negotiating teams. What we need is a human awakening.

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

A good person

A good person

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Coach Matt Lynch and teamAt the end of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, the title character, now an elderly veteran, visits the American military cemetery in Normandy, France. He finds the grave of the Army Captain who led the mission to save his life and remembers his last, dying words to him: “Earn this.” Meaning, live a life worthy of the sacrifices made to save you. Remembering that harrowing scene decades later, Ryan, in tears, turns to his wife and says, “Tell me I’ve led a good life. Tell me I’m a good man.”

What does it mean to lead a good life, to be a good person? I thought of those questions reading a recent, powerful story in the New York Times: This Man Turned the Worst Job in College Basketball Into a Slam Dunk. “This man” is Matt Lynch, 33, head coach of the men’s basketball team at University of South Carolina Salkehatchie, a small regional school about an hour west of Charleston.

Salkehatchie is likely the opposite of your image of “elite university.” When Lynch arrived, its basketball program hardly existed. In the eight months before his appointment, four coaches had been hired and quit. The starting salary was $38,000, there were no other staff, no recruiting budget, and no players. But Lynch was undaunted.

With the help of his mother and siblings, Lynch renovated the dilapidated locker room. Connections led to new uniforms donated by Nike. To find prospective players, he traveled thousands of miles and watched hours of games online. The result was a roster literally from around the world. And after one season Salkehatchie basketball has a winning record and a chance to be in the playoffs.

The reason this story was in the Times, however, is not Lynch’s remarkable drive or accomplishments, but because he is gay.

According to Outsports, the website that chronicles L.G.B.T.Q. athletes, there had never been a publicly gay men’s head coach in any of the North American major professional leagues, nor in college football or men’s basketball until Lynch.

There was no way for Lynch to know if being gay would affect his job prospects, but it remained a question in the back of his mind — even for a job that was within his reach.

“If I was going to get a head coaching job, I knew it was going to be at a place that needed to be built,” said Lynch, who came out publicly nearly four years ago in an essay for Outsports…. “All I ever wanted was an opportunity. The way I looked at it was this may be a bad job, but it’s my bad job. You’ve got to make the big time where you are.”

Matt Lynch understands that being a good coach means being a good person. Not only does he guide his team in playing basketball, but he also guides his players in being human. As he told one family, “There’s nothing sexy about Salkehatchie. But if you come here, you’re going to be a better man, a better student and a better athlete.” And “being better” would extend to all areas of life.

Lynch made no assurances to parents about playing time or winning. But he made two promises: that they would know how to change a flat tire and properly knot a tie.

Thus far, being gay in a small town in the deep South has not been a problem. Nor has it been in coaching his team, where his humanness and openness have only been an asset.

Since players arrived in late August, Lynch has addressed his sexual orientation with the team once — when he hosted a September retreat at his house in Wilmington, N.C. On their last night, the team sat around a bonfire in the backyard….

He told the players he did not need their acceptance — that it had taken nearly 30 years to accept himself. “He’s not afraid to open himself up to us, which is a big positive,” said Darcy Pares, a guard from Port Macquarie, Australia. “We might not like him some days at practice, we might not like him when he wakes us up early to go to the weight room, but we know he’s doing it because he really cares about us.”

While the reaction in the comments to this “feel good” story was overwhelmingly positive, I wondered about how Matt Lynch would otherwise be evaluated in today’s culture. He has thrown himself into a job with no prestige and that, by most standards, pays a pittance. I recently watched a series of on-the-street interviews with undergrads at Harvard. Upon graduation, all expected jobs in major financial or technology companies, paying six-figure salaries. No doubt, their family and friends would be very proud of them. But what if they decided to follow a Matt Lynch type path?

From this story, there can be no doubt that Lynch could have found success in any number of more lucrative careers. But this has been his dream, and he’s followed it. In following that dream, just as in his coming out, he has decided to be true to himself. Doing so takes both encouragement and courage.

One of Jesus’ more perplexing and paradoxical teachings was that we must lose our life in order to find it. I think the life Jesus wants us to lose is the life we think we are supposed to live, the person we think we are supposed to be. We pick up those ideas and images in all sorts of places, especially family, school, religion, and the media. Yet deep within all of us is also an image of our self waiting to be discovered and allowed to flourish.

“Have I been a good person?” Often, we think the measure of that is whether we have made some Mother Theresa-like sacrifices. But I think the real measure is whether we have been the person we know we truly are. In making that choice, Matt Lynch has not only become the coach he felt called to be, but he is also showing the true meaning of being a good person, to his players and to everyone around him.