Barack Is Not An Elitist (from an earlier letter)

Dear Friends,

Though I know you might be expecting a letter about spiritual practice as it relates to loving well, I find that I must deviate from course for just a moment and illustrate something that I have spoken about in my letters to you.

In recent days I have watched the press take stabs at Barack Obama over comments that he made regarding Americans, and in particular Pennsylvanians, becoming bitter over the economic injustices that affect the vast majority of us. These comments, while perhaps poorly worded, are true in my experience. Americans are bitter. They may not all be bitter about the same issues, but they are all struggling in some way to create or maintain some financial stability in their lives. Whether its health care costs, soaring fuel and food prices, lower paying or non-existent jobs, or the fact that you just can’t hardly buy anything made in America anymore, we are frustrated. I would even say that I am afraid. We are so far removed from the state of our own oppression that we are willing to be side-tracked by a few words misspoken.

How can we be so blind? Barack Obama has been consistently a man of character and compassion. His speech is generally eloquent for sure. But have we listened? His message is ever more so. It is a message about loving well. You can see that this is true because he does not discount the poor, the rich, the white, the red, the brown, the yellow or the black, the Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, the Buddhist or the Atheist. We are all one people, one human race with the same basic needs for food, clean air and water, shelter, safety and healthcare. Barack sees that our basic requirements for life have been and are being encroached upon by those who live in a state of plenty.

Despite a message of love, sacrifice, and equality, some see fit to call him an elitist. What could be more erroneous? Does the fact that he has an ivy league education make him an elitist? My husband does too. Hmmm. No I don’t think it’s that. In fact, when Barack could have taken a high profile, high salary job, he instead chose to become a community organizer in an area of forgotten and despairing citizens. He did not sit on the board of a major corporation, or go jet shopping with his heiress wife. Barack doesn’t have to pretend to be one of the people because he IS one of the people. In his person is manifested the bridge between our diverse populations.

So will we content ourselves with sound bites, measure the man in a single moment? By the measure of your own judgment, so shall you be judged. Who among us has not a single moment of error that if taken in isolation would be the undoing of us? No one is perfect, nor ought they be expected to be. God does not demand that of us and we should not demand it of each other. Do not be fooled when the speck in one man’s eye is offered as a distraction from the log in another’s. Don’t let a misspoken truth steer your attention away from the real injustices in our country and in our world.

A real injustice is that our current administration has not just abandoned the working class, it has abandoned all of those for whom our Christian foundation commands us to care. In the book of James it says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (1:27) In this verse, as in many others, widows and orphans act as a symbol for all those who have no voice or means. James urges us in this passage to advocate and provide for those without protection or livelihood. In doing so we are more clearly reflecting God’s love into the world. For too long, our government has ignored those without a voice or means. Barack has taken up the mantle of this increasing demographic. I believe he has proven his sincerity and offered a much needed hope to those of us who are overwhelmed by fear and need.

So I offer you this letter as a call to righteous anger, not just for those who would attempt to denigrate a champion of the downtrodden, but for those who steal from you everyday and for a government that sits idly by and allows it. In chapter two, James says:

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the other one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as a transgressor. (2:1-9)

There are some who would have you believe that someone who makes millions (or billions) of dollars and lives a life of luxury is somehow better and more worth defending, assisting and knowing. But this is so far from the truth, my friends. Those who grow and harvest your food, clean your water, teach your children, pick up your trash, build your houses, fight for the salmon, the spotted owl and the wolf—these people guarantee you your life in one way or another. And yet they have been largely forgotten by this administration. Barack has made a place at the table for them and for you and even for the fat cats who live off the sweat our backs. I am not asking any of you to vote for Barack--even though you know I think you should. What I am asking is that you see him for who he is and for what he has consistently given of himself. If you do this, I think you will find it difficult to believe what his detractors say.

Love Letters - Part III Learning to Love Yourself Well

Today, as I was planning to write, I felt a deep questioning. Who am I to be talking about love? This week I don’t feel so loving. It’s not that I am feeling hate, but rather I feel tired and complaisant and just a bit blah. I haven’t slept enough lately or taken enough relaxing baths. I haven’t been writing. That in itself is a sure sign that my heart is just not in this thing called life. “Calgon, take me away!”

But then…I stopped to consider what my topic was and in a flash everything about writing to you suddenly made sense. “Practice self-love and care” is the next topic. The work of months ago is a good reminder for me today.

Part III

“If needed an oxygen mask will drop from above your seat. To start the flow of oxygen firmly pull the mask toward you and extend the plastic tubing. Place the mask over your nose and mouth; place the elastic band over your head and tighten the strap as necessary. Although the bag does not inflate, oxygen will flow to the mask. Secure your mask before helping others.” --airline safety instructions


In order to love well you must:
· Practice self-love and care

So what is all this business about loving yourself. I thought love was supposed to be selfless, self-sacrificing. For most girls this idea often replaces even the natural instinct to self-preservation. We are taught to nurture and care for everyone, everyone but ourselves that is. And I have found it easier to throw myself into the fire of maternal martyrdom than to take a few minutes for myself.

But this life of endless self-sacrifice is not sustainable, and not just for me, not just for women. A lack of attention to the needs of the self undermines the basic biblical commands of Judaism and Christianity. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18) and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31) In hearing these quoted over and over again all my life, at no point did I stop to consider that loving another was predicated on my loving myself. Truly, what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself if you do not love yourself?

A particularly applicable Jewish proverb goes like this “To get wisdom is to love oneself; to keep understanding is to prosper.” (Proverbs 19:8) What I believe this author is saying is that in order to have this much esteemed quality of wisdom, we must know and attend to ourselves. To continue that attention enables us to function fully in the world. You have probably heard it said, that you can not drink from an empty well. So I have found that it is difficult to love others well when I am not understanding the concept of loving myself well first.

So what does it mean to love yourself? The very question brings fear of something I am desperate not to become—self-centered, egotistical, narcissistic. But I have learned through the example of the great teachers and through my own experience, that this attitude or revulsion toward self-love is a distraction that pulls us away from a deeper relationship with God.

I, like many others, had constructed an understanding of myself and my nearness to God which is both faulty and incomplete. My understanding was focused on my being flawed, unworthy and unlovable. I believe I saw myself in this way in part as a result of my Christian upbringing.

Before anyone is in an uproar over that statement, let me explain. I consider myself a Christian, not because I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior, because I don’t. Rather, I consider myself a Christian because I was raised in the cultural deeps of the Protestant ethic and because I believe in the sage wisdom of Jesus, the prophet of God. As a grown woman, I love God. But the God of my youth is not the loving God that I discovered in my adulthood. The God of my youth stood in judgment, just waiting until the final days to release my soul to a fire-filled hell. And despite my best efforts, I could never deserve his love. I could never be worthy of his love. I was too sinful, too broken, too lost, too female, too faithless. And so I was caught between a rock and hard place. I felt unworthy of God’s love and I felt it was pointless to try to be good enough. If God knew what was in my heart, he knew that I did not believe in a virgin birth, could not say that I believed Jesus died for my sins and that his death and resurrection washed my sin away if only I’d just believe. So I felt judged. I was damned. I decided not to bother trying to be better, even though I knew in my heart that God wanted so much more for my life. So I went on hating myself, all the while searching for the God who could take me just as I am, who could love me despite my disbelief and who would save me even if I couldn’t muster the spiritual courage to reach upward for his hand.

I found that God. I found him in the Jesus of the canonical gospels and the Jesus of the Gnostic gospels. I found him as he flowed through Baha’u’llah and in the Nothingness of the Buddha’s teaching. I found God and my life changed course.

I love the story in the book of John about the adulterous woman who is brought before Jesus as a test. There is a crowd of self-righteous men passing judgment upon her. That judgment was death. Jesus said, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7) At this, even the most pious person walked away. In that moment Jesus made it clear to her and, more importantly to the witnesses gathered about, that he had more to say than “don’t kill her.” He did something more incredible, incredible because it was averse to Jewish law. He lifted her up; he presented her as the spiritual equal of those who were readying to throw the stones. Later in John, Jesus says, “You judge by human standards. I judge no one.” (John 8:15) I say ‘amen.’ There is a great deal more here than mercy or forgiveness. Here is Grace.

So I get to start over again. I get to start over with Grace on my side and knowing that I am your spiritual equal and you are mine. I know that I am loved and forgiven even when I act poorly or feel faithless, even when I turn my back on God in anger or grief. I find myself motivated by this boundless love to be a better person, to give to others what has been given to me.

Still in order to reflect this great love into the world, it seems that the great teachers say the same thing over and over again. You must take care of yourself first. This includes:
1) attending to our basic physical needs so that we have energy to do good work
2) making efforts to understand our inner state of being, which includes our inner dialogue and motivations (such as fears and desires) so that we can see the right path and know when we require assistance
3) deepening our spiritual selves/connection to God so that we can hear divine guidance and more clearly reflect God’s/pure love into the world.

A story that illustrates the first point is one regarding a prince named Sakyamuni. When Sakyamuni saw that there was suffering in the world, he was deeply despairing. And so he left his lavish palace behind in search of the answers to death and suffering. In the course of his journey he met a group of ascetics who taught to him that in order to attain the highest understanding he must not take food, among other things. And so Sakyamuni meditated all the while starving himself until one day he collapsed. As the story goes, a milk maid found him there and, attempting to revive him, gave him some milk. Each day Sakyamuni grew stronger as he accepted the milk and rice that the woman brought. When he was well enough he sat beneath a great Banyan tree on a bed of straw, provided by a young herdsman. There he meditated accepting food and drink and the comfort of the straw until he became enlightened. At this point he was renamed the Buddha, the awakened one. What would our world look like if the Buddha, after having been saved by the young milk maid, went back to starving himself? This story illustrates for us the necessity of caring for oneself and accepting help from others in doing so. Practically speaking, we all need to respect our manifested selves by eating healthy food, getting adequate rest, and exercising. Likewise, we ought to show gratitude and appreciation for the bodies we were given by thinking positively about them and by not abusing them with drugs, alcohol, overeating, self-mutilation and the like. It is unfortunate that we have to be reminded of such basic attentions.

The second point, ‘know thyself’, is more difficult in my opinion. It requires constant vigilance and, in some cases, in depth study. Perhaps the best thing I ever did for myself was to go through psychotherapy. The process was lengthy and expensive, but it was worth every minute. During this time I was able to peel back my inner layers and uncover the root of my fears, unmask my motivations, and demystify the patterns in my relationships. In the center of so much of my anxiety and unhappiness was me. This reminds me of a poem by the Sufi mystic Rumi:

Don’t go off sightseeing.
The real journey is right here.
The great excursion starts from exactly where you are.
You are the world.
You have everything you need.
You are the secret.
You are the wide opened.

Don’t look for the remedy for your troubles outside yourself.
You are the medicine.
You are the cure for your own sorrow.

That is not to say that events beyond your control don’t happen. Of course they do. What this means is that I have the power to control the inner dialogue that I have with myself that tells me that I am not okay, that enables me in destructive relationships or patterns, that constructs a reality of mistrust and emotional violence. Life will continue to happen, but when you begin to understand how you function energetically in your world, you will begin to live with the flow of life rather than being bowled over by it, drowned by it, or constantly swimming against it.

I am not necessarily suggesting that everyone run out and find a psychotherapist. A therapist could be useful, but a pastor, spiritual guide or good friend can be a great person to reflect with or get advice from when you are struggling to know yourself. I would also suggest Eckhart Tolle. From what I have read of his work, he is very adept at teaching this point and providing a jumping off point for this type of self-awareness. There are many religious and spiritual writings that can also serve this function. In general, if you simply slow down long enough to listen to your self-talk in times of trouble, you will begin to unravel the threads of the veil that stands between you and love.

Doing the work of attending to my own inner self is a heck of a lot harder than attending to someone else’s problems. Jesus reminds us over and over again not to judge others, but he also warns against helping others to solve their problems before we have solved our own. In Matthew he says:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (7:3-5)

Sounds a lot like those airline safety instructions, huh?

Before I move on I also want to point out a popular misconception about loving others well that relates to loving yourself well. Loving others well does not preclude you from setting boundaries. If, for instance, you are in an abusive relationship—physically, emotionally or psychologically—your love for that person does not mean that you must continue the relationship as it is, or at all. In fact, making the best choice for yourself may end up being the best choice for the other person as well. Enabling yourself or another to continue in an unhealthy behavior does not encourage change in either party. Even when God calls us to love and work among those who are deeply troubled, God is not asking us to be a punching bag. Taking care of ourselves enables us to reach out.

The next part in loving yourself well is deepening your spiritual connection to the Source of your being. How we deepen that relationship is a persistent question. The short answer is to develop a spiritual practice. As I mentioned in the beginning of this series of letters, the parts of this process are all interrelated. Because I thought it was valuable to explore the idea of spiritual practice in greater detail myself, I listed it separately. But even so, I am hoping that you will remember (should I forget to say it again) that having a spiritual practice is an integral part of loving yourself well. If you forget, don’t worry. I forget about spiritual practice all the time.

For now I will leave you to your journeys. I hope that you will all join me in an attempt to love yourselves a little better. Speak more kindly to yourself. Take time to get to know who you are. Ask for what you need. And know that you are loved, most especially by me.

T

Love Letters - Part II Understanding & Oneness

In order to love well you must:
· Do the work of understanding yourself and others
· Learn to see the oneness of humanity/all living beings


Who am I, and who are you?
Tell me what you’re going through.
I’ll be glad to listen to all your stories.

I’ve been here and you’ve been there,
But it seems we’re both nowhere.
Shall we laugh or shed a tear for our lost glory?

I’m the wind and you’re the rain.
I’m the sky and you’re the sea now.
Who knows how or why we came.
We are leaves upon the same old tree.

--lyrics from Leaves Upon the Same Old Tree (from my junior high music textbook, author unknown)


“In this world I have learned that what you pay attention to, what you nurture, generally flourishes.” --Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell


Everyone wants to be loved in his/her entirety, don’t they? Flaws and all? One of my most treasured moments came on a day when I was feeling kind of low. After recounting a string of my faults, I looked at my husband and said something to the effect that I was glad that he loved me in spite of these defects. He looked me squarely in the face and said, “Honey, there is nothing I love you in spite of, only things I love you because of.” Whoa!! I don’t even love myself that way. This was an amazing gift. It is a gift that we can give to every person and, just as importantly, to ourselves.

Does this mean that my husband loves those actions which I perform in weakness—does he love the “bad things” I do? I don’t think so. I think it means that he loves me, and that is largely because he has taken the time to understand who I am and what my underlying experience is at a given moment.

The Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hahn writes in Being Peace about this very practice—called samadhi—of focusing our attention on a problem in order to gain insight. While he acknowledges how difficult it is to love the “unlovable” person, he stresses that Buddhists have a moral responsibility to seek the cause of this person’s “present state of being.” He says:

The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love; love is another name for understanding.

Let’s use an example that is quite possibly the most difficult of choices—Adolf Hitler, responsible for leading a nation to the mass murder of approximately 11 million people (3 times of the population of Oregon) including almost 6 million Jews and 20% of the population of Poland. This is to say nothing of what was done to the living. How is anyone to love such a man?

His rise is well documented, and his reign was the umbrella for some of the most sick and perverse atrocities I have ever heard of. But let me tell you a little about Hitler before he became a “monster.” Adolf was born in Austria to a man who was 51 years old at the time of Adolf’s birth. As a child he was brutally beaten by his father, in addition to being held to increasingly higher expectations of achievement. In primary school, Adolf was able to meet those expectations, but when he entered secondary school he was no longer able to maintain his high marks. His father was cruel and threatening in his attempts to get Adolf to achieve at a higher level. At last realizing that he could never make his father proud, Adolf gave up on academia and pursued his interest in art. This infuriated his father with whom he never had a reconciliation. His father died when he was 13 years old. From that point on, Adolf had no other male roll model except briefly in a history teacher, who was a German nationalist and a stark opponent of socialism.

Adolf was rejected by his father fundamentally. He was later rejected by his school peers because he did not work hard, and after that he was rejected as an artist, which was his great pursuit. At last Adolf joined the German army and found that his zealous attempts to prove himself resulted in his first real taste of success. However, after he was temporarily blinded and recovering in a hospital, Germany surrendered thus ending Adolf’s chance to continue in his first successful career. During the period following the war Adolf began to associate the end of the war with Jews and Marxism. A great many Jews were Marxists because this movement promised them an equality that they had lived without in Europe. In Adolf’s mind Jews and Marxists were weak and preventing Germany from being a wealthy and stable nation (reminiscent of his history teachers nationalism?) and Adolf from having his own opportunities for success. When the socialist party was overthrown, Adolf turned informant against his fellow soldiers and for the first time was accepted for his political views which were at this time both anti-socialist and anti-Semitic. Within that venue of hatred Adolf found not only opportunity for achievement, but more importantly a long desired acceptance and appreciation.

When I try to understand Hitler in the context of his whole life, I still find no excuses for his heinous crimes. How could I? Yet despite this fact, I do begin to find a small spark of empathy—empathy for the child who was savagely beaten, the child whose life was about fulfilling the desires of another, a young man who had to discover what being a good man means without having anyone to model it for him. I see the young man who dreamed of being a great artist, who saw himself as a great artist in the making, and saw that dream dashed. I see the beginnings of acceptance and how good that must have felt to a young man who was time and time again rejected.

Every human being deserves love. In Hitler we see what comes when we fail to give it. This portrait is repeated on a smaller scale in those we meet everyday. We hear about it in the news; and in some cases we know intimately the horror that arises from those we have failed to love and proved we could pass judgment on. I have heard too often that these poor souls are sick, diseased, or “genetically predisposed.” This is all well and good when you live in a culture that thinks everything can be solved with a prescription medication. Give them an anti-psychotic, an anti-depressant. It certainly takes the burden of responsibility from people, from me. But like so much that is wrong with the world we live in—a world where people fly planes into buildings, children carry guns into their schools and shoot their classmates, and even birth has become a violent act—we have lost focus on eliminating causes and conditions and instead place all our hopes in treating that which has already become a problem.

The social ills of our time are conditions of detachment, conditions that arise because love has not secured the attachment of one person to another. Imagine what the historic landscape of this most recent century would look like if at some point Adolf Hitler had received the love and acceptance he deserved. No Hitler can be found in a world where a baby is brought gently into being, nurtured and loved by his parents, picked up when he cries, fed when he is hungry, encouraged in his ability, esteemed in his efforts, and accepted for what he is, a human being made in the image of God.

In Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus says:

You have heard that is was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love you enemies and pray from 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. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And in John 13:34-5 Jesus said:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

In these two passages and in many others, Christians are called to reflect both God’s love and Christ’s love into the world. Where this love is replaced with judgment, fundamentalism rises up to secure our attachment to hatred, longing, desire, and power over others. This trajectory cannot be changed unless we are willing to change how we see and understand ourselves and others.

In the pursuit of loving well it seems that we must be willing to be transformed and continue being transformed until God’s face is plainly seen in our own. In a state of openness we have the eyes to see ourselves truly--our glory and our imperfection. That openness is the doorway to understanding ourselves, and forgiveness is born out of that understanding. In forgiving ourselves we are at last released from the chains of self-centeredness and shame. In forgiving others we are released from the equally strong bonds of self-righteousness. We simultaneously take back power over ourselves and our choices and relinquish power over others. This realization of cosmic/divine equality, even if only understood by one person, enables love to enter the world.

In the book If Grace Is True, Quaker authors Phillip Gulley and James Mulholland write:

A theology of love is grounded in the realization that God loves our enemies as much as God loves us. And we are all created in the image of this God. We are all precious in God’s sight. We are all children of God. This, more than any other idea, changes how we perceive others. It requires us to call every man and every woman by the names that make murder nearly impossible—brother and sister.

When I can apply this “theology of love,” this practice of samadhi, to Adolf Hitler, how can I not apply this to myself? When I can apply this love to myself, how can I not apply it to you? I would like to say that I am the perfect example of this type of patient understanding, but I am not. My mirror reflecting God’s love is still very bespeckled. I am a work in progress. Still, I have noticed the profound changes that have occurred in my life by simply cultivating this one attribute called by so many names—understanding, compassion, empathy and love.

So may it be with us all that we open ourselves to change, share God’s grace which is love of all beings, and practice that understanding which funnels this grace into our greatly troubled and beautiful world.

Tiff

Love Letters - Part I Stay With Truth

A quick note:

The process of learning to love well by the above “standard” is not a step program. You do not perfect one ability and then move onto the next. Rather, these are interrelated, each strengthening the foothold of the other. These skills work together as all limbs must do when the climber attempts to scale a mountain.

The path toward loving well is also the work of persistence. Elise Boulding once wrote, “Every human being that comes into the world is capable of that love, but how to give expression to that love has to be learned.” We are all born with the capacity to love fully, but we must be taught how to love well. Saint Teresa of Avila spent twenty years perfecting her ability to love. So must we all accept our human-ness, our need for practice. This is a great struggle of my own. I have not yet lacked persistence, but I have treated myself abominably in pursuit of almost every goal until a few short years ago. Expecting perfection from yourself or others is corrosive. It will eat away at your ability to live joyfully and lovingly. We must be firm with ourselves—that is true—but also gentle and forgiving. Once you are able to be so with yourself, you will be able to extend these gifts to others.

*********************
Stay With Truth

If all the other parts of this path are the limbs of the mountain climber, Stay with Truth is the blood. Each of the other qualities is nurtured and fed by Truth. Seeing life, others and ourselves as they are keeps the path toward love straight even if our feet stray from it once in awhile. When truth is abandoned through self-deception, justification and denial, the progress of all the other developing practices is halted; we wander blindly in search of true and abiding love.

So what is staying with the Truth? To stay with Truth is to be in the moment. In most of the moments of our lives and certainly in our relationships to others, we are bound by attachments--heavy chains of desire, fear, expectation and the like. These attachments skew our perception of reality in simple and complex ways. This is particularly true of fear, perhaps the strongest of attachments. Think of how many people report “suspicious activity” during airline travel simply because the person appears Middle Eastern. Fear is quickly able to overthrow sensibility and stand like a mighty roadblock in the course of loving.

To stay with the Truth we have to keep asking ourselves difficult questions in the moment. Am I seeing things this way because I am trying to convince myself that I am right? What is my motivation here? What do I want out of this situation? Is my energy invested here in an unhealthy way? What am I afraid of? Is my happiness at the expense of another’s? As states arise where there is conflict, suffering or pain on either side, we must be willing to answer these questions honestly. When you can look at yourself, others and circumstances as they are you will be able to make more loving decisions and recognize points for improvement.

Practical Practice:

Honesty needn’t be unkind. Just because you think s/he looks hideous in purple, doesn’t mean you have to say it. However, if you are asked, you can kindly say that you do not care for it. Nor does honesty necessitate compulsion. You do not have to search desperately through your history for every lie you’ve told and then find a way to right it. But you do have to look at yourself and your past with truth in mind. And certainly if you carry a painful lie into each day with you, by all means expunge it with a word of truth. You also do not have to tell everyone everything. You are still free to say “No its not such a great day, but I would rather not talk about it right now.”

This may seem scary, and to be quite honest, it can be. But I found that the path to living authentically and truthfully begins with changing small habits. Step one for me involved not adding any new lies or misrepresentations to my life. Begin in the present. Like in scrapbooking, if you won’t work on today until you have your past organized you might never catch up to life now. Also, changing small habits is so much easier than changing big ones. For instance, I resolved over a decade ago that I would never say I had heard of a song, album, movie, etc. unless I actually had. (This was a bad habit of mine.) My next resolution was to honestly state my opinion when asked for it. “No I don’t care for it.” “It’s not my favorite.” “I wouldn’t choose it for myself.” You can come up with a million ways to say you don’t like something in a non-offensive way. The same is true of what you do like or enjoy.

If you begin small like this you will gradually begin to hear your own inner voice of Truth because you are not trying to deceive yourself or others. Soon you will see that others still like you, still love you, still want to spend time with you. However now it’s so much better because you are the real you. This is confidence inspiring. Once you are in the practice of telling the Truth, you will be able to begin the deeper investigation into your attachments.

With love,
T

Love Letters - Introduction

In late 2007, I applied for and received a volunteer position at my church as a sermon researcher. I figured that this might be my only opportunity to use my religion degree, so I pounced on it. In all, there are 7 of us, 4 gathering material for 2 sermons, and 3 gathering for 3 sermons. The topics range from child rearing to reaching the Promised Land. I got two—one on love and the other on evil. Hmmm. Two of the biggest and broadest topics out there and I got them both. My first question to myself was, “Why couldn’t I have the one on the transformation of suffering?” After all I feel largely qualified after my 2 year nervous breakdown and recovery. However, I trust that God has plans for us, to prepare us, to guide us, to strengthen us. I have lived the “transformation of suffering” and now, I suppose, the time for love has come.

The exact title of my first sermon was “What does love demand of us?” Not a simple question. I scribbled down some of my first thoughts and then I went a’searching. To begin, I went to those whose lives were a celebration of love, both earthly and divine—Teresa of Avila who is reported to have levitated when she prayed, the Buddha, Thich Naht Hahn who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as Jesus of Nazareth, among others. Many have written about such figures, even starting religious traditions in their names. So that is where I began.

First let me tell you this before I go any further. Though we might each have different answers to this question—and I encourage you all to ask it of yourselves—I have compiled a list based on the recurring themes I found in the two main areas of my exploration, Judeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions. Also, because the points of this list require some explanation, I am intending this newsletter to be sent in parts. Again, if anyone wishes to be removed from my newsletter list, please reply to that effect. I will not feel slighted or injured. My goals in writing to you all so often are to spend more time in the practice of writing while at the same time becoming more comfortable with being known on a deeper level. These opinions of mine are simply that, opinions, though I will often quote or paraphrase others. But none of this is intended to convert, convince or denounce some other Way. This is where I am in my life and I would like to share more of my life with you. Please feel free to comment if you wish. I love to hear what you are thinking.

Now off we go! What does love demand of us?

Initially I had to clarify this question. It was just too broad, too awkward. Did it mean that when we fall in love we will automatically become slaves to some new code of conduct? Was it referring to romantic love at all or was it more general? I decided to reword it a bit. “What does loving well demand of us?” Suddenly the question didn’t beg “what kind of love?” Instead the question evoked a sense of universal application and an image of cultivation. Then another incarnation. “What do we need to do in order to develop the ability to love well?” Oh, how I love the more active sense of this question. It allows for loving well to be an engaged process, open to big and small failures and successes. No judgment, no perfection involved. Was I answering the same question at this point? I didn’t know, but I also didn’t care. This to me was a better question, a more human question, a question with forgiveness built into it. Ahhh. This was a question I could approach without fear.

So what did I find? Well, I found a sort of 7-point program that looks something like this. In order to love well you must:
· Do the work of understanding yourself and others
· Practice self-love and care
· Learn to see the oneness of humanity/all living beings
· Develop a spiritual practice such as regular prayer or meditation
· Be willing to make sacrifices and live simply
· Be peaceful/non-violent
· Stay with Truth

Enough for now.

Love and regards,
Tiff