Paths to God

In the past year, I have seen this billboard all over the roadways of New England where I live,

and it has been driving me a little bit crazy.

The reason is simple.

As a human being (who happens to also identify as  Unitarian Universalist) living on a planet of over 7 billion people in a galaxy among hundreds of billions (possibly trillions) of galaxies, the belief that there is "only" one path to god is not at all congruent with my own beliefs and values.

Therefore, each time I caught a glimpse of this billboard on the side of the highway as I commuted to work on 91-South or on the drive to my in-laws house through the backroads of New England, I would have a pretty intense reaction to the words "Jesus...your only way to God."

(Oh, and if you didn't already guess, the reaction was anger.)

The reaction was so strong in fact, I actually began to form a whole defensive position in my head against them- the mythological narrow-minded, arrogant people I had concocted in my head who paid for that billboard.

(Oh, and yes, I got quite righteous and judgmental too!)

So first, I headed to my books to get more evidence to back up my position.  Because I was after all: right.

I started with the opening lines to the Introduction of a great 20th century contemplative D.T. Suzuki in his book Buddha of Infinite Light: The Teachings of Shin Buddhism, The Japanese Way of Wisdom and Compassion.

Buddhism speaks of 84,000 paths to supreme enlightenment. The number symbolizes the countless ways that can lead us to the world of liberation, freedom, and peace.

84,000 paths to supreme enlightenment.

See, I thought to myself in my most know-it-all fashion, how could someone possibly believe there is one way to god? 

And as I cemented my position (without one iota of irony just yet mind you) I kept going through my library until I got to Merton.

Thomas Merton, another famous 20th century contemplative who was a Christian monks and author wrote in New Seeds of Contemplation:

A 'faith' that merely confirms us in opinionatedness and self complacency may well be an expression of theological doubt. True faith is never merely a source of spiritual comfort.  It may indeed bring peace, but before it does so it must involve us in struggle. A 'faith' that avoids this struggle is really a temptation against true faith.

And then he even commented on Christian proselytizing which had been my experience of the billboard.

What about the men who run about the countryside painting signs that say 'Jesus saves' and 'Prepare to meet God!' Have you ever seen one of the? I have not, but I often try to imagine them, and I wonder what goes on in their minds. Strangely, their signs do not make me think of Jesus, but of them.  Or perhaps it is 'their Jesus' who gets in the way and makes all thought of Jesus impossible. They wish to force their Jesus upon us, and He is perhaps only a projection of themselves.  They seem to be at times threatening the world with judgment and at other times promising it mercy. 

Jesus...your only way to God.

But then, by the grace of I don't know what, I began to see the irony, the hypocrisy, of my argument.

I began to see that the more defensive I became, the more consumed I became with being right, the further I was moving from my own experience of god.

When I began to wake up to this reality, the same Merton reading started to look a little different. 

In any case, their Jesus is quite different from mine. But because their concept is different, should I reject it in horror, with distaste? If I do, perhaps I reject something in my own self that I no longer recognize to be there. And in any case, if I can tolerate their Jesus then I can accept and love them. Or I can at least conceive of doing so. Let not their Jesus be barrier between us, or they will be a barrier between us and Jesus.

I then realized that I could just as easily have been accused of being, what did I originally call "them?" arrogant and narrow-minded, in the one way I had chosen to read the billboard.

This led me to look into how many other ways this billboard could be read or interpreted that might help me with the barrier between us that Merton spoke of.

Though not a Christian, I started with the Gospel of John itself. What does it actually say?

I am the way...no one comes to God but through me (John 14:6).

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love (John 4:8).

This led me to remember some of the writing of Christian-leaning author and Unitarian Universalist minister Kate Braestrup who I frequently return to:

It is entirely possible, that is, that the God I serve and worship with all my body, all my mind, all my soul, and all my spirit is love (1 John 4: 8). It’s enough. It’s all the God I need. 
-Here if You Need Me

God is love, John’s Gospel tells us. That’s a whole theology in three words. The practical application of that theology—God is love—is nearly as simple. Be as loving as you can, as often as you can, for as many people as you can, for as long as you live. Why should you do this? Because.
-Marriage and Other Acts of Charity

I also found an article online at Huffington Post called "Jesus said, 'I Am the Way...' But What Does that Really Mean?" by an author an lecturer named Steve McSwain.

In the article which chronicled pieces of the author's own personal journey with Christianity, spirit and god he wrote:

One day, I finally just gave up. That is to say, I quit believing. I quit trying to “believe” enough to make it with God. I gave up the fruitless effort to find God through words, or confessions, or the “right” beliefs. And, when I finally gave up, that’s when the transformation seemed to happen. To this day, I do not know what to call it. I’m not even sure how to describe it. But the mystery of grace was born in me. All the fear I had known disappeared. Since that day, I have never felt separated from God again. And, this is not because I finally found the right set of beliefs. Further, it is not because I had finally attained to a higher level or better quality of believing.

Not at all. In fact, it might be precisely the opposite. Not until I quit believing did I start living. Not until I gave up trying...gave up searching for the “right” beliefs about God that I discovered the Source of Mystery within.

I have since come to know that spirituality...that is, knowing the Divine...has little if anything to do with what you believe...Spirituality is really all about how you live, not about what you say...about the WAY you live, not the WORDS you say.

Reading the words of Merton, Ms. Braestrup and Mr. McSwain helped me loosen my grip on my need to be both righteous and right, and opened me back up to a space of connection and inclusivity with others which is in fact the essence of my own theology of god.

I suppose anyone who has a light-hearted sense of god with a healthy sense of humor might argue that someone as thick as me needed that very billboard to show up in my life multiple times for over a year in order for me to get the message...

Okay, message received.

Poetry 117: Nothing More

Nothing more.

The silhouette of my son's trampoline

in the dawn of day.

The grandiose

(and reliable) Big Dipper

in the night sky

that guided Harriet Tubman

to freedom.

The luscious bite

of this perfect peach

in 95 degree summer heat

with my lover standing by.

The first ten seconds

of bedtime when

my animal body makes that delicious

direct contact

with fresh, clean sheets.

What more

could I ask for?

The bare naked

purity of that which

surrounds me

is whole(some) and complete.

I need not add-

or subtract.

The clarity that comes

from that Emersonian Awakening

of heaven on earth.

Meaning.

Magic.

Merriment.

Mysterious and romantic

they are.

And on more than one occasion,

I'm there, in full;

bathing in the fantastical,

sensual pleasures

of the mind's

creations.

Yet, as Pure Land

would suggest,

we may just

have everything we need.

Nothing more.

-Me

The Stories We Carry

Lately I've been contemplating the many, many ways that we hold and carry our stories.

For me, it would include the dozens of journals we keep stored in the basement.

The dear old friends (who are more like family) who have journeyed thousands of miles of road with us already.

The siblings who are the only people who ever shared the idiosyncratic homes of our childhood.

The photo albums that fill our book shelves with images of each major milestone preserved behind a plastic cover.

The land and landscape around us that can at times feel more like our own DNA than our own tribe.

The books, movies and songs that we re-read, re-watch and re-listen to 2, 3, or 200 times because it feels almost magical that someone else has captured the essence of our story within their own art. 

Our very own physical bodies that carry the C-section scars across the belly. The dull pain in the right hip every time it rains.  The scar on the right knee from the bike accident in childhood.  The 3rd earring hole only on the left ear because fainting occurred before the other could be pierced.

Yes, these are all ways we carry our stories.

And I could very well write a post about each and every one as their individual value to me is that great- that meaningful.

But just for today, I'd like to consider the therapeutic relationship as a holder or container of our narratives, our histories.

As a psychotherapist by day, I actually don't generally write here, in this blog, about the topic of therapy.

There are probably a lot of reasons for that; one being, psychotherapy is my Monday through Friday day job (that I love), and in the ether of the virtual world I like to explore other interests of mine.

And even today, it is actually not my plan to share with you my reflections as a therapist, but rather in my experience as a patient or client.

Because you see, in the spring of this year I learned that my longtime therapist had died.

I wasn't working with her at the time, yet the loss and grief I felt was there just the same.

Of course the death of someone you care about always has its usual challenges, but I've found having my therapist die has been a different kind of experience.

I'll tell you why.

For those of you who have ever worked with a therapist for a longer period of time you may understand this better when I say, that after learning my therapist died, it was a very strange feeling to know that the keeper, the holder, of my story was not here anymore- here on earth.

As someone I had worked with on and off for over ten years from the period of time right after I got married until my mother's cancer just a year and change ago, this woman had the largest breath of my intimate history next to my husband and 2 childhood friends.

But unlike my husband and two friends, and I only realized this after she died, my therapist and I had the both explicit and implicit agreement that she would help me hold my whole story- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Because, you see, sometimes the dark parts of our story are just too heavy to carry on our own. 

In fact, sometimes, I think it was the sheer weight of the new event (or the old event that I was finally ready to contend with) that would bring me back to her office again and again.

It would be like when my husband and I have a big household chore to do that feels too big for one of us alone, so he will say to me: Let's double-team this one. 

Except, our story is not something concrete that can be held in hand, but rather something ethereal that is more likely to be held in the heart and mind in the company of another.

And I really don't think I'm alone with this need.

I recently went to a wedding, and at one point late into the night I decided to take a break from the crowd and the dance floor to take a breath.

And as I sat there, just a few steps away, I had this sensation of awe for all of the hard-won stories that were being carried around out there on that dance floor.

For example, a woman in her twenties who had just lost her father in a plane crash.

A couple who had lost the baby girl they planned to adopt after 2 years of being her parents everyday.

A man, not yet 40, with a beloved father of only 67 with rapidly advancing early-onset Alzheimer's.

The adult child who's mother took her own life when she was just a baby, leaving her without ever having had the experience of having her very own mother.

All of these complex stories weaving in and out on the dance floor- carried inside each human body.

Watching them made me realize, though I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, my therapist acted as a carrier for me of my own story, my own history. 

I began to imagine her as one of those huge barges I had seen out in the middle of the sea. 

Flat ships, not really moving anywhere, jam packed with large wooden crates filled with all of my historical cargo. With all the appearance like, they (the barges) seemed just as content to stay out there indefinitely.  No where to go. Nothing to do. Just saying, "yeah, I got this."

Through all those years of pregnancies, jobs, losses, and just life, I didn't fully appreciate what a gift it had been for her to help me carry the historical weight for so many years (whether I was actively working with her or not) so that I could continue putting one foot in front of the other in the next set of life experiences.

Having had this experience, I now find that I have a much greater appreciation for the sacred (I know that is a big word) quality that is present when someone leans into vulnerability in order to share a part of their story, and when someone agrees to respectfully listen to, hold and honor someone's story.

This new appreciation reminded me of a quote I once heard.

"Listening is an act of love."

I heard this said in an interview with the creator of the radio/podcast show StoryCorps, David Isay, which is essentially an entire program dedicated to the loving and respectful holding and preservation of our American Stories- literally holding them in The Library of Congress.

An act of love.

Even though as a therapist myself I had already bought into the power of deep listening, still, since I've reflected on the significance of the therapeutic relationship with my own therapist after learning of her death, I now believe, know, this truth at a much deeper level.

And that has changed me.

Just yesterday I was in a long conversation with the new student intern I'm working with at the hospital, and she began to tell me a little bit more about her own story- what brought her to our shared field of mental health and psychotherapy. 

And as her  story unfolded, I felt a much deeper appreciation come forward--almost as a sort of meta-awareness--as she opened up to me.  And I have to tell you, it felt generous and authentic. 

It felt like mindfulness.

I want to thank my therapist, Joan, for all of the stories she helped me carry, and even now, for continuing to participate in my own personal transformation.

Blessed be.

Forgivng Our Ancestors Part II: A New Paradigm of Imperfect Love

For decades I have been stuck in a matrix of resentment, disappointment, rejection, and anger. A matrix of my own making.

You see, I had constructed a paradigm of forgiveness that was organized into a tightly packaged, rigid dichotomy of: good & bad, success & failure, right & wrong.

The funny thing is, as the word "matrix" suggests, I didn't know it.

It was like what 20th century Japanese contemplative D.T. Suzuki wrote in his Introduction of Buddha of Infinite Light: The Teachings of Shin Buddhism, the Japanese Way of Wisdom and Compassion:

Based on [a] fundamental error, we construct a world with words and concepts infused with our emotions. Our life, then, becomes filled with polarities, such as good and bad, like and dislike, love and hate, black and white, mine and not mine, enlightened and not enlightened, ad infinitum. Such is the world of 84,000 delusions.

But then, one evening during this past summer, while at my last 5-day silent retreat, my teacher Heather said the following sentence during one of her many Dharma talks:

Your friends and family will love you imperfectly, and you will love your friends and family imperfectly.

You know when someone says something that is so obvious and so true that it is like "WHAMMO" right between the eyes? That's what happened to me that very same night.

As D.T. Suzuki says:

We are made to acknowledge this life of fabrication when our reality is illuminated by light. This light focuses on each of the 84,000 delusions, making them transparent and powerless. Light is symbolic of wisdom in Buddhism, and this light is none other than the Buddha of Infinite Light (Amitabha).

After years of being completely frustrated with my absolute stuckness in the process of forgiving and letting go (because, you see, they go hand in hand), all of the sudden I could see with utter clarity how I had imprisoned myself in a static Paradigm of narrow perfectionism.

But I must stress, this realization was not met as a baseball bat to the head, it was more like a long, slow exhale.

Again, D.T. Suzuki:

Since the light is not harsh, cold, and distant, but soft, warm, and proximate, it is felt as a compassionate working.

Compassionate working.

I realized I had confused my feelings and judgments about my relationships for the relationship paradigm itself; without realizing it of course.

And you know how once you gain insight or discover something new, suddenly that novel object of your attention  is everywhere?

Well, it was this past summer.  Even in the most ordinary of ways like watching movies and television.

For example, when my children and I rewatched the Disney movie Maleficent with actress Angelina Jolie as the bitter and betrayed lover who takes her revenge on an innocent child whom she, overtime, comes to love as her own, I saw imperfect love.

Or when my children asked me if Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi hero of the first 3 Star Wars movies, was "a good guy or a bad guy?" as he appears to love his wife and soon to be twin babies, but is also engaging in death and destruction, the most fitting answer seemed to be: imperfect love.

And when I binge watched the entire first 10 episodes of season one of the National Geographic series Genius about the life and times of 20th Century Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein, and I had an awareness of exquisite painful as I watched the way he engaged with ideas and the world in such an enormous way that was virtually breathtaking, while at the very same time completely missing the boat in his most primary relationships that were truly dear to him, I thought, imperfect love.

And finally when I watched the 2016 film A Quiet Passion that dramatically depicted the excruciating life of 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson played by actress Cynthia Nixon I was startled by the utter obviousness of the theme of imperfect love which played out among all of the Dickinson family members and their close friends and partners.

In fact in this movie there is a very moving scene that is well into the film when, through tears, the poet incredulously asks her only sister who has been her caretaker, friend and confidant over decades of the poet's physical, emotional and psychological struggles:

How can you go on loving me?

And the sister simply replies through her own tears:

Because you are so easy to love.

I must say though, even with all of these examples that seemed to be everywhere this summer, it is still unbelievable to me that one artful sentence could unlock such a distorted, yet powerful, long-held belief system that kept me locked in captivity where forgiveness seemed all but impossible.

Whereas now, I can see a pathway through.

I can see how good vs bad, success vs failure, and right vs. wrong just don't work, and maybe never even applied to the relationship paradigm, because now I know and accept that this pathway is necessarily fluid, complex and dynamic.

Your family and friends will love you imperfectly, and you will love your family and friends imperfectly.

Several months now since my teacher Heather said these words to me--words that I've been repeating often as a sort of prayer to memorize on my heart that I wish I had been told years ago--I feel a sensation of being released (or at least a loosening of my grip) from my old paradigm of good vs. bad.

It has become a jumping off point of sorts for an entirely new paradigm of relationships and intimacy with self and other that is grounded in realistic and humanistic functional behaviors such as: empathy, compassion, patience, integrity, remorse, authenticity,  and radical acceptance.

And even though I honestly don't know what this new Path will look like, I am willing to try to walk the Way anyway.

How about you?

(Please stay tuned for the next post: Forgiving Our Ancestors Part III.)