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Worship

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The ancient Romans insisted that the rites of the gods be honored, on pain of death. The concern was rooted in practical experience of the consequences of pissing them off. Why would failure to practice the rites make so much difference to the pantheon?

A clue is found in the Greek spiritual practice that has been revived as Hellenismos. The Greeks believed that the mystical progression began with simple human heroism. It continued after the hero’s death when grateful people gathered at shrines to celebrate his (or her) accomplishments. If the personality of the hero inspired further heroic achievements, justifiably the celebrations would increase. The accumulated psychic energy would eventually make the hero a daimon. Adherents might then invoke to power of the daimon in times of need. If the daimon responded effectively, the continued outpouring of gratitude might eventually elevate the personality to Olympian stature.

So worship is important to the gods because, as suggested in The Matrix trilogy, human beings are psychic batteries of a sort. Our attention is part of a political partnership.

As cultures evolved from local to regional to continental extent, this process became politicized. The Roman emperors spoke of becoming gods in their own right. King Louis XIII of France had himself crowned “The Sun King.” The Capital dome in Washington D.C. is decorated with a mural celebrating “The Apotheosis of Washington”. And the sanctification of Ronald Reagan is evidenced by the evolution of the exhibits at his Presidential Library. Given hundreds of millions of adherents, power similar to a Hercules might be accumulated within a decade or so, where before it might have taken generations.

Cynicism about the process is evident in certain religious controversies. Despite the similarities shared by Christian and Buddhist sages, some Christian theologians complain that the avatars of compassion and loving kindness celebrated in Tantra are actually “demons”. I have some challenged in attempting to reconcile that accusation with Christian celebration of saints and angels. The characteristics of the Tantric and Saintly personalities are almost identical.

Despite all of this commonality, I am going to assert that the worship Jesus offered to the Apostles is fundamentally different. I believe that our own selfish aspirations to saintliness blind us to this understanding: we have a vested interest in subscribing to practices that increase our personal power.

For Jesus did not command us to worship. He admonished us:

You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.

If worship is to prop something up to make is stronger, then loving is not worship, for the goal of love is to bring something closer. In a kind of virtuous circle, our loving calls to us the perfect love of God. We can attempt to corrupt this love, but in doing so only succeed in driving it away. It stands just aside from us, until we relent in our harshness, and allow it to come again into service to us.

Why is love so efficacious? Because it holds power in readiness for others. It does not spray out in gaudy shows, but preserves its energies until it finds spirits calling out in genuine need.

Amy Grant renders this so beautifully in Better than a Hallelujah:

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful, the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah

The desire of Unconditional Love is not to be served, but rather to be of service.

What about the other gods? Well, in seeking after worship they are in fact seeking after love from their adherents. If that love is given conditionally, the deity is at risk of losing their elevated status. Of course, the only way to secure unconditional love is to love reciprocally, because if the deity loves conditionally, the adherent will eventually realize that they’re getting the raw end of the deal. So the most powerful gods, in their relationship with their adherents, are eventually suffused with love, and ultimately are subsumed by it.

This is the truth articulated by Paul in Colossians 1:17:

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

And should we want it any other way?

Christian Healing

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One of the consequences of guilt is the resistance that it brings to the process of healing. When we internalize the wound of guilt, we create with our minds a bastion that cannot be reached by forgiveness.

The presumption that Humanity brought sin into the world in Eden is a universal guilt – a guilt that says Humanity is unworthy of the trust that the Divine has invested in us.

And so I must quibble with the Christian teaching that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. A sin is a sin because it leaves a wound in the soul. As Jesus loved us, so his goal must have been to heal us.

As creatures given choice, however, that is only possible if we open ourselves fully to the power of that healing. “Forgiveness of sins” is only a waypoint on that journey. It is a gift that says we do not have to be worthy of healing.

We have struggled with that lesson now for 2000 years. That guilt blocks us from healing justifies the half-truths of the Pharisees – past and present. Because guilt prevents Humanity from receiving healing, the only way to manage spiritual wounds is to make rules that prevent them from happening. Rules can only be enforced by punishment, and that eventually perverts the whole purpose of the exercise, as we wound the souls of those that do not have the strength to resist their selfish impulses.

This is the truth: he comes again when we give up control over others, and invest ourselves with the faith that the Divine power of Love can heal all. He comes for the healing.

Suffering Children

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A former football player held court after yoga yesterday morning, explaining his role as a private coach. He is a huge name, so strong in the arms that the instructor warned him against straining his leg muscles in the binding poses. “It’s not just the athletics: I try to be an advocate for the athletes.”

“I suppose that’s only for boys?” asked one of the mothers present.

“Well, I used to think that, but I am opening the program to girls. I realize that they need that advocacy, too. They need a strong father figure to help them believe in themselves.”

Down in Watts yesterday, surrounded by people that came barely to my solar plexus, those words echoed dissonantly in my mind.

I have sought opportunities to share the energies that I possess with the youth of my community. I gave a service at church one Sunday a couple of years ago, and the next week one of the children sought me out and sat on the floor next to me. His mother, a firm atheist, gave me an irritated look and dragged him back to his seat.

Or a more extreme example from seven years ago: I had taken my sons out on Easter to the mega-church down the freeway, pastored by a charismatic speaker. As I walked up the steps into the stadium seating, a young lady gave her heart to me. After the service, the boys enthused about the charismatic pastor, and urged me to fill out an information card. The next weekend, I was woken early on Saturday morning by two parents. The wife asked, “Excuse me, who is this?” before her husband demanded “We want to know where our daughter is.” He carried on until she broke in “He doesn’t know, dear.”

I still have my sons, but – whether they understand it as such or not – they have already learned to draw energy form the eternal source. They really don’t need me any more. So when I read in Unite 4 Good about the Red Eye program down in LA, I was open to the calling.

The prospect down on 114 Street was daunting. It is lined by split-level apartments, perhaps four hundred square feet on each floor, windows and doors heavily barred. A long block breaks the progress of the street about three blocks down from Compton. The program address was the recreation center. Across the street, a group of middle-schoolers were gathered around adults in azure t-shirts. The basketball court inside was occupied by high-schoolers and adults. I asked around about the Red Eye program, but those loitering at the entrance claimed no knowledge of it.

There was one other Caucasian present, a young woman hiding in the hallway. Next to her, a dark-skinned girl, almost her height, regarded me with reluctance. I struck up a conversation, discovering that we were all there for the same reason. When I asked for her name, the girl said “I don’t have one,” but then relented when I just shrugged and turned my attentions elsewhere, and offered “Dazzle.” We admired the antics of the four-year-old on his four-wheeled scooter (the kind that moves when the front wheel is turned).

Brenda, the young woman, identified the organizer Justin when he pulled up, and we all congregated in the gym. I asked about registration, and was pointed at Edna, who advised me that there was no agenda – our role was just to “pour loving” on the kids. I spent most of the next two hours on the basketball court, watching the older elementary-aged boys heave up shots from well outside their range, and trying to keep the bricks and outright air-balls from beaning the younger ones.

With some surprise, I did discover that my efforts in hot yoga were paying off: the bone spurs in my right elbow have subsided. I’m able to snap at the top of my release again. The first ten minutes on the floor were pretty embarrassing, though. My muscle balance is grossly different than when I last picked up a ball seven years ago, and my only form of exercise involves holding isometric poses. But things began to come back, and the boys were admiring, asking me, in order, whether I could dunk, how old I was, and how tall I was.

I was by far the oldest person on the floor. Most of the other volunteers were twenty-somethings.

The real connections began to develop as the adults and kids trickled out to the playground. I started giving advice to some of the kids regarding their shot mechanics. My focus was to get them to come in a little closer and get their muscles to work smoothly together. As the arc of their shots increased, the ball began to fall more softly on the rim, and bounce its way in instead of out. When I enthused “Look at that! That’s how it’s supposed to work!”, they opened up to me, one by one, and I’d feel this surge of energy move into them. They took it all in stride, just going back to their practice with extra enthusiasm.

Edna finally broke camp in the gym and brought everybody together up front for the walk to the store, along the refuse-lined sidewalk between the apartments. It was a local market, full of alcohol and snack foods. I was worried that I didn’t have any cash, but learned that Justin was covering the charge for snacks and drinks. A number of high-school boys and hookers joined the parade, but Justin didn’t mind. He even waved across the street to an older man in a wheel-chair, and sent his friend inside to get a drink for him.

As we stood in line, I noticed Dazzle braiding a friend’s corn rows into a pony-tail. She felt me looking at her, and glared back. I stepped closer and sympathized, “I know it’s hard to open our hearts, but we have to keep trying.” She got this vulnerable look on her face, and went back to her work.

I chugged down a bottle of 24-oz Gatorade, then squatted with my heels on the curb to meditate in support of the good will that was gathered. My little friend on the scooter stopped in front of me and shouted “You’re sleeping!” I opened my eyes to find him with a finger pointed accusingly at me.

“No. I’m meditating.”

“What are you meditating on?” Wow, this kid didn’t miss a beat.

“About good people.”

“Good people?” His tone suggested that it wasn’t a concept that he encountered very often.

“Yeah. Everybody here is a good person. I’m meditating to support that.”

Either satisfied or mystified, he walked off. I turned around to discover a three-year-old sucking the frosting out of his mini-bite cookies and tossing the crackers into the dirt. I advised: “Oh, you should eat the cracker, or we should throw them away. If we leave them there, animals will come, like rats.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it. It’s just the way the world is.”

He started chewing the cookie in his hand. His older sibling came by, mouth full of metal caps on his teeth. The little guy admitted, “My Mom has rats in her house.”

On the way back to the rec center, I saw their future on the sidewalk. A cluster of five thirty-year olds was gathered around a dice roll. The two contestants danced about with money in their fists, the roller throwing down or picking up bills after each toss. Energy bled from the scene and dissipated into the harsh light reflecting off the pale blue stucco.

Most of the volunteers and kids didn’t go back into the gym. I found a cluster of boys on the bleachers, and spent another fifteen minutes with them. Getting really hungry, I found Edna out front and said that I had to leave. She remarked that it looked like I had fun, and, not wanting to ask whether that was the point, I shared that it was good to pick up a basketball again, and talked about my bone spurs.

But as I drove away, I reflected that I had been allowed by the children to pour water into their thirsty spirits, and recognized what a blessing that had been to me.

Who Is in Charge Here?

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A common motif in corporate management is the analogy of competition as a sport. A certain visceral energy comes into a community of people when they stand over their fallen enemies.

One of the challenges employers have in managing me is that I recognize the fundamental nature of that experience: the energy comes from feasting on the spirits of our foes. It’s literally vampirism. It’s wrong, and I refuse to participate.

A survey of the lives of prominent business and political leaders reveals a trend – not universal, but powerful: many of them crave attention. They are needy. They are unable to bring energy from within, and so must consume that produced by others. This creates conditions in which the culture of our organizations is not controlled by the needs of its constituency (workers and customers), but by the personal needs of its psychologically neediest members.

This is not an abstract problem. It severely damaged America during the terms of Presidents 42 and 43: Clinton hungered for the attention of women, and his indiscretion led to wasteful impeachment proceedings. W hungered for a father, and his need to outdo Bush Sr. in the Gulf lead to rash decision-making that cost the nation trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of ruined lives.

Why does that happen? Why do we allow these men (in many cases, empower them) to run our lives?

This is, in fact, the central conundrum of the Bible, starting with Cain and ending with Christ. Some women think of Christianity as a “men’s club”, but I don’t see it as something to be proud of. The Bible focuses on men because our weakness is the greatest problem to success in the mission we have been given.

When John is invited into heaven (Revelation 4), he encounters twenty-four “elders” celebrating the presence of unconditional love in their midst. Twelve are identified as the patron angels of Israel; the other twelve are encountered in the tiara of the holy mother who comes to bring the savior to humanity. So in heaven, there is a balance between the masculine and feminine angels.

Why don’t we feel the presence of those angels? The intimacy of their involvement with the doings of Earth is described so beautifully by John [Rev. 4:9-10] (emphasis added):

And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever

In reading this, I have the image of a great welling up from all the living things of the Earth: the animals, plants, fungus, even the bacteria. This welling up travels up through the souls of the elders where it literally forces them to their knees in praise.

But after Eden, humanity was placed under quarantine. We are not allowed to participate in this upwelling, for as it says [Gen 3.24]:

He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Being cut off in this way, our experience of life is dominated by the material world, and predominantly by the fear of death. When wielding fear to control others, men, whose natural participation with the creation of life is so distant, have less compunction than women. Too often, those that cherish life submit to the terrorism of aggressive men.

What Jesus demonstrated to us was the power that is available to us when we relinquish fear. It is to enter again into that upwelling, and with disciplined minds not only not to pollute it, but moreso to help to channel it. In so doing, we are embraced and sustained by it, just as Jesus was. It is this channeling, and not physical control, that was meant in Genesis 1:28:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

In that divine relationship, the power of love sweeps all else before it. I once had an employer tell me that I was a “free spirit.” Not at all: I am constrained to avoid the use of fear, which in this world is to surrender power over people. But in surrendering that power, I have submitted to the purposes of a power that overwhelms all others, and so I cannot be turned by fear as others are turned.

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. [Matt. 7:13-14]

Dawn of the Dread

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At the Reagan Presidential Library, a plaque commemorating T. Boone Picken’s financing of the Air Force One hall also recounted his influence over Reagan’s financial policy. He had apparently explained to the President that “like Eastern Europe, money should be free.” One manifestation of that policy was the deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry. What had once been a sleepy industry used by the middle class to finance home purchases and college education became a cash cow for some of the nation’s most imaginative financial schemes.

The details of the ensuing Savings and Loan disaster invoked justifiable moral outrage. At the same time that the industry was liberalized, Reagan cut the regulators responsible for monitoring the industry. This meant that two banks in Colorado could trade an undeveloped property back and forth, increasing the purchase price each time, and treat the land as an asset to secure loans for ten times the final purchase price. When the banks went under, it was the government that was obligated for covering the depositor’s losses.

This pattern was paralleled in the history of the hedge fund industry and the mortgage arbitrage disasters of the 1990’s and 2000’s. Industry professionals lobbied extensively against regulation, citing the power of innovative methods to reduce overall financial risk. In both cases, the sense of security encouraged risk-taking at unprecedented levels, until major players in the market collapsed.

In all cases, it was the public that bailed out the industry, not just through tax receipts, but also through the release of trillions of dollars in low-interest or no-interest money to the financial industry through the Federal Reserve. This is money that the government must nominally pay interest on through the promissory note mechanism. Through that method, the nation’s money supply is issued by private money-center banks, and the government pays interest to the banks for the privilege. Is it any wonder that the financial industry accounted for 50% of corporate profits in the year immediately following the 2008 mortgage disaster?

The recent disasters reflect a more dangerous trend: the complexity and speed of modern market mechanisms make it almost impossible for either regulators or consumers to assess the nature and value of the services provided. The use of complexity to defraud consumers was most visible in the health insurance industry. The availability of health care outcome data allowed new players to enter the insurance market and target only those subscribers least likely to need health care. Obviously, these subscribers were those that in their prior plans funded the claims of patients needing extended services. As they were siphoned away, existing health plans went into the red, and premiums skyrocketed. A large number of chronically ill patients fell out of the pool of insured, and their conditions worsened. To ensure access to a doctor, they began to lie on their health insurance applications. Carrying an insurance card, they would then be admitted to a hospital, which by law could not discharge them until their condition was stable. The hospitals would find out after the provision of services that the patient was not covered, and would have to pass the unrecouped billings on to regular patients, which drove up their premiums. And on the insurer’s side, a whole army of bureaucrats was hired with the goal of finding cause to deny coverage. Thus the system was further burdened with administrative costs.

The net result was that, prior to the Health Care Affordability Act, health insurance was on its way to being a “pay-as-you-go” system with enormous administrative overhead. The rational choice for those that could finance their own care was to be uninsured.

The complexity of market mechanisms also played a large part in the Enron fraud in the California electrical supply market, which saw traders calling up friends at power plants to take generators off-line during brownouts to create leverage over state regulators. It also was a major factor in the Madoff financial fraud.

If the myth of efficiency and rationality in financial markets wasn’t bad enough, the pathological influence of the philosophy has extended to the provision of basic public services. When workloads at forensic laboratories exploded with the war on drugs, private contractors stepped in, claiming that they could adapt more rapidly to the increasing work load. What has become apparent as these laboratories entered the Physician Health Plan market is that they have accomplished higher throughput by cutting corners on procedures. The profit motive drives all other factors aside. As those profits grow, these providers have used their resources in the political arena to generate legislation that opens new markets for their services.

What is truly frightening in this last case is that the failure to adhere to scientifically defensible practices has made the public at large responsible for huge claims for wrongful incarceration. Prior to privatization, local law enforcement had some visibility and control of the forensic laboratories. Now they are completely beholden to them, and the possibility of class-action civil lawsuits brought for lost income and privileges during incarceration makes disciplining the contractors unpalatable.

So I see patterns emerging, and those patterns all point in the same direction: siphoning of resources from the public to those with control of the nation’s financial and social infrastructure.

What is the impact on the spiritual plane? I’ll offer an experience I had in the aftermath of 9/11. I was struggling with fear in an intimate, and decided to go spelunking one night to find out what was driving their anxiety. After plunging through their personal fears, I found myself on a wavelength of fear that had as a fog enveloped the entire nation. Curious, I put my psychic mitts under it and lifted it up to look around. When I let go, it fell back down to earth.

What is the solution? As an act of will, stop being afraid. Love those that are close to you. Recognize that the financial elites, as always, are divorcing themselves from the reality that sustains them, and will fall when we organize ourselves around relationships that create value, rather than relationships that promise us security.

And seriously consider whether God isn’t a key asset of that discipline.

Who is to Blame?

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When I began listening to praise music five years ago, my most powerful reactions were to two types of songs: those that express gratitude for the cross, and those that describe the patient suffering of a parent confronted with the loss of a child.

There is no experience in life that more powerfully contradicts the premise of a loving God than to watch an innocent child succumb to cancer. The experience of the Amish families that lost five daughters to a gunman in 2006 is far more shocking, but the faithful can rationalize it as the work of an external evil working through fallen humanity. The silent killer that consumes from within is a horrifically intimate violation.

The pain of that struggle is captured powerfully by Mark Schultz in “He’s My Son”. It takes real strength to face this loss without anger.

So why does it happen? Why does God allow this, and so many other bad things, to happen to good people?

The depth of our outrage is sharpened in the West, where so many religious traditions teach us that we have only one life to get it right. I’ve touched on this before in On Dying. When the nature of the soul is revealed, it will be obvious that reincarnation occurs, and that – as our Eastern siblings have been telling us for so long – we have many chances to free ourselves to spend an eternity in the divine embrace.

But even so, why should good people have to suffer?

It might help to back away and look at a case that is not so terrible. I have a friend, a great strong man, that cross-dresses. He has married and had children, but is overcome with the need to wear women’s clothing. He shared with me one particular experience: he served in the navy on an aircraft carrier. They were at port, and on this occasion all men had been called to their quarters in preparation to return to sea. My friend grabbed a dress, changed, and went out on the flight deck. When he was spotted, an all hands was issued. Changing back into his uniform, he participated in an exhaustive search of the vessel for a female stow-away.

When I heard this story, I had an apprehension of a father holding his daughter while their ocean liner sank. He had promised to keep her safe, and had failed her. She was afraid to go out into the world again, and so was journeying with him in this life to overcome her fear. That was, in part, why he had joined the Navy.

When I listen to Mark’s song, I have similar visions. In the child is a spirit that has never received love, and suffered terribly in a past life as an adult. They need some strength to face that journey again, some reason to hope. So they come into the world to have some time with parents that love them. They push all their pain into the disease that consumes them, and leave it behind when they die, filled with the love that their parents have poured into them.

Yes, it is a heart-breaking work for parents to perform, but so beautiful and full of purpose.

The story of the Amish children has a similar sense to it. The girls were trapped in the schoolroom with a deeply disturbed man. When he determined to kill them, the eldest girl stepped forward to say (I paraphrase) “I am oldest. Leave these others alone and kill me.” In that moment, she conquered his evil. And during the preparation of the bodies for burial, the elder watched the women at work and counseled “We must not think evil of this man.” In fact, the community gathered resources to sustain his family.

In The Soul Comes First, I interpret the Bible from the perspective that good people are medicine used by God to heal the wound of selfishness. What these experiences have given me to believe is this: bad things happen to good people because their light is needed in the darkness. While Jesus confronted the greatest darkness – the evil of systems of justice that destroy the people that come to bring healing to the world – all good people carry that cross to a greater or lesser degree. We bring light, and the world that suffers in darkness attempts to steal it from us.

So, please, if you can: when confronted with evil, or pain, don’t collapse into resentment against God. Just open your heart wider, and let his love brush back the pain of the world around you. Maybe you won’t change the people that prey upon you, or heal the diseases of those that you love. But you will give hope to others that suffer as you do, and leave them with the strength to do better next time.

Why God Comes First

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To the skeptic, holding out the hope that prayer will bring divine guidance is to become a “meat puppet.” This is unfair for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that smart predators make life a lot more complicated for us that it should be. Sometimes we just run out of thoughts at the end of the day, and it’s nice to have other sources of insight to fall back on.

In trying to find a balance here, the pronouncements made by Jesus on the road to Jerusalem can be troubling. They include Luke 9:60 and 62:

Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.

but most distressingly is Matthew 10:37:

Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

Does this God sound a little needy to you?

We can certainly interpret those quotes from that point of view, but think of it from the other direction. Let’s say that it was your father demanding that he come before your relationship with Christ, the one that tenders to you a perfect, healing love. Would a father that loved you deny you that gift?

And if your father already possessed that gift, would he not want to purify and refine it so that he could share it to its fullest with you? In fact, would he not believe that it was in fact his walk in the presence of that perfect love that empowered him to love you? When you walk into that space of love the he has called to him, all the hurts and pains of the past fall away, and he sees you exactly as you are, and offers you only those things that will make you stronger.

In “My Father’s Eyes”, Eric Clapton shares this experience of nurturing a child:

Where do I find the words to say?
How do I teach him?
What do we play?
Bit by bit, I’ve realized
That’s when I need them,
That’s when I need my father’s eyes.

From this point of view, the reason that Jesus asks us to put him first is because when we do that we become better able to bring his love to others, and that also makes us better at loving them. As with the servants in the parable of the talents, this is what makes us worthy of Jesus: not to hoard his love, but to give it to those around us that need it most with the faith that they will return it to us in our time of need.

So what this leads us to is this: when we fail to put love (which is Christ) first in our relationships, we not only become unworthy of Christ, but we become unworthy of those that we claim to love. In fact, we are lying to them when we say “I love you.”

Why Do We Pray?

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While I declare as a Christian, since renouncing my atheism I’ve only prayed twice. Once was for my children, who lived through a time of great fear in their lives. The other was for the woman I was in love with, asking that she be prepared to receive all the beauty that life held for her.

It’s odd, then, that I often feel guidance coming to me.

I didn’t understand what was going on until I came across Talking to God: Portrait of a World at Prayer. This beautiful coffee-table volume includes reflections on prayer by the faithful of many religions. The essays are collected in three sections on supplication, praise and meditation.

The most common phrase in the Bible is a variant on “fear not.” Supplication is the act of reaching out to the divine power for strength to do good in a world that too often exploits our weakness. The elements, disease, and predation (human or animal) all cause us to expect death, and so the loss of the joy that we have discovered in living. This causes us to call out to the divine presence to direct a portion of its power to protect us. When death is not imminent, the habit of prayer may lead us to ask for intercession in other matters.

Even when no direct response is provided, the psychological benefit of supplication is in allowing us to name our fear. As the Buddhists teach us, this brings the power of reason to work, which helps to quell our dark emotions. Having named our fear, we may be able to speak of it to others, and thus to rally others to our aid.

It is when we move beyond emotion to reason that we enter into prayerful praise. This is a celebration of the virtues that enable us to overcome adversity. Among these are patience, courage, compassion (in ourselves and others) and discipline. While praise of the virtues has always been recommended, I believe that there is a physical aspect to the process that has not been fully appreciated. It is suggested by this quote by Jakob Boehme, the German mystic:

If you ask why the Spirit of Love cannot be displeased, cannot be disappointed, cannot complain, accuse, resent or murmur, it is because the Spirit of Love desires nothing but itself, it is its own Good, for Love is God, and he that dwelleth in God dwelleth in Love.

Thoughts are physical things. When we ponder an idea, we reach out with our mind into a “space of ideas” to establish a connection. Think of it like a telephone line: where at first we have to work laboriously to connect to the strength of a virtue, when we praise it, we build a direct line to it, and can reach it almost immediately.

The amazing thing about this stage of prayer is in discovering the incredible power of the virtues. Why are the virtues so powerful? Well, the reason that predators use fear to control us is because it’s easy. Those people, such as Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth, that struggle and eventually overcome fear have to be stronger in their spirits than the predators that seek to destroy them. Eventually, that strength becomes so great that the are able to actually banish the precursors of fear from the minds of those that seek to harm them. They succeed in this because the predators, in taking the easy road, never develop their spiritual muscles. Furthermore, predators wallow in a set of ideas that really don’t care about them. At the first sign of spiritual weakness, the vices turn on their favorites and consume them. Thus when Jesus went to the cross and forgave his tormentors, their vices could not enter into him, and so turned back against their source.

When we pray in praise, we tap directly into the strength of the virtues built in the space of ideas by our great religious avatars. As we see this taking hold in our lives, our praise becomes more and more fervent. Because we seek joy in our lives, we walk about sharing our strength with those we care for, protecting them from fear as well. This is the stage of meditation.

In meditation, we enter into experience without expectation or judgment. We seek, not knowledge, but the sensation of our bodies, hearts and minds. In allowing those sensations to enter into us, we close the gap between the experience and the virtues that surround us. When there is pain or dissonance, we allow the virtues to enter into the experience to create healing and harmony.

The first time I realized that I was meditating (almost constantly) was in Cub Scout monthly meetings. The Scout Master was a shy about public speaking, and I would get this strong sense of fear from him when he stood up to present. I would just close my eyes and send him my confidence and admiration. His voice would steady.

For those that aren’t in the habit of praying, this can be a frightening experience. It’s like an invasion of their selves. I’ve had some really hostile reactions. Many aggressive men assume, for example, that I’m gay. They aren’t habituated to receive affirmation in any other way than through sex. The rest of their lives are organized around conflict.

In organizations, the response is more complicated. When we start to heal anger and fear, the participants become aware of their psychological dependencies. As victims become aware of how their trust is being manipulated, they may react to the healer as the source of paranoia, or even worse as the cause of the breakdown of trust in their relationships with predatory leaders. Such leaders often present themselves as noble interlocutors in the conflict that they engender among their followers, and when that strategy is revealed, the followers often rally to those that prey upon them, blaming the healer for the insights they bring!

As Boehme testified, the healer succeeds eventually when (s)he seeks nothing except the opportunity to allow the virtues to enter more deeply into the workings of the organization. Others finally realize that they feel far better in the presence of the healer than otherwise, and begin to work effectively against the true source of their problems.

So what I’ve come to understand is this: we pray to bring the divine presence into the world. Whether we are asking for help or mediating in its delivery, the end result is the same. The only way that God comes into this broken world is through prayer, and in its ultimate expression, that occurs through those that surrender themselves joyously to love of everyone willing to receive it.

The Imitation Game

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I’ve been known to get emotional at the movies, but it’s been since Alien that I’ve been as broken down emotionally as I was today by The Imitation Game.

Alan Turing not only made fundamental contributions to the mathematical foundations of modern computing, he also formulated an inspirational goal for machine intelligence. Known as the Turing Test, it proposes that if a human communicating through a neutral interface (such as a teletype) can’t distinguish the responses of a human from those of a machine, then the intelligence of the machine must be considered to be comparable to a human’s.

My father, Karl Balke, was one of the men that plowed the field cleared by Turing and others. As he described the think-tank at Los Alamos, the researchers brought every intellectual discipline to bear on the problem of transforming logic gates (capable only of representing “on” and “off” with their output) into systems that could perform complex computations. Their research was not limited to machine design. Languages had to be developed that would allow human goals to be expressed as programs that the machines could execute.

In the early stages of language development, competing proposals shifted the burden of intelligibility between human and machine. The programming languages that we have today reflect the conclusion of that research: most computer programs are simply algorithms for transforming data. The machine has absolutely no comprehension of the purpose of the program, and so cannot adapt the program when changes in social or economic conditions undermine the assumptions that held at the time of its writing. It is left to the “maintenance” programmer to accomplish that adaptation. (Today, most in the field recognize that maintenance is far more difficult than writing the original program, mostly because very few organizations document the original assumptions.)

I believe that my father’s intellectual struggle left him deeply sensitive to the human implications of computing. As I child, I grew up listening to case studies of business operations that came to a grinding halt because the forms generated by the computers were re-organized to suit the capabilities of relatively primitive print drivers, rather than maintaining the layout familiar to the employees. People just couldn’t find the information that they needed. Worse were the stories of the destruction of sophisticated planning systems implemented by human methods. When automation was mandated, the manual procedures were simply too difficult to describe using the programming languages of the day. The only path to automation was to discard the manual methods, which could cripple production.

Turing confronted this contradiction in the ultimate degree after building a machine to break the Nazi’s method for secret communications, known as “Enigma.” If the achievement was to have sustained utility, the Allies’ knowledge of Axis military planning had to be limited: otherwise the Nazis would realize that Enigma had been defeated, and develop a better encryption method. As a consequence, most Allied warriors and civilians facing Nazi assault did so without benefit of the intelligence known to Turing and his team.

While the point is not made obvious, the movie illuminates the personal history that conditioned Turing for his accomplishments. Isolated psychologically from his peers – both by the social stigma of his homosexuality and by what today might be diagnosed as autism or Asperger’s syndrome – Turing was confronted from an early age by the question of what it meant to be human. Was it only the degree of his intelligence that distinguished him from his peers? Or was his intelligence tied to deviant – if not monstrous – behavior? My belief is that these questions were critical motivations for Turing’s drive to understand and simulate intelligence.

That parallels the experience of my father, burdened by his own psychological demons, but also critically concerned that artificial intelligence answer to the authentic needs of the people it empowered. That belief led him to devote most of his life to creation of a universal graphical notation for representation of the operation of systems of:

  • arbitrary collections of people and machines,
  • following programs written in diverse languages.

That technology, now known as Diagrammatic Programming, was recognized by some as the only provably sufficient method for systems analysis. Unfortunately, by the time it was refined through application, the economics of the software industry had shifted to entertainment and the world-wide web. Engineering was often an after-thought: what was important was to get an application to the market, structured so that it held users captive to future improvements. Raw energy and the volume of code generated became the industry’s management metrics.

The personality traits that allowed Turing to build his thinking machines ultimately cost him the opportunity to explore their application. He was exposed as a “deviant” and drummed out of academia. Accepting a course of chemical castration that would allow him to continue his work privately, he committed suicide after a year, perhaps because he discovered that the side-effects made work impossible.

My father was afflicted by childhood polio, and has been isolated for years from his peer group by degenerative neuropathy in his legs.

While my empathy for both of these brilliant men was a trigger for the sadness that overwhelmed me as the final credits rolled, the stories touch a deeper chord. Both were denied the just fruits of their labor by preconceived notions of what it means to be human: Turing because he thought and behaved differently, my father because he attempted the difficult task of breaking down the tribal barriers defined by the languages that separate us.

So what lesson am I to draw from that, as I struggle to prove the truth of the power that comes from a surrender to the purposes of divine love? Is social rejection inevitable when we surrender what others consider to be “humanity”?

Is that not what condemned Jesus of Nazareth? His renunciation of violence and self-seeking? His refusal to fear death?

Distributing the Treasure

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In the parable of the fields, Jesus says of his kingdom that:

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Then in the parable of the talents, Jesus addresses the Apostles and says of the servant that hid the money he had been given to invest:

‘You wicked, lazy slave…take away the talent from him’…For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away

The two parables illuminate the challenge of bringing divine power into the world. The unsuspecting finder of faith has no idea what to do with it. Looking at the history of the Hebrews, it is obvious how fragile faith is. From Aaron to the Pharisees, from Saul to Herod: the leaders of the nation of Israel corrupted faith for political and economic purposes. Aaron acted in good faith because the people were afraid when Moses disappeared on the mountain, but in the time of Jesus the Pharisees twisted the fear of divine retribution to line their pockets. Saul, having been anointed king by Samuel, was angered when others threatened his authority. In Herod’s time, that pattern had become so entrenched that oppression of dissent was not even remarkable. Given this, perhaps it would have been best to keep the treasure hidden.

But the Apostles were students of a master who prepared them to exercise faith in service to the oppressed. They had seen what faith could do. All that they required to see it multiply was simple courage. For those demonstrating courage, the master would not judge between those with greater or lesser skill in the exercise of power, but reward them all. For those lacking courage, the portion of power that was given them would be given to others.

The tension between the two parables should be heeded by us today as we ponder how to go about distributing the riches that Christ has provided us to do good in the world. As people of compassion, our natural tendency is to respond to fear and righteous anger with promises of aid. The obvious first step is to eliminate the cause of the fear and/or anger. When that cause is hunger, it would be hard to fault an offer of food. But when the cause is political tyranny, forceful intervention (as currently in Russia) can be propagandized to justify further oppression. The Russian people have offered adulation in response to Putin’s aggressive militarism.

So we have to ask, when offering aid, “What are you going to do with the power we offer you?” When the hungry man is fed, will he then seek employment? If an oppressed people is offered political assistance, how will they organize to overcome the tyrant? If these question can’t be answered, then their troubles are merely symptomatic of a large social disease that must be addressed before individual problems can be solved. They may need education, or political enfranchisement – or assistance in finding a leader that can articulate their needs.

I think that many of the world’s problems today require the last: for those offering Christian compassion to go beyond simple charity to supporting the development of leaders motivated by Christian ethics. In assessing candidates, I favor strongly the wisdom of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. In developing leaders, the program upholds this law:

A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

These qualities are an interlocking web of virtue that ensure that power is not diverted for personal gain, but rather directed towards those that first inspired our compassion. They are not qualities that necessarily translate to the easy currency of popularity. That is gained all too often through promises of an end to fear and oppression that cannot be made good until the people themselves begin to manifest the qualities of true leadership. As it is said in the Chinese I Ching:

Of the great leader, when the work is done the people say ‘We did this ourselves.’

God took 2000 years to work his will on the people of Israel. For those continuing that work in the world today, patience (although perhaps on a more human scale) is essential. As in Jesus’s relationship with the Apostles: It is not upon us to do the work ourselves, but only to offer the oppressed the hope that it can be done at all. Hope is the seed of courage, Christian compassion is the seed of faith. When courage and faith combine, anything is possible.