Cat-emplation

I Know Your Address

(This is something I wrote in the early 1990s, while at the Squaw Valley writer's conference near Lake Tahoe. I planned on revising it but never did.)

I was a dog in my last life. I'm sure of it. These days dogs sense I've known that world of secret smells, spoken their native language, pissed on priceless rugs. I was a big and noisy dog, a wild-haired mongrel. I will never live it down.

One day I am walking home alone. A big-eyed dog, some kind of shepherd-lab youth, comes bounding out of the meadow. Oh no, I think. It's happening again. Dogs catch my scent and want me to join them in some semi-domesticated version of a pack. Of course I pet him. I can't help it. He licks my hand and I resist my canine urge to lick him back. No, sweetheart. I look into his sad face. I'm a woman now, not your mate in heat. He won't listen. Instead, he trots along the busy thoroughfare, revelling in our meeting, forgetting his street smarts, darting onto the road. Damn you, dog! I call to him, Get out of the street! He leaps back to safety, a spasm of brute ecstasy: he has found the key to my attention! Don't get all excited, I snap. Just keep your ass out of traffic. His tongue drips sweat onto my shoes. I resent this responsibility.

Okay, fool, what's your name? I look at the tag on his collar: BUBBA, it says, #96104. Well, Bubba–his ears perk up–you have to go home. I point across the meadow to our original meeting place. Go home. Bubba hangs his head, but doesn't budge. I turn my back on him, continue my walk. Heedless, Bubba follows.

Human suitors might pick flowers. Bubba proudly pees on them, choosing my favorites: tall daisies, asters, forget-me-nots. This is the world we can share together, he says with the tilt of his tail. Then he smells a nearby creek, rushes to dive in. Yo, Bubba, I say. I didn't know you were a water sign. He's happy in the water and I use his intoxication to attempt an escape. If I just run fast enough, I tell myself, Bubba will forget I ever existed. I pound the road's shoulder with my two human feet, raising dust, and when Bubba catches up with me–as of course he would–at even higher levels of dog-gasm he bounces and leaps and shakes the creek sludge onto my skin. But Bubba, I'm tired, I want to take a nap. Bubba just pounces and flaps. Please, Bubba, the mosquitoes are eating me alive …

Eventually I win this argument. Bubba is unable to tempt me back to the meadow and follows me home instead. I feed him half of my beef burrito, then sit out on the porch with him dozing under my feet–such loyalty, trust, and charm. I'm in a mongrel reverie, relishing how late the sun sets during these dog days of August. I feel the slow rhythm of Bubba's breathing, relax into the softness of his fur at my feet …

Suddenly, police car sirens disrupt our canine communion. Bubba's up in a snap, haunches ready for the chase, snout eager for long-toothed retaliation against cop-car interruptions. At last I'm free, I say to myself. Go on, sweetheart, I look into his eyes, you got yourself some cops to chase. But Bubba's last green glance shoots me a warning: You're mine, baby. I know your address.

Small Moves

Another "greatest hit" from my previous Gaia blog -- written for the May 2007 Integral Blogopalooza.

I love that scene near the end of the movie Contact, after astronomer Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) has been tesseracted through several wormholes to meet with an alien intelligence. This intelligence has "uploaded" her memories, appearing as her beloved father on a starlit beach - a wisely hospitable gesture that, the alien explains, makes such momentous meetings easier on the newbie, the one who is having her first close encounter. Ellie has many, many questions she wants to ask: who are you, what is the history of your species, how did you create this traveling machine, to which the alien answers -- using a well-worn phrase of her father's: "small moves, Ellie. Small moves." In other words: this is only the initial meeting, a first step of many. Let us take our time on this journey, foot by foot, bit by bit. There is no need to know everything, say everything, solve everything, at this particular moment. Answers and actions unfold in the by and by ... Even then, don't they usually lead to more questions, more uncertainties, more wild and woolly paradoxes...?  And though evolution and transformation does have its grand cataclysmic moments, much of it seems to occur through seemingly small, even hidden, moves tucked deep within the folds of time. Imagine the countless adaptations and mutations it took for humans to become what they are now. Or how a drop of water, which, joined with millions of other drops over the eons, carves great canyons into rock.

A few years ago the French Carmelite mystic Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) paid me a visit in one of my dreams. Therese, often referred to as the "Little Flower," is a kind of saint of "small moves." Fresh from an Air France flight, camouflaged in a wool cap and Nirvana T-shirt, Therese a la grunge, she wanted to take a tour of my life - touch all its tiny little details, the textures of my day to day existence. I was a little ashamed to let her see my messy home office, our sink full of gummy dishes, our backyard overgrown with half-dead weeds. What must this young nun, accustomed to a neat and orderly convent life, think of all this mess? But Therese seemed to enjoy the external disorder of my life. With a grin, she peered at one of my disheveled bookshelves as if it were a field of exotic wildflowers.

Therese's "mission" in her short life was to teach the "little way," that is: the way of spiritual childhood, the path of trust and surrender - a way that we find right where we are, day by day, in the messy sacredness of the small, the momentary, and the ordinary. Although there are New Testament references, in the gospels, about the necessity of "becoming as little children," Therese usually referred to texts from the Hebrew scriptures when explicitly teaching her little way: "Whoever is a little one, let him come to me" (Proverbs 9:4). "For to him that is little, mercy will be shown" (Wisdom 6:7). There is nothing cloyingly sentimental about spiritual childhood. It is a situating of oneself, with awe, reverence, and curiosity, before this wild Mystery that births us and surrounds us, with a trust that the Kosmos is quietly unfolding as it should, in us, through us, and with us. It is the delighted recognition that we arrived here through a Mother and Father, through forces beyond our grasp. From this perspective, then (referred to by integralistas as "the second face of God") humility is never a demeaning of oneself. It is an embracing of what is.

These days my life is characterized by small moves rather than grand cataclysmic shifts. (Though of course, that could change at any moment!) Living with dysthymia - an on-and-off mild depression that I currently manage with supplements, frequent walks in sunlight, talks with a spiritual director, laughter, and prayer - is teaching me to focus my limited energy into small projects and tiny disciplines: toothbrushing as a spiritual practice, writing as prayer, editing as cognitive workout and income, the yoga of napping with cats, small-group contemplative volunteer work, and - when ambition has got the better of me - dishwashing and pulling weeds.

And bathing. I really dig bathing: soaking in the sacrament of the present moment.

Lectio Divina

She would never have defined it as such, but back in the day my mom practiced Lectio Divina ("divine reading") in the bathtub - often with the bathroom door open, so that a passerby might catch a glimpse of her relaxing in the hot water, reading her leatherbound King James Bible and smoking Kent cigarettes. What long, luxurious, holy baths! She usually kept her bathing Bible on the shelf underneath the medicine cabinet. I'd open it sometimes while using the toilet. Its water-wrinkled pages were full of tiny little pencil marks - apparently she kept track of where she started and ended her readings. I saw that she would read just little bits at a time - from a few verses to a few paragraphs.

Long after she'd lost patience with churchrules, until the day she died, my mother maintained a downhome devotional life by sitting and smoking and soaking in the Word.

Lectio Divina is an ancient art - apparently practiced at one time by all Christians and kept alive in the monastic tradition - involving a slow, contemplative praying of the scriptures. Monastics divide Lectio in to four "movements": lectio (reading/listening), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation).

Lectio - the first movement in the prayer, requires us to quiet down and read slowly - usually just a few lines, perhaps a couple of paragraphs. Since the voice of Spirit often speaks very softly and intimately, one reads with an attitude of silence and reverence. In this receptive mode, we listen for one word or short phrase that attracts us, that speaks to us in a personal way. During meditatio - the second movement in the prayer, we take that chosen word or phrase and ruminate on it, ponder it. We turn it over in our minds, and allow it to mingle and simmer with our inner world of memories, concerns, and ideas. Thirdly, during oratio, we inwardly speak to God, interacting honestly with the Spirit as you would with a deeply loving other. Depending on the selected word or the phrase, one might express yearning, gratitude, anger, desolation, love, sadness, joy, peace, etc. Finally, with contemplatio, one rests in silence with the chosen word, simply being present to Presence.

Lectio Divina has alternative forms, and can be adapted in a variety of ways for practice with small groups. Today practitioners see it as a way to open up and "pray with" a sacred book. "Sacred book" can be broadly defined -- the New Testament, a collection of Rumi's poetry, a non-scriptural text, the realms of nature, a painting, events in history, one's own life experience. . .

Most often I practice Lectio with the written word - and once in a while with song lyrics. On occasion I'll keep a book or journal of the phrases I've chosen for pondering. I may spend several days or a week or more with a particular phrase, listening to various nuances, inquiring into its meaning, hearing its truths, responding or reacting to it, observing with interest when it synchronistically resonates with some event in my life, perhaps encouraging me to take some action, offering me a long-awaited answer to an inner dilemma, or even kicking me in the ass.

A few of my past lectio phrases include:

"Seek, and you will miss." (Anthony de Mello)

"Love one another as I have loved you" One-word version: "Love." (gospel of John)

"There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." (Rumi)

"How long must I climb?" (Coldplay)

"You came out of nothing, isn't that something?" (Fr. Thomas Keating)

"Faith is the bird that sings in the night" (Tagore)

"Persevere" (Hebrews 12:1)

"All I need is your extra time and your kiss." (Prince)

"Jesus wept." (John 11:35)

The practice of Lectio can allow a single word or phrase to bloom and release its hidden fragrances into our lives. It can also liberate myth. As Beatrice Bruteau writes in Radical Optimism: "The [biblical] stories are about us. It is to us that the angel of the Anunciation proclaims that through the power of the Holy Spirit we will bring forth from our emptiness divine life...

 
"It is to us that the baptismal voice is addressed, saying, ‘You are my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.' And if we really hear that, we will be driven into a wilderness wherein we will struggle with the question of what that means and what its implications are. And eventually we will find, as was foreshadowed at our birth, that we are lying in the manger as food for the world."

I most often use the Bible for both solo and group Lectio. Over the years, its wisdom has washed through me and through my Lectio comrades like a cool subterranean stream. Or perhaps we're... luxuriously soaking in it. I guess I really am my mother's daughter.

Centering in the Hood

For several years, I facilitated a centering prayer group at a Catholic church in a poor neighborhood near downtown San Diego. We would meet once a week to do a 20-30 minute centering sit together, followed up with group Lectio Divina, informal sharing, or one of Thomas Keating's Spiritual Journey videotapes. (An excellent series of videos, by the way, which elucidates the Christian journey in light of recent understandings about development, spiritual stages, psychology, etc. These videos are where I first heard about Ken Wilber).

It was a lively little group of diverse folks leading busy lives. And the church, situated just a few yards away from a busy trolley stop, was never a quiet place. We'd sometimes use electric fans to create white noise while we meditated, but usually the sounds of the city would come through - the trolley horn, police sirens, young men yelling and breaking out in fights. The Ballet Folklorico used the church's rec room to practice, so there would usually be Latin beats coming through the walls. Kids ran up and down the hall outside of the room where we met. So we often joked that we were getting in some very good centering practice - learning to sit still and let all those wild distractions come and go as we inhaled and exhaled ...

Centering prayer involves consistently consenting to the presence and action of the Spirit within. Consent is anchored through the use of a short "sacred word," (not the same as a mantra) which is silently repeated only when meditator becomes actively engaged with thoughts - including sense perceptions, feelings, images, memories, reflections, etc. The idea is to gently let the thoughts come and go while maintaining the intention. With practice, one eventually "falls into" contemplation, a state which, in Keating's words, involves "the opening of mind and heart - our whole being - to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions." It can be a deeply restful time; it also helps folks become more present to the present moment during their lives outside of the sit. As one practices nonattachment by letting the thoughts come and go (sometimes simply letting go of one's ability to let go) one can more readily offer her mind and her heart to whatever the moment requires.

Anyway, I just have to share this other little story. I know this is long already.

We had been listening to taped discussions on the relationship between contemplation and action. I think we had also recently done a group lectio on Matthew 25: 31-46: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you ... a stranger and make you welcome ... sick or in prison and go to see you?" ... "In so far as you did this to one of the least ... you did it to me." 

Dennis, the attorney-saxophonist in our group, and our most steadfast contemplative, suggested that we needed to do something active together as a group. Our church was surrounded by the sick and the hungry: homeless people who slept on nearby sidewalks, not too far from the trolley tracks. Why not gather some items to hand out to them, and have this gesture become the "active" part of our group contemplative prayer?

I resisted. I already had my neat, tidy, and safe ways of serving the destitute - by donating to charities and giving old clothes to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. And since I was the facilitator of this group and all, I took it upon myself to explain that activity per se was not really the purpose of a centering prayer group. Although our contemplative practices should naturally weave themselves into our actions - into our lives outside of the two 20-minute sits a day - that "weaving" need not take form as a group activity in any explicit way. And I did my spiel of: "Ultimately contemplation is not personal and private, even though we usually practice the prayer solo. True contemplation is never ‘kept to one's self,' but instead charges all our interactions and becomes a part of everything we do, whether we are eating, changing a diaper, teaching, nursing a dying friend, playing, suffering through an illness, managing a business, fighting injustice ...." Etcetera., etcetera.  In other words: Um, let's not get that close to the homeless people.

But Dennis gently persisted. And when Rosie, everyone's favorite Mexican tia, felt persuaded toward this group action, I figured: well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with giving it a try, as long as we still do the centering prayer. Group members can choose whether or not they want to participate in these giveaways. We might solicit donations from friends and congregants, and pass out goods every other month or so.

Dennis had a very simple plan. It turned out that this was kind of his thing, giving odds and ends to homeless people. He often kept extra blankets in his car, and on a cold night, if he was driving around and happened to see a street person who looked like he needed a blanket, he'd offer it to him. "They also like bottled water and new white socks," he told us.

So we began gathering bottled water, crew socks, nutrition bars, and plastic grocery bags. On the day of the handout, we'd place two waters, two pairs of socks, and two food bars in each bag, pile them into the back of Dennis' van, and drive around to the variety of "street camps" nearby. (San Diego has a lot of them, comprised largely of the mentally ill, alcoholics and addicts - and the occasional family with children.)

As a group -- generally it was just three of us who did the handouts -- we would slowly approach people, and simply ask, "would you like some water and some new socks?"

Almost always, folks really, really wanted the water and the socks. (And only one time did a man ask for more. Reeking of alcohol, he slurred, "baby, what I want iz a hug!" Dennis and I simply grinned, but sweet aunt Rosie took him into her arms. She told us later that he licked her ear.) Especially, heartbreakingly, the street peeps rejoiced over the socks. I was completely undone during that first handout trek, to see the looks of sincere gratitude for a pair of new cotton socks. You would have thought we were giving away gold. I actually felt an odd, sad, shame - oh dear people, can these socks, these small things, make such a difference in your day? Oh please do not thank me so much for these few paltry items - I'm giving you nothing, really ...

I had not expected their gratitude to bring tears to my eyes. Socks! Such ordinary things. Such small moves.

The L Word

I feel compelled to talk about the L word.

No, not the popular cable series about lesbians and love (which I really must Netflix someday). No, not linguini or lassitude or luminous or lice – although any of those topics might make good blog fodder some day. (I have had my run-ins with lice).

I’m talking about the word Lord.

I've noticed this jump-on-the-bandwagon-meme thing happening on Facebook lately – “Jesus is Lord! If you agree please click ‘like.’” When you do so, it shows up in your list of “likes” and as an announcement on your page so that your friends can see it.

I am a Christian practicing within the Catholic tradition, a follower of Christ – though perhaps a quirky “liminal” one – and I’m pretty certain that all of my friends in Cyberia and in meet-space know this. But -- though I appreciate the sentiments of my FB friends who have done so -- I am not clicking on “Jesus is Lord.”

Why?

Because my Facebook friends are a virtual interspiritual conglomeration. When I look at my list of friends, I see Buddhists, Jews, Agnostics, Atheists, Panentheists, Pagans, Yogis, Swamis, Shamans, Waking Downers, Self-Realizers, Bellydancers, Methodists, Metaphysicists, Mormons, Lutherans, Quakers, Ex-Catholics, Advaitans, Vegans, Humanists, Environmentalists, Episcopalians, Non-Denominationalists, Taoists, Sufis, Zen Meditators, Integralists, and variously shifting intersections and mixtures thereof. 

I have a great respect for this proliferation of spiritual paths, for the irrepressible magnanimity of the sacred and the secular. It fills me with awe to behold it, and to be held within it. Such a radiantly flowering Mystery it is! And within this wild Mystery, I journey and love and pray as a part of the body of Christ with no need or desire to proclaim my path as “Lord”  in the company of those born or beckoned into any other of the world’s wisdoms.

If you’ve ever attended a well-planned interreligious gathering, you probably know what it feels like to be quickened and deepened through a mutual multifaith sharing of questions and stories and silences. Every once in a blue moon, I get a chance to attend an interfaith contemplative service or meditative sit. My good friend Kathy C. and I attended a contemplative interfaith weekend at La Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara several years ago, an event sponsored by the Spiritual Paths Institute. Teachers and celebrants included Father Thomas Keating, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Kabir and Camille Helminski -- a Sufi couple, and Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi -- a Buddhist chaplain. The closing ceremony was a profound experience of alternating silences, chant, sharing, and prayer – at one point we were swept up in a choral round and vocal tapestry incorporating elements of all four traditions at once – a shimmering moment that left many of us in tears.

And now I’ll say the obvious: you never close such communal celebrations with the prayer, “through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.” Instead, you invoke the One Who Cannot Be Named, the Great Mystery, Source, Being, Not-One and Not-Two. You allow Whatever or Whomever you are referring to as God or Eternal or Presence to be much larger than any one culture’s or tradition’s experience of the All-in-all. And you recognize yet again – perhaps with a welcome rush of wonder and gratitude – that no single tradition holds the corner on truth.

In light of that recognition, I do not click “like” on the meme “Jesus is Lord.”

But – but !! – check out this different yet related insight I encountered while reading Joseph Prabhu’s article about “interreligious apostle” Raimon Panikkar, who, rest his soul, died just last month. In The Hidden Christ of the Hindus, Prabhu explains, Panikkar offered the notion that “Christ and his teaching are not … the monopoly or exclusive property of Christianity seen as a historical religion. Rather, Christ is the universal symbol of divine-human unity, the human face of God. Christianity approaches Christ in a particular and unique way, informed by its own history and spiritual evolution. But Christ vastly transcends Christianity. Panikkar calls the name ‘Christ’ the ‘Supername,’ in line with St. Paul's ‘name above every name’ (Phil 2:9), because it is a name that can and must assume other names, like Rama or Krishna or Ishvara.” Furthermore, as Panikkar once remarked, “To the third Christian millennium is reserved the task of overcoming a tribal Christology by a Christophany which allows Christians to see the work of Christ everywhere, without assuming that they have a better grasp or a monopoly of that Mystery, which has been revealed to them in a unique way." If more folks, (Christian or otherwise) voiced this kind of perspective on Christ or felt that the Christian tradition was not the Only Sole Ultimate Truth About All Things Spiritual, I might feel less touchy about public declarations of “Christ as Lord.”

Maybe.

Anyway – okay, there’s more -- I might just trip you out now! – I also want to talk about my sweet sweet love of the L word.

After I slowly emerged from my antireligious phase (for me between the ages of 15 and 35), I encountered an interesting conundrum: objections to the prayerful, in-church use of the word “Lord” (or any other “male” name for God) among some religious folks.

The feminist theologian Kathleen Fischer, for example, decries of the use of exclusively male terms to denote God, asserting that patriarchal images of the Divine can restrict women’s (and men’s) religious experiences. She is right to point out that confusing a particular symbol of God for the actuality of God is a form of idolatry –  and that when we (perhaps unwittingly) do this we “box God in,” squeeze the boundless Mystery into a temporal, human-made form, limiting our own potential for spiritual growth and transformation. I get that, and I agree.

Then, in church, I came across some religious progressives who fervently condemned the use of “Lord” as a word for the Divine. In their opinion, the L word implies that God is some kind of cruel feudal master whom we servile peon-subjects must obey – or else. Truly, I do understand the need to personally jettison the word “Lord” when it holds this kind of oppressive connotation. But for many African-American (and other!) Christians, “Lord” remains both a tender and reverent name for God and/or Jesus – it (ironically, perhaps!) has no “master-slave” overtones. My childhood experience (prior to my antireligious phase) attests to this. In the churches of my girlhood, I recall the Lord as a great lover of our oppressed ancestors, walking with and grieving in our sorrows, finding so many ways to tend to our wounds – and, perhaps most significantly, joyfully liberating and empowering us! In the homes of my friends, it often seemed that Lord was simply God’s first name, and thus a friendlier, informal term for God – tu rather than vous. Lord even became an affectionate nickname at times, akin to “Sweetie” or “Honey.” Common exclamations in my neighborhood included “Good Lord!” “Do, Lord!” and “Lordie Be!” While you could utter the word “God” in vain, such was not the case with the phrases like “Oh Lord,” because, apparently, once you were on a first-name basis, the Lord had a humungously understanding heart and a grand sense of humor. The Lord, then, was simultaneously protector and confidant,  liberator and nurturer, friend and path-walker, powerful and merciful, gentle fire and bold imprinter of the Word in our hearts, and – we must not forget-- sacred instigator of fish frys.*

What some folks see as oppressive language is experienced by other folks as liberating and empowering and consoling. So, yes: we should avoid turning symbols into idols, as Fischer suggests; yet also: we should not censor or suppress any particular image of or name for God that arises out of our lived experiences.

One of the changes that happened to me, when I tip-toed into meditation and prayer back in the 1990s, is that I overcame my allergy to words signifying the second-person of the Divine, words like “Lord,” “God,” “Thou,” and even “Father.” It didn’t happen all at once – it took time, and silence, and patience, and sitting with feelings of absurdity and ridiculousness – and grace, of course. But when I was able to open my heart to the great Other, to unashamed relationship with Spirit, the tenderness and intimacy with God that I had known as a girl resurfaced, and “Lord” once again became a name for Love, for this Mystery embracing us all.

At the same time, I know I live in a world where the phrase “Jesus is Lord” is not always an invitation to love and compassion. Sometimes it is a threat, a bludgeon, or a precursor to burning the sacred texts or buildings or bodies of our brothers and sisters. So, out of love and concern, I am careful about my use of the L word.

My ramblings here offer just one example of what it is to be a liminal Christian: living what seems to be a paradox in which one simultaneously avoids and embraces the L word. Sometimes it feels like I’m walking on a razor’s edge. But as the old(er) folks still say, the Lord loves fools and babies… and lazy lice-encounterers too, I suppose. I trust Her to catch me when I fall.



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