Just Wondering...

The Shema, or Deuteronomy 6:4-9, is one of the most important passages in Judaism.  It’s about how you have to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and all your might.”  Jesus thought it was the “greatest commandment”  as evidenced by his words in Mt. 22:37-38.  While reading this I had a wild thought…

I was wondering about religious intolerance, thinking about those people who are so sure they’re absolutely right about God and everyone else is wrong.  Those people who condemn everyone to Hell for disagreeing  with their beliefs.  Thinking that, since they’re going to Hell anyway, it’s ok to taunt, bully, exclude, batter, or kill people who disagree.

It occurred to me that a God who can give rise to the Universe could certainly kill off non-believers if it wanted to.  Unless, of course, killing people over religious ideology is against the rules even for God. Then I thought that if it’s against the rules for the source of life itself, it’s probably against the rules for us too.

And that’s it for tonight…I just had to share that thought. 

The Best Kind of One of Those Days

Have you ever had one of those days when things seem to be falling into place and you get a glimpse of purpose and meaning in your life?  I’m having one of those days right now.  Let me tell you how it all started…

Eight years and two days ago, I moved out of the home I’d shared with my husband of fourteen years and into a furnished rental for a trial separation.  I picked up a book from the bookshelf and began reading the introduction, which told a story of a woman who’d moved out of her marital home and into a furnished rental and picked up a book that got her through her separation and subsequent divorce.  I had to read it!  The book was At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst, and it was my first introduction to St. Julian of Norwich, who I quoted heavily in yesterday’s blog.

I felt a comfort and kinship in St. Julian I had never felt before, and reading the book was the beginning of a deep spiritual exploration and growth process that continues to this day.  In many ways, that book is responsible for the fact that I am in seminary now.  Because in St. Julian I found a woman with a theology I could relate to, I felt the courage to claim and proclaim my reading of scripture.

I’m still finishing up my Masters of Sustainable Communities program at Northern Arizona University, which will have a chapter on St. Julian from the perspective of process theology.  I’m also planning to complete a doctoral program that will allow me to more deeply and intensely examine the intersection between ecology and theology.  To that end, I made an appointment with my history professor because he assigned St. Julian’s Showings and has written on the theology/ecology intersection so I figured he’d have some useful advice.

As it turns out, he’s a St. Julian scholar, and is supervising a doctoral student at BU who is writing on St. Julian through the lens of queer theory (and my thesis will include some work on queer theory and process theology).  He gave me great advice on moving forward from here academically, and agreed to check out some of my writing and mentor me on how and where to get an article published.

It feels like things are coming full circle, like a long and arduous journey is coming to…well, the base of another mountain I’ll have to climb at some point.  But in the meantime, I’m in a lush abundant meadow, the traveling easy, and the company splendid.  Thank you for coming along on my journey, whether or not we have met.  Knowing you’re out there reading and cheering for me gives me the strength I need. 

Blessings, love and light

Shelley

Process and Prayer and a 14th Century Mystic

For the past two blogs I’ve been writing about the alterations and meditations I’ve added to the Lord’s Prayer, and a little bit about my experience with saying this prayer twice a week.  At the conclusion of part 2 I invited you to pray some sort of prayer, too.  And maybe you’re thinking, “yeah, that sounds nice an all, but…I’m busy, I don’t believe in God and prayer doesn’t work; I do believe in God but God likes the standard Lord’s Prayer better …”   I can think of at least one hundred reasons why you shouldn’t pray this (or any other) prayer. 

But the seminary student in me is in the midst of reading St. Julian of Norwich and now thinks that none of those reasons is as compelling as the possibility that prayer might work.  The doctor in me does a risk-benefit analysis and determines that the risk is low and the potential benefit is high, so why not try it?  At the very least you’ll have 5-15 minutes of quiet time; you may have lower blood pressure as a result.

St. Julian was a 14^th century mystic whose reports of her visions of God and Jesus would have gotten her burned at the stake had anyone bothered to read them.  .  For example, she asked God specifically to show her sin and damnation in order to validate the church teachings and she saw neither.  She says of sin, “I saw not sin; for I believe it has no manner of essence nor any portion of being, nor can it be known except by the pain that is caused by it”  and of punishment  “I saw no wrath except on man’s part, and that He forgives in us.”

But what she said about prayer totally blew my mind, especially since I read it after I started my prayer practice.  God told Julian “I am the ground of thy praying—first it is my will that though have something, and next I make thee to want it, and afterward I cause thee to pray for it.”  And that implies that if I’m praying for the hungry to be fed, and all those other things, it’s because God is leading me to want it because God wants it.  Pause to reflect on that for a moment.  That means God wants us to be free, but we’re keeping ourselves down.  Ok, so if you don’t believe in God maybe this means nothing other than “Shelley needs to be medicated.”  So for the potential atheists in the crowd, consider replacing the word “God” with one of the following: The Consciousness of the Universe, The Spirit of Life, Gaia, The Earth, The Matrix, whatever works 

If God wants us to have it, why can’t God just make it happen for us?  Well, God doesn’t work like that.  Y’know how people are always saying you create your own reality?  And it’s all in your vibrations?  Well maybe there’s something to that, because God also told Julian that “What He intends is this: that we understand that He does everything, and that we pray for it. For the one is not enough, for if we pray and do not understand that He does it, it makes us sad and doubtful.”  Because of the vibrational nature of the universe if you’re sad and doubtful you can’t get yourself in vibrational alignment with the solutions to all of these problems, so they can’t show up!

And it gets even better, because when you do pray, then you are likely to see changes occur because, as Julian wrote, “by prayer comes to agree with God.”  So what that suggests to me is the possibility that God wants social justice, and God wants us to live more gently on the earth, and the other things I pray for in my daily prayer.  But my soul, and the souls of billions of other people are in disagreement with that prayer, so we can’t receive that gift.  I’m not saying that if we all pray for fifteen minutes right now everything will magically get better. But maybe if enough of us pray for fifteen minutes a day for more loving solutions to the world’s issues they will emerge over time.

And speaking of time, what if what we’re praying for doesn’t show up right away?  St. Julian says that in that case, “either we are to await a better time, or more grace, or a better gift.” So if it doesn't work right away be patient.

Maybe St. Julian’s visions were the result of a horrible delirium.  But I like to think that the Universe is conscious, and that consciousness is God.  And God wants us to live peacefully on the Earth, and we can participate in bringing it about by spending fifteen minutes a day agreeing with God’s good ideas.

Strange Days, part 2

This is part 2 of a series on The Lord's Prayer.  It will make more sense if you read Part 1...

Give us this day our daily bread

I pause to think about those who will go hungry today because we as a species still have not figured out how to distribute food equitably and humanely.  I hope my prayer helps at least one person find a good meal, or sets some better process into motion in that “butterfly effect” kind of way.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

This reminds me that as we forgive, so are we forgiven.  I take a moment to loosen the grudges that have a stranglehold on my heart.  I make a silent request for forgiveness from those I have wronged.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors

Oh, do we have debts to pay.  We are accumulating an energy debt as we rob the Earth of natural resources and create environmental disasters that require years of recovery.  The United States loans money to developing nations, and does so under policies structures to prevent these nations from ever rising out of poverty.  And I personally am accruing some debt for school.  I take a brief moment to remember the times I have loaned money never to have been repaid, and I forgive that debt.  I hold a thought that “forgiveness of debts” can be set into motion somehow and the looming global problems that scare me (and I bet you too) can begin to unravel with this forgiveness.  You may say I’m a dreamer…

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

It is easy to get distracted from the beauty of life on Earth, and to forget how fragile it is and also that we are charged with loving care of this Garden of Eden.  It is easy to get distracted from the inherent worth and dignity of each and every person, including ourselves.  It's easy to forget to love one another.  The "evil" of consumerism, with its attendant problems, results from this forgetting.  We shop and spend to fill the void caused by forgetting who we really are.  We forget the real cost of these things we're buying, costs such as greenhouse gas emissions, sweatshop labor, animal testing.  I pray to be led from the temptation of distraction, and to grow in my ability to bring my full presence to each moment.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory

Another reminder that I am a very tiny party of the Universe, life is much bigger than I am, and I shouldn’t take myself so seriously.  And also, an invitation to trust that “all shall be well” as St. Julian says (much more on her later this week—I love her).

Forever and ever

Amen

May it be so.  Let it be so that we end racial, religious, gender, ethnic, economic, and sexual oppression because injustice isn’t sustainable.  And besides, love is much more fun.

It has been a strange thing to do, saying the Lord’s prayer.  I say it slowly, pausing with each phrase to breathe and meditate more deeply on how to make this a prayer of compassion similar to the Buddhist prayer “may we be free from suffering and the root of all suffering, may we know happiness and the root of all happiness.”   I’m certain the world at large hasn’t noticed a visible difference yet, but I feel better—happier, more grounded, freer, and more authentic.  That has to help me engage more positively with the world.  And maybe if you join me in praying fifteen minutes a day—any prayer of compassion at all—maybe people will notice.

Blessings, love and light,

Shelley