November 17, 2019

When is it appropriate to forget or ignore our values?

When is it appropriate to stop examining our values in the light of our experience or to stop adjusting our values, our actions, or both, as our integrity may require?

When is it appropriate to stop trying to be a good person, an agent of grace?

When is it appropriate to stop studying, and exercising, the power of love?

October 13, 2019

October 13, 2019

I am reading a book by a psychiatrist friend based on his thousands of hours providing psychotherapy to American veterans and active duty armed forces personnel suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.  Each of the chapters of War Stories From the Forgotten Soldiers tells one soldier’s story — anonymously, of course — ­­­including horrific combat incidents, deaths and injuries, and their effects on the patient and his or her family and friends.  I am only part way through an advance copy the book — for which I’m helping the author get endorsements — and I have been moved to tears several times.  I believe the book is of great educational, social and political importance.  My concern for the wide recognition of that importance is that, though I’ve read no graphic or gratuitous descriptions of violence, even the book’s simple descriptions of what the soldier-patients have gone through are so horrible and uncomfortable to read that Americans will refuse to read them, let alone to learn from them.

If we want to have more peace in the world, we need to know more about war and to tell the truth about it.

If we want to have more love in the world, we need to know about anger and hate and to respond to them with compassion.

If we want to contribute to the healing of society, and of our individual neighbors’ wounds, we need to learn much more about the causes, nature and scale of the injuries and the emotional wounds of those our nation has sent to war; more about how our society cares — how we care — for our soldiers; and more about the origins, present wisdom, and future implications of our national policies which led to war and are likely to continue to do so.

Love is essential.

Love, including the will to extend oneself for the benefit and growth of others, is already essential to peace of mind and successful relationships. Ultimately, love will prove essential to the very survival of humanity as well.

September 22, 2019

Habits, for the most part, become easy and comfortable.

Growth is uncomfortable.

In the Bible,* there is a parable of a man who is going on a long trip.  To each of two other men he entrusts money – I think it’s one “talent,” a marvelous irony, in English – with the understanding that each will take care of the money.  When he returns, the first man who undertook stewardship of the talent says, “Here are two talents. I put the one you entrusted to me to work and gained another one.”  The man who gave him the money is pleased and impressed.  The other man entrusted with a talent says, “Here is your talent.  I did as you asked: I guarded it – by burying it - and now I return it to you.”  The man who entrusted the money, much displeased and disappointed, admonishes this man saying, in essence, “you squandered the opportunity to use and enhance that which was entrusted to you.”

Holy Spirit, please help us consciously to discover, use and grow that which we have been given, bearing all necessary discomfort, the better to be agents of Your grace, and to our own peace and benefit.

*  See Matthew 25:14-30.

August 4, 2019

I have some thoughts this morning about the special chemistry of the Holy Spirit for which I am grateful to poet Ross Gay.

If we share our sorrows – if you and I add my sorrow to your sorrow – the result is joy and greater resilience for each of us.

If we share our vulnerabilities – if we add my vulnerabilities to your vulnerabilities – the result is joy and greater strength for each of us.

If we share our joy, and add a tincture of love, the result is more joy.

June 30, 2019

If you think about Life as a body, and of each person, and even every living thing, as a cell within that body, each of us has his or her own role, or function, in service of the health of the body.  We have great freedom in discerning and fulfilling that function.  Just as, in a body, some cells protect other cells, connect other cells, or bring the oxygen others need to function, we each have the responsibility of fulfilling our particular function, and supporting each other - not judging or interfering with each other - in fulfilling each other's function.

Life always works marvelously well (our judgments notwithstanding), its cells unified and informed by something more than its physical components.  There is a Holy Spirit connecting all of Life: a Spirit of Love.

June 2, 2019

Was there a God before there were human beings?

Was there a God Who decided, for this small planet in the vast universe, “It’s time to for me to make some dry land there”?  And later, “It’s time for an Ice Age. I’ll make some glaciers.”

For a long time, I have thought that there were only two fundamental differences between human beings and other mammals – other animals.  First, humans have a qualitatively greater cognitive capacity, including the capacity to imagine, and even to design and create, things that do not exist.  Second, human beings have the capacity to perceive that some things are good, or right, and some things are evil, or wrong.*

Today I have come to believe that there is a third difference between humans and our fellow creatures on this planet – a difference which seems more important than the other two.  That difference is the presence of a Spirit within, and accessible to, each human being.  It is a Spirit which I call the Holy Spirit, and also God, because it beckons each person to a state of holiness; to peace of mind and pacific action despite personal, social and global travails and conflicts, including those caused by violent, oppressive, or improvident use of the other two distinguishing human capacities.  The Holy Spirit beckons us, individually and collectively, to connection and peace between people and, if we allow it to do so, guides us there.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is Love.  I believe that Jesus saw that Spirit – saw love and holiness - in every person and devoted his life to teaching people how to find that Spirit, that holiness – to find God – in themselves, and in each other, including today.**

* In light of experiments such as the “capuchin monkey fairness experiment;” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg ;

I have ceased to believe that only humans perceive differences between right and wrong.

** See the Holy Bible, 1 John 4:8.