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Mercy for Abortion

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Pope Francis proclaimed today that during the Jubilee year starting on December 8th, priests will be allowed to absolve contrite women of the sin of having procured an abortion.

Francis hails from a region with both a high rate of abortion and relatively religious populations. As my mother continued an active role in church after starting birth control in the ’60s, I wonder how many women who have had an abortion continue quietly to participate in Catholic life. The proclamation of mercy may simply be a concession to practical realities.

I have offered meditations on the problem of abortion. In the wording of his proclamation, I feel that Frances has a heart that is open to the realities described in my first post. Abortion is not a choice that any woman would seek, and it indeed leaves scars. Those scars deserve healing. It is here that I find Pope Francis’s message to be yet a little tone-deaf, in that it trumpets “mercy” rather than healing.

When incarnation has already occurred, among the most significant scars of an abortion arise from the struggle of the infant spirit to disentangle itself from its mother’s womb. I know of two ways of solving this problem: one is for the chastened mother to seek a stable relationship in which a baby will thrive, and to bear the worthy father of a child. Church should be an incubator for such relationships, and keeping women out of Church is contrary to that purpose. The second mechanism is for a mature spiritual practitioner to aid the infant spirit in its liberation. This is an intercession by Divine Love that priests are supposed to mediate.

I also am frustrated that the conditions of mercy are limited to “a contrite heart.” I have voiced the opinion that religion should be seen as the mechanism by which we bring people out of primitive spirituality into a rational engagement with the divine powers. Cain was not punished for the murder of Abel, but sent away to reflect and learn. I believe the same is true for any sin, including abortion. The repentant woman should be asked not only “Are you sorry?” but “What did you learn, and how have you changed your life as a result?”

There are women trapped in circumstances in which the answer will be “Nothing.” I offer my own proclamation here: whether or not the Catholic Church is willing to forgive you, Christ will be with you when you are ready to receive healing. That may be in the final moments of your life, when the hold that the pimp or abuser or pusher has on you slips away. Be unafraid, and open your heart to healing. It is from the heart that unclean things come, but it is also from there that the light of Christ enters into the world. When you receive it, those that have forced themselves into you will be infected with compassion, and you will enter into the ranks of the angels.

Yes, Francis, I think that you understand me: it is the place of the Church to help the burdened carry their cross, rather than to beat them down with it.

Body Call

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A few years back after the local UU speaker’s forum, I was waylaid by an out-of-area couple in the cool of the spring evening. The husband explained that they were trying to relocate back to the Thousand Oaks area, but his wife jumped in to speak of her commitment to caring for the son that had been disabled in the Gulf War. She mourned that sometimes it was so hard to be strong in her faith, that it felt at times as if the window was closing on her.

These impulses come over me at times: I formed a ball before my heart with my hands, then shifted them to the right and opened them higher and lower. “Here it is.”

She paused, hand held against her breast, and offered “Thank-you.” And they looked at each other and asked, “When does Jesus return?”

“When enough of us say ‘Yes, we understand now. We are ready to love as you did. Come to us, right here, right now.’”

These are the closing lines of my exegetical book, The Soul Comes First. The most significant contribution of that work is to explain the Book of Revelation (not interpret, but explain). What is left unanswered still is the why. Why does he have to come again? Why wasn’t once enough?

One part of the answer is that we have free will. I have addressed this before: the true evil of “sin” is that it disposes us to believe that we deserve our suffering. We’re like the judges of the Darwin awards that celebrate those that have committed such incredibly stupid acts that they’ve provided the rest of us the benefit of removing themselves from the gene pool.

To recognize our “sin” is to convince ourselves that we must earn our healing. In Jesus’s era, that was transacted through the priesthood using a system of indulgences based upon blood sacrifice. Jesus came and said “Well, enough of that bullshit. I will be the last sacrifice, and for my sacrifice you will be given forgiveness for your sins.” Now, looking back to Cain and considering the eternal nature of the Divine, obviously Jesus was not changing policy. He was simply trying to get us to stop beating ourselves up so that we could be healed.

In a recent discussion, I asserted that the authority of Jesus over heaven and earth is rooted in the irresistible admiration that comes with his perception of the possibility of our wholeness. This is what gives him the ability to heal the world: the fact that it comes not with scorn, but a joyous “Good job!”, much as that offered by the father to the prodigal son. “You were lost to me, but – Lo! – you have shed your burdens and now are returned!”

So in this framework, Jesus comes again to deliver us the promise of healing that can only be received when we stop believing that we don’t deserve it.

But there’s more.

In the end-times prophesy of Daniel and Revelation, we have the appearance of three corrupted beasts. The first of these in Revelation famously bears the number ‘666.’ This was first explained to me as a numerological reference to the days of Creation, with the conclusion that the beast was man. But that is to make too much of ourselves: it was not only man created on the sixth day, but all of the mammals.

Carrying this back to Daniel, it becomes clear that the beast (the fourth to appear in the dream) is the collective spirit of the mammals. In Eden, human intelligence was protected by the presence of God, but the Fall forced us out into the world to struggle with all the primitive urges that preceded us. Daniel sees this only abstractly: the beast bears teeth and claws of iron that destroy life. These represent the machines that we use to reorder the earth. We use them as predators, not attempting to integrate ourselves with other life, but exploiting it for our gratification.

In Revelation the personality of the beast is resolved in more detail. There are two of them, the second a red beast ridden by the feminine avatar called “MYSTERY.” So what does this tell us about the second coming? The masculine expressions of the primitive urges, represented by the first beast of Revelation, are the hunt and sacrifice. Jesus confronted and mastered them on the cross. The feminine expressions of the primitive urges are intercourse (the mingling of personalities through sex) and maternity. What about this aspect of human nature? When does that submit to Christ?

I feel this confrontation in my own life like a wall around my soul. It comes to the fore when I walk into a store and the counter girl pushes her breasts up at me, or when a pastor looks at me, interrupting my meditation on the cross to suggest that I am sexually harassing the members of his congregation. It has been the focus of so much conflict in my life, from the Sterling Men’s group that tried to force me to stay in my marriage, into the family law system, and in the workplace where brilliant women at home find that I disrupt their influence over the men at work. It is a wall rebuilt every night when I wake up at the witching hour with sex crawling all over my body.

How to resolve this problem, the problem of “MYSTERY,” the influence that reaches into our souls from a distance and leaves us wondering “Why did I do that?” Is the image of Christ in confrontation with this influence that of the rock star with a bevy of beauties moaning in the audience? Or is it the image of the celibate, relinquishing all experience of sexuality?

My two fiction books, Ma and Golem, are meditations on this problem. Ma begins with two dysfunctional erotic encounters – one a casual hook-up and the other a long-term political bonding – and evolves as a slow-moving train wreck with the men struggling against the consequences of their failure to honor their women. Golem elaborates with a truly amazing sexual explosion between Corin and Leelay, both introduced in Ma, that arises as an expression of their service to the survival of Life. And it confronts us with an encounter between the Goddess Zenica (Corin’s mother) as she uses sex to break the will of an old adversary to accomplish the end of her re-incarnation. In relating the events to Corin, she simply offers “I did what I had to do.”

Is that where it ends: sex as a tool?

Revelation does offer us an image [NIV Rev 22:1-2]:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

To me, this imagery is incredibly sexual. And I think that is as it should be: there is no part of our nature that cannot be sacralized, that was not given to us for the purpose of healing ourselves and this reality of corruption by selfishness.

I believe that intercourse must be brought into the service of Christ. So this means that it should be a means of bringing Christ into our lives, of pouring the love that we receive from him out over each other. My interpretation of my experience in church is that the opposite has happened: we take sex as the center of our intimate relations, and when Christ enters into that he is perceived as a threat. Or for sexually active single women, the presence of Christ in a man is interpreted as an opportunity to have really great intercourse – that is, to receive a love that would be given to them directly by the source if only they would ask for it.

As long as this persists, we are going to continue to struggle. My question is whether this is really the business of Christ. Eve was sent to Adam as his help-mate. Jesus confronted the masculine pathologies on the cross. Is it really possible for him to do the same work on the feminine side? My sense is that the end game would be far less painful if women stood up to take ownership of their problems.

Women: Being Loved by Christ

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When Jesus first taught in the synagogue in Jerusalem, his neighbors received him with skepticism verging on outrage [NIV Mark 6:2-6]:

“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.

This contrasts with the events just prior with a woman who had bled for twelves years, and was healed simply by touching Jesus’s clothes. Shocked by the experience, the woman hid in the crowd, but Jesus persisted [NIV Mark 5:33-34]:

Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

How does this work, spiritually? The aura that forms around the head of a saint is generated by souls pressing against their minds in the hope of discovering meaning and purpose. Meaning and purpose are discovered most readily in the saint because they have surrendered themselves to love of the world, and the world in turn reveals itself to saint’s examination. It is as said by Tagore:

Power said to the World, “You are mine.”
The World kept it prisoner on her throne.
Love said to the World, “I am yours.”
The World gave it the freedom of her house.

The saint looks into the world and sees its spiritual needs. Among the souls that surround the saint are such that can fulfill those needs. The saint has the privilege of facilitating the union of the two parties. But where the party in the world (the soul currently “living”) seeks instead power, the union fails. The souls choose to remain to the company of the saint. That saint, honoring the compact of their company, accepts them back.

Spiritual union can be ravishing, having many of the aspects of intercourse. For this reason, Catholic nuns once referred to themselves as “brides of Christ.” But the union can be a tenuous thing. If Jesus had not been present to voice his approval, would the hemophiliac woman have maintained her cure?

When I encounter woman struggling with this dynamic, I offer the encouragement, “Believe in yourself!” There are angels in the air wishing to enter into you to heal the world. Yes, it feels wonderfully sensual, but you don’t need sex to receive them. You don’t need the approval of a father. Spirits becoming angels yearn only for the spiritual union we know as “Christ” that found its steward when Jesus took up the cross. To receive them, you need only their approval, an approval gained most powerfully through a commitment to love and heal the world.

He Will Reign – Won’t He?

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One of the challenges in building a brand is to ensure that prospects receive a consistent message concerning value proposition. The Church fathers and Emperor Constantine addressed this problem in the fourth century, establishing the Nicean dogma and creed that the Catholic Church and its heretical variants enforced through preaching, training and – in the breach, until recently – torture and death.

Normally, we’d talk of offended authority as “spinning in the grave.” In this case, given the last, we must be glad for Jesus’s resurrection, because otherwise the globe would have been whirling around his tomb.

The early Church fathers, confronted with the evidence of civil decay following the decline of the Roman Empire, seem to have concluded that empire was a part of God’s plan of salvation. They spent the twelve centuries following Nicea working to centralize political authority in Europe. At the end of that era, Renaissance Europe sprouted a dozen kingdoms capable of reproducing the accomplishments of Rome. Their response to Church meddling was to interfere in Papal selection, and when coming out on the losing end of that struggle, to support the rise of reforming heresies.

So what might Christ think of that?

In Scripture, I see three high points in the relationship between Humanity and God. The first is in Eden, where Adam and Eve experienced the ravishing grace of a direct relationship with God. Next is the era of Judges immediately following the entry into the Promised Land. The Hebrews as a people lived in gratitude for the Father’s gift, and when their occupancy was threatened, God found heroes to guide them through danger. That era ended with the people throwing their trust onto the human institution of monarchy. In the final act, Jesus arrives to expose the iniquity of the human institutions of his day, and proclaims that redemption is not bound by any contract or tradition, but is available to all the peoples of the Earth.

The modern Dominionist interprets this proclamation as a call to spread the institutions of Christianity across all the globe. The question is: what is the true church? Or is it simply enough that each individual should recognize Christ as lord and master in his heart?

Jesus is a little coy on this point, stating [John 10:14-16]:

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.

In The Soul Comes First, I consider the parallels between the spiritual trajectory in Judaism (culminating with Jesus) and Buddhism. In Islam and Christ, I examine the choices made in the formulation of Islam, choices made to facilitate such developments in cultures still practicing polytheism.

These insights, supported by the evolution of the covenant recorded in the Bible, lead me to the conclusion that Unconditional Love reaching to us from Christ meets us where we are. It does not care about structures and institutions, and in fact idolatry is often evident in human attempts to sustain those forms. Rather, as Jesus says, it enters into our lives in twos that grow into threes, thereby empowering us to care for one another.

Witnessing the end of this process, John testifies of the “New Jerusalem”, that {NIV Rev. 21:22]:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

Remember that Jesus does not ask us to submit, but to learn [NIV Matt 11:29]:

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

And [Math 20:28]

…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The temple of God is the individual human heart. His age is consummated when we allow his sensibility to enter into us. As I said recently to a priest:

Sometimes words serve no purpose, and the only thing I can do is to allow the broken heart of Christ within me to speak for itself.

It is when we offer our hearts as he did, offering them in the service of supporting the weary and burdened, that his will for us is achieved. This is a service beyond understanding, for we cannot explain all the suffering in the world. It is beyond us, having its origins billions of years ago, and woven into our living through the predatory competition that is Darwinian evolution. All that we can do, as Jesus did, is to offer ourselves in the service of healing the wounds it has created.

So is the modern fragmentation of Christianity – exposing contradictory messages that erode faith – is that fragmentation a problem? Or should it be interpreted as the process by which Christ dissolves the human institutions that stand between the seeker and Unconditional Love? If Eden was the ideal, should we not be seeking to recreate that ideal for every man and every woman? And if that is the goal, how can we doubt Christ’s word that he will gather all of his flocks – all of those traditions that declare a covenant and discipline that opens our hearts to the power of Divine Love – how can we believe that any one of them will be unreconciled to Christ? Or judge any of them as inferior to our own path?

In God’s Hands

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My book signing on Saturday started off slowly. The venue is a wonderful place to browse, though. (If you live in the Thousand Oaks area, please stop by and check out The Open Book in the Oaks Mall.) So, to avoid filling the air up with anxiety, I tried to find the second part of The Tales of Genji (alas – they had sold the collection of vintage books that I had pulled it from), and ended up perusing a collection of 19th century horror stories.

Being clever people, the staff had set my table up in front of the New Age and religious inspiration section. I had a few chances to say “hello” to those that stopped to browse the blog posts I had reprinted or look at the book covers. The reactions weren’t always encouraging: one man simply scowled and went around to the New Age section. Another woman engaged me with a hostile tone of voice, asserting “Love works because people make it work.”

This was beginning to feel like my first book signing, when I spent most of the day dealing with the baggage brought by people who had found reasons to stop believing. Feeling a little food coma along with the disappointment, I stepped out to buy myself a coffee. When I came back up from the lower floor, I found the scowler with a new book, sitting in an armchair across from the store. I smiled and remarked “Well, you found something!”

A little uncertainly, he said that his brother had survived a near-death experience, and while he wasn’t quite sure about the whole business, he wanted to investigate. As we discussed religion and spirituality, I learned that he had been raised Christian, but was an atheist. Without prompting on my part, he explained that he suffered from a form of spinal arthritis. For most of his life, he had prayed to God for relief, and never received an answer. Then he had found a doctor who took interest in his case, and received treatment that made life bearable.

I couldn’t preach in the face of this testimony. There is nothing more difficult to bear than suffering that has been laid in the hands of God. But I did offer that God works through people, and that I was glad that his doctor had shown the compassion to take interest in his case. Then, hoping that somehow he’d find his way back to the source of Divine Love, I encouraged him to continue to study spirituality.

We parted amicably, and I went back into the store. When I reached the table, all of his loss and pain came pouring down on me. All I can do in those situations is try to breath, and let it settle through me into the floor. It passed in two great waves, and then I looked back into the doorway. He was staring at me, and I lowered my gaze to the floor. When I looked back up, he was gone.

For those in similar situations: don’t keep your eyes turned up to heaven. Yes, leave your suffering in God’s hands, but understand that, as Paul experienced in Damascus, his response is often to allow a compassionate person the opportunity to receive your gratitude. That is the great gift that the meek offer to those that bring them respite. Don’t deny it to the world!

Healing is a Messy Process

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I was heading to San Francisco Airport to catch a flight out to Washington D.C., and was glad that I had left early. Traffic down the 580 to the 238 was an absolute disaster. I could feel the tension and frustration in the air as traffic crawled forward. I put out the thought that we should try to give that energy to the emergency crew working to clear the accident. When I finally reached the scene, they were just loading the victim – a motorcyclist who had gone under a car at high speed – into the ambulance. I could feel his spirit swirling in the air, terrified of the prospect of re-entering the broken body. Firmly, I projected, “It’s time to put yourself back together.”

“Why,” we might ask ourselves, “why does God let things like this happen?” All the wasted time, the pain and frustration: can’t he do any better than that?

I can’t give a answer that is going to bring consolation. The only answer I have is of the “that’s just the way that things are” kind. Unconditional Love, which is the foundation of God, does not judge. Why? Because if it judged, it would justify the use of force, which would give authority to destructive spirits.

So what can Unconditional Love do? It can echo the “yes” of things that feel joy. It can enter into productive and healing relationships and support them with its presence. Jesus put it this way [NIV Matt. 18:20]:

For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

Not with one alone, but in even the smallest group.

Simply, Unconditional Love supports things that work for us together, but it’s up to us to find those things. It doesn’t prescribe for us – it doesn’t want us to kneel and pray if that doesn’t work for us. It doesn’t want us to bear lashes if that doesn’t satisfy our sense of justice. But neither will it deny the martyr the grace of surrendering life to prove to the tormentors that love is stronger than fear, and thus to infect them with love.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Really, because their light is needed in the darkness. Yes, it’s painful, but if in those moments more of us took the attitude

Dear God, help me to shine brightly so that the captives can see freedom, and those that persecute me can see that their abuse only serves to liberate my spirit into knowledge of you.

Well, things might go a little bit faster. No, we won’t avoid pain, but we will have the security of knowing that our suffering has a purpose, just as did the suffering of Jesus. No, not every tormentor will chose healing, but when the light becomes bright enough, they will be forced to flee.

The Writing of The Soul Comes First

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In Catholic terminology, thaumaturgy is the working of miracles through love. Raised by a skeptical father and steeped in science that disproved the possibility of such experiences, for most of my life I disbelieved.

That changed with the millennium, when personal and political crises brought fear into my life. I began to read widely on spiritual and religious experience. Then one Sunday I entered the sanctuary at St. Kolbe’s in Oak Park, CA. A thirty-foot statue of Christ hangs from the ceiling, not nailed to the cross, but suspended before it. Confronted with this powerful image of human suffering, I instinctively put my hand over my heart, held it out to him, and thought, “Use this for healing.”

In the intervening years, I have learned a great deal about healing through divine love. I learned that many “evil” people are simply doing what was done to them, and desperately looking for someone with the strength to show them how to get over it. I learned that people used to being in control find the sensations that come with being loved to be frightening, almost a betrayal by the thirst of their hearts. I learned that many intellectual atheists are “spiritual”, and those that are not do not realize how frightening others find the strength of their minds. I realized that Biblical literalists use their dogmatism to hold those minds at bay.

As I sought for answers, the astrophysicists announced the discovery of Dark Energy. To those that remember the philosophical roots of modern physics, this discovery was shattering. Einstein’s theories of relativity are based upon the assumption that space is empty. Dark Energy demolishes that assumption. With that called into doubt, we might notice another oddity in the history of physics: where from Ancient Greece to 1950 the complexity of nature was always understood by positing structure inside the smallest objects we could observe, in the modern era physicists assumed that no additional structure was needed. Taking away relativity and adding additional structure reveals a whole new class of theories that have the potential to reconcile science and spirituality (see Generative Orders (GO) and GO Cosmology).

I began to share these insights in 2005 with the web site at http://www.everdeepening.org, in which, as a Greek philosopher might have, I try to prove that love works. Realizing that the material was really difficult, I wrote a “layman’s” treatment back in 2008, the unpublished “Love Works.” Unfortunately, attempts to teach others demonstrated that the ideas were still difficult to grasp.

Then, in 2013, I was moved to re-read the Bible cover-to-cover, and saw it in a completely new light. I realized that what Darwin and paleontology had revealed about natural history was written right into the Bible. No conflict existed, and in fact the consistency of science with the Bible served to substantiate everything else written within.

Reading through the book in such a short time, I also saw the greater work on human nature, and the majesty and brilliance of God’s efforts to prepare us for the manifestation of Christ.

So I sat down at my computer and wrote The Soul Comes First in three weeks. In it is contained all the hopes that I pray I share with Christ: the unification of reason and faith, the hidden strength that will give humanity victory over fear, and the healing of the world through the power of love.

The message may be frightening to some. The job that we forsook in Eden is a big job, and difficult. All I ask is that you remember that it is not in human hands that the work is held. We all do our part, and the farm hand that plants a sustainable crop is no less essential than the ecologist that plans the restoration of a forest. The housewife serving in the soup kitchen is no less essential than the CEO commissioning a new factory. The counsellor that saves a marriage is no less essential than that politician that negotiates a peace treaty. With love, the strength of Christ, and the unifying wisdom of the Holy Spirit, all things are possible.

Healing Dissension

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In the weary journey that has been this life, I have come to accept that we cannot end sin by trying to destroy the impulses that trigger it. That simply justifies their behavior. So Jesus counsels us [NIV Matt. 5:9]:

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

So I have sought to join the vices to love. That strategy was held out in All the Vice of Jesus. I was pretty satisfied with my progress, and had turned my thoughts from the matter until I realized that Dissension was still at work in my life.

She kept me up all last night, from 12:30 until I rose at 6:45. Competition and fear at work, the cry of “Anti-Semitism” against the reasons for Jesus’s demotion of the Law of Moses, old family history and recent family struggle: they rolled through my mind, one after another, sometimes mixing into toxic stew, and I found myself simply reiterating: “I have so much else to be concerned with! What right do you have to burden me with these trivial complaints that are your responsibilities?”

So I lost that round. I allowed dissension to separate me from those that I seek to love and inspire.

I think of dissension as “she” because I have learned that Mystery, the woman on the red beast in Rev. 17:5, uses it as a favorite tool. Whether in debasing my relationships with younger women by imposing sex or in undermining collaboration with other men, Mystery (I could name the women, but that would be counter-productive) has inserted dissension again as an obstacle to my goals.

When things got really bad at work, I found this piece of wisdom about dealing with conflict, the goal of all dissension:

Find a mutually beneficial solution.
Adapt to surroundings.
Don’t share all your secrets.
Stand up for your dreams.
Sometimes you need to move on.

It’s that last that has come to disturb me: surrender. I have found it to be an effective solution, but a consequence has been that I haven’t been able to build upon the foundations I establish at work and home. Domineering people walk off with them.

There’s another method: dissension justifies the projection of our egos. If we don’t participate, and accept that projection without responding to its harmful intent, people become enmeshed in our love. Eventually they may realize that we can do more together than we can as individuals.

But then comes Mystery again: the quiet lurker in the backwaters of our minds who gains power by picking up the gold that dissension scatters. As we learn to work together, she’s frozen out, and the volume and intensity of her projections goes up.

Is that what I’m dealing with? The last hurrah of Mystery?

That doesn’t seem satisfying. I’d like to redeem her.

So let’s consider: if dissension motivates us to assert our egos in destructive competition, perhaps with love it becomes celebration of our differences? Maybe the answer to a charge of ill intent is to insert, at the top of the list:

Celebrate your opponent’s virtues.

Happy, Happy

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I usually spend the Christmas season listening to Sarah McClachlan’s Wintersong, over and over again. This year, I couldn’t put my hands on it. I finally went down to Barnes and Noble this weekend to look for a replacement copy. The clerk shared that there was one copy in the store, but it was on hold. I promised him that I’d be the vulture in the racks in the hope that it would go unpurchased.

Sarah is my favorite muse of the soul. I went to see her live in concert at the Nokia Center a couple of years ago. Part of her way of connecting with the audience is to read notes out of a hat. They were pretty standard party fare, the most scurrilous being whether she goes “commando” on stage. Sarah was really patient.

She had just authorized the use of “In the Arms of the Angel” for the animal rescue centers. During her request that we make a donation to that community, Sarah told us that, much as she would like to respond to our questions, the entire band was wearing ear-plug monitors, and couldn’t hear anything that we were saying.

After the pitch for the animal rescue shelters, I focused my thoughts and said “Thank-you”. She almost jumped out of her skin. It was obvious to me that we share a connection somehow.

Sarah was going through a troubled time. Her husband had filed for divorce, and her children were travelling with the band. The next day I went out to her web site and posted a note to her, saying all the things that I wished I had been present enough to put into the hat for her.

I picked up Mirrorball maybe eight years ago, and it’s been a really powerful tool for me, rivalled in that sense only by Snatam Kaur’s Essentials. Kaur’s work is beautifully devotional, but Sarah gets really in deep with people’s pain. I don’t know how she processes it. It’s like a key for me when I’m in contact with people carrying deep psychic wounds. Even more, Sarah does it without bitterness. Almost all of Mirrorball sees life as a struggle that reveals the hope for grace in all of the participants.

So I offered her my perception that, if she would only recognize the healing forces that swirled around her, she might have some really beautiful experiences.

Last night, I had a strong urge to go back out to Barnes and Noble, and discovered that the CD was back on the racks. Happy, Happy!

I don’t know what possessed Sarah to create Wintersong in 2006. Most pop Christmas albums focus on the joy of the holiday season, but Wintersong is powerfully devotional, and not at all derivative. She sets “Noel” to the beat of African drums, and weaves it with “Mary, Mary” as a spiritual set to lute. “Wintersong” and “Song for a Winter’s Night” are originals that capture so beautifully the bittersweet feeling of being without the one we love on Christmas.

I’m listening now to “Little Town of Bethlehem”, and the rendering of “No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him still, Dear Christ enters in” still brings tears to my eyes, even after four years of listening.

So what if it’s not party music? I don’t know why it hurts so much, but it’s a gift, Sarah, that I know leads me into the joy of healing.

Thank-you.

The Body-Mind Connection

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When I started my current job at age forty-eight, I was just beginning to get heavy on my chest and abdomen. The primary impact on a software developer is lower back pain that steals the last two hours of the work day. I ran a few miles a week and played tennis with my sons on the weekend, but I could see myself starting the long, slow slide into flabbiness.

The general manager at the company was in far worse shape, having decided to take up golf for exercise. After ruining his back with all that hyperextended twisting, he decided to bring in a yoga instructor. I took a few classes with her, but with zero-period drop-offs for the son that was taking AP chemistry, I couldn’t make more than one session a week.

My introduction to Bikram Yoga was incidental – the studio is next door to the music shop where I took flute lessons until last month.

At this point, I can’t say enough about the discipline. To tell the truth, though, starting it at age fifty was really hell. I was riddled with tissue and joint alignments that had evolved to support my defective posture. Then there were the untreated stress injuries and left-right muscle imbalance from basketball and tennis. I’m also a long string bean, and was just really embarrassed to collapse half-way through the balancing poses held by all the little 5’2” ladies. Finally, I’m a walking bog monster: I drop ten pounds of water weight over the ninety minutes in the heated room.

So I was a train wreck for the first eighteen months. Between aggravating my stress injuries by straining too far in the poses, to just collapsing in the heat, I really drove the studio owners crazy. I still remember the first time I really compressed my gut in wind-removing pose. After the twenty-second squeeze, I uncurled to lie in corpse pose, and I could feel my body reeling as fat was released into my blood stream. Yuck!

Along with the physical challenges were some serious psychological challenges. I’m a really open and supportive person, and there are predators that come into a collective effort like group yoga and just suck energy out of people like me. Some of them don’t realize what they’re doing: they’re just hypercompetitive people that have always taken energy out of others in accomplishing their goals. Some of them are fully conscious of their abuse of people that they consider to be weak-willed. And some are just struggling with the discipline of staying in a heated room while exercising at the limits of the ability. After learning to recognize and reclaim my energies from the first two groups, most of the second year was spent learning to manage the last group. I put a lot of thoughts like “Breathe”, “Just rest” and “It’s OK. Do the best that you can” into the room. Every now and then someone comes up after class to thank me.

Some of the experiences I don’t even know how to categorize. The most intense was when lying down after an deep back bend on the floor. I felt a spark, pretty much like an electric spark from finger to metal, emanating from my liver. Everybody in the class froze, and the teacher stopped and asked “Is everything OK, Brian?”

This last year has been about building strength in the left side of my body. As I got closer and closer to balancing out the poses, I was overwhelmed by feelings of intense loss and sadness. Sometimes those feelings seemed to be related to having a specific person or persons in my vicinity, but I eventually realized that they were coming from somewhere deep inside of me.

I was exhausted last Tuesday just coming into class, and spent the first half of the floor series trying to catch my breath. The sadness was powerful, and I had to hold my breath to keep from sobbing. I finally got back into the postures, focusing this time on the left side of my neck and upper back. Suddenly, I had an amazing sensation, as though the right side of my head was filling up with energy.

I mentioned that I have a spiritual tenant on my right shoulder, something that was waiting for me in my mother’s womb following a six-month miscarriage. I realized that I had forced him out of my mind. He was a little upset, but resigned. The intensity of focus I had invested in activating the muscles on the left side of my body had worked back into the right side of my brain (the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body).

The impressions that I drew from him, regarding the sadness I had been struggling with, were related to memories of the agony he had suffered as his little fetus succumbed to death. Honoring the sacrifice that he had made, I spent the rest of class working out how to supply him energy without renouncing the right side of my brain.

What’s been amazing is the impact on my relationships. I’ve been seized by fear of rejection all my life. That’s evaporated. And the people that rely upon emotional connections to drive their relationships no longer find me to be so needy.

Of course, it’s not just me and my tenant in this situation. One of the things that I’m conscious of is that predators consider humility to be a form of weakness. I’ve been letting a certain class of them get twisted up in the right side of my mind. It’s time to infect them with the strength that comes from loving.