Parousia…Look Up!

“And I saw heaven opened”
– John, Revelation 19:11

Go outside. If you’re already there, that’s great. If you’re indoors, move away from your desk, couch, or zafu and head toward the nearest exit.

Once you’ve extricated yourself from whatever edifice you may be in, look up. Tilt your head back and lift your eyes toward the skies. What do you see?

In our postindustrial world, we spend long hours gawking at electronically generated images. Our computer screen, flat panel television, and Blackberry have become the primary items we focus on and through. While I’m grateful for these new virtual worlds, it’s important to understand that they are housed within a more ancient real world: the cosmos.

Traditional western thinking — religious and secular — often depicts the universe as harsh, depraved, and unruly. Popular theologies consider it to have fallen from a primordial pristine condition. Subsequently, the natural world is supposedly in conflict with the spiritual world and in desperate need of an extreme makeover. Modernism saw the planet as a machine to be harnessed in order to meet any and all human desires. The excesses of Modernism have led to the Postmodern critique portraying the world and humanity as being at war with each other — we’re trying to kill Gaia, and she is trying to protect herself by killing us.

There may be bits of truth in all of these viewpoints. The cosmos is an apparently chaotic place. It has vast resources that support human life, and we have habitually treated the planet as an infinite waste dump. Yet the prevailing narratives depicting humanity as separated from the broader universe ignore our mutual interconnection. Even Genesis has humanity arising from the dust of the earth. This suggests integration, not isolation.

In The Great Work, Thomas Berry points out the multiple layers of cosmic reality. Humanity lives on a planet situated within a solar system and “beyond the sun is our own galaxy and beyond that the universe of galactic systems.” Everything is nested within a complex structure of embedded reciprocity.

Because the outside world houses our inner world, we discover profound spiritual inspiration when we contemplate our exterior domain. Berry notes that our “psychic nourishment and support come from the natural environment.” We neglect our place and presence in the cosmos to our own impoverishment.

As a shepherd, David experienced a rich inner life through years of outdoor living. He recognized the changing of the seasons, the flora and fauna, and the soil. He could read the sky, the wind, and the flocks. No wonder when musing upon the glories of his surroundings, he exclaimed in wonder, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:3-4). The first step stimulating David to reach this place of enraptured praise was his consideration of the heavens. He looked up.

Centuries earlier, God invited Abraham to lift his gaze. “Look up at the heavens and count the stars” (Genesis 15:5). In looking upward Abraham received the promise of an immeasurable blessing that became realized in John’s vision. When John looked up, he saw heaven opened. Mimicking the rip in the temple veil, the torn sky assured John of unfettered human access to God.

Without reflecting on our environment, we reduce the ways in which we can appreciate God and diminish the ways we can identify ourselves as partakes in the divine nature. So follow the example of the sweet Psalmist, Abraham, and John. Go out and look up. You will discover a deep mystical resonance in your heart as you peer into the limitless heavens.

In taking the physical step of going outside and looking up, you’ll discern a new sense of presence in your place. Our universe just is — a welcoming home for us to live, die, love, and thrive. Popular author Meredith Little reminds us, “The land is nonjudgmental enough to allow us to be our whole selves fully. Nature expresses its wholeness not through words but through its being, and that allows us to remember our own nature and step into that expression of ourselves.”

Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve gone outside to intentionally notice your world and your place in it. You may seem childlike as you stare upward in awe, but Jesus invites us to receive the kingdom of God like little children. Initially you may feel foolish when you go outside and look up, but where’s the folly in appreciating the glory of the physical creation?

Go outside, stretch out your arms, and look up. What do you see? Where do heaven, earth, and sea meet? What specific hue is the sky right now? Notice the clouds. Do you observe any stars, planets, comets? When you look up with the eye of the spirit, feel your heart expanding. Allow your inner self to soar. Let looking up be a living metaphor for hope, optimism, and sanguinity. See the heavens open and look directly into the eyes of God.
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Originally published on July 14, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.

Parousia…Crazy

Besides football, my favorite television program is Law and Order: Criminal Intent. The plots are ripped from the headlines, but the sharp writers develop a depth to the characters that newspaper blurbs rarely mention. In Proustian fashion, something as small as a watch, a photograph, or a child’s toy opens vistas into worlds that we would normally stroll by casually.

The show invites viewers to appreciate the erratic machinations of the human mind. Our emotions, ideas, environment, background, obsessions, and choices combine in infinite degrees to create the unpredictable events of our lives.

I’m especially drawn to the lead character, Detective Bobby Goren, compellingly embodied by Vincent D’Onofrio. His eccentricities, observational skills, and deductive prowess might make you wonder what he (and the show’s writers) would notice about you. Trained in psychology, Goren deals with his mother who was plagued by emotional disease before her demise, and he constantly wrestles with his own demons.

Goren’s subtly alluring charm stems from his desire to accomplish more than catch the culprits. He’s interested in understanding why people do what they do — quite possibly in an attempt to better understand himself. And in his pursuit of self-comprehension we might discover a beginning point for our own journey of self-discovery.

In the engrossing episode Gone, Goren tracks a paranoid chess master, David Blake, suspected of murdering a young woman who arrived in New York in order to visit her fiancé’s family. As a boy, Blake blossomed with a prodigious gift for chess. He became a grand master and, subsequently, a pawn in US-USSR chess diplomacy during the 1970s. At one point, Blake broke the US embargo on Cuba by visiting the island to play in a tournament in which he ultimately won a million dollar prize.

By violating the embargo, Blake became subject to seizure of his assets and criminal prosecution. Being a genius, he invented ways to hide for over two decades. Meanwhile, he was unable to do the one thing he loved most — play chess at the highest levels. Any public appearance would have resulted in his immediate arrest. His inability to find an outlet matching his creative impulse drove Blake mad.

At the story’s climax, Goren places Blake in check causing the grandmaster to contemplate his next move while in police custody. In the dénouement, the ever-insightful Goren quips to his partner Alexandra Eams, “When you keep people from doing what they do best, it makes them insane.”

You may not know a rook from a bishop, but you might feel the stifling inability of fully expressing yourself. Many people live emotionally fused lives, believing that their will is what’s best for others. A son loves painting, but father wants him to be a doctor. A daughter has a passion for math, but her parents push her into business administration. A couple believes that God loves all people, but their religious authorities instruct them to keep their faith quiet.

Your heart cries out for a particular form of articulation but society, relationships, and institutions continually suppress your unique creativity. Without having what Virginia Woolf called “a room of one’s own,” frustration grows into irritation, anxiety, and despondency.

Perhaps this partially explains the intense disquiet felt in various religious communities. The common theme announced weekly affirms that our highest purpose is to glorify God, and we achieve that end primarily through the vehicle of the church, performing its rites and liturgies, and affirming the traditions of the particular fellowship. We’re left to tacitly infer that what we do best is maintaining the inner functions, financial health, and public appearance of the institution. We serve best, supposedly, when become human batteries energizing the matrix.

But what happens when what we do best comes into variance with the official policy? The hierarchy says that a twelve year old girl was born to become the wife of a fifty year old man. Or you can’t play the guitar because God approves of acapella music only. Or you can’t speak in public gatherings because you don’t have a Y chromosome. Or you must abandon the one night you have a week to spend with you family so that you can attend a group meeting. Must we persistently sacrifice our individuality for a supposedly greater good? When does the greater good include us?

Let’s assume that glorifying God might be what we do best. It’s a simple category error to conflate the glorification of God with the perpetuation of institutionalized religion. Jesus noted that the Sabbath had been made for humanity and not the other way around. Ideological enforcement of Sabbath regulations drove people to the point of madness so that they couldn’t celebrate the healing of a blind man or the feeding of hungry humans. Today, ideological enforcement of our religious traditions elicits similar lunacy.

How can we stop the insanity? The book of Revelation ends with a buoyant vision. A river of life proceeds from the divine throne. The river irrigates the Tree of Life whose fruit and leaves provide and promote healing. Here is God’s therapeutic word. Healing of heart, mind, and soul. We can begin to experience this healing by recognizing that God takes no pleasure in burdening you to the brink of psychosis. God’s concern is about your freedom, not your bondage. Your liberation, not your repression. Your flourishing, not your shrinking. Once we see this, we will stop confusing creedal dogmatism with God’s will.

If glorifying God is what we do best, what does that really mean? Once again, we look to Jesus who describes glory as loving God with all that we are and loving others likewise. This recognition reframes entirely our normal thought patterns concerning the substitution of stale religion for vibrant living. Importantly, it’s open to an infinite variety of expressions. Your incarnation of love creates new life as you breathe fresh air into our world.

You may already be aware of what you do best. If not, spend time with your heart and discover it. Live awake so that you can know what you do best, and then do it. Don’t remain unconscious to your highest and deepest life passions. God takes as much pleasure in gardening as singing on the praise team. Meanwhile, grant that same life-giving freedom to others. Don’t imprison them, thereby driving them round the bend. Listen to their hearts so that you can help them encounter God’s inner divine healing.

Finally, we might ask what God does best. Jesus provides an intriguing answer in his prayer. “And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one” (John 17:22). God glorifies us. Because no one prevented God from doing what he does best, he lives in perfect success of his good work through Christ, and we all share in that blessing no matter how crazy it seems (1Corinthians 1:25).
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Originally published on June 30, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.

Parousia…Authoring Your Life

There’s a difference between an author and an editor. The author creates ex nihilo. She looks at the blank page — computer screen, canvas, chunk of marble, or sketchpad — and fills it. Ideas take form in words, images, and pictures. Often crude, rough, and unrefined, they spill from the heart and mind of the author. It’s the real and untouched overflow springing from within. The author’s first draft stands like Adam and Eve — naked and unashamed.

Then comes the editor. The editor looks at the text with a critical eye, examining it for flaws, mistakes, and errors. His job is to find defects and to recommend corrections. The editor wants to refine the initial product like an instructor from a finishing school.

Rarely, if ever, does the audience see the original manuscript. It’s messy, filled with incomplete ideas and roughly worded phrases. The earliest document is a spontaneous declaration, but the edited version has been pored over, worked on, and chiseled away. In the world of publishing, the best books often result from the best editing. Life is different, however. In life we excel from authentic authoring rather than extensive editing.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg is an illuminating book designed to help people hone the craft of writing. In it, she reveals startling truths about living by helping people discover themselves. In her chapter “Trouble with the Editor,” she observes, “It is important to separate the editor from the creator or internal censor when you practice writing, so that the creator has free space to breathe, explore, and express.”

As we author our lives, we may hear the voice of our internal editor telling us that we’re not good, bright, or worthy. The editor looks disapprovingly at all we feel, believe, do, and hold dear. It tells us that we not as qualified as others to have opinions. That we’ll probably make a fool out of ourselves. That we’ll look, sound, and even smell horrible. The editor tells us that we’re less than perfect.

After a while, we tend to believe the editor. We take the editor’s suggestions and try to incorporate changes. We get a mentor, look to a guru, find someone to model our lives after. Hoping to please the editor — or just to shut him up — we search for someone who agrees with the editor. Yet, no matter how hard we try the editor continually marks our lives with red ink and track changes.

Eventually we might even attempt to imitate Jesus. If we can just force ourselves to be more like him, maybe the editor will be satisfied once and for all. But before long, we discover something shocking. We can’t live like Jesus because we’re not Jesus.

That’s not something to bemoan or regret. It’s just the reality. Jesus was Jesus, and you are you. And besides, neither Jesus nor God ever expected you to be Jesus. You’ve been called to be you, and that’s enough. Why would you settle for being less than you? If you feel compelled to follow Jesus, follow his example of living genuinely and fully before God, himself, and others. Jesus lived out of an authentic sense of being himself, and he didn’t model his life after anyone-not the prophets, not Elijah, not John the Baptist. He would be himself, regardless of any voices of judgment. When the soldiers came to arrest him under the cover of darkness, he reminded them “Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts.” Jesus lived openly. He would author his life, not edit it.

But you might wonder: What happens if I mess up? If I spell the words of my life incorrectly? If people read me and laugh? If it’s a horror story rather than an inspirational novel?

In that case, you might be tempted to turn to God as an editor. To correct all your mistakes. To cut this word and paste that one. To take something nonsensical and straighten it all out. Sadly this approach leads to greater disappointment and a more heightened impulse of self-editing. It turns God into a cosmic critic whose primary concern is finding fault. It squelches spontaneity, sincerity, authenticity by assuming that life as it has been lived is less than as it should be.

God is not an editor because God does not believe we need one. The voices attempting to edit our lives deny our legitimacy and even our humanity. They want us to be something other than who we are. Perhaps it may help to realize that anyone trying to edit you is actually longing to edit themselves.

God is quite different because God wants you to be no one besides yourself. The true you. God’s not interested in precise grammar or fastidious margins. God knows that a frank life sometimes misses a comma or spills past the borders. That’s cool with God because God is at peace with himself, and that allows God to be at peace with you.

So author your life. Boldly. Blatantly. Fearlessly. Don’t cut out the parts that may seem less than flattering. Michel de Montaigne wrote, “Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.” Don’t despise your being. Don’t hate you. Embrace the fullness of your divine inner self, and when you do you will find yourself fully present with God and all of life.
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Originally published on May 26, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.

Parousia…Rereading The Story

The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved stories of the past hundred years. As much as I enjoy the classic movie, I must that the same flying monkeys that scared me when I was a child still make me feel a little nervous.

Besides the fanciful and loveable characters, it seems to me that the appeal of The Wizard of Oz comes from the most famous line in the story. You know the magic words. So click your heels and say, “There’s no place like home.” The sentiment of “home” conveys belonging, welcome, and warmth. Feeling “at home” carries an ethos of safety, security, and sanctuary. Home offers you a sense of place. At least, that’s the archetype of “home.” Even if our actual homes are less than idyllic, the mental image of the model home resonates deep within our hearts.

Of course, The Wizard of Oz has other evocative themes. The ability to be at home whenever and wherever you are. The possession of what you desire most. The hero’s journey. The tendency to look outside ourselves for what we possess all along.

As adored and familiar as The Wizard of Oz is, it may be difficult to revise the way we tell the story. But can you flex your imagination and envision an alternative reading of the story? Keeping the entire narrative exactly as it is, a retelling of The Wizard of Oz will thoroughly alter our perception of Dorothy, Oz, and the message of the story.

Dorothy was an impetuous child. She disrespected her elders, visited a strange man in a wagon, and trained her ferocious dog to attack an old lady.

As a result, God sent a tornado to punish her. He swept her away to a bizarre world where she killed two of the residents and celebrated their deaths with freakish elves and demonic soldiers. In this peculiar realm, Dorothy cavorted with witchcraft, weird talking beasts, and evil flying monkeys.

After stealing a pair of priceless ruby slippers, Dorothy sought a way to return to Kansas. She seduced a human-like scarecrow, a metallic lumberjack, and beastly lion into accompanying her to a bejeweled city in order to rendezvous with a wizard who could send her home. She finagled her way into this city that was held under the despotic sway of the deceptive warlock. After berating her, he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. He would send her home if she would perform an act of thievery. If she would steal a magic broom, he would help her return home. Dorothy consented.

In the course of the robbery, Dorothy killed the rightful owner. Upon returning to the city, she double crossed the wizard, and banished him when she discovered that he was from Kansas, too. (He has not been heard from until this day.) The wizard’s absence freed Dorothy to install her minions as puppet rulers of the city. Discovering from her spirit guide that she wielded magical powers herself, Dorothy returned home to Kansas where she waited to exact revenge on her unsuspecting family and neighbors.

That way of telling the story sounds more like a horror show than a cherished family tale. These are the exact same facts but told with a different tone, an unusual emphasis, and some suggestive wording. One way warms the heart. The other makes you want to take a hot shower and sleep with the lights on.

We have the God-given power to tell the story. Any story, including the Biblical story. For centuries, people have told the Biblical story in terms of humanity’s rebellion and God’s intense yearning to make us pay. That way of telling the story portrays an irate God who resolves to whack all humanity in a genocidal act of revenge because the first couple took a piece of fruit. He decided to give us a second chance by taking out his frustrations on Jesus. People who believe these facts in the right way will escape never-ending torture. Moreover, these believers need to think the right thoughts about the metaphysical make-up of the ineffable God, agree to a certain cosmology regardless of what the visible evidence suggests, and behave properly; otherwise, they’re going to regret it for a long, long time.

Those lucky enough to believe, think, and act in harmony with God’s revealed and hidden purposes call their good fortune “grace.” To them, God in his infinite mercy (we’re told) is waiting patiently for all people to come to their senses. Yet, the vast majority of them won’t. One day God’s patience will run out and he’ll get so fed up that he’ll send Jesus back to earth in order to end it all.

That, we’re told, is the “good news.”

No wonder there is so much anxiety around religion. This way of telling the story portrays God as a petty, neurotic, and secretive tyrant. It puts humanity in the position of seeking to appease this God by the performance of enigmatic rituals and adherence to arbitrary moral standards. It gives us all one chance to get it right. Our fate is sealed by death, and even God is bound by death’s decision.

I simply must believe that there’s a better way of telling the story. One that pictures God as something kinder and gentler than the godfather. One that honors God for walking with us through the hurts, sorrows, and wounds of life. One that depicts God as love incarnate. One that reads Christ on the cross as the ultimate expression of divinity with humanity. One that blesses all families of the earth. One that finds God to be infinitely immanent rather than completely separate. One that sees humanity’s comprehensive connection in the ultimate all-in-all. One in which God decrees, “There’s no place like home,” and so he makes his home with us — not as an abusive despot, but as a tender and understanding presence (Revelation 21:3).

You have the power to tell the story. This is not only your God-given gift; it is your inescapable blessing. No one has a monopoly on the story. You don’t have to accept anyone’s interpretation of it. So, begin telling the story in a way that makes it worthy of being the Greatest Story Ever Told. And when you do, you’ll discover a personal transformation and contribute to a new cultural awareness that will make all things new and reveal a New Heaven and New Earth.

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Originally published, April 7, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.