Worshiping

Through Eternity and Infinity, through time and space, I have been you and you have been me. I have loved you and you have loved me. I have killed you and you have killed me. We have worshipped the same gods under the same heavens, fought and died in the same hells. We have sacrificed at the foot of the same sacred mountains; we have lain upon the same sacrificial altars. We have abandoned the same foolish gods. We have watched gods born and gods die. I have given birth to you, you have given birth to me. We are all things to each other at every moment. I am your god and you are mine. And like everything else, we worship all that lives, all that is. I worship even myself. Even right now I am you worshiping me worshiping you.

Andy Kehoe: Savage Beauty

Andy's work has been a big inspiration for me. His work is savage, beautiful, and very often sublime. The world of his paintings is one fraught with spirituality. The savageness and the horror of life is depicted with a transcendental eye towards completeness and equanimity. A rare quality in art. I've included a lot of his paintings in my blog posts because they, in some intimate way, inform my life, especially lately. If you're interested in seeing more of his work you can find it here:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Andy-Kehoe/93484625188?ref=ts

All meaningful achievement derives from the sacrifice of the lower self to the higher self, the relative self to the absolute self. What I am talking about is discipline, that is, autonomy. Volition. Freedom.

Male Facing Darkness

The cold rain on the petals.
The mist in the garden.
The crickets in the grass.
The dripping eaves.
Nothing I have done
can find harmony here.
The day moves away from me--
A shape in the rain,
confounded by direction,
only something moving
I cannot find my way with.

These Were Our Children

They are dead, their bellies swollen with songs.

The first light of dawn did not know them.
Flowers now rise through their eye-lids, bloom through their ribs,
their bones, a museum for thriving things--
flowers that ate and were loved better than they.
These were our children,
and the flowers I deem theirs.

For Those Who Share the World with Me Now

If at a water’s edge you linger and watch the heavens float through the water;

If beneath the stars at night you look up and wonder what the source of all this is;

If when sleeping you dream of wonderful things that fill you with joy, love, peace, and wonder;
If before a child you stand in awe, wordless, happy beyond reason,

Know that you sit in the same silence that all beings have dwelled in since before time,

that you commune with the same silence the world was born of,

and that same silence is the silence you move through, live through, love through, and will someday perish through.

Silence is the music all worlds dance to. It is the rhythm that sings between your heart beats and keeps time to your own breath.

Enjoy it. It is perhaps the only thing that lasts.

What is Spirit?

Spirit is the insurmountable silence that drives dancing things to sing. Spirit is that which knew, without knowledge, the arc of your life, the bend of your breath, the geometry of your every movement from birth to death, measured out in eternity, bound by freedom and an energy that extends through your life and pulls time through it as a thread is pulled through a needle.

The Sad and Sublime Death of Aunt Francis Marie

She was found dead on her apartment floor with the big purple dildo still clenched in her fist. The police officers and various lab people quietly walked through her apartment taking pictures and taking notes on the immediate surroundings of the body. They looked around her apartment with squinted eyes and wrinkled brows searching for how this poor woman might have died. The look of heightened tragedy was on their faces as if they were theater actors who had stumbled onto a movie set and were playing it too big. But they were professionals. They could hold in their laughter until later. They would have a giggle over the pictures. It would probably even end up in some scrapbook that they would take out and show the rookies all the terrible and sad ways to die. Their faces were all composed in a way that perhaps denoted she might have died from something else other than a heart attack while in the throes of pleasuring herself. No one looked at the dildo. I noticed they kept saying “victim” when they referred to her, always just above a whisper. I suppose she was a victim of a kind. A victim of her own pleasure, of her semi-advanced age (she was only sixty-three), her body, her life as much a fate as fate. Aunt Francis Marie deserved better. She did manage to pull it out in time and was dragging herself to her open dresser drawer before her heart finally gave out. The look on her face must have been one of complete terror. I didn’t think people’s faces could stay that way after they died. Some of the terror was still left on her face like a horrible echo. I wanted to bend down and somehow change her face back to the way I remembered it, but for some reason I thought better of it. Maybe I thought I might contaminate the “crime” scene. The record player was still on, the low hum and scratching of the needle running across the paper on the record. I walked over and cut it off. She had been listening to Johnny Mathis.

I remembered how she used take me for ice cream after school when mom wasn’t able to get off of work to pick me up. We would walk down from her apartment on the third floor, the same apartment she would die in thirty five years later, and she, with a Salem cigarette in between her thin fingers, would buy me ice cream from Bernie’s Ice Cream parlor. She would rarely get any, said she was watching her figure. We would sit on the park bench in front of Bernie’s under the afternoon sun and I would eat my ice cream cone and she would smoke her cigarettes. Afterwards, we would go back to her apartment and she would let me watch cartoons until mom picked me up. It’s strange that looking at her sprawled out on the floor all I can think of is her carrying me to get ice cream. She was the most fun of all my mom’s sisters. When she laughed it wasn’t like others laughed. She laughed with her whole body. Her head thrown up, her voice raspy but shrill, and her whole body shook like a spasm. She was the best laugher I ever saw. And she never laughed unless something was really funny. Most folks nervously laugh or laugh sort of over the top when they know something isn’t all that funny, but not Aunt Francis Marie. When she laughed, you knew it was really funny. But she was also the most troubled of my mom’s sisters. Four marriages in fifteen years and boyfriends in between and sometimes during her marriages. She wasn’t happy unless she was with someone, and then she was positively miserable. She loved night clubs that were decorated as if they were from the fifties. They were becoming rarer these days but there was still one over on Shaker and Fifth, but it wasn’t very popular and there was always just a few people in there. But that became her night club in her later years. Almost every night of the week she could be found there drinking her Tom Collins and smoking a cigarette listening to the jukebox. She said Tommy’s had the best jukebox in town. It cost a dollar now but she would say it was worth it because they no longer played those songs on the radio anymore—Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Andy Williams. They were the voices of her youth. She sang to them, danced to them, made love to them, fought and divorced to them. Men came and went but they would always be with her. They would never leave her. She said no one sings like that anymore, pointing at the jukebox or record player. In some ways she was the most sensitive of mom’s sisters.

Since I was the one who had to identify her body I had to sign some forms. The police officer gave his condolences and then they gently pulled the dildo out of her hand and dropped it in to a plastic bag. They then picked up her body and slid a plastic bag beneath her and then zipped her up. I watched the plastic ends connect as they hid her face from me. Part of me was relieved. I didn’t like seeing her so fragile, so exposed. But it was more than that. I didn’t want to be reminded of her face. How it was contorted. I didn’t want to imagine her final moments lying like that naked on the floor trying to just put the dildo in the drawer before she called 911 all the while Johnny Mathis playing in the background. Her body was so thin. Her breasts had lost their shape and fell loose at her sides. When she was very young she was full-figured but the older she got the less she liked to eat and her body lost all its shape. Now it was just an outline of what it had been. One could see the hints of what was once a beautiful woman. Aunt Francis Marie once told me she hated time because it would take all her beauty away. She said she would fight it with every ounce of strength she had. She took exercise classes five times a week, rarely ate red meat, and drank endless glasses of vegetable juice. I can’t imagine what thoughts were running through her head in those final moments when she knew she wouldn’t make it to the dresser drawer. Maybe at that point she didn’t care. Maybe by that time she was already gone, perhaps at Tommy’s listening to the jukebox, or with some old lover in the back of a 57’ Chevy, or perhaps at her high school prom with the skinny boy she always showed me pictures of, her in her blue gown with a white corsage, he in his white suit with a red rose in the lapel. Maybe they danced all night to the music she loved and maybe that would be where she would always be. I’d like to think moments like that are heavier than others and leave a fingerprint that after life we can go back to and inhabit again. Maybe human lives were special and were as heavy as planets which curved space-time. Maybe lives curved space-time too? Maybe she is with that boy and they’re dancing and the music will never end and the morning will never come and we are here bearing witness to her dead body and will never know what her last thoughts were or whether the look of terror on her face bespoke what her last thoughts were or whether it was just the pain?

Her body slumped in the black body bag. As gentle and delicate as they were, at the end of the day it was still a body in a bag and no amount of delicacy would change that. The door shut and they were gone. I heard their steps down the hall and heading down the stairs their footsteps growing fainter until there was only the silence in the room. The room smelled of cigarette smoke and her flower scented perfume. The late afternoon light streamed in through her windows. Constellations of dust swirled in the light. The room looked lonely without her in it. It became inexpressibly sad. I sat down on the couch I used to watch cartoons on and just sat and breathed and watched. Her ash trays were empty. She was gone. She would never walk through that door again. She would never sit on this couch with her feet up, her toe nail polish drying, and drinking a Tom Collins watching a bad horror movie as she liked to do. I got up and looked in her refrigerator. Not surprisingly all she had was five oranges, two apples, a zucchini, three bananas, and a six pack of Natural Light, two missing. I took a beer from the fridge and gently put the needle back on the record and cut it on. “Chances Are”…The music was heartbreakingly tender. Johnny Mathis’ voice sounded otherworldly. I never much cared for him. There was something about that music that always ended up being creepy. I think it was that it was completely artificial and fake. All optimism and joy, no sadness, no loss, no despair. Everything was wonderful all the time. Maybe that was why she liked it so much. It didn’t remind her of anything real. The beer was cold and good. I imagined how many afternoons my aunt had done this exact same thing. In these moments she would have had to be happy. I got up from the couch and lied down on the floor where she died, half my body on the rug and half off. I put my ear to the cold floor and listened. The music hummed through the hardwood floor. I put my body in the exact position Aunt Francis Marie died in to see if I could intuit what she might have felt. I couldn’t feel anything except her absence. This apartment over the years had stored every sound she ever made. Somewhere in the wood of the walls was every word and every laugh and every sigh she had ever made. And no one would ever be privy to it, only the dead walls, the furniture, and the hardwood floors. My aunt was still here. I moved through her echoes, through conversations that ended decades ago. The air was thick with her voice and no one would ever hear it again.

I looked over her apartment before I left. I found her key on the nightstand and locked the door as I left. Outside her apartment building I suddenly felt the urge to get ice cream. Bernie’s was no longer there but there was another one maybe one more block down. It wasn’t as good but it was there. I sat on a park bench and licked my ice cream cone. It tasted good-- sweet and cold. The taste of the ice cream, or maybe it was just sitting on a park bench again and eating ice cream, but I remembered once when Aunt Francis Marie carried me for ice cream and an old man trying to cross the street was hit by a car. We ran over, she holding my hand tightly. The street, filled with workers, vendors, shoppers, all ran towards the accident. The old man’s eyes rolled back in his head and blood was coming out of his mouth and eyes. She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. And then just like that he was gone. Everyone standing around looked up at the driver standing by his open door. They dragged the driver away from his car and started beating him up. Apparently he was quite drunk. Aunt Francis Marie touched the old man’s forehead and she took my hand again and we left the old man there on the street.

Funereal

We’re most human when we’re burying our dead,

when we stand on the very edge and peek over,

bottomless and endless fall; and we can’t help but gasp,

imaging our fates married to that drop, with the score

of souls tumbling, twisting, hurtling through its dark shape,

fighting to be born, or sleeping, or just waiting in the void,

as some of us here measure our hearts and prepare for the end,

imagining when it is our turn to fall, to slip through the world

like a tear drop sliding down the cheek of the wind.

And we here, impossibly alive, trying to feel the sun on our skin.

The Smokers

Some days I wonder if I’ve earned this life.

Sitting by the smokers outside our classroom

I zone out and wonder who will be the last one of us alive

and wonder how each one of us will die. I picture each of us

on our death beds, surrounded by family, kids and grandkids, friends,

some of us dying sooner than we should; and I can’t help

but feel profound love for these incomplete people, striving,

wrestling heroically with themselves, rising, falling,

each smoking a cigarette in between their classes.

And some days I wonder if she will wait for me. I don’t think she will.

People mean well, but they can rarely wait for you.

Life is very fast, fleeting, and fragile; waiting makes it seem more so.

But I understand. Really I do. She can’t help it.

It was always going to be like this. As soon as she called me

that first time and I eagerly picked up the phone it was already done.

I knew yesterday when she crossed the street to meet me for lunch

and her cell phone rang and instead of waiting she took the call.

We embraced, her phone still pressed to her moving lips.

Sometimes the world is undone by such small things as that.

for Brit

I Am Fulfilled By Stars

Looking up at the immediate stars...Up there nothing is striving, or if it is, it is certainly not precious. What is it that strives for or against? Here we lay waste our powers for sordid boons, energy, bodily and otherwise, sleeks through eternity. Out there is is here and here is out there, but light seems to be precious. Assembled energies. What is my connection to all that? The ground of being that notices? One who sees and is seen? One who remembers and bears witness? Looking at the heavens how can one not feel enormously happy, happy against all odds and reason. How can we not feel immeasurably large and immeasurably small? How does one not cry? Searching the heavens is a worthwhile activity, I think. If one did that and little else what a life that would be! Looking out at the stars I am fulfilled. Tonight is one more day of eternity, one more night of the universe unfolding...Spirit waiting, working, striving, resting, till the moment it turns around in the mirror of emptiness and sees itself. Till then I keep watch over the stars...

Just Awake

I don’t know the world as it is. Even yesterday I could have told you. But today things escape me. Music falls through me and doesn’t catch on anything. Some days I wish I could jump from the Washington Avenue Bridge. Other days I just want to sleep and never wake up, or else wake up just when a good TV program is coming on. But mostly I am just awake and scrawl through the tilting world at things mostly unreal, but still harmful to me. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t even dream anymore. Dreamless for three years and two months. I don’t even know what that means. But it’s probably not good. I miss the days when I was passionate enough to love one author and exclude the world, and sit in their poetry for months on end and never come out until I had exhausted myself with words, drowned in words. Died even. I guess maybe I’m just bored. I tell my niece all the time that only boring people get bored. But I don’t care anymore what it means that I’m bored. It is enough to feel the lack. How my soul slumps in the betweens of things I can’t connect. It has to be enough even if it isn’t.

A Riff on Jesus's Sacrifice According to Fundamentalism

I know sacrifice in fundamentalist orientated Christianity is important. But sometimes I think of what they think of Jesus’ sacrifice and I wonder: for a God who is all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing and Eternal...how awful could it be to just have ONE bad afternoon? Even one hanging on a cross? When I'm in this mood I like to think of Jesus’ DEEP humanity, a humanity that is no less than ourselves, the divine manifested as human, which doesn't make light of his human sacrifice. To make Jesus a God in the way fundamentalism does, is to steal the meaning of Jesus’ very real sacrifice. If he’s God, then how big of a sacrifice could it have been? But if he’s human, like us, divine like us, then his sacrifice has substantive, instructive, and transcendent meaning, not just a God who plays a human for an afternoon and then goes back home. For esoteric, or Gnostic Christianity, Jesus’ sacrifice IS a sacrifice because he has something to lose, his life. Jesus would never come back again. His individual light would never come into the universe again. The loss is VERY real. Otherwise, what has Jesus lost by dying? This is the Jesus I dearly love: intimately aware of his humanity, aware of his death as a very real death, and willingly hanging on the cross, becoming symbolically for us the space where time and eternity marry, where life and death are simultaneous.

How Me and the Christian God Grew Up Together, Argued, and Later Became Homeys, Basically

I was raised “Christian” (in all the various interpretations and misrepresentations of that vaguest of possible terms). Then I became an agnostic, then an atheist, then…well, now, these names seem pretty funny to me. Mostly these names, which are meant (perhaps) to designate meaning, really steal meaning if we don’t qualify what we mean by them. What I mean is that these words are for the most part used to prop up power, gain influence, maintain ignorance and perpetuate blind-servitude. Especially the word “Christian”. The others make sense only in relation to what we define God as. Of course, all words and all things that exist exist only in relation to some other thing. So meaning is relational, and so, relative. But this does not mean that meaning does not exist. Far from it. Just that meaning must always be ascertained from the fullest context(s) available.

But as I just said I was raised a Christian, that is, God exists as some white bearded guy reclining in the clouds. He’s all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. He created all that exists, he needs 10% of your monthly income, and used to really like the smell of burning meat, but has since given it up (except in certain rarified circumstances). God, when he finally decides (his coming has been eminent for some time now apparently), will punish all those who decided not to obey him by casting them in a lake of fire, in which they will burn forever and ever. And those who obeyed him will bask in his glory forever and ever in some vague place that is supposed to contain ultimate bliss. Oh, and he had a son too, by a virgin named Mary.

Apparently she was “chosen” and the Holy Spirit (a more mysterious part of God) came to her and impregnated her somehow (of course, virgin births wasn’t new by then, there was Buddha 500 years before, who in some stories was born of a virgin, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, Huitzilopochtli, Lao Tzu, Dionysius, Athena and many more …). Joseph, her soon to be husband, wasn’t that happy at first, but eventually he came around to the idea. And then Jesus, the son of God, was finally born. Which completes the Holy Trinity (if you want to get technical, and I do, Christianity is sort of a polytheistic religion and not monotheistic at all, and if you really want to get more technical it’s incestuous too, since God is both the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, he, in the form of the Holy Spirit, impregnated his own mother, Mary, but that’s only if you want to get technical, and I do).

Now of course, this story has more plot holes in it than the last Star Wars trilogy (which is probably not that surprising since it owes some if its plot elements from the Gospels, Anakin Skywalker being a virgin birth himself). Of course, there are certainly more absurdities and I can go in to much greater detail on any of the above but that’s not the point at all. One can argue ANY of these points till the cows come home, provide alternate interpretations of the narrative(s) but again that’s not the point.

The point I came to in my late teens was simply this: it is a story (which first, I think, swayed me to become agnostic, and very quickly thereafter, an atheist). Being a story about such things as it speaks of, it holds no more empirical or epistemic validity than does a story like Beowulf or Gilgamesh or pink elephants. But once I realized that the literal interpretations of these stories were absurd and ultimately not helpful to me, then the real work began. I was condemned to deeper meaning. How can the stories be valid at all? How can they be meaningful in some sense to me?

I studied every religion I knew about, I read the Bible 3 times (just to make sure, Hell is a powerful idea after all) along with many many many commentaries by Christian thinkers both premodern, modern and postmodern. I read the very tedious Koran once. I read the many many many Buddhist sutras along with hundreds of books by Buddhist scholars and practitioners. I read the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda and, of course, read the works of many philosophers and scientists.

And then I read some Stephen King. You can’t read serious stuff all the time you know. But after reading all these things and reading the great literature of the world one learns something very valuable: that we evolve and have evolved and will, if we don’t blow ourselves up, evolve again. We have evolved both physically, morally, spiritually, socially, etc. But the same “religious” (pardon the use of yet another vague term, here I simply mean it in its original Greek context, religio- meaning to link back, as in the passing down of some ritual or narrative) terminology always was dragged with us. Which is fine as far as it goes.

But we have neglected to redefine these terms in light of new discoveries in science, philosophy, ethics, and art. And most of the issues some of us have with religion, or God, can be solved with just a little agreement on our terms. We might not agree on what God is, but we can at least be clear on what we mean when we say the word God. This, I think, can alleviate a lot of confusion and allow real, more meaningful communication to begin.

So, after a ten odd year quest I’ve come to this idea: God has evolved too. Once God was (at least in western culture) pretty much what I described above, the old white guy with a long white beard in the clouds judging humanity, sending the good ones to Heaven and the bad ones to Hell. But this idea of God, we no longer find interesting, or even valid. Children are climbing the early developmental stages at a much faster rate than did their ancestors. They’re hitting the rational level at around 13 or 14 now. Quick. This means that the mythic idea of God they are discarding for some other idea of God, or discarding God altogether (and all this while their hormones are raging out of control which makes for interesting times). And sadly, in our postmodern culture there is seemingly no room for both God and rationality. There is of course, but I’ll get to that a little later.

“God is dead,” Nietzsche informed us in 1883. It finally made the cover of the New York Times in 1966 (good news travels fast, I guess). But it is only the mythic God that has died, that is, the God that says there is only absolute notions of good and evil and no in-between, that if you don’t do what I say you will burn in Hell forever. Good riddance to that God most will say. And for good reason. But this idea of God is the only thing that has died, not the idea of God! And remember, we must be careful when talking about large populations who believe this or that, because we are talking about developmental sequences, which is ever shifting.

But we do know this: right now 70% of the world believes in some notion of that kind of mythic God, and that population is still ethnocentric, which means that they are likely to believe and say things like, “my country right or wrong; my race right or wrong; my religion is right and everyone else’s is wrong; my God is the only God and everyone else’s is false…you get the idea. Basically, this is the same developmental level that allowed Nazis to gain power in Germany and cause the murder of more than six million Jews. Scary. Just a nudge left or right and we’re talking about potential genocide.

These people are not yet at the rational stage. But those who are, at least in the West, are between a rock and a hard place because in our postmodern world (postmodernism is dead, it’s just that few people know about it) they are given the choice of no God or a mythic God. And, of course, given the choice they obviously would rather deal without a God than that mythic God! I mean, look at all the trouble we have from the mythic idea of God, all the holy wars, all the near genocides, all the intolerances, the persecutions, etc. and all in God’s name. For every year of peace throughout human history we have endured 14 years of war…and all over this mythic notion of God.

Life’s hard enough without having to worry about all that. But here’s the good news as I see it. God is an ever changing construct that is real. And very briefly God is this: God is what was before the beginning, before the Big Bang, the Eternal, whatever power or force, that started off all that we know and see in the universe, and what will be after the universe (or multiverse) finally ends. That is God. And we can name this as simply Spirit. But any name will do. Call it cheese puffs. Call it flooky poo poo. Doesn’t matter. This divinity won’t get offended (how can you offend God?). And Spirit kicked off evolution too, which is simply Spirit-in-action. There is teleology to evolution, direction, purpose. Since the Big Bang the universe has evolved into more and more complex systems. It has become more holistically embracive, more moral, more spiritual, more loving, and more compassionate. It is meandering to be sure, but it has a direction and it is up.

God is becoming more God-like. In a physical sense look at it this way: first there was matter, then life, then molecules, atoms, cells, cell systems, organs, organ systems… consciousness…) And the more depth that is disclosed the more spiritual anything is. And since spirit discloses depth and ever reaches for richer meaning, by this definition of God, science is even spiritual. In fact, a scientist who attempts to cure the world of disease from universal concern and care is far more spiritual than say, a fundamentalist preacher, who preaches that if we don’t believe in his God (his version of the story) we are going to Hell. So, you see, God will always exist, but the idea of what God is will always evolve as we grow more conscious of both our selves, the universe we live in, and the divine interplay between inner worlds and outer worlds (our consciousness and the world). At the end of the day God is all that is. And this includes us.

But having taken the path I have I can’t help but wonder, knowing now what I do about the world, the universe, could I ever become a Christian again? What circumstances would have to take place for that to occur? But I realize that that is to beg the question. Because I, of course, could never be that Christian that I was raised to become any more than I could revert back to the consciousness I had when I was five years old. I think of how Christianity is largely practiced today, with little authenticity, little transformation, and I wonder could there be a place for me in the fold somewhere again. The answer is, of course, no. Is there a Christian church that would have the same experiences that I have had (I say experiences instead of beliefs because beliefs require no work on the part of the believer, only obedience, likewise I distinguish between faith and hope: faith is born out of ignorance, having no experience of the divine or very little; and hope as having experience of the divine as it arises in the mind as the world, the universe, the beautiful, the true, the good, etc.). The answer is still, of course, no.

I believe that if there is not a major transformation is consciousness in the next 20 years, or at the very least a translation of consciousness, then I sincerely think Christianity will not be around, the same goes for Judaism and Islam (all have the same God for those of you keeping score). There are innovators to be sure, those luminous thinkers of those 3 religions that have worked within the religions at a high level of consciousness/awareness, but they are few indeed and will only be truly appreciated in the years to come when that 70% catches up with them. Right now they are just the heretics.

Today I consider myself a Buddhist more than anything else. But that’s only if someone held a gun to my head. I don’t really concern myself with labels anymore (at least as far as my own spiritual orientation). Buddhism is the sanest religion, I think. No dogma, consequently no blind belief system, no archaic God, only the prerational, rational and transrational mind in direct contact with the divine. That’s it. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have its problems. Those 70% we talked about earlier are Buddhists too.

But what is different with Buddhists rather than Christians is that the leaders of the Buddhist religion practice it from a rational and transrational awareness. And this is important. This is why I think Buddhism is so popular with those at a rational level of awareness in the world. It’s light years ahead of any other religion being practiced today. It’s like one philosopher said speaking of the validity of all religions: “All religions are true, especially Buddhism!” Buddhism (and all its many flavors) is the foremost light in the religious world. On the qualitative alone it is superlative among the other religions. But the remarkable thing about Buddhism (and the secret of its longevity) is that you can be Christian, Muslim, or Jewish and still be a Buddhist. Buddhism is dogma free, and so, its truths can be integrated into whatever religion you identify yourself most with. The important thing is your own consciousness, not what you believe.

So I was reading one of my favorite philosophers today and I found something very interesting. He had found a way to be a Christian, yet not sacrificed his rationality. And though we would have some conceptual discussion on a couple of our identical terms, it does not render his words any less fit or sublime. Cornel West said this:

“To be human is to suffer, shudder and struggle courageously in the face of inevitable death. To think deeply and wisely as a human being is to meditate on and prepare for death. The quest for human wisdom requires us to learn how to die–penultimately in the daily death of bad habits and cruel viewpoints and ultimately in the demise of our earthly and temporal bodies. To be human, at the most profound level, is to counter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies. This courage contains the seeds of lived history–of memory, maturity and melioration–in the face of no guaranteed harvest. Hence, my view of what it means to be human is preeminently existential–a focus on particular, singular, flesh-and-blood persons grappling with dire issues of death, dread, despair, disease and disappointment. Yet I am not an existentialist like the early Sartre, who had a systematic grasp of human existence. Instead, I am a Chekhovian Christian who banks his all on radical–not rational–choice and on the courage to love enacted by a particular Palestinian Jew named Jesus, who was crucified by the powers that be, betrayed by cowardly comrades andmisconstrued by corrupt churches that persist, and yet is remembered by those of us terrified and mesmerized by the impossible possibility of his love.”

I could be that kind of Christian.

Reteaching the Fire: On Becoming Batman...Sort Of...

“You cannot stop me—not with wine or vows or the weight of age…”--Batman

I was pretty young when I decided I wanted to become Batman. It was a dream that could only come from a broken child’s heart. I had just turned thirteen and been transported to Duke University Hospital for surgery to try to save my left eye. A week before that I had been accidently shot with a bb gun and had undergone surgery to remove the bb. Now it was time to see if they could save the eye. I recovered over the next week (a week where I learned that the eye could not be saved and I had to make the choice of either having it removed and getting an artificial eye or leaving the eye alone in which case it was possible that it could eventually affect the vision in my good eye—I chose to have the eye removed). My eye bandaged up, and in a kind of pain I never experienced or even imagined was possible, I remember mom and dad carrying me to a bookstore one afternoon. I guess maybe I was well enough to leave the hospital for awhile. Both mom and dad had lost their jobs months before and we were getting food stamps to make ends meet. When I got hurt you can imagine the financial stress they were already under. I can’t even imagine how they coped. And we were poor to begin with, having lost the family farm shortly after I was born to bankruptcy. Mom was even going to school during that time too. Even while at the hospital and doing all the things mothers have to do she managed to keep a GPA of 4.0. Amazing. And she was taking a two year program in only one year to be able to get back to work as soon as possible. I not only only remember the will and courage of both of my parents during that time but I also remember the generosity of so many people in our community, people that donated money to help us stay afloat, help us pay for hotel rooms when I had to be fitted for a new eye, food, gas, and of course, all the endless bills. But I remember that they carried me to a bookstore. I’m not even sure where it was, possibly a mall. And I immediately went to the comic book section. And there on the shelf was a black leather bound book. It was dark and thick. It was Frank Miller’s Complete Batman. I didn’t know who Frank Miller was then. But I knew who Tim Burton was and to this day seeing his Batman on the big screen was the biggest movie experience I have ever had. It was magic. I picked up the book and skimmed the thick glossy pages. It was 30.00. Expensive. But they bought it for me anyway. And even though the doctors said that I shouldn’t be doing any reading because it would strain my eye I sat in bed and read the book cover to cover again and again and again. It was life changing. Something clicked in me for the first time. Something mythic. Something incredibly large. Something elemental.

“The time has come. You know it in your soul, for I am your soul... You cannot escape me. You are puny, you are small, you are nothing--a hollow shell, a rusty trap that cannot hold me. Smoldering, I burn you--burning you, I flare, hot and bright and fierce and beautiful. You cannot stop me, not with wine or vows or the weight of age--you cannot stop me, but still you try. Still you run. You try to drown me out... But your voice is weak.”

I felt a possibility in me that I could become greater than I was. Maybe if I had had enough will and desire I could overcome my injury and help people someday. Now, I guess maybe I thought I actually could become Batman. Looking back I probably did think that. I don’t remember anymore. But I do remember the inspiration Batman gave me during those years when I was relearning how to see (I wasn’t blind as a bat, only half-blind and no depth-perception, which makes what should be simple tasks often frustrating…but I was learning back then and figuring out all the little tricks to help me that I now do without even thinking about it). I think it was then that I first committed myself to my body. I was tall and skinny, not much athletic talent. I think I may have weighed 130 pounds then. But I immediately started lifting weights and running, lots of running. It started out only around the yard and quickly turned into a mile, then two, then three, until my senior year I was running up to thirty miles a week and lifting weights up to two hours a day every day. I also started to read more books. Comics, philosophy, novels. If I thought it was the least bit practical I consumed it. When I graduated high school I was 6’2 and 200 pounds. By then I knew it probably wasn’t possible to become a superhero (although some days…) but what I did know was what Batman represented for me: the 100% commitment to an ideal, the transcendent, the sustained will to achieve something great, something of everlasting value. Batman had become in his mortal and finite quest, everlasting. He had become more. He had transformed a tragedy into something transcendent. I could do that I thought. I’m still trying to do that. Now I’ve lived with one eye longer than I have lived with two. I no longer even remember what it felt like to see with two eyes. Which I still find strange. But I do remember back in that hospital room all those years ago reading Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns and making that silent vow to myself that I would learn to make myself better. That would transcend my circumstances. In many ways I’ve done that. I know I have. But so far I’ve never been satisfied. No matter what I’ve accomplished there is always the feeling that I haven’t done enough. I suppose this is what pushes me. But I’ve also failed in a lot of ways too. I’ve let what others may think about me affect my life. And I can evolve as I need to with nonsense like that floating around in my head. The last three years I’ve basically been retired. The cape and cowl hung up on the wall. Sure, I’m finishing up a Master’s degree and I’ve certainly accomplished something of value in doing that, but something is missing. I don’t feel complete. I feel as though I’ve lost the passion of my youth, the intensity, that fire. As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned a great many things but the one thing that I haven’t always learned is how to cope with the new things I’ve learned, how to adapt. I think that as I learned about myself and the world the more I grew uneasy in it, the more I began to feel afraid of it. The more we know, the more we have to worry about. Ideally we should also be learning ways to cope with our new knowledge, our new lives, our new selves. But this knowledge often doesn’t come and we struggle to show up in our own lives as fully as we might. I know I haven’t. And I know this, which is what makes it hard when I don’t commit myself as I should. I know it could be otherwise. I know what I’m capable of. In many ways I’ve grown and in some ways I am just as raw and hurt as the day I lost my eye. Development is messy. But I’m aware of what I need to do, and that is important I think. Robert Thurman in an email once told me this: “My old Mongolian teacher once told me, after some years of study and practice, “When people ask you about your eye, don’t be embarrassed, just go ahead and say, "I lost one, and gained a thousand!"" You have that opportunity too. So get busy and make your life meaningful by being more wise, (less self-centered), and more compassionate (less selfish), and you will have a far greater life than otherwise.” And he’s absolutely right. Get busy living or get busy dying, no more half-measures. It’s going to take super-heroic effort to make my life a meaningful one, one that sustains my body and soul and heart and helps the world, but for me it’s the only life there is. I’ve always been working towards it even when I wasn’t aware of it. So my task seems to be to find that fire again. Remember the feeling I had when I was young. When things came easy. Sure, it’s different now. But I’ll just have to reteach the fire. Make it burn just as long but with more intensity. And that means back down the curative spiral. Back to the Bat-cave.

As I grow older I’ve realized that the dream changed. I’ve changed. And my commitment to living a meaningful life has sometimes waivered, sometimes lulled, sometimes redoubled its efforts, but the vow always renewed itself. For some reason or another I keep moving forward. I feel like there is a life out there moving towards me just as much as I move towards it. And maybe some day we'll actually meet. Maybe...

Batman has always been the touchstone to renew myself. He is one of the greatest characters in literary history. His own mythology awakes in us our own human potential. Sure, you might say he’s just a character, and you’d be right. But characters have power. They inspire. They create a space for us to imagine our selves better, finer, stronger, wiser. They remind us of our highest natures. We can always make ourselves over. It's never too late to change your life.

Batman is my Sisyphus, my Prometheus, eternally prowling the night on his impossible quest to rid Gotham city of crime. And we all have our impossible quests. But even though it is impossible, even though one day we will die, we have to commit to this world, this time, this moment, and make a difference wherever we are. Batman is my Buddha. He was my Buddha even before I knew who Buddha was. And I suspect he’ll be along for the ride throughout my life time. I can’t imagine my life without him as strange as that sounds. As a symbol, Batman is an organizing point for me. It may sound silly to some and I admit it sometimes does to me too, but I think we all have one character or some token of our childhood that reminds us of that liminal moment, that threshold moment, when one world ended and another began. When we lost some of our innocence, or all of it. For me, Batman was waiting in between those worlds and guided me into the next one. It was a darker world, sure, but it was the real one.

“My parents taught me a different lesson... lying on this street... shaking in deep shock... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to.”

And I learned something too from Bruce Wayne's parents, but more than that I learned from young Bruce. Thanks, Batman. And you too, Frank.

The Light Gospel

I cannot speak but with words.

Nietzsche once said

that concepts were like a river

we built our cathedrals on.

I cannot help but love

the frail architecture spun

like webs from the human soul

to a world it can never see

but by the light it sees from.

Death and Fire

It occurred to me today while jogging that even as life is ending it is on fire with eternity. We are born, we die, and we are eternal.

Ultimately grace abounds in everything we do. But there are some people who naturally have grace, and some who have to work for it, and earn their salvation again every single day.

Welcome to the Quitter's Bible

Are you a radical non-participant? Do you constantly worry about the state of the world? See corruption and apathy everywhere you look? Do you like to arrive at your job or school or other designated important place early, only to slack once you get there? Do love Warren Zevon? Do you love Wes ANDERSON? Do you love Richard Linklater? Do you secretly think of yourself as a superhero? Do you love stories about losers? Idealists who sacrifice everything for a brief glimpse at the truth of their souls? Do you like True Crime? Do you like bad movies? Do you like good movies? Do you love Johnny Depp? Do you love Jim Jarmusch? Have you ever seriously trained to become Batman? Have you almost quit or been fired from every job you’ve ever had? Do you love music other people deem “weird”? Do you not care what other people think about you but secretly still sort of do? Are you health conscious but still find yourself eating junk food? Are you an atheist? Are you an agnostic? Are you a Buddhist? Do you love God? Do you sneak food into movie theaters? Do you believe that you are a manifestation of the divine, the latest spiritual model in a long line of other spiritual models evolution has been churning out for billions of years? If so, this just might be the blog you’re looking for. Do I know what kind of blog this is? Nope. I don’t have a clue. But I do know this: it will always be interesting. You will never be bored (and if you are it’s probably not my fault), you will always be enlightened and you will always leave here having affirmed your belief in Eternal Recurrence and loving the fact that you will get to be here countless times throughout Eternity. Do I make any promises? Nope. Do I make any guarantees? Nope. I make declarative statements. Sometimes I ask questions. And sometimes I kind of trail off and don’t finish my sentences. That’s what I do. Now, is anybody interested in grabbing a couple of hamburgers and hittin' the cemetery? I sure hope so.