EMPATHY IN A WORLD OF SYMPATHY

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Recently, I was asked to say a few words on the topic of “empathy in action” as much of what I do involved listening to people in an open and caring way.  Here is some of what I said, and some of what I didn’t have the time to say, in the time alloted to me:

“When I was asked to speak today, to give “a testimony on empathy”, it was framed at first as perhaps talking about my dual roles here as the communications and membership staffer who also serves as a lay pastoral care minister, and how being a good listener plays into those roles.  I immediately laughed, because you see, I do not consider myself a very good listener.  In my great enthusiasm to connect with you or what you’ve said, I can sometimes miss the nuances.  I hear the content…but in my common state of exuberance and haste, I can miss hearing you, you know the real you, the YOU that really matters behind the words.  As a matter of fact, that I’m standing up here talking on the subject, to me, reveals God’s great sense of humor and irony.

But what I can say, is that I have been trying the last several years, to the best of my ability, to earnestly develop this talent, this talent of active listening, engaging my body and all my sense, to in essence, absorb what you’re experiencing.  This is what empathy means to me and it is really unnatural to my constitution.  Yet is has become a conscious and deliberate spiritual practice because there is really no greater gift to give someone, than your full presence.  Not ever.  Isn’t it hard to not speak or not attempt to smooth things over when something horrible is happening in someone’s life?  It is hard work to simply be with someone else’s pain, not asking them to feel better or saying it’s going to be alright.  Sometimes it’s enough, to just look a person in the eye, and say, “This really sucks.” And then nothing.

But not nothing.  That I am willing to stand with you, sit with you, be uncomfortable, and not judge anything that comes out of your mouth because your feelings are just having their way, that is empathy.

Ever sine I’ve made this commitment, weird things have been happening to me.  I was at the drugstore a while back, looking at birthday cards.  A women, ostensibly also looking for a birthday card for her daughter, started to tell me of how she is trying to decide whether to divorce her husband. She has been with him since she was 15 in Brazil, and he is like a father to her, as well as a husband, as her own father had died when she was seven.  She has been married for 25 years and he has always made her feel special, but he has violated her trust in an unspeakable way with a child family member.  I didn’t know what to with this.  So I just walked over to her and hugged her and she cried.  I said I didn’t have any answers but that I trusted that she would have the courage to find her answer.

To emphasize with someone involves getting involved.  It means that I am you, and you are me.  I say thing because a lot of people confuse sympathy and empathy.  You will never get a sympathy card from me.  You will get a hand written note on blank stationary or one with a poignant quote that resonates somehow, but never one that reads with sympathy.  Sympathy, implies that I can kind of (similarly) understand what you are going though and I feel bad for you.  Empathy means I am attempting to the best of my ability to be in the trenches with you.

Please know that I am not saying that in all situations to simply say wow, this is really awful, I feel your pain, is the appropriate response.  We hear of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, no even a year ago (200,000) dead and we are shocked.  Then they have a tropical storm and there’s more hardship.  Now there is an outbreak of cholera sweeping the country, an epidemic from which they have no immunity.  Having pity does nothing.  Praying for them is a step up, but still does not serve them.  Empathy sometimes needs feet and arms and alms.  It needs to mobilize doctors, nurses, food stuff, and medicine.  It is active listening AND action.

This commitment to radical acceptance listening (which I still stumble at, at any given moment), has given me the blessing to get know some of you and know your stories.  It is a rare gift to share the deepest and sometimes darkest nights of another’s soul.  With empathy, we come to know how strong the spirit is, how incredibly resilient we humans are, even after our losses, how being heard allows us to move through and forward in our lives, touching the lives around us.

YES VIRGINIA, THE UNITARIANS HAVE MYSTICS-TWO TRANSCENDENTALISTS (PART I)

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OK, OK, Unitarians do not have (to my knowledge anyway) ardent pious folk who took the path of asceticism to the degree of wearing a hair shirt or living in a desert cave for decades. For edification’s sake, asceticism is the part of the mystic or saint’s path that includes renouncing worldly pleasures in order to become closer to God.  Those who have taken these extreme measures did seem to have some remarkable “other worldly” spiritual experiences (see Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Rabi’a of Persia, and lots of others in almost every other faith, including Buddhists and Hindus (Gandhi chose a life of asceticism as well).  So, I am not knocking it.  It just that most people do not feel such a calling. 

In fact, most people are adverse to giving up anything they find pleasurable, even when they know it is bad for them (hence the challenges during Lent…) However, no matter how we may kick and scream, there must be some giving up of comfort, security, and ego, in order to attain any real semblance of Communion (with a capital C).      

The first and most famous of the Unitarian “mystics”, who chose a counter cultural lifestyle of purposeful simplicity that reflected and embodied both an ancient and more modern approach for those seeking unity with God, with Nature, and others, was Henry David Thoreau.  Coming from a family of wealth and privilege, with a Harvard education, Thoreau (much maligned in his day for it…he was considered eccentric by the kindest and a nut by the rest) chose to live in a hut in the woods of Concord, MA for two years to isolate himself from society so that he could better understand himself and others.  His classic book, Walden, or, Life in the Woods, now required reading for most High School students, is a compilation of this experiment.  Unlike the Desert Fathers, he was not intending to live as a hermit, and did take visitors, he was instead seeking to understand life more deeply by consciously removing many of its distractions.          

What Thoreau was emphasizing (among other themes) was the necessity of solitude, contemplation, and nature to “transcend” our over hurried existence.  His words and works still call to us today, timeless in their appeal: “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will become simpler, solitude will not be solitude…nor weakness weakness.” While many of his oft quoted words ring of the uniquely American self-reliant spirit, they too challenge us to think and be, rather than to be always about the business of doing.  For as Thoreau puts it, “Being is the great explainer.”  

Many of his criticisms of society were harsh and at many times his views are expressed in an overly zealous manner.  Is that not true of the prophets, the social reformers, and those considered holy men and women of every place and time? I am not suggesting by this question that Thoreau was unique or special as a long revered saint, he was a man with his foibles and misinformation.  Yet there is a reason we keep reading him.

Thoreau is not asking us to build ourselves a cabin and live in the forest, he is asking that we shake off our complacency, that we do not live an unquestioned and unreflected life.  If we are happy with our lives, that’s good and yet we should challenge our assumptions and think more broadly.  If we are unhappy, he is pointing to another way.

“If a man (or woman :)) does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

MODERN FAITH…NOT AN OXYMORON

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Faith that distinguishes itself as liberal or progressive need not be regarded in the vast religious ocean as “less filling” or “more tepid”. In actuality, it can elicit a great deal of spiritual fulfillment.  Making a conscious, committed, and personal choice to live and address the issues confronting ourselves, our communities, and our world takes great fortitude.  There are no easy answer to the complexities and challenges that bombard us daily and we must remain diligent and awake in a host of ways to effectively engage.

Gary Dorrien, an Episcopal Priest and American theologian, characterizes liberal theology in this way: “From the beginning, liberal theology was a third way.  It was not radical, agnostic, or atheist, though it was routinely called all of these; liberal theology was both a morally humanistic alternative to Protestant orthodoxy and a religious alternative to rationalistic atheism”. 

Liberal theology is based on the premise that religiousness should be understood and interpreted from the perspective of modern knowledge and modern life experience.  In other words, members of a liberal faith are committed to making religion intellectually credible and socially relevant. Theirs is a belief that a working religion is not one that is separate from the modern world in all its brokenness, but one that firmly links their religious life to the present.

It is certainly true, and uncomfortable for some, that definitions of divinity can vary widely in an atmosphere of modern inquiry and perennially changing and growing perspectives.  Yet Sharon Welch, a popular Unitarian Universalist ethicist emphasizes divinity, not as a shorthand for a particular quality of the universe, but as a “quality of relationships, lives, events, and natural processes…that provide orientation, focus, and guidance for our lives.” This definition can hold a spectrum of frameworks for who or what God is and an unending supply of what gives meaning.

Spirituality in this sense is deeply tied to a personal and direct communion with the Other, the Divine.  Living the sometimes messy work of relationships as a vital part of one’s faith leads to another primary tenet of modern faith, a focus on moral ethics.  Ethics and social justice are natural outcrops of those who are concerned with this world. Salvation is about healing in the here and now and not focused solely on an eternal paradise in a yet unseen afterlife.  `

Modern faiths do place a high value on the autonomous authority of individual experience and reason, but that doesn’t mean (like some more conservative folks conclude) that not having a dogma means you think that you are your own god. It’s rather what David Tracy, a Catholic theologian, relates: “Liberals are those members of a church or religious sect who hold opinions ‘broader’ or more ‘advanced’ than those in accordance with its commonly accepted standards of orthodoxy.”  Of course, I would like to believe that progressive views are “more advanced” but I know that it is not always necessarily true.  What I do believe to be true is that liberals may hold strong opinions, but they rarely think they, or anyone else, have the whole or final truth.

Galileo, paid the highest price for his discovery of a scientific truth and Rene Descartes, known as “The Father of Modern Philosophy” (1596-1650) questioned every aspect of what is true.  Both men opened the flood gates of reason, giving “license” to the testing of scientists and those skeptical of external authority. Instead of a prescriptive belief system causing them to feel adrift in the religious sea, the liberal mindset is one of seeking and searching and working towards a more hospitable planet.    

Religion at its best helps us to find meaning and orientation in life.  Sallie McFague, a theologian with a passion for environmental issues, revels it thus: “Thinking theologically is not an end in itself; it is for the purpose of right action, for discipleship…theology is therefore essential, even though it is not the central enterprise of the “religious” life.  The goal of theology, as I see it, is to be functional, that is, to actually work in someone’s life.  It is meant to be an aid to right living.  There are two criteria it has to make sense and it has to make a difference.

THE TORCH OF REASON AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

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On the eve of the elections and the “increasing heat and decreasing light” of free expression, I think it apropos to remember that in the end it is the torch of reason that should determine how far our first amendment (the right to free speech) is allowed to go.

In the Oct. 4th issue of the Christian Science Monitor, the article “Free Speech, How Free Should it Be?” covered this very topic.  Using many recent examples, among them the US Supreme Court case now underway examining whether members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, went too far when they staged a protest at a fallen marine’s funeral in Maryland.  The demonstrators hoisted signs proclaiming: “You are going to hell” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”.  Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro church, has made a career out of using blunt and offensive statements to try to shock Americans into joining his crusade against gay rights.  His followers show up at military funerals and announce that God is killing American soldiers for the sins of the country.  Funeral goers are urged to repent…or else.

In Maryland, it was too much for the grieving father, Albert Snyder, to endure.  He sued. The case pits Mr. Snyder’s First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in a church to mourn his son’s passing against the Westboro protesters’ right to chant  harsh slogans and display shocking signs in their campaign for so-called moral salvation for the nation.

The Monitor adds: “The essence of free speech in America is not that you can say whatever you want.  There is no constitutional right to libel someone, or to use ‘fighting words’ that are sure to provoke fisitcuffs…there is no constitutional right to falsely yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.  Government regulation of that speech is appropriate because of the predictable outcome of panic.”

Yet we are also a country that can paint a Hitler mustache on the president’s likeness without fear of the government’s wrath (something I personally find utterly deplorable nonetheless), while a poem critical of the King in Jordan can land its writer in jail.

So what is the yardstick?  Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis provided a sage response in a 1927 case: “To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion.  If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

In other words, “It is the principle that the best way to counter a stupid idea, a hateful idea, a dangerous idea, is through the expression of better ideas.” 

Sound advice.  We have been hearing from the rabble rousers, the stirrers of the pot, and the haters for months now.  We must use our first amendment to speak up and out against those who will not let a family bury their dead in peace.  We must vote for those who represent us in the forum of public civil discourse, that will be, well, civil. It is not in yelling back, but in providing thoughtful responses that seek consensus and equanimity that the wonder of our first amendment stands.  If we do not use our first amendment right to counter the “stupid, hateful or dangerous ideas, we have no one to blame but ourselves, and oh yeah, as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would say, “the media”!

HOW THE IRISH GAVE US ST. PATRICK’S DAY…AND HALLOWEEN

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What we now know as Halloween began 2,000 years ago as the Celtic festival of Shamhain in Ireland. “Samhain” is the Gaelic word for “summer’s end”. For farmers and rural folk, pagans (the original meaning of pagan was not that of our current understanding, as those who aren’t Christian, but simply those who lived in rural areas, by the rhythms of nature), the holiday marked the beginning of the Celtic New Year. It was the transition from the light part of the year to the darker months of the year.  The day was celebrated starting on sundown on October 31st and then throughout the day on November 1st.

It was beloved- and is still beloved by some- as a time when the veil between this world and the spirit world is thinnest, and departed spirits can return to mingle with the those of the living. 

Celebrants would dress up in costumes, representing the various Celtic deities. Part of the folklore contains a story that Samhain is when the old God dies and the Crone Goddess mourns him deeply for the next six weeks.  The popular Halloween image of an old hag stirring a bubbling brew from a giant black cauldron comes from the Celtic belief that all dead souls return to the Crone Goddess’ cauldron of life, death, and rebirth to await reincarnation.  

The jack-0′-lantern, also has its roots in Celtic legend.  Based on a folklore tale about a forlorn ghost named Jack, jack-o’-lanterns were set outside during Samhain to guide lost souls-and to scare away evil ones.  The difference in the United States is that we use pumpkins.  The Irish originally carved out turnips, but when they brought their tradition to America, turnips were much harder to come by than were pumpkins. In fact, they discovered that pumpkins worked better.

Handing out candy on Halloween to our costumed guests at the doorbell stems from the Celtic tradition of giving food and money to the costumed celebrants, just in case they were the physical incarnations of lost souls.  In addition, when the kids say “trick or treat”, it springs from the custom of doing things to please the spirits or else risk some evil.

Around 700 A.D., when the Christian church began to spread throughout Ireland, the Church renamed the holiday All Saints Day (Nov. 1 precluded by All-Hallows Eve (Oct. 31st) and so it became to be known as Halloween.  Like many other pagan festivals, the Christians adopted Samhain and made it a Christian event. 

While other places in the world celebrate Halloween, it is most widely known and celebrated in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the U.K.    

So, while the light outside my window is already dimming at 4:30 pm, and my Halloween candy is at the ready for the throngs of trick or treaters to descend upon my doorstep tomorrow evening, I can relish the spiritual connection with my distant ancestors in the “old country” who marked this as a holy and sacred time AND revel with the all the kids who are simply looking forward to a bag full of candy, getting dressed up, and being out after dark on a school night.  As always, the sacred and the everyday live side by side…it’s important to acknowledge both.

PASS ME THE SALT

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I came upon this wonderful story from the ancient texts of the Hindus, The Upanishads, that got me thinking about how we far-flung faiths have so many streams crossing each other, while celebrating the unique rivers of thoughts that flow from their own spring:

“A young man called Sretaketu has studied the Vedas for twelve years and was rather full of himself.  His father, Uddalaka, asked him a question which he was unable to answer, and then proceeded to teach him a lesson about the fundamental truth of which he was entirely ignorant.  He told his son to put a piece of salt into water and report back to him the following morning.  When his father asked him to produce the salt, Sretaketu could not find it because it had completely dissolved.  Uddalaka began to question him:

 ‘Would you please sip it at this end?  What is it like?’, He said.  ‘Salt.’

“Sip it in the middle.  What is it like?’ ‘Salt.’

‘Sip it at the far end.  What is it like?’  ‘Salt.

‘Throw it away and then come to me.’ 

He did as he was told but that did not stop the salt from remaining the same. 

His father said to him, ‘My dear child, it is true that you cannot perceive Being here, but it is equally true that it is here.  This first essence-the whole universe has as its Self: That is the Real: That is the Self”: that you are, Sretaketu!'” 

“Thus, even though we cannot see it, Brahman pervades the world and as Atman, is found eternally within each one of us.” (Juan Mascaro’s translation, VI of The Chandogya Upanishad).

  The element salt has many used to illustrate well known spiritual parables in our Judeo-Christian traditions as well.  In biblical times, it was an expensive and important commodity.  It was used to barter, was widely traded, and used not only as a means to flavor food but even more vitally, as a preservative.  Hence, it was widely understood as a metaphor for preserving the purity of the world, as well as being essential to sustain all life . 

The Hebrew Bible (namely Exodus, Ezekiel, and Kings) mentions salt as a purifying agent. While passages in Leviticus (2;13) and Numbers (18:19) present salt as a sign of  God’s covenant .  

Jesus employs the metaphor of salt in the gospels of Matthew (5:15-16), Mark,  and Luke (14:34-35) in the New Testament to spiritually instruct:  “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another (Mark 9:50).”

Salt itself, sodium chloride, is extremely stable and cannot lose its flavor, so that interpreting salt that has lost its flavor has been a topic of some debate.  The most common explanation for this is that salt in the era was quite impure, not only due to extraction methods, but also due to unscrupulous merchants mixing it with other substances. Other scholars say that the writers are aware of salt not being able to lose its flavor and hence being the salt of the earth implies that the audience, once having heard the message, will always remember their value. The words translated lost its flavor translate from the Greek as became foolish, but the Aramaic for both phrases is the same, and so we must use our gifts, lest we lose our gifts, from lack of wisdom, complacency, or impurity.

May you never lose and may you be worth your salt.

A GUEST BLOGGER: THE SINNER’S ALMANAC STOPS BY FOR A VISIT (Part I)

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The author of  A Sinner’s Almanac has graciously allowed us to share the following posts.  This voice is an important one for it responds in an articulate and meaningfuly way to the questions that many Americans and Westerners in general ask, “Where are the moderate Muslims in today’s interfaith conversations?” and “What do Muslims think about the way extremism and fanaticism is trying to hijack their faith?” 

The following was posted on October 8, 2010:

Ground Zero Mosque and the Ornament of the World

35. Menocal 2
Tolerance is the Jewel
Upon the Crown of Certainty,
 
And intolerance is
The Unmasking of Doubt
…………………………………….
From the chapter entitled ‘Candy from the Ahad Candy Store’, March 2010
In 2002, Maria Rosa Menocal wrote a book entitled ‘The Ornament of the World’. I only just purchased and read it sometime earlier this year. It is an important book for everyone to read and understand. In light of the Ground Zero Mosque / Cordoba Center / Islamic Centre / Park 51 controversy in New York, one cannot but wonder, how far has the religionist of Islam drifted from the golden age of Cordoba.
I do not know who she is, I have not heard of this writer until I read the book, but her historical documentation of the impact of the Umayads in Spain cannot be overestimated in its importance. The book triggered a deep longing and yearning for those ancient days and a terrible realisation of just how far ‘Muslims’ have strayed from the poetic beauty, sincerity, compassion, love and strength that once illuminated the ancient world. This made me happy and sad.
Those people who are strapping grenades on naive men and women, those people who are tucking a cellphone bomb underneath the bus seat, those people who are called in the media as ‘Islamic Extremists’ or ‘Al Qaeda terrorists’ – They are just bandits. They are weak, doubtful, blind and desperate, and in their despair they hijack and slander the noble names of the Most Excellent Faith of Muhammad Habibullah.
These ‘Muslims’ have become intolerant because they have cast their faith in a vessel of desperation. And for those who knows of the Prophet Muhammad, the Red Rose, the Sublime Humility, oh woe unto those who despairs, for they have raised their banner against the Beloved. Muhammad is anointed as the Mercy to the Worlds, yet they slander him as the Doom of the Worlds. They are worse than even the most wicked amongst non-Muslims, because they cloth their wickedness in the Beautiful Names of Islam.
.
O’ Nation of Muhammad. What is your incessent bickering and complaining about? What is your mad adoption of a million and one conspiracy theories? You act as if you are being oppressed. You act as if the whole world is against you. How easily the names of Muhammad and Allah and Islam spill from your lips. But compared to the Companions, you are rubbish…

MIND POLLUTION

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Paranoia, Fear, Prejudice…what are they?  They are very simply, negative EMOTIONAL states.  The rational mind is frozen, led by the nose by the “instinctive run or be eaten” part of our primal brain that our very distant ancestors needed for survival. 

For a moment, for years, or for a lifetime, it can rack the minds of its owner and worst yet, collectively, a whole population (ie., the mob mentality).  The ‘us vs. them’ mindset is the perfect atmosphere for charlatans and ego-centric politicians to whip up supporters, with sound bytes as rallying cries.  I’ve already talked about the tea partiers in another post, so we won’t go there.  But this mind pollution has tentacles.

In Arizona, they’re pulling people over who look Hispanic, just in case they might be illegal immigrants  (which is absolutely nuts as there is an overwhelming population of Hispanic Americans residing in that state).  The same people who are screaming about our taxes are now cheering as we pay law enforcement big bucks to play “Big Brother” to fight against the illegal “aliens”.  And they don’t find this shoveling “you know what” against the tide? Us vs. them will not work.   

Osama Bin Laden must be gleeful.  The politicians and other pundits have gotten us riled about over the Islamic Center in Manhattan.  He planted the seeds of terror and we ourselves are watering them.  He doesn’t even have to tend the horrifically evil garden he planted.

It was our founding fathers’ explicit wish and was thoughtfully constructed in our Constitution, by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin, that our nation would be a place where everyone (Christians, Jews, and Muhammadans (as John Adams refered to them) could have houses of worship and practice as their conscience dictates (never mind community centers).  Us vs. them will not work.

We moderates better be careful.   When we sat by and thought the lunatic temperance movement would pass, we got Prohibition (There would have been no wine for Nun Tuck) . Over the years, paranoia has gotten us McCarthyism, interned Japanese Americans, racism, classicism, sexism and every other ism. 

I’d like to close this frustrated rant with two excerpts from a RATIONAL editorial by John Buchanan in the Christian Century (Sept. 21) :

“In his New York Times column (August 22), Nicholas Kristof wrote about the controversy over the proposal to build an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan: “For much of American history, demagogues have manipulated irrational fears toward people of minority religious beliefs, particularly Catholics and Jews…Today’s crusaders against the Islamic Community Center are promoting a similar paranoid intolerance, and one day we will be ashamed of it.”…”The most tragic dimension of that irrational fear is the way it is exploited by politicians.  I cannot comprehend how otherwise sane and thoughtful people can conclude that an Islamic community center two blocks away from Ground Zero is inappropriate-not to mention dangerous.  It’s not a mosque and it’s not on the site of the World Trade Center twin towers, but even if it were, the right of all Americans to pray and worship how and who and where they choose is one of the most important rights and values of our nation.  It is not negotiable.”    

Who are we REALLY…as a people, as a nation?

A WHIRLING DERVISH

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Lately I’ve been feeling like a whirling dervish…except that I’ve been getting dizzy.  If you’ve ever since those Persian/Turkish dancers with their high hats, loose slacks, and robes spinning in unison, you may think, well, of course they’re getting dizzy.  But the aim is ironically the opposite; they’re surpassing dizzy.

Dervishes are like Christian Orders.  Among the Catholics, there are Franciscan Friars (which I would have been if I had been male), Dominicans, Jesuits, Paulists, and Benedictines.  The Sufis (the mystics of Islam) have their fraternal orders as well and these are called Dervishes.  Among some of the more important dervishes are the Qadir, Rifa’i, Shadhili, Suhrawardi, and the Mevlevi.  Like their Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist (known as sadhus) counterparts, individuals within the discipline of a dervish are practicing asceticism or a chosen simplicity and poverty, what the Sufis call tariqa (the path, the way to God).   

All dervishes do not whirl.  Each order follows the practices of its founder.  The Franciscans follow St. Francis of Assisi,  (the charismatic nobleman and soldier who gave up everything save God), wearing rough, plain garments, they live completely by alms, and serve the poorest of humanity and the needs of animals.   In Egypt, the Qadiryya dervish, also live humbly and give to the poor, but what sets them apart, is they are mostly comprised of one profession, they are fishermen.  Interesting to note, the more we are different, the more we are the same.  There was another famous fisher of men in Galilee, a Jesus of Nazareth, whose apostles were also fishermen. I guess you could say in some ways, that Jesus was the founder of his particular dervish.

But the dervish that whirls is the Mevlevi dervish. Founder Mevlana Jaladdin Rumi (1207-1273), the renowned mystic and prolific poet included the trance-like dancing as part of his practice of tariqa.  Rotating in a precise rhythm, the dance is part of a sacred ceremony.  The dancer represents the earth revolving on its axis while orbiting the sun.  The purpose of the ritual is to empty oneself of all distracting thoughts. Entering a meditative state, the body conquers dizziness.

There is intention.   When I am spinning my wheels, with a to-do list that is attacked like putting out a fire, tangled up in a lengthy fire hose, un-intentionally wrapped around myself like a boa constrictor; I have not entered the dance mindfully, but rather stumbled onto to the dance floor befuddled.  “Music is to develop the consciousness, poetry is wisdom”, said the prophet Muhammad.  Music, an essential accompaniment to whirling, is repetitive and rises to a crescendo of spiritual oneness, the blurring and blending of the material and cosmic worlds.

It is also about the breath.  It is bringing the body and mind just to the present.   

One of the many reasons that Rumi is known and loved across faiths and cultures is that his prolific writings speak to the timeless life of the Spirit. His message speaks of NOW:

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen.  Not any religion, or cultural system.  I am not from the East or the West, nor out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.  I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.  My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless,  neither body nor soul.  I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know. First, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human. (Rumi Poem, Only Breath).

Always, a returning, a turning back, no matter how many times one has strayed.

WHAT DOES BEING ‘SPIRITUAL NOT RELIGIOUS’ REALLY MEAN?

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On March 19th, my blog post was entitled The Top Ten Religious Words that the Spin Doctors Doctored. Under #6 was the word ‘religion’, I wrote: “I don’t want to beat a dead horse here.  I mean, after all, hasn’t this word been bludgeoned enough.  But, this word, which has come to represent difference and divisiveness, was originally just a verb, religio, meaning ‘bringing together that which is separated.’ So, all I’m gonna say is, huh?”

My intention in this post is not to try to get you to go to church or not go to church, but to think about the implications involved in the personal belief statement of being “spiritual but not religious.”

When I’m at a party, the gym, at a school function…and I hear, “Oh, I’m spiritual not religious”, I always ask what the person means by that.  Usually, the answers are a combination of the following,  “I didn’t agree with a lot of what the xyz church that I grew up in believes”, “I don’t get anything out of going to church”, “Religion is a construct created by the powerful to appease the poor and downtrodden”, “They’re so hypocritical, the church leaders and so many people I know that go to church”, and so on. 

You know what, I agree with a lot of what they tell me.  There has been a lot of “unholy alliances” between individuals, governments, and church bodies.  Much of what they articulate about why they don’t go to church or practice a faith or why they feel disillusioned or skeptical about much of what is essentially dogma (a good working definition of dogma being, “a corpus of doctrines set forth in an authoritative manner by a church”), are all things I can give a hearty Amen to.

So when people say they are not religious, they mean they have chosen not to limit themselves to the reduced definition of religion as a particular church, synagogue, or mosque with its doctrines, its own definitions of sin, salvation, and exclusions.   

When they do express some of their spiritual practices or ways of experiencing the spiritual, there is also much to concur with. My Buddhist friends use a variety of meditations, both alone and in groups.  And while some will agree that using the original meaning of religion, they are indeed religious. While  others, on principle, still detest the idea. They prefer to call it a philosophy of thought. Here, again, semantics do indeed shape and inform our worldview. Whether it be early bad experiences with a “religion” that has scarred or the in-your- face fundamentalists whose fanatical zeal causes one to recoil…the result is the same.    

Some friends are in 12 step programs, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, and their loved ones. One of the principles of these programs is that they are a spiritual not religious program.  Again, meaning they are asking you to discover for yourself “God as you understand Him or Her” and to turn your life and will over to the care of this “Higher Power”.  However, this is not done alone, but rather with the aid and support of the group.

When I get a vague answer about trying to be a good person, they often add how they don’t need a church to become one (agreed). Most of the people who say this, I know to be good people, caring and true.  So, when I ask them if they could be a bit more specific, they say things like they go weekly with their family to volunteer at a food bank or they are a part of quilting bee that creates blankets for those undergoing cancer treatments.    All of the above examples include a component of community as part of the individual spiritual framework.

“My own kind of prayer” and “being in nature” (responses I often get) are also spiritual experiences and are vital parts of the equation, but are not complete without the balance of others.  I too often find a  centering while walking in the woods, a wonderful “un-lonely” solitude, that feels a communion with God. Yet it also feeds me so that I can help, serve, and nurture others and that I am able to receive the same from them.

In closing, an excerpt from A House for Hope by John Buehrens and Rebecca Parker:  

“Is it really preferable (0r even possible) to be religious alone?  Or, is there an importance to religious community life that need to be claimed anew, while protecting against the liabilities and dangers that community life can pose?  I strongly believe the answer to the first question is no and the answer to the second is yes.  We need life together, and we would be wise to invest in rebuilding the walls of community.  My suspicion is that religious conservatism has grown not because its theology is more inspiring than that of liberal theology, but because conservatives in recent decades have been better at creating and sustaining religious communities that offer people meaningful connection with one another and support in enduring life’s trials and tribulations.”

 So…I am back, congregants of the blogosphere!…new job…yada yada.