My intellectual effort has led to this: a full explanation of the final book of the Bible, John’s Revelation. I am not capable of a deeper expression of my compelling sorrow and hope.
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Through
As of Sunday morning, the 101 was still closed in Montecito, so I resolved to head down to Westwood for the Ecstatic Dance LA celebration. After lunch, rather than heading up to the Getty Center, I was inspired to visit the Armand Hammer Museum.
It was deja vu all over again as – just as when I visited with my sons during Kevin’s attendance at UCLA – most of the museum was closed for their annual rotation. Apart from the standing collection (mostly French and American oils from the 19th century), they had four environmental experiences.
The most profound is Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Saydnaya. Saydnaya is the death prison established by the regime of the Syria dictator Bashar al Assad. During the course of the civil war, more than 13,000 people have been destroyed there.
The guards at the prison maintained control through a strict regimen of silence. Any significant noise was punished by beatings – even the screams of those beaten were punished with further abuse. As a result, every sound was impressed upon the victims. Through acoustic forensics, interviews with those released have reconstructed the organization and operations of the prison.
The installation is simple: at the entrance, two large speakers that first demonstrate the effects of a 19 decibel drop in sound – reflecting the drop in the volume of the prisoner’s speaking when the prison stopped serving any investigative purpose and became simply a death camp. The recording starts with a loud siren, and drops through a series of declarations of annihilation (including the extinction of frog species in the Amazon). When the volume is inaudible, the recording continues with the testimony of a prison survivor describing the use of silence as an instrument of torture. Finally, the artist and acoustic specialist describe their methods.
The entry is dim, as the main installation is set off by a large partition. Walking around the partition, we are confronted with a number of overhead projectors, each bearing a ray tracing of the acoustic reconstruction. Two smaller text projectors add testimony of the investigation to the setting.
I entered during a lull in the recording, and stood in the center of the room, amidst the projectors, trying to feel my way into the situation. It was distant until I turned around to look behind me, and found that my shadow had fallen across the ray tracing on the partition. The pain washed through me then, and I turned my back to the young female docent as I allowed it to penetrate. When I finally left, I made the mistake of asking her “Do they have a PTSD therapy program for you after you spend all day in here?” Her face nearly cracked with grief. I don’t think that she understood before that moment.
I went down to the Peet’s Coffee on the corner and resolved to soak in the sun and listen to music. Brahm’s First Piano Concerto seemed appropriate, but the street traffic was noisy. After finishing my coffee and scone, I thought to head back into the Hammer atrium where I’d be able to focus on the music. As I stepped into the quiet, I had the sudden inspiration that I should do my listening in Hamdan’s exhibit.
The first movement of the concerto is an elegy to Robert Schumann, Brahm’s unstable contemporary who committed suicide at a young age, leaving a wife and young children. Much as the exhibition’s recording, it opens with crashing orchestral chords that evoke the trauma of receiving news of a tragic loss. After extended orchestral development, the piano solo enters with an echo of those chords. It was at that point that I paused the recording before walking up the stairs.
As I settled on the floor in the back of the projection space and resumed the concerto, the exhibition recording started, blaring loudly over the music. Again, the trauma and sorrow washed over me.
This was the process, then: holding onto the pattern of the music as the noise and words stepped over it. The stronger chords exerted themselves even through the loudest sections, but Brahm’s meditation has passages of delicate arpeggios and simple, haunting melodies that even hushed voices would occlude.
The thought that I projected was only this:
If they won’t let you speak, then hear this; share it.
To not be forgotten. To receive evidence that love transmutes sorrow into beauty. And, as the first movement ends with it’s playful re-iteration of the opening themes, to hope that children would come to restore joy where greed and fear have made a wasteland of the human heart.
Christmas Teaching, 2017
In the years from 2006, I made every effort to be down at the LA Cathedral for Christmas Midnight Mass and Easter morning services. Having given my heart to Jesus “for healing” back in 2002, on first encounter I was pretty direct upon approaching the crucifix set behind the altar. Looking into the serene visage, I gestured to the twisted limbs and observed, “It’s time to clean all of this up.”
My interaction with the brotherhood has been complex, and sometimes contentious. So when I moved another twenty miles up the freeway into Ventura, it was with some relief that I decided to spend Christmas down at the local parish, rather than making the trip to Los Angeles.
Though my mother asked pointedly whether I intended to go.
I also passed on Easter.
For some reason, I feel a greater receptivity now. I’ve had a number of dreams about Christmas Eve down at the Cathedral, including sharing words with the community. I began this writing before Thanksgiving, but became mired in theological resistance.
I sent out the message that love won’t manifest against resistance. It must be welcomed. A breakthrough of sorts happened last weekend, and I felt the resistance melt away. The words come forth easily.
I was down at the Ventura Government Center for jury duty, and worried through the last of the wording this morning. I do tend to become a little abstract. I hope that it conveys the meaning.
We are so very close. I do my best to mark the way.
The Age Upon Us
Hello, dear friends.
May all the blessings of this day be upon you.
Summoned by the cry of broken hearts, I first came here fifteen years ago. Thus it was to the sweet virgin, witness to the suffering of her people, praying that the Father might bring forth a savior from among her sisters. After Gabri-el revealed her role, the jewel of feminine compassion said simply, “Here am I.”
So I say now: “Here am I.”
That is all the introduction I have for you. The rest is not important, for the gifts of this day descend from a greater source.
In Genesis, when God arrives, the earth is declaimed as “formless and void.” That is to say: nothing found there had any purpose, nor any soul. The molten lava flowed and cooled. Rock ground against itself, creating nothing. Water washed against the rock, forming beds of clay, but no life sprang forth.
The Love that is God seeks to make relationships marvelous, and the Bible records His gifts. The first were simple: light, ground and rain.
Of these gifts God sought to raise creatures that loved as He did. Three billion years later, He crouched on the ground, remembering, and bestowed upon Adam the ability to love. Having compassion on Adam’s loneliness, God found a companion, and Eve was given Adam’s heart to tend, and bore witness to Adam’s virtue.
I remind you of these things to clarify the gifts of this day. Jesus lived forty years on this Earth. He walked among us, and we remember this day because he died to give proof to the undying power of love. But we should set that forty years against the three billion that preceded it. If we are amazed at what Jesus accomplished in forty years, how can we describe the tenderness, strength, and determination of the Father? Can we even begin to grasp it?
Three billion years. As it is said: “I am less than a worm.”
But the Father finds joy in us. Look around you. See the rock, polished and cast. We give form and purpose to it. Our gratitude secures a sanctuary for the burdened. Our souls expand, filling the world with the love we receive.
That is to say – as he is love – that we fill the world with God.
That is the specific gift of this day. Love descended to us. Secure in Mary’s incorruptible womb, love joined flesh, and walked among us.
This sounds simple, but is not easy to understand. What did it mean for Christ to descend from heaven? Why did he need to come in the flesh? Why did he need to suffer and die on the cross?
We come together tonight not only to honor Mary and Jesus, but because on this night the Most High comes closer to us. We see beauty, we hear it in voices and instruments, we see it in the faces of those we love. This beauty washes against our troubles and strife, and if we raise our faces and hearts in gratitude, we feel the Most High fill our cup to the brim.
There are those among you that know this to be true. You are near to the saints.
But is it for you that Jesus came?
Why would that glorious spirit, replete in the presence of his Father’s love, descend for the saintly? Would they not be served better if he stayed to prepare a place for them?
Let me remind you: there are those among us that dare not raise their hearts. They are like Peter on the boat after the fish rush to fill the nets, fallen to his knees, pleading “Go away from me, master, for I am a sinner!”
How many of us have felt that shame? Feared that God would turn away from us?
“Oh, you of little faith!” was the rebuke from Jesus. That was to say “Believe in yourself! Believe that you are beloved by the Most High! Believe that you should share the joy of my service to Him!”
St. Theresa of Avila wrote:
O Lord of my soul and my Good! There are souls so determined to love you that they gladly abandon everything to focus on nothing but loving you. Why don’t you want them to immediately ascend to a place where they may receive the joyful gift of perfect love?
The answer being: because God needs us here to fill the world with love.
Not only on Calvary. Not only on Christmas Day. Not only in this church. But everywhere, every day.
In this Age, Jesus commanded that we “pick up our cross.” But that is not the goal of love. Let us talk of the New Age: A day will come without suffering, without fear, without grief. It is the day from which the power of the love that surrounds us will chase those experiences from our lives.
In that future we will find, like the five thousand, that when we gather what little we have, it is multiplied until it is more than enough. Illness will fade when our sister gazes upon us with compassion. Conflict will flee when our brother prays that our ambition be tempered by good will.
Can we glimpse that day? Here? Now?
Let us try!
Oh, you saints, remember the grace of those two: the woman and the child that were touched by heaven, yet chose to serve us. Take the hands of those you love, and lift your hearts to the Most High. Feel his gaze upon you. Feel the tenderness, the patience, the strength. Behind it the unending ocean of his love. Allow that love to fill your heart.
Thus was the Sacred Mother. Thus was the Lamb.
Rest there, you saints, for now I must address others.
Oh, you weary and burdened. You that bear witness to the sorrows of the world. You are not forgotten.
They descended to serve you. Mary and Jesus: they became flesh so that they might feel your anguish, and bear witness to the sin that oppresses you. It is you that matter, you weary and burdened, for you test the submission of the saints to the love of the Most High.
Lean your sorrows upon me, oh you weary and burdened.
Here am I.
Oh, you saints, do you feel them among you? This is the purpose for your hearts: that as did Jesus, you might share your love. Open your hearts and minds now, and robe the weary and burdened in your grace. See in your hearts that they will find, in the coming year, all that they need, because those that have means to comfort them will receive something in exchange: the certitude of the New Age prophesied by Jesus. Not as a distant promise glimpsed from 2000 years ago, but as a palpable nearness in the heart.
That will be an age when the rich will not hoard their wealth, because they will have the security of fast friendship. It will be an age in which no one asks “What’s in it for me?” because they know that in sharing what they have, their hearts expand to receive ever more of the limitless power of the Most High.
Do you not feel it, oh you saints? Is there not still more? Let it pour out from you into the world! Through the streets, into the dark corners. Across rivers, plains and oceans. Into every heart that craves the hope birthed on this day.
Jesus was not born into comfort. Mary did not labor in a feather bed. This is the gift of this day: they brought love to the world so that we might know that all the world is sacred, that we were meant to be sacred, and that the Most High is determined that all should be redeemed.
Mold with the redwoods. Worms with the eagles. Shepherds with kings. And those oppressed by sin with the saints.
Oh my friends! Let us be worthy of our brother! Let us worship with every breath, with every touch. Let us worship in the temple of the Most High. Let us worship in the temple of our hearts.
Merry Christmas! And blessings be upon you all!
The Garden Door
More than once, this dream.
I am standing at the threshold of a garden.
Blooms and limbs beckon to me.
Light emanating from every fiber.
Heart yearning, I step forward,
but walls intercede, the vision recedes,
A woman steps forward and shuts the door.
Work.
From Grief to Power
A friend was offering a sermon on his birthday yesterday, dwelling on the contradiction between his grief over all the things that we are losing in this era, and the joy he finds in seeing his community interacting. When I had the opportunity to speak, I offered:
Grieving is the prequel to the opening of the door of our heart to a spirit that would otherwise be lost.
That opening is not easy, because the expression of Darwinian selfishness has left so many of them traumatized. But once they have settled in to the experience of being cherished, they look back into the world they have departed and reach out to those left behind, giving them assurance, strength and guidance.
“They” are trees, flowers, fish, birds, mice, whales, children: anything living that is being displaced by a disappearing or polluted ecosystem.
Over the years my conscious welcoming has gathered quite an entourage around me. From that community of displaced souls I draw my power, power that is expressed in the t-shirt I started wearing six months ago to dance celebrations. Across the shoulders are a right and left hand framing a head and a heart. The words are:
DANGER
Angel GatewaysThey just want to be friends.
Please play nicely.
Filling the Holy Spirit
In Love Works, I have a short section called “Hat Trick” in which I explain the Trinity. The only subtlety is the Holy Spirit.
I have to start here: we are God’s medicine for the world. It might be hard to see, because our Darwinian programming coupled with the strength of our minds makes us incredibly powerful predators. We are the fourth of Daniel’s beasts – the huge monster that devours all before it with our iron machines. But we have been wearing down our Darwinian impulses and subjecting them to the discipline of love. It’s a slow process, in human terms, but when seen against the background of a billion years of creatures that came before us: we’ve made enormous progress over the last 30,000 years.
The reason love wins is because, where predators turn on each other after their prey is consumed, those that love stick together. They take refuge in Christ, who had the strength to be consumed by sin and yet continued to love. It is in his sacred heart that spirits that love find refuge from sin. From that refuge, as the Holy Spirit they dispense wisdom – the insights gained from their practical experience of loving – to those still trying to shed their attachment to sin.
Sister Gloria picked the parable of the Good Samaritan for our contemplation this week. During the discussion, several people mentioned that when confronted with the call to offer mercy and compassion to a troubled soul, they resisted, thinking “Well, you’re only getting what you deserve.”
As I see it, though, those are the most valuable moments for the Holy Spirit. The impulse to offer compassion and mercy is the Holy Spirit saying to us: “Yes, this troubled person represents a powerful pattern of destructive behavior. Bring us near to them. Be our eyes and ears, our hands and feet, so that we can learn how to bring strength to them.”
Every person that falls and is redeemed blazes a trail through human nature. They create a nexus in time that reaches out through the Holy Spirit to others facing the same struggles.
We sometimes fail to offer mercy and compassion because we are have been convinced by the materialists that only clothing and feeding is important. Ultimately, though, those things are meaningful only in that they bring the spirit closer to salvation, and thus a return to the place of our origin.
If you don’t have the means to solve the material problems (and that’s becoming true for more and more of us), don’t discount that power of mercy and compassion. Mercy and compassion bring the Holy Spirit close to those in need, helping them find the strength to resist destruction, and tendering hope that helps them seize the initiative in their lives. When we call it close in moments of need, the Holy Spirit burnishes our souls, preparing us for full citizenship in the kingdom in which love reigns.
Looking Ahead
It’s such a beautiful experience, moving through a crowd of gentle people, and then getting hooked on life, stretching out a hand and feeling the pulse of the Amazon, caressing the Andes and then making the leap from Tierra del Fuego to Cape Hope, gently cupping the Congo and pausing before merging into the thrum of Ethiopia. Stuck there, I reached across with the other hand and felt the rainforests of Southeast Asia, roamed over the Russian tundra, and then slowly squeezing inward around the pustule that is the Middle East, soaking it with the healing energy of life and love.
And later she said, hesitantly “It seems that it’s going to get worse.”
“I’m afraid that is what I see, too.”
With the air of one surrendering innocence, she hazarded “But it’s not going to affect people like us.”
I had to look away, trying to find a formulation that did not take air out of the joy she was sharing with me. “Well, in order to bring healing, we have to make a diagnosis. That means getting close enough to feel their pain.”
It’s the last hurrah of selfishness. It knows it, and so figures there’s nothing to lose.
As Matt Maher promises in “Hold Us Together”:
It’s waiting for you knocking at your door
In the moment of truth when your heart hits the floorAnd you’re on your knees
And love will hold us together
Make us a shelter to weather the storm
And I’ll be my brother’s keeper
So the whole world will know that we’re not alone
everdeepening 