“Contemplation Is the Highest Form of Activity”

I was recently watching a program on PBS called “Excuses Be Gone” featuring Wayne Dyer. In it, he quotes Aristotle as saying:

“Contemplation is the highest form of activity.”

I so resonate with that statement! I am wired differently from what society, corporations and even churches applaud and hold up as good. “Idleness is the devil’s workshop” we were often told as kids. Certainly that was the message in the church and family in which I was raised. For me, the opposite is true.

The more “activity” I am involved in – the less I do – and the quality of anything that I do, and even the person I am, suffers greatly! It is in the silence of nothingness, in time, seemingly wasted – where great things are born within me. When I don’t take time to be, read, write, pray, listen to music – my life and work suffer. When I have, or take this time – despite great pressure not to do so – then my work finds life and creativity and I am a decent person to be around.

I find this is not very much appreciated either in society or the church. Produce! Produce! Produce! This is the message that most of us receive. It’s funny. I don’t find society, churches or countries any the better for all the incessant activity! Perhaps we would be wise to slow down, take stock. I recently heard these very words in a church, coming from a man who’s an unredeemed, angry workaholic whose toxic energy is oppressive to his staff and his church. He does a tremendous amount of work; but I don’t know of anyone (who really knows him) who looks up to him or actually wants to spend time with him. How sad. But I believe, like all addicts, he’s basically a good person at heart. Perhaps he just needs to slow down and take stock.

Fear

How very much fear can rule our lives – and we are unaware. We calculate what we say, how we say it, to whom we say it. We fear losing the respect of others, or get caught up in what they think of us. We fear losing our position, our job, or a friend. As a result the light that we are is held back; our unique way of being and flavoring our world is diminished. Not to mention that fear is death dealing to the spirit.

I am saint and sinner. I fly to the heights and I sink to the depths – and both are my teachers. Although I write, preach, speak and sing I am by no means a guru and far from perfect – simply a fellow traveler, expressing what is within and trying to make sense of it all.

Be who you are.
Say what you believe.
And let the chips fall where they will.
At least you’ll be living!

Supernova

Like a dying star
Convulsing – trying to hold on
The heat – intense as gravity folds in on itself and energy ceases
Unable to escape the intensity – I collapse inward and finally explode

Will I fall into the inescapable darkness?

Or find myself thrust outward in a burst of creative energy
Forced and forged by this seeming death
Exploding into newness – Supernova my name?

Elements strong and bright
Silver and gold are forged in this heat
Gravity’s intense pressure – beauty’s unlikely birthplace

Gratitude

I awaken, able to move

Sound body – energy even to tone

Gratitude – how blessed!

Setting The Table

Visions of days past loom like distant memories
When I would gather them

Songs of passion, dreams of a different shore – a way for us to be – that seemed within reach

A heart that beat with affect and hope, open and seeking – dashed – yet like the phoenix,
Rising from the ashes
Flying again into your heart.

The gravity of ashes now speak: “lay here”
Rebirth – a distant belief
Voices of sunrise silenced
Visions of setting the last table become the heart’s
company

Visions. Songs. Dreams. Heart.
Has the Song found it’s end? Is the table to be
set?

The Vision still has its time. Here . . . A spark.

“I Mean To Stay At Your House”

Luke 19: 1-10

To be chosen is a wonderful thing. Remember when your partner chose you? Remember the day someone looked at you and said they loved you? Or, better yet, having known you a long time, knowing your faults and foibles, that person still loves you?

What a great thing it is to be chosen; not only at first, but day after day. What a great thing it is to be loved, despite one’s weaknesses or failures.

It must have been what Zacchaeus felt when Jesus said: “Hurry down, I mean to stay at your house.” What a wonderful thing it must have been for Zacchaeus, who was despised because he was a tax collector, to feel invited to become a part of the group again. How healing this must have been. We don’t know, but I wonder what happened to Zacchaeus over time? And notice too, despite the grumblings of the righteous folk around that Jesus was going to “go to a sinner’s house,” Jesus did not back down.

God doesn’t want to hang around on the periphery. She wants to come inside our house, the place where we are fully ourselves, gifts and warts and all. He desires to come to the place where we are fully known and there speak a word of love that has the power to move us beyond mere observers in a tree to participants in life and community. I mean to stay at your house.

Blind Guides

Jesus often chastises the religious leaders of his time, accusing them of being “blind guides.” How easily any charism which gets institutionalized over time, can begin to loose its way and get hung up on peripheral matters to the exclusion of love and compassion. OK, I’m not going to bash any institution here, but take another road by asking: who are the “guides” that you have in your life? Who do you listen to?

When I look back on my life, those who have been good guides have lead me to a greater sense of clarity and life. There is within me a gut sense whether one is a good guide or a blind guide. I am grateful for the guides that have appeared in various chapters of my life and have lead me to good places. Sometimes this has not been easy. But even challenge has been made with a view to leading me to fuller, happier life.

When we are blessed with a good guide, there is a tendency to “canonize” them. We sometimes put them high on a pedestal and when we discover that they are merely human, like us, we can become disillusioned. No one is perfect.

Who are you listening to in your life? Do you listen to anyone, or have you set yourself up as the ultimate guide? Do you consult? Who are the guides in your life?

Are You Willing?

I admire the courage of those who have risked their jobs and the support of family, friends and associates to take a stance, to walk in a new way and to make a new dream a reality. It is such people that make things change. It’s like the thoughts that many have, the conversations about how this or that should be different, suddenly become REAL when someone stops talking and starts doing.

“Everyone who has given up home, brothers or sisters, father or mother, wife or children or property for my sake, will receive many times as much . . .” (See Matthew 19: 23-30)

What am I being called to let go of in order to make a new dream a reality?

Amazing Divine Synchronicity

I have been struggling with the re-emergence of a guy in my life that I once had deep feelings for. I have been struggling with the way he is living his life. I am no saint, by any means; but after many years of not being in touch, to hear of the way he is living and justifying his life surprises me.

In the midst of this struggle, I opened to a daily reading. It was from Teresa of Avila’s “Interior Castle” and this is what it said: “Let us look at our own shortcomings and leave other’s alone. . . . There is no reason why we should expect everyone else to travel by our own road, and we should not attempt to point them to the spiritual path when perhaps we don’t know what it is.”

I looked up and laughed, amazed at Divine Synchronicity. . . . And to think there are times when I have difficulty believing!

Teresa goes on to say that we might learn important lessons from the people who shock us. Indeed, it may help define more clearly what is life giving to us and who we are.

Get the focus off of him; and get it back on yourself and what you need to do to live in ways that are life giving for you.

Not Living To See the Dream

Moses, the man who lead Israel out of Egypt to the promised land, never himself made it to the promised land. He died before they got there, surrendering the people and the dream into God’s hands.

Those of us who dream a new dream and who work for gay rights, church renewal, the end of hunger and poverty, equality among all people (and the list goes on) may never live to see the “promised land.” We may never live to see the dream take shape. Does that mean that we should not, like Moses, lead others through the desert to this land?

We are sometimes the cornerstone, the building blocks that make a dream a reality – but we may never live to see the dream take shape.

What is your dream? What is a vision for a better world that you hold in your heart?

What is a step that we can take today to get to the promised land? Instead of wondering if we’ll actually see our dream realized, perhaps we should just act as if it will.