Recently, I met some­one new. At first glance, due to his pro­fes­sion and appear­ance, he reminded me of three peo­ple I had been close to years before. Imme­di­ately, my mind decided that he was a mash-up of these folks and started scan­ning the con­ver­sa­tion, his ges­tures and expres­sions for evi­dence that, indeed, he was such a com­pos­ite char­ac­ter. Luck­ily, I caught onto my mind’s machi­na­tions before it could fully con­jure this fic­tional per­son. “I know noth­ing,” I reminded myself, although not in Sgt. Schultz’s fake Ger­man accent. For those too young to remem­ber, he played the fool­ish camp guard in Hogan’s Heroes. In Zen, spir­i­tual aspi­rants are also known as fools, will­ing to encounter the next moment with nei­ther fear nor anger, no mat­ter what hap­pens. In short, being a fool means not need­ing to be “right”. Although it was quite pos­si­ble that some of my assump­tions and first impres­sions would turn out to be accu­rate, the real­ity of this per­son might also be quite dif­fer­ent from my ideas. Could I drop my inter­nal chat­ter and enter the moment, rather than ana­lyze, antic­i­pate and pre­dict? Before I started prac­tic­ing Zen and med­i­ta­tion, I often believed that the por­traits my high Read the Rest…

Why not be an anar­chist for love? Explode as gen­tly as a rose. Can Krishna’s sky be scrawled on a wall? Does Mary appear in a frac­tal of shat­tered glass? The face of chaos, like the face of the Beloved, is too beau­ti­ful to name. Jesus burst the wine­skin of God’s law. Now it’s time to burst Jesus; he won’t mind. Burst Marx, Jef­fer­son, Obama; split open the left and right. Let them seep into each oth­ers vine­yards. Your wild heart could make this world dance naked, crush­ing every kind of grape in one bar­rel. But first, fer­ment your mar­row, dis­til your blood. Wake up beyond the mad­ness of two. Don’t be drunk or sober.

A few weeks ago at a library book­shop I picked up a book that I’d been mean­ing to read for a long time, Diet­rich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Dis­ci­ple­ship. I’m glad I read the book, which Bon­ho­ef­fer pub­lished in Ger­man in 1937, but I can’t say I’m happy about it. This book opens and moves in a long, slow, painful pro­gres­sion of accu­sa­tion. For me it does at least. The open­ing lines are par­tic­u­larly com­pelling: Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fight­ing to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the mar­ket like cheap­jacks’ wares. The sacra­ments, the for­give­ness of sin, and the con­so­la­tions of reli­gion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is rep­re­sented as the Church’s inex­haustible trea­sury, from which she show­ers bless­ings with gen­er­ous hands, with­out ask­ing ques­tions or fix­ing lim­its. The essence of grace, we sup­pose, is that the account has been paid, every­thing can be had for noth­ing. Since the cost was infi­nite, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of using and spend­ing it are infi­nite. What would grace be if it were not cheap? I can­not read these words with­out a cer­tain amount of dis­com­fort. I know that all too often I, Read the Rest…

I am day­dream­ing again. Hav­ing stum­bled upon the descrip­tion of God’s breath hov­er­ing on the waters, my imag­i­na­tion has trans­formed me into a hum­ming­bird. I am sit­ting still but my mind is buzzing. Day­dream­ing is both a neces­sity for my writer-self and a lux­ury for my mother-self. It can also be a lia­bil­ity. Often, the open space of my dream state allows the tem­pest of my night­mares to over­whelm me. I am stand­ing at the edge of a chasm, peer­ing down at God’s breath hov­er­ing below me. I feel light-headed: I could eas­ily lose my bal­ance. Rabbi Tsvi Blan­chard taught me that the abil­ity to tol­er­ate both the night­mare and the fan­tasy of my dream state empow­ers me to trans­form my fear to joy. As I embrace the truth of his teaching—my mind can­not soar higher unless it has hov­ered low—I strug­gle to dis­cern my thoughts amid the noise of the dream. I am sur­rounded by chaos and noth­ing­ness. I inhale deeply, fill­ing my lungs with oxy­gen. I exhale slowly, feel­ing stead­ier as my breath fades. I take a sec­ond breath, emp­ty­ing my mind of anx­i­ety. The third time, I close my eyes and hold my breath close to my heart. Some­how, I Read the Rest…

Here’s an inter­est­ing 2010 inter­view with Ram Dass on the process of let­ting go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LxB-4_MGbc   “Your soul wit­nesses your feel­ings, your desires, your fear­less­ness. Stay  in the wit­ness, not iden­ti­fy­ing with the desires or atti­tudes or those things. You can sit by and watch the show. Watch the show of your incar­na­tion and just sit back from your ego and your other thoughts. I like to sit back with my guru who is like a soul-friend. And I would sug­gest you have a soul friend, one that is going to be lov­ing and pas­sion­ate and peace­ful and wise.” instead of desire the car, maybe the car will go and instead of the car maybe desire a guru or a good spir­i­tual friend, some­one to keep you on line towards God.”

One of the tasks I set my advanced cre­ative writ­ing stu­dents is to have them, one stu­dent a week, find three poems to read and then unpack from what­ever anthol­ogy I hap­pen to be using. We do this not only for mean­ing but also for craft, the tech­ni­cal and strate­gic ele­ments that cre­ate the psy­cho­log­i­cal atmos­phere of the poem. Poetry, to me, is an act of atten­tion. And I think that the reader’s atten­tion to the poem, his or her engage­ment with the words of the poet, can allow access to the poet’s atten­tion to the Power of Things. The best poems—those that evoke what used to be called the Good, the True, and the Beautiful—can reward this atten­tion with some­thing akin to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion: a direct access to a deeper real­ity. Other poems, unfor­tu­nately, ren­der lit­tle more than access to a poet’s web­site. But that’s another story. This week, my stu­dent Phyli­cia brought this poem to our atten­tion:   The Bat­tle by Abra­ham Abu­lafia When Yaweh spoke to me, when I saw His name spelled out in blood, the pound­ing in my heart sep­a­rated blood from ink and ink from blood, and Yaweh said to me, “Know your soul’s Read the Rest…

  “The Prodi­gal Son” Rem­brandt Har­mensz van Rijn Turn­ing away from attach­ments sig­ni­fies a change of heart. In the Para­ble of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11– 32), Jesus por­trays vivid images of the human expe­ri­ences of being lost, of lov­ing and for­giv­ing, and of nearly incom­pre­hen­si­ble com­pas­sion.  I will start Lent by reflect­ing on the lost son at his point of turn­ing away from the madding and mad­den­ing world of sen­sual attach­ments. Luke 15:14–17 14 When he had freely spent every­thing, a severe famine struck that coun­try, and he found him­self in dire need. 15 So he hired him­self out to one of the local cit­i­zens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.16 And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. 17 Com­ing to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired work­ers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. Reflec­tion When my phys­i­cal being aches for food, I search for food. I find no food and I dis­cover that self-will has left me des­ti­tute. Dig­ging deeper, I real­ize beneath the long­ing and the need for food, I long Read the Rest…

By Linda K. Wertheimer Jew­ish mourn­ing rit­u­als meant noth­ing to me when my brother died. It took nearly two decades for me to embrace the gift Judaism gives mourn­ers – reg­u­lar times to remem­ber the loved ones we have lost. My brother Kevin died 26 years ago today on March 1, 1986. He was 23. I was 21. I grew up igno­rant of the struc­ture my reli­gion offers mourn­ers. Singing in tem­ple choirs and attend­ing Shab­bat ser­vices gave me my first lessons about Jew­ish remem­brance. I noticed the peo­ple who stood to hear the names of those they had lost – spouses, moth­ers, fathers, broth­ers, and sis­ters. Today, I am no longer so igno­rant of my faith’s rit­u­als. But, I con­fess, it’s not always easy to stop life and remem­ber.   My brother Kevin and I on a 1983 ski trip in Utah Going to ser­vices and hear­ing my brother’s name read on his yahrzeit, the anniver­sary of his death on the Jew­ish cal­en­dar, has com­forted me annu­ally for more than a decade. Some­times, the yahrzeit falls on March 1, the date seared in my soul. Some­times, the Jew­ish anniver­sary of his death falls a few weeks later. My tem­ple sends me Read the Rest…

When we real­ize that the kind of last­ing joy and peace and the free­dom from fear and anx­i­ety we are look­ing for can­not be found in the pur­suit of sen­sory plea­sure or in the world of com­pe­ti­tion and suc­cess, we begin to look for some­thing to nour­ish our insis­tent crav­ing for what is miss­ing in our exis­tence – some­thing less tan­gi­ble, some­thing beyond ordi­nary every­day con­scious­ness, and yet within our reach. Among the many seek­ers, there are those few blessed souls in whom some aspects of the per­son­al­ity, psy­che, or mind are already highly devel­oped. Their cer­tainty of vision and con­vic­tion of a higher call­ing attracts them to a teach­ing, or rather the teach­ing is drawn to them. They feel imme­di­ately com­fort­able with the pre­cepts of a par­tic­u­lar path or sys­tem, and their mem­ory of truth just needs a tiny jolt. They have a sense of “hav­ing known it before” or “hav­ing done this work before,” and it feels like “com­ing home.” Then there are those who seek and seek, and travel great dis­tances to achieve extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences or to find a guru on a moun­tain­top, only to be uncer­e­mo­ni­ously turned away. Yet upon their return, they dis­cover the words of wis­dom Read the Rest…

Amidst the daz­zling exha­la­tion of explod­ing super­novae and the pas­sion­ate in-breath of black holes, galax­ies whirl wildly while God, vastly smil­ing, spins on one cen­tripetal toe at the cen­ter of all, shout­ing, “WTF is going on?!” I pro­claim the igno­rance of God. This procla­ma­tion of God’s igno­rance is an act of faith. I am  com­forted by the propo­si­tion that the uni­verse is out of con­trol. God sim­ply watches the ran­dom glory of spon­ta­neous evo­lu­tion in per­pet­ual won­der, with no idea where it comes from or where it’s going. No God whom I could pos­si­bly wor­ship is in the con­trol busi­ness. I do not live in a robot uni­verse. As God’s great­est gift to me is the gift of free will, so God’s great­est gift to nature is chaos, the frac­tal poetry of chance, the ran­dom beauty of evo­lu­tion­ary self-design. The notion that Bib­li­cal prophets pre­dicted the future is a com­mon mis­un­der­stand­ing. The Hebrew word naviʾ, a loan word from the Akka­dian nabū, orig­i­nally meant to call, to sum­mon, not to pre­dict. The Hebrew prophet saw where present trends might take their peo­ple, and called them to ethical/spiritual trans­for­ma­tion now. The prophet’s call was not a time-line, but a cry for the turn­ing Read the Rest…