“What does feeling my feelings have to do with ‘fixing’ what is going on in my life?”
Our goal is to make choices that make things better. Things get better when we create what we need. We can’t create what we need if we don’t know what we need. What we need is to satisfy our longing. We can’t know what we long for if we don’t know what we feel. So the place to start is to feel our feelings.
One cannot help but be heartbroken by the news from the Middle East. The violence seems so senseless from this distance. And while I have been more exposed to the plight of the Palestinians, and have good friends in Israel who are actively seeking to change the hearts and minds of Israelis and with them the policies of the Israeli government, I have recently come across a couple of accounts of the perspective of Israeli Jews who speak eloquently about what it is like to live in such close proximity to those who are committed to your destruction.
So I wrote a couple of short paragraphs on my Facebook wall about something the devout Muslims in the Arab states short surrounding Israel could do that would be a non-violent response to the conflict. They could assure their Jewish brothers and sisters that, in keeping with the teachings of the Koran and the spirit of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, that they support the right of Israel to exist and for its citizens of whatever faith to live in peace. Indeed there are a great many Muslims who hold to just such a position.
It was not my intention to choose sides. I was just pointing out that the otherwise non-violent tactics of public demonstrations and calls for divestiture against Israeli action against Palestine don’t acknowledge what Muslim Arabs all around the state of Israel are doing that create the tension. There are some fundamental problems here that can be easily seen if not easily addressed.
From the perspective of Just Conflict, the first best thing we can do to address persistent conflict in significant relationships is to stop doing what creates the problem. There are a good many things we routinely do that move us away from what we need. Most of them are things we do because in some way our society has taught us that this is what one should do. First among them is that we are told by sports, politics, and what passes for our justice system that we can create what we need by making others lose.
Of course this never works and we know it. If I have a conflict with you and I do something to address it which makes you fear that I am trying to make you lose, you will respond by trying to make me lose. So I will try to make you lose. And so we both lose. But no one gets what they need, with the possible exception of the team owners, the party leaders, and the lawyers.
What the Muslim Arabs that surround Israel are doing that constructs the tension is that they hold as their fundamental political goal the eradication of the State of Israel. However understandable this may be in the light of the oppression they have experienced, it is the central thing that Israelis point to as the justification, no, the necessity of their violence.
We know that we cannot make others change…we cannot cause them to choose what we want them to choose. Nevertheless, this knowledge does not stop us from trying to change them. And for our efforts we get feelings of frustration. We become helpless and hopeless.
If instead we ask if there is anything about the current situation that is so troubling to us that we are willing to change ourselves, then we begin to discover a new way of being that allows for genuine transformation.
This is not just something the Palestinians can do. The Israelis can see that their insistence that they have a right to build settlements on disputed land is tantamount to saying that Palestine doesn’t have a right to exist as a sovereign state. They are taking what they see as Arab bad behavior and using it to give them the right to behave badly. Each makes choices to cause the other to lose.
I am not denying anyone’s right to defend themselves. I am saying that doing what causes the other to lose, or even to fear losing, makes us lose.
When instead we act in our own interests to create what we genuinely need, we will necessarily also be acting in ways that create what the other needs. But when we are so hurt and scared and angry that we can only focus on the destruction of the other, then everyone loses.
I had the distinct honor and privilege of meeting with seven strong wise women of Holistic Connections Health Center in Cincinnati this past week. It was a long-planned and much anticipated opportunity for me to present the latest iteration of my method for addressing conflict as a means to self-transcendence.
I was exhausted by the end of the day, having been “on” for nearly nine hours, but I was also exhilarated. I had promised that whoever wanted to end the day with a specific plan for what they could do that they trusted would move them toward resolution would have that plan. We ended the day seven for seven.
I had suggested that they pick the toughest one they could think of that they were willing to wrestle with and they took me up on it. Then they were courageous and vulnerable and willing to go deeply into the inner sources of the conflict. What a ride. I can’t wait to do it again.
“The infinite love that is the architect of our hearts has made our hearts in such a way that nothing less than an infinite union with infinite love will do.”
James Finley
I was one of the first ones to enter the room. I like being to an event early so I can sit up front. I don’t hear well and sometimes it helps if I can see the speaker’s lips. I found a seat on the first row.
This was a day for firsts. It was the first event in the first symposium of the Living School of the Rohr Institute. This was the first gathering of the first cohort of the school.
I am privileged to be a member of it. Over a thousand people from all over the world paid $50 just to apply to the school and I was one of 180 who were accepted.
The room was just an ordinary hotel conference room. The back wall could fold to open to the room behind it. As it was it was just large enough for the 180 of us. On the dais was a podium and a table with three microphones.
Others joined me on the front row and we began to chat. Hi, how are you? Where are you from? What prompted you to apply for the Living School?
As we traded stories we could hear the room fill up behind us. There was the energy of the anticipation and of the noise of the conversation and the hum of the air handlers. And there was something else. There was something I can’t quite name. It was like electricity. It was accompanied by a welling up of emotion that caused me to feel slightly out of breath. It was just a bit scary. It was awesome.
This doesn’t happen to me often enough. I want more of this in my life. I think it may be the sensation that arises when we are in community with people who are spiritually mature.
Later, when the three microphones each had one of the faculty members seated behind it, I found tears rolling down my cheeks. I was so full of joy that I was leaking. The person speaking was James Finley. He was the faculty member I was least familiar with. His claim to fame is that he was a student of Thomas Merton but he is a true mystic in his own right.
As I listened to him and wondered about the feeling welling up in me I noticed an odd thing. I could clearly hear each of his words. He speaks slowly and deliberately. None of the words are unusual. He is a plain speaker using simple words.
Nevertheless I had the sense that I didn’t know what he was talking about. He was speaking about a reality that I have rarely if ever glimpsed. And in the midst of a sense of not knowing I was also deeply aware that everything he was saying was profoundly true.
Forty-three years ago this summer I was between college and seminary and was backpacking around Europe with a Eurail pass. Most mornings I woke up not know where I would be sleeping that night. But for a week of the two months I was over there I lived with the family of the boy who lived with me my junior year of high school.
Gian Carlo Pinza, Gianny, was an exchange student through the American Field Service. When he arrived he couldn’t speak a more than a word or two of English. What he knew he learned from the book he studied on the plane. But knowing not only Italian, but French, Greek, Latin, and a bit of Spanish, it didn’t take him long to master English. A couple of months into his stay he was teaching us new English words.
So this was now my turn to stay with him. Except that I had no intention of learning Italian. I had enough Spanish to get by in Spain and later in Central America. And Italian and Spanish share a few cognates but not enough that I was going be conversational with Gianny’s family.
And what a family. I never quite understood who all these people were. Mostly aunts and few uncles and cousins. I don’t know if they always took all their meals together or this was just a special occasion because I was visiting. In any case, each evening after his father closed the shop out of which he sold all things plastic; we would drive out to the country place and sit around a large table on the veranda.
Dinner was a grand affair. The women had already been there preparing when we men folk arrived and there was always a salad that featured tomatoes from their garden and of course pasta. And there was plenty of wine and beer.
And cigarettes: I had stopped to visit a fraternity buddy who was stationed just outside of Munich and picked up a carton of Marlboro Reds at the PX. Each evening after dinner I would pull out a fresh pack and offer it around the table. They loved those American cigarettes.
Again, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Even though I couldn’t begin to speak the language except through gestures, both the gestures with my hands and with the offer of cigarettes, as the evening wore on, and the meal was finished and the smokes shared and third or fourth glass of wine drunk, I found that I understood everything they were saying. I understood Italian.
We tend to think of Pentecost as a Christian holy day. Indeed it is, but the name Pentecost comes from the name Greek-speaking Jews gave to the Hebrew Festival of Weeks. The weeks are the seven weeks after Passover that was the harvest time for grain and so the festival was a time of thanksgiving for the bounty of the harvest and the beginning of the season in which to bring offerings to the temple which came fifty days—thus Pentecost—after Passover. Originally the festival we call Pentecost was a Jewish celebration of harvest and thanksgiving.
At that time there were three major festivals that were celebrated in Jerusalem by the Israelites. The first would be the New Year Festival of Booths in the fall, the second the Festival of Passover in the spring, and third, the Festival of Weeks in the summer.
It was on the occasion of the Festival of Passover that Jesus and his band of disciples was in Jerusalem and it was just before the festival was to begin that he was crucified. When he was killed the disciples returned home to Galilee, confused and afraid and having had strange experiences of Jesus being still among them even though he was clearly dead.
Now, by the testimony of the author of Luke-Acts, Peter and the boys returned to Jerusalem less than two months later. The boys are back in town, and while the girls may have been with them it was only the males who would be allowed to speak. They who fled in fear have now come back filled with power.
How can we talk about what happened. These events that are drenched in spiritual power are not things that can be easily described. They are truly ineffable, indescribable.
But we try. We have to keep in mind that the only way to approach speaking about the divine is through metaphor. God is like…
As soon as we definitively say, “This is God,” we have put God into a box that is too small. Just as I don’t know how to describe what it was like to be in that conference room a few months ago feeling an energy that was a spiritual presence, not a physical one, I suspect the author of the Acts of the Apostles struggled to describe what happened that day. Perhaps he wasn’t there but told the story of those who heard from those who were there. But it any case the words that came were about a mighty wind and about tongues of fire.
This story that we read in the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles is the opening scene in a larger narrative. In this narrative Peter, the buffoon who denied Jesus and fled in fear boldly stands before a huge crowd in the assembly. Gathered are thousands of Jews who have come from many countries to be in Jerusalem for this festival. They may speak enough Hebrew or Greek to get by but they certainly don’t know Aramaic, the language of Galilee.
And yet, here are these men, these peasants and fisherman from a backwater region who are on fire…who are so full of spiritual energy that it is overflowing… and those gathered feel it too. There is something about what is happening that is speaking to them in their own language.
No, no that can’t be it. This is just ecstatic speech. Someone here is just drunk.
And it is just that confusion and skepticism that is the beginning point of Peter’s address to the crowd. It is just their sense that what is making sense to them is nonsensical that Peter uses to persuade them about the truth of the gospel. And at the end of the day 3,000 have been baptized and the Church has been born. This is the story we find in the lesson for today from Acts. What do we make of this?
It is important to note that the thrust of Peter’s sermon is that Jesus was one who did great deeds and was rejected by the leadership of the nation and even crucified. And while no doubt Peter was, at least at this point, an inspired orator, we can assume that Jesus himself could tell a good story and he got killed.
Jesus walking among the people and teaching and healing was not enough. What made the difference was not the leadership of Jesus but the discipleship of the apostles. It was their testimony by the nature of their presence in the assembly that changed people’s hearts and minds.
My pastor, Allen Grothe, tells a story about Phillips Brooks who was an Anglican priest and a great preacher in Boston toward the end of the 1800’s. The story is about a question put to Brooks about the source of his faith. “Why are you a Christian?” he was asked. After a bit of thought he said, “Because of my Aunt Tilly.” It seems that it was the testimony of her faith and the impact that it had on young Phillips that had most influenced him.
We may like the idea that the Church exists because of the ministry of Jesus and the mighty power of God. But the truth is that the Church was born and exists to this day because of the faith of people just like you and me who allow into their experience a deep awareness of the presence of the Holy. When we live our lives in the remembrance of God, when we have the relationship with the Divine that Jesus had with the one he called Abba, Daddy, we become the Body of Christ.
We are the Church. Today we celebrate the birthday of the Church by opening our hearts anew to the indwelling Spirit. Thanks be to God.
As students of the Living School we are learning a set of theological perspectives and are encouraged to engage with them through certain practices. The option of meeting together in a retreat creates a context in which:
I hope to add to this another couple of layers:
Or to put this a bit differently: from a Unitive perspective, given our new understandings of Incarnation and Christ, what do worship and evangelism look like?
Sometimes we find ourselves in conflicts with others and we just give up. We think, “This is too hard, the other won’t change, I can’t fix this.”
But other times we decide that the relationship and the issues are just too important to give up on. We decide to engage the other, the one with whom we find ourselves in conflict, in a conversation.
When the other cares about us as well, is aware of the problem and interested in repairing it, and engages in the conversation we find that we can actually hear the other’s point of view. We don’t agree. We each have our own perspective. But we come to understand how the other came to see things the way they do and we are able to state our opinion such that they get us as well.
Out of this we find there are certain things we both need. We don’t have to see things in the same way to work together to create what we both need. We have an agreement. We each make commitments to create the common good.
And when we do this, we discover that the relationship is even stronger than it was before we became aware of the conflict.
The crux of the matter, the cross, is whether we decide to not give up but to address the issue. This rests on our confidence in our competence when it comes to the resolution of conflict. If you want to build your confidence, join us in the Peacemaker Fellowship.
Not everyone wants to see conflict resolved. As someone who works in the field of conflict resolution I tend to think of the best outcome as one in which everyone gets what they need…at least as much as possible. But from time to time (and this afternoon was one of those times) I find myself talking to someone who is asking “What should I do?” but what they are looking for is, “How can I make the other lose as much as possible without getting myself into trouble?”
Certainly there are a good many people who think of justice as a quality that arises when bad people get hurt for hurting good people (i.e. people like us). This is the “logic” behind much of what passes for a criminal justice system. To be clear, I support the presence of a system that determines when people have violated rules for public safety and gives them certain negative consequences as a way of getting their attention and inviting them to change their behavior. In the absence of such a system people tend to behave badly.
But there is a higher form of justice that is about being sure that everyone gets their needs met as much as possible. While we are not making rapid progress in establishing this as the standard across society broadly (though proponents of restorative justice are doing powerfully creative work) we can certainly make this the standard in our own lives. Indeed, in the absence of working to be sure that others get what they need; we will not be able to create what we need.
When we attend to what we need, discern the qualities that are missing for us, act in ways that create these qualities while letting go of the impulse to change others, we succeed in creating what we need and in the process, create what others need as well. But when we are dedicated to ensuring that the other doesn’t get what she or he needs we are constrained to act in ways that fail to meet our own needs. We cannot create justice for ourselves by denying it to others.
Far too often I find people wanting to be emotionally strong and thinking that means “not letting things bother” us. As Junpo points out, the strength is in remaining present –conscious– in the moment.
The young man across the restaurant table from me closed his eyes and straightened his shoulders. I sensed immediately that he was dropping his awareness into a meditative state and I followed him. I normally meditate with my eyes closed but watching him allowed me to connect with him more closely and as he quickly dropped more and more deeply into a trance I felt myself pulled along as in his wake.
I had hesitated to accept the invitation to meet at this restaurant. I knew only a few of the people at the table and the place is noisy. It is a microbrewery and the high ceilings and hard walls make it hard for me to hear. This was a group of folks who were just coming off a week-long meditation retreat and they were excited about and bonded by their shared experience. I was afraid I would not be able to connect, especially because of the noise.
We all exchanged names in the foyer before we got a table and we made it through giving our orders to the server when we discovered ourselves at that awkward place where we wished we could connect more deeply but didn’t want to shout at each other. It was at just that point that he closed his eyes.
Watching him I found the noise in the room fade into the background and we settled into the quiet and the calm that we can summon by our meditative practice. We rested there together for a few minutes before he took a deeper breath and opened his eyes looking straight at me. He had sensed that I was with him but was surprised to discover that he was right. We had only just met, had shared but a few dozen words, knew only each other’s first name and almost nothing else, and yet had shared this deeply intimate moment.
Weeks later we became friends on Facebook. It was only then that I got a glimpse of the life he was transitioning back to as we met in that noisy restaurant. I learned of the death of his lover and mother of their child and his struggle to raise the child even as he struggled to care for himself. This knowledge put that shared moment in the restaurant into a deeper context. He wanted to savor that spacious peace before returning to the “real” world.