Love

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1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; 6 rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; 7 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part: 10 but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I have been known. 13 But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Going quiet shhhh..

I read this in "The Wisdom of Solomon" this morning. I hope it wasn't meant to be taken literally. It's pretty lame if it was. Taken metaphorically it had an impact on me.

11: For whoso despiseth wisdom and nurture, he is miserable, and their hope is vain, their labours unfruitful, and their works unprofitable:
12: Their wives are foolish, and their children wicked:
13: Their offspring is cursed. Wherefore blessed is the barren that is undefiled, which hath not known the sinful bed: she shall have fruit in the visitation of souls.
14: And blessed is the eunuch, which with his hands hath wrought no iniquity, nor imagined wicked things against God: for unto him shall be given the special gift of faith, and an inheritance in the temple of the Lord more acceptable to his mind.
15: For glorious is the fruit of good labours: and the root of wisdom shall never fall away.
16: As for the children of adulterers, they shall not come to their perfection, and the seed of an unrighteous bed shall be rooted out.
17: For though they live long, yet shall they be nothing regarded: and their last age shall be without honour.

All of our works and the fruits of our efforts are like our children. This blog requires effort and energy on my part.

My last post and response to my friend Joel, has really bothered me for awhile. I'm often in a rush to push my opinion out there because I think that I have so many important things to say. And sometimes I think I'm really really clever in the way I say things. I think, at least hope that everyone else knows better.

But even when I'm quiet (because I'm not a good conversationalist - usually a conversation killer), I sometimes think the poor other is so lost, so I'll just sit here and feel badly for them. Sometimes also my envious feelings keep me outwardly quiet too. But inside my little calculating engine is always and tirelessly cranking away from dawn to dusk throwing out it's agenda net onto the world. And it's so noisy too. Lately the wind has been blowing the net back and I'm getting tangled in it.

I wonder how often instead I just sit and listen to a friend, wife or one of my kids and just be with them. Everyone I love that I share my life with so deserves the best things from me. To do this I have to let go of all sorts of things I can't see clearly that seem to be me. In short, I have to let go of who-I-think-I-am.

Life has a way of filling up with all the trite things that seem so urgent at the time and pushing out the really important yet unassuming parts - you know - the raindrops on roses and puppy dog tails kind of stuff; the only things that are really real.

Who-I-think-I-am requires a lot of energy to maintain, energy that I suspect would flow beautifully and in the most divine ways if it weren't diverted thusly. That's why I started this spiritual quest in the first place. Because in a few precious and beautiful moments in life, a scent like an incense wafted or sometimes pushed through and past who-I-think-I-am and I turned my head for just a second. Gradually I became hooked.

Like the time I was caught off guard when my three year old son said "Look at my shit, my shit is new. Do you like it?". He couldn't pronounce his 'r' sound and was referring to his shirt. I thought it was precious to tears.

There was the time my first daughter was born and the doctor put this wet slick babyish thing in my arms saying "Here's your daughter", and I was overwhelmed beyond words to the complete helplessness of that moment.

This was just raw life, the most ordinary thing really. Everyone experiences this kind of stuff.

Spiritual practices have the effect of accelerating these kind of moments. That is, the moments aren't really being accelerated so much as I'm waking up to more and more of them more often. The truth is there is no deficiency of these moments at any time - they're always there, at least that what the great teachers say. My experience seems to be confirming this so far.

And each of these moments have a wounding effect on who-I-think-I-am. And it's sometimes painful and sometimes unbearable. And yet there is a also sweetness in this wounding. Gradually I have the sense of falling in love. Each time who-I-think-I-am is wounded I become more helpless in love.

Who or what is the object of this love? I've learned to call her Sophia. I even named my last child in her honor because to me she is life itself, although hidden most the time.

I don't think who-I-think-I-am knows anything about her yet. He's pretty busy falling apart these days and trying to pick up the pieces. Pretty morbid actually. It's an internally messy affair that gets into everything I do including writing these words and posting.

My understanding is this process is called Agon or sometimes referred to as the dark nights.

There is a small handful of people who actually read this blog. Yeah I figured out how to track that - pretty cool actually. It is for you and me that I'm going to shut up for awhile till I get through this. It could be several years. Who knows.

I don't want to mislead anyone who is looking for spiritual direction and there is a lot of us really. I have a tough enough time sorting through other peoples spiritual trash and taking all the wrong things to heart. I know I shouldn't be contributing to anyone else's confusion.

I don't think I can write this blog till I have more clarity myself. I need to refocus on my own spiritual practices for awhile until a time comes (and hopefully it does) that I can say "Yeah, I think I have something useful to say or do that might be of help" - the day when all (or most) of what I have to offer is free of who-I-think-I-am.

Until then I may post an occasional poem, quote or something artistic. Nothing much really.

Shared thoughts with an old friend

Today I shared some thoughts with an old friend. We were discussing conspiracy theories and after stating that these theories for the most part didn't have merit he wrote:

My premise that people try to make sense of their experience of life, and that they will believe what they need to believe, when they need to believe it still stands.

My response:

I think conspiracies happen but most you hear about aren't true. Those that have a basis in truth are never all powerful. Your final analysis that we're all creating our own personal manufactured conspiracies sounds right to me although sad. Very sad.

You, I and every other human male comes from a long line of risk-taking warriors. I mean, every one of our fathers all the way back grew up and successfully found a mate for at least one shag. Considering the survival rate per generation in primitive man with all the shit they had going against them, our lineages are full of success stories. I think we are designed to have something to fight against, to push up against. We're risk takers at heart.

Today we have all this extra wealth. I mean even though I'm broke, I still live like a king. Not bad of itself, but we haven't evolved to figure out what to do with ourselves and our excesses.

So there's this perceived lack, like a key inside that should have been opened, you know like what happens when you fall in love for the first time. It's said somewhere that the girl we loved in some way was already inside us before we met. She just woke THAT up inside ourselves when we laid eyes on her. And there's a lot more of THAT that isn't waking up because our environment has changed. But evolution's not that fast. Our mind has out-evolved the rest of us.

So what does a mind do when the soul is lost?

Back in the day, living was hard work enough without sitting around inventing self-delusional bullshit. Because there's all this relative wealth and time, there's all this new space that has opened up. Nature abhors a vacuum and the powers are at work making inroads. There are whole systems of bullshit being spawned in the minds of man and man is taking his place inside his own bullshit worlds like a termite building himself into its own mound. The termites children will never know what daddy knew.

But what's natural for termites is not for man.

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

-Thomas Merton