Faith in the Mean Time

It's interesting just letting go and letting be what is.  Often times, simply standing still in the middle of the storm invigorates. In the words of an old Quaker hymn: "No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I'm clinging. Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?"

A sense of equanimity pervades my being; not much riles me now. But I also find that I am deeply passionate even more than before about issues in which I believe. This is a deeply-felt feeling that is balanced by the spiritual.

Life is truly a sacrament--all of it--not just the neat and tidy, but also the dull and grimy. Living in the present moment reveals such freely-given grace in the darndest of places. It's breathtaking.

Birdsong and car horn's blaring, my psalms of praise to an unknown God. Being present to all beings, sentient or not, my communion of love. Graffiti of wall and heart, my scripture. Tears of gratitude or frustration, or both, falling...my baptism. A smile of acceptance, my absolution.

Let me, then, be a minister, not of creed and ordo, but of hope and silliness, of comfort and compassion. Let me know that I may not have all the answers other than to be deeply present.

The Circle of Life

Death, where is thy sting?  Right in my heart, thank you!  How can a cat, or a person for that matter, be alive one minute and dead the next? It really is that quick.

It was surreal to wrap Lucy the cat's lifeless body in a cotton towel, dig her grave, and bury her. I have done this before with other pets and I will do so again. What once was live, lives no more.

Loved ones, whether animal or human, die. It's that simple. And when they're dead, no life force is present.  My hope is that we will meet again; my heart tells me that this is so.

This beloved cat was only seven years old; she died as the result of an accident in which she most likely slipped, while sleeping, from the kitchen table and cracked her neck under a heavy chair that fell with and on her.

Her brother/litter mate, Ricky; her cat sister, Gidget; and her dog sister, Ginger, as well as Jim and I mourn her. Grieving is another form of letting go; it sucks, but is necessary in order to go on. The Circle continues.

An Empty Fullness

It is amazing the twists and turns that my spiritual journey has taken. I have gone over bumps, been jostled to and fro, hit brick walls, and have had any sense of God disappear completely from my life. I have also been to the depths and heights of ecstasy, feeling as if God embraced me completely. I wouldn't change it for the world.

Undoubtedly, most of those looking on simply don't get it--especially the ones who think they do. They mean no harm. Each of us has different ways of God-awareness.

It seems I have come to the place where Meister Eckhart's prayer has been totally realized: "I pray God rid me of God." There simply is no God there. Hell, there's no there, there. Unlike when I hit the brick wall known as the Dark Night awhile back, no terror this time. A sense of total peace pervades my being.

The challenge of this awareness is that church doesn't feel right. I feel completely disconnected from it. Again, I am not unsettled about this, merely grieving its loss. This is an amazing liminal space in which the Divine has led me.

Furthermore, I need to let be what is. No need to fight it or run from it. Just accept. Patience and faith.  

At this point, I don't know whether God exists or doesn't exist. Methinks the emptiness must even include this: total letting go of all that went before. I do not know where I will end up, but I'm in this for the duration.

Chogyam Rinpoche supposedly once said of the spiritual journey, better to have never begun. Oy! He was onto something here!

What I can do is be in the present moment, mindfully. No more; no less. What a trip... 

Marathon Redux

Due to a flare up of my athletic-induced asthma and a need to lose the winter-weight I gained, with consultation from my physician, have decided to withdraw from training for the Chicago Marathon for 2013. I had already raised 75% of my goal in a short period, so feel really good about that.

I will be volunteering on Saturdays to cheer on my peeps.  I also asked Team 2 to divide my contributions between two of my teammates, both of whom were responsible in large part for getting me through training and finishing the marathon last year for the first time at the age of 47.

Marathon!

Well, I am doing it again: training, running and finishing the Chicago Marathon with the Team 2 End AIDS.  It was an honor to raise over $1200 for AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC) last year.

AFC does amazing work from advocacy to rent assistance.  With budget cuts, they depend even more on donations from folks like you.

Why do I run with Team 2? Wouldn't it be easier to run for a more "acceptable" charity?  Isn't AIDS over with?  

To answer the second question first: FAR FROM IT!  Every nine and a half minutes someone tests positive with HIV. We need to end this.

As to the second question: I run for life--in memory of those who have died as the result of HIV/AIDS, like my friends David; Wayland; Thomas; Sean and Allen.  Their laughter and smiles were cut short by this horrible disease; they are sorely missed.  But rather than sit around and be depressed, I decided to do something for LIFE.

I run for our sisters and brothers living with HIV.  I would rather make folks uncomfortable running for a cause in which I believe, even though it does not affect me physically.

So please join me in partnership:  I train, sweat, run; you donate.

Thank you,

Yossi

Click here to donate

Coming Home

How amazing when a church calls to you. I felt this tug to simply search, and I stumbled on Lake Street Church.

Finding a church that doesn't claim to have the answers, but welcomes the questions, speaks to my condition, to quote the Quakers. A church where Jesus is the question, not the answer, really touches my heart.

A church where mystics' words from various traditions dance freely from the pulpit as we all look at our piece of the Truth, knowing that our Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, practitioners of nature religions as well as other Christian brothers and sisters have their piece as well. Our agnostic and atheist brothers and sisters have theirs too.

This church has a lovely, but not fussy service. It is committed to the spiritual growth of its members, knowing that one size does not fit all. It is also deeply passionate about social justice, but not at the expense of everything else.

Is Lake Street perfect? No, thank God. It is human. 

This is a place where I can breathe without feeling constrained by doctrine and hand-me-down, second-rate beliefs. It is place to be free in the truest sense of the word. It is a place to dance with God. It is home...

Lent

The word "lent" originally meant no more than "Spring."  Hmmm, isn't that enough for great joy? Why so solemn in a time of ever-lengthening days? We need to dance and proclaim the joy of God!

If we are stardust (thank you Brother CJ for that wonderful reminder), how AMAZING that we come from the galaxies, a star giving life by its very "death." How wonderful that we are connected to all things; God is that connection, yet also much more.

Don't get me wrong: we need to remember our own mortality. Each of us will die, not just everyone else; it really puts things into perspective.

If we live beyond physical death, and I believe we do, shouldn't we be happy that our mortal remains will go into the ground and bring forward new life? (It goes a lot faster if one is not embalmed and locked in a crypt--just thought I'd put that in there).

That alone is enough for us to cry "Hallelujah!"

Life is a sacrament. it is an outward and visible sign of God's ongoing love through our very being. With death we merely expand into deeper awareness of that grace and love of God who permeates all things. 

Sin exists, both personal and societal. No less a mystic than Dame Julian of Norwich asks God about that during her "shewings." God says that sin is a result of our naivete, our ignorance. To say that sin results from a corrupt humanity is utter blashpemy; God says in Genesis that all is good. Sin is, ultimately, a failure to love; "the sense of estrangement and the feelings of alienation are themselves the consequences" of sin. It exists to remind us to live more closely to each other and with the Holy One...(A Voluptuous God 103, 105).

Jesus, then, teaches us how to live. He does not "rescue" us from sin; he does not die to appease the angry sky god who would like to smite us, again. His death comes as a result of daring to proclaim the Reign of God among the outcast. Jesus is about the extravagant love that God is and in which God calls us to participate. It simply never ends...