Tag Archives: Spirituality

Broken Shards of Light

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The Jewish practice called Tikkun Olam has been translated as the mending of the world. This practice draws from the Kabbalistic ideas of Isaac Luria, a sixteenth century Jewish mystic.

He believed that when God created the world, God formed vessels to hold the Divine Light. As the light began to fill the vessels, they were unable to contain divinity and shattered. Sparks of Divine light were trapped in the shards of these vessels; they scattered throughout the cosmos and formed our world. The task of humanity is to reunite the scattered sparks of Light, to repair the broken world, and thus participate in finishing God’s work.

Light in HemlockBy acknowledging our brokenness we take the first step toward returning to wholeness. I observed this so often during my practice as a psychotherapist. As painful things happen in our lives, we learn to block off the memories and feelings that cause our pain. We become divided from ourselves, and divided from others. Perhaps we may shut down the angry feelings we feel, or despise the needy child that is deep within us. The first step in healing is to acknowledge those parts of ourselves that we have broken off.

According to the healing process of psychodrama, one might begin by imagining the broken off parts of the self as separate entities. A woman came in for therapy, anxious and lonely, and we chose an empty chair to represent her loneliness. I invited her to talk to the loneliness. At first she is dismissive. “I don’t need anything from you,” she says to the empty chair. “Just stop bothering me.” But then I asked her to move over and sit in the chair of the loneliness, to imagine herself as the loneliness talking back to her. In that other chair, tears start to fall, and something like a light dawns in her eyes. She has brought the loneliness back together with her own center.

People often come to therapy thinking they are going to get rid of the pain inside themselves. But they find healing only when they have learned to embrace the brokenness with love. It is that embracing of the pain which finally eases their pain, the return to wholeness.

Webs of Connection

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Think about language. Humanity is a social species. Not only our bodies, but our minds are interwoven. Human beings speak to each other. I am able to create sounds with my voice, and a certain meaning awakens in your mind. When I say the color blue, you can hear the word blue, and see it within your imagination. When I say the word love, you can call to mind a whole wealth of feelings and memories.

Web

Photo by Margy Dowzer

We belong to each other. We are part of a larger whole. And yet, we forget. Wars rage on in the Middle East, millions die from disease in Africa for which treatments are already known, poverty sits alongside wealth, industry pollutes the air and water. This is why we need to understand brokenness as well as wholeness. Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan tells a beautiful story of a broken clay woman. She writes:

I remember the first time I saw the clay woman …in a museum gift shop. …Her black hair flowed behind her, and on her clay feet were little black shoes… Her stomach attached to earth, just above North America. Her name was written on a tag, “The Bruja Who Watches Over the Earth.” Bruja is the Spanish word for a woman healer, soothsayer, or sometimes a witch.

I loved the flying soothsayer who protected the lands beneath her. She was connected to them by her very body, the very same clay. …I bought the clay woman and asked the clerk to mail her back to me, then I returned home, anticipating the day The Woman Who Watches Over the World would appear.

When she arrived, she wasn’t whole. Her legs were broken off, the gray interior clay exposed beneath the paint. I glued them back on. Then she began to fall apart in other ways. Her nose broke. Soon one of her hands fell off. The woman who watches over the world was broken. Despite my efforts she remained that way, fragmented and unhealed. At first I was disappointed, but then I thought, Yes, the woman who watches over us is as broken as the land, as hurt as the flesh people. She is a true representation of the world she flies above. Something between us and the world has broken. That is what the soothsayer says.

Linda Hogan’s bruja is an image of a creator who is connected to us in our actual reality, broken as we are broken, not merely a perfection to which we might strive. Broken Web DSC01269The brokenness is within us, the brokenness is between us, and also between people and the earth. But—this is important—we feel broken because we are meant to be connected.

Quote from Linda Hogan,The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir (New York: Norton, 2001) pp. 17-18.

DNA, Breathing & Trees

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There are many signs all around us that can help us to awaken from the illusion of our separateness, help us to awaken into an awareness of the larger whole to which we belong. Science has always been a form of revelation for me. For example, I am amazed when I think about DNA. All forms of life are propagated by this microscopic code. The human DNA includes elements in common with the DNA for yeast. Even microbes discovered deep within caves—bacteria that feed on poisonous chemicals and never enter the light of the sun—these strange bacteria also have a DNA code that has been measured by scientists. All life, as we know it, is written in the same language.

Our biological unity is present in the continuous interconnecting of all life on earth. It was bacteria that first began to create oxygen, billions of years ago, originally as a volatile waste product. Now, all of us are breathing oxygen every minute of every day.

Take a moment to notice yourself breathing right now.
As you breathe in, small molecules of oxygen are entering your lungs
and then passing through the membranes of its cells into your bloodstream;
from there those molecules flow to every cell in your body.

Imagine those oxygen molecules flowing down
into your belly, your legs, your toes.
Imagine the oxygen flowing up
into your arms, your face, your brain.

Without oxygen we cannot survive for even ten minutes. When we breathe, we bring into our bodies molecules that have been inhaled and exhaled by other beings. This air is common air. These molecules may have sailed here from the winds of Africa, or through the tempest of hurricanes in Japan. Lions may have roared these molecules; whales may have spewed them forth in a fountain above the sea.Misty Trees

Look at the trees outside your windows.
We breathe each moment with the trees.
As we breathe out, we release carbon dioxide into the air,
which the trees need for life.
As the trees breathe, they take in carbon dioxide
and exhale the oxygen that we need.
Breathing teaches us that we are one.

The Mullein Plant

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Mullein Plant

Photo by Forest & Kim Starr, Creative Commons License

As a young adult I became intrigued with herbal healing. I read books that identified particular herbs that could heal different ailments of the body. I learned, for example, that mullein tea was helpful for a sore throat. Then one day, someone showed me a mullein plant growing wild by the side of the road. I suddenly felt the connection: human beings and plants belong together! That mullein plant can actually heal my human sore throat. We are related to each other in some deep essential way.

Spirituality is about experiencing our connection to the earth, to each other, and to all that exists. According to Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” Seeing that mullein plant beside the road brought me a moment of awakening. For that moment, I knew deep in my being, that I was not separate from any of the plants or animals or people on the earth. I realized that, in reality, we all are one.

But time passed, and the illusion of separateness took over again. We are all one, and yet we are also divided from one another. Mother Teresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Certainly, for most of us, we go through our days forgetting this essential truth. How often do we feel isolated from, or even in competition with, the people around us? In fact, every day we are encouraged to see ourselves as separate and individual, we are encouraged to watch out for “number one.”

A whole series of television commercials come to my mind: a grandmother telling her grandchild to “Get your own bag of chips,” or a man guarding his chicken fingers from his co-workers, or a family getting individual pizzas so everyone can have their own topping… it just goes on and on. There are messages all around us that promote the illusion of separation.

In much more devastating ways, the political idea of a common good is being taken apart in favor of privatization. Programs like Social Security and Medicare are under fire, under the guise of some kind of freedom of choice, with the argument that people can do better on their own, that individuals can maximize their retirement options through private investing.

I am pretty sure that is not true, but what goes unspoken is the shift in the very terms of the debate—we are no longer arguing how to best care for all the members of our society. Rather, we are being asked to buy into a fragmented and individualized world, a place where the important goal is to get the most for myself. Thich Nhat Hanh, Mother Teresa, and other teachers, call us to a different outlook. They call us to remember that we are part of a larger unity. They call us to return to our true wholeness.

Part of the Whole

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GiverofStarsA Human Being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

                                                                                           Albert Einstein

From a 1950 letter, published in Howard Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, (Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977).

Sand Castles

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Sand Castle

Photo by Margy Dowzer

Harold Kushner tells a story:

I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sand castle by the water’s edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle.

All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships to other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody’s hand to hold will be able to laugh.

From When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, (New York: Fireside, 1986) p. 165-166.

Choosing Community

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So often when we hear that we should love one another, it sounds like hard work, like a task, like a moral imperative that would be good to follow, but not very pleasant. And I admit there is something difficult about loving one another. But somewhere in the middle of it, comes a surprise. There really is divinity within each person—and when we see it, it is beautiful, joyful, mysterious, and wonderful. It is like the diamond that Dorothy Day was so quick to give to the homeless woman. 

And not only that, when we risk opening our hearts to others, sometimes we experience the divinity that happens in the connections between us. We experience something of that ancient belonging for which we have been yearning. Ubuntu. We experience the oneness of all beings, our part in the family of all things. We realize that we are all gathered in a circle already, we are all part of one dreaming.

Those moments give me energy for the work of creating circles of love and faithfulness. Because we really do have to work at community. We have to make a choice for community. In our society, the bonds are frayed, and the mainstream is drifting toward isolation and competition. There are people who have no one with whom to share their real feelings. So dreaming in circles is about choosing connection, choosing love, joining hands with one other, and then another, finding the people with whom we can cast our lot, those who are similarly looking to manifest ubuntu in our lives.

When we choose community, when we practice loving a particular group of people, we are letting the reality of the universe enter our hearts—we are learning how to experience the reality that we truly are all part of one another. Of course we don’t usually get it right. Otherwise we wouldn’t need to practice. We are not here to try to fix everything in order to create some sort of perfect circle—we are the circle right now, trying to wake up together. Every person is sacred, and we are all one circle. Stone Circle

Active Love

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In the great Russian novel The Brothers Karamazov, a wealthy woman comes to seek advice from a holy and renowned priest, Father Zossima. She is anxious about eternal life, and wants to know how she can be sure of it. Father Zossima tells her, there is no proving the existence of God or eternal life. But there is one way she may be convinced of it. “How?” she asks. “By the experience of active love.” he replies. “Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love, you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul.”

The woman goes on to tell him that she loves humanity, so much in fact, that she dreams sometimes of leaving her privileged status and becoming a sister of mercy. She would nurse the afflicted and bind up their wounds. She tells the elder, “I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to overcome all obstacles.” But then she worries that if the patients did not respond with gratitude, if they were rude or abusive, she would be incapable of continuing to love them. And so she is in despair about her quandary.

He replies,

I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last too long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps a complete science.Person in shadow

Dorothy Day would often repeat the pronouncement of Father Zossima, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

We are here to awaken to that kind of active loving, that vision of divinity within each person. I remember an experience that happened one time when I was flying on an airplane, returning home from an event in Washington, DC. I had settled into my window seat, and started to read a book. I can’t remember now what the Washington event was or what the book was, but something had inspired me to be pondering this connectedness of all beings, this divinity within all beings.

Then, two young men climbed into the seats next to me. The man in the middle leaned his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes. A while into the flight, he started to be sick—his friend gave him a paper bag, and he vomited, mostly into the bag, but also splashing his friend. I was a little horrified, and imagined them with hangovers from some drinking and partying.

But then it struck me that if I truly believed in the connectedness of all beings, I would realize that these men were my brothers. They were part of me, living in another lifetime, another journey. Something shifted within my heart. Instead of judging them, I was able to feel compassion. We didn’t go on to have a long conversation or anything like that—I think I just asked, are you okay? I remember a flight attendant coming by to check, and asking me if I wanted to change seats. But I said no. I was experiencing something deeper, something taught to me by these unlikely teachers.

Quotes from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, translated by Constance Garnett, (New York: MacMillan, 1922), pp. 59-61.

Every Person Is Sacred

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Star in logOne purpose of spirituality is to restore our connection to each other, or rather, to wake up our awareness to the connection that already exists. We are always connected, but we forget, we lose hold of it, we suffer from the illusion that we are separate. Spirituality is our experience of being a part of the larger whole. Spirituality is restoring our awareness of our connection to the earth, to other people, and to the Mystery at the heart of our vast universe. All of it is one.

Every person is sacred, and we are all one family. The early Universalists said that everyone was getting into heaven. As that belief evolved over the years, they began to say that there was something of heaven, something of God, something of truth in all people and all religions. The circle kept expanding. Today, some of my beloved congregation members don’t even believe in heaven, but we all believe in the common circle of human beings. We profess that everyone is sacred and everyone is welcome.

I am reminded of one of my favorite stories about heaven. Everyone was gathered around the pearly gates, waiting for judgment day, when a rumor started going around.
“Did you hear that God’s going to let everybody into heaven?”
“You mean, whether or not you followed the commandments?”
“That’s what I heard! Even murderers and heathens!”

Well, some people started griping.
“I’ve worked hard to be good all my life! I don’t want to be thrown in with sinners!”
And others complained, “I can’t believe he’s going to let in the perverts and the terrorists!”

Finally, God showed up. And sure enough, everyone was welcomed into heaven. But a few proclaimed, “We’re not going in with sinners and heathens!” So they were the only ones who remained outside.

On this spiritual journey, we choose to open our hearts to all people. We learn to see that which is divine in all people. When I think of that kind of vision, I think of a story about Dorothy Day. She was the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, of which I was a part for seven years. Catholic Workers live in houses of hospitality to serve the homeless and poor, while working for peace and justice. One day a donor came into the Catholic Worker house and gave Dorothy Day a diamond ring. Dorothy thanked her for it and put it in her pocket. Later a rather demented homeless lady came in, one of the more irritating regulars at the house. Dorothy took the diamond ring out of her pocket and gave it to the woman.Diamond

Someone on the staff said to Dorothy, “Wouldn’t it have been better if we took the ring to the diamond exchange, sold it, and paid that woman’s rent for a year?” Dorothy replied that the woman had her dignity and could do what she liked with the ring. She could sell it for rent money or take a trip to the Bahamas. Or she could enjoy wearing a diamond ring on her hand like the woman who gave it away. “Do you suppose,” Dorothy asked, “that God created diamonds only for the rich?” Dorothy looked for the treasure in each person who came through the door.

Story recounted in the essay “A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day’s Witness to the Gospel” by Jim Forest

Born to Belonging

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Excluded, Photo by Juan Ferr Alvarez, Flickr Creative Commons

Excluded, Photo by Juan Ferr Alvarez, Flickr Creative Commons

Have you ever felt on the outside of the circle? When I was in third grade, I went to a new school in the middle of the year. It was a Catholic school and when I arrived everyone was in church waiting for morning Mass. I went into the church but I had no clue what to do next. Everyone seemed to be sitting in groups by classes, but I didn’t know where I belonged.

I tentatively edged down into one pew, but the child next to me said, “This is for fifth graders, you don’t belong here.” I tried to move to another spot without being noticed. Again, the child near me looked askance: “You’re not a sixth grader!” I moved to yet another pew, with similar results. I was scared and embarrassed and out of place: I had no way to know where to go. Finally, one of the teachers noticed me, and brought me to where the third graders were supposed to sit.

It was a minor incident, yet a frightening moment of dislocation for a small child. Because my family moved frequently when I was young, that dislocation repeated itself often, and I was left with an unsettled feeling in my heart. I was left with perennial questions: How do we know if we belong or if we do not? What must we do to belong? Perhaps it was those moments of dislocation that made me aware just how important community is.

Activist and writer Mab Segrest wrote about a South African word that describes this essential need for community: ubuntu. “Ubuntu translates as ‘born to belonging.’” Ubuntu expresses the African idea that our human dignity and fulfillment is dependent upon our links to each other in community.

In contrast, our modern American society bases itself on the idea of individualism. John Locke formulated a theory of society as a contractual type of relationship freely entered into by individuals. Locke proposed that in the original state of nature, all humans were free and autonomous individuals, and from that state, they agreed to give up certain aspects of their independence, for mutual benefit and protection.

Today, this individualistic understanding is endemic. But Mab Segrest challenges individualism, and she begins her argument with the experience of motherhood. She writes,

It was after watching Barbara give birth to our daughter, Annie, …that it occurred to me the degree to which this Original Individual was a ridiculously transparent …fiction. None of us start out as individuals, but as fusions of sperm and egg, embedded and growing in the mother’s body for nine months. For months after birth, our consciousness is still merged with its environment, and a sense of the particular and separate self emerges only gradually.2

We start out in relationship, and our unique individuality grows out of that circle of relatedness. Not the other way around. We all need each other in order to flourish and to thrive in life.

To give Locke and others their due—the philosophy of individualism was created in rebellion against the authoritarian structures of an earlier age, the tyranny of church and monarch. To affirm relationship is not to deny the importance of human dignity and freedom. But we must recognize that relatedness comes first, and within that circle of relatedness, we find our inherent worth and dignity.

Quotes from Mab Segrest, Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit and Justice, (Rutgers University Press, 2002) p. 2.