Advent Journal: A Piece of Bread

Differences appear, right? This shirt is blue, that one is red. Sunflowers are not bluets. When you fall into the lake, I don’t get wet.

Differences are not a problem. The problem is when you and I say, “this difference is me.” When we talk about separation, that’s what we’re talking about – that subtle interior claim to possession. This is me, that is not. It seems harmless enough – even natural – but it’s the source of all our suffering.

The move to separate shows up inside us as the reflexive need to judge, evaluate, defend and attack. It’s the reflexive longing to avoid criticism and receive praise. But the world begotten by thatpractice is not a world of love and connection, but of fear and disorder.

We have so much potential for a gentler, kinder way. We are creative, compassionate, playful and kind. Waking up doesn’t mean LOSING those qualities. It means letting go of the imaginary center that claims that potential as uniquely its own. Waking up dissolves the sense of ownership – the sense that something is personally at stake in every moment.

The suggestion is that the appearance of differences is useful in terms of communication and cooperation. It takes two to be one. The differences that appear aren’t absolute. They’re more like suggestions. Try the one relationship this way; now try itthat way.

When we insist on separation, we feel shame, anger, guilt and fear. Those feelings lead to narratives about scarcity and trauma, the need to take care of ourselves over and against others. Those narratives become cultural, political, religious. They harden into borders. “I’ll never speak to you again,” or “we don’t want people from shithole countries.” Eventually it scales up to war and genocide, and the torturous logic that attempts to justify evil. If the outside world is the picture of an inside condition – and that is not an unhelpful way to frame it – then we have a lot of work to do, you and I. A lot.

The end of separation is just the end of our attachment to – our investment in – separation. Again, the appearance of differences is not the problem. Differences happen. But they can be used to isolate ourselves and instigate conflict or they can be invitations to join and collaborate in recreating the Edenic promise. What do you want? Really and truly?

In my life, this insight came first through eastern religious traditions being filtered through western culture and commerce. The Gospel According to Zen, Alan Watts. I was in high school when that stuff appeared for me. I had no idea what it meant but I liked it. I spent years trying to be Buddhist, and then even more years trying to understand why I couldn’t be Buddhist. I have great respect for those traditions, and profound gratitude for the folks who helped me discover and learn from them.

But my path is the following Jesus path, and Jesus doesn’t make those kinds of claims. He doesn’t ask is the world real or what am I in truth. He doesn’t care about projection and denial or whether forgiveness makes the error real.

Instead, Jesus talks about justice, and how practicing justice is the way to fully realize our potential for love. We are fully God’s children when we love the way God loves. For Jesus, perception of difference is simply an invitation to practice remembering that love does not do borders or hierarchies or conflicts. Justice is not an argument to be won or lost in a classroom or a court or a temple. It’s a practice that we take into the world and live.

Last night I was thinking about Therese of Lisieux. Therese is a good example of what I’m talking about in the drafty itinerancy essay mentioned yesterday. Itinerancy is not about the absence of possessions. It’s about the undoing of the one who claims a right to possession in the first place.

Therese made a commitment to being less by having less. She actively sought deprivation and hardship. If there was a nun she didn’t like, she made a point of sitting with that nun as often as possible. If a piece of bread fell on the floor, Therese volunteered to eat it. When she realized she had tuberculosis, she lit up with joy.

There is a lot of Catholic dysfunction in that. And, deeper, there is a lot of confusion about the relationship between suffering and virtue. I hear that, and I see that.

But also, Therese discovered something that Jesus had also discovered – you can let the false self go by actively refusing its claims to specialness. Therese put her body into the undoing of ego. And honestly? When you do that? Ego doesn’t stand a chance. That crucifix is no joke.

Putting our body into the undoing of ego means bringing it to the cushion, a meeting, therapy, a writing nook, whatever. But it also means – it has to also mean – actively working with each other to create together a world in which all bodies can bring themselves to the undoing of ego. We leave nobody behind. Heaven is all of us or it’s not Heaven.

A Course in Miracles is one way of packaging nonduality for consumption. How grateful I am for it! But it’s not special. It’s just another eddy in the brook, like you and me, and like Buddhism and Catholicisim. Is it helpful? Yes? Okay then. Work it.

Whatever path we’re on, it’s downstream of the work which is simply to notice the subtle interior movements towards possession – this is mine, this is not, I have a right to feel differently, you have an obligation to treat me differently, et cetera et cetera.

Notice the inclination to possess the experience and then ask – what is going on here? How is it going on? What is the inclination after? What beliefs does it depend on? What effects are produced by its activity? Are they fitting to a Child of God?

I found that once I could see clearly that inclination to possession, I did not want to align with it. I wanted another way. I wanted to align with something simpler and gentler, and given to coherence rather than conflict. And that other way is given – it was always right here. But it’s obscured by the error of separation.

We are nearing the middle of Advent, bearing down on Bethlehem and its as-yet empty manger. There are gifts at the end of this journey; there is new life. Here in the cold dark – frantically trying to finish writing before chores (the blind horse is crying out) – I thank God for you and for the way you showed me was the way.