Advent Journal: The Last Day

Today is the last day of Advent. The past couple of years I’ve kept an Advent journal. Last year I was grateful to reach the end; this year it’s different.

For a long time I identified as a seeker. I sought God or enlightenment. Happiness and inner peace? It doesn’t matter. Really I was searching for a way to search. Wondering if I really did want to search? Well, I was always more removed from the process than I pretended to be.

This Advent, that removal – that distance – undid itself. It was just busy work anyway, the mouse frantically cleaning itself while the snake unfurls. I was pretending. The suggestion that hovered over the season was, Sean, you are using “seeking” to avoid responsibility for what is given.

Jesus calls us to an ethical stance. Faced with a politically hostile and untenable situation, and a religiously sclerotic one, he enacted a rigorous social and behavioral response: nonviolence, shared meals, and free healing, all in the Name of God for whom justice was the fulfillment of love.

A Course in Miracles is an attack on that man, that mission and that message. It suggests that what Jesus really meant to say was that the world is an illusion and we are not actually bodies. All of the drama around imperialism, oppression and violence are errors in thought. They can’t be solved in the world, because the world isn’t real.

Some people – I am one of them – reinterpret that to mean that violence and oppression are physical expressions of mental or intellectual confusion. The illusion and the confusion are one. But I don’t think that’s fair to the course, which states repeatedly that it’s clear and simple and doesn’t need interpretation. Take it or don’t take it, but don’t pretend it’s something it’s not just because you don’t like it. I think that’s rough but fair.

As is this: follow Jesus or don’t, but don’t pretend he’s something he’s not just because you don’t like it.

On the other hand, I seem congenitally incapable of following Jesus. I mean, The Catholic Worker is right there. Am I really so confused?

The thing is, I think Jesus represents a way of living with God, one that does not abide any assault in or on God’s Creation. But to reach that level of serenity and calm, that abundance of peace, we have to do interior work. We do have to heal our minds. Itinerancy is not merely a form of doing without, but also with undoing the self that believes having and being are separate.

I am saying that you can’t really “follow” Jesus without healing your mind of its addiction to fear. But also, it’s very hard to heal the addiction to fear just by studying it. You have to live it, in a body in a world. Jesus emphasized application, not theory.

A Course in Miracles takes an ontological stand – the world isn’t real, we aren’t bodies, and this is all an illusion. It’s a bad dream of which even God is unaware. Wake up!

On the merits, those ontological claims are reasonable. Our cognitive and perceptual lenses are limited. We are physically restricted from seeing and understanding the whole. Even our tools, which are nontrivially impressive, can’t compass the whole of reality. A kind of humility makes sense.

But the course is not advocating humility. It’s saying that it knows the truth, and that you can as well. Not a relative truth but an absolute truth.

I believe that claim is an error.

I know that not a lot of folks care about this, but it matters to me. Epistemic integrity is fundamental to our ability to communicate and be in relationship. Pretending to have the answer, rather than an answer that’s helpful in context, is dishonest.

More importantly, it reinforces the very separation that it professes to undo. If there is a “right” answer, then some folks will be “wrong.” There will be the ones who get it and the ones who don’t.

And that – the lovelessness of ‘I get it and you don’t’ – is the source of all our conflict and suffering.

Anyway . . .

Clear understanding and effective application are connected. The one makes possible the other. At the level of experience, which crystallizes in the holy instant, understanding and application are one, the way the dancer and the dance are one.

We have a vast potential for healing, both individually and collective. Individually, we can be calm and supportive, we can keep things simple. Collectively, we can ensure that folks are fed and housed in sustainable reliable ways, we can live harmoniously with all life.

I’m not saying any of this is easy, just possible.

In the present moment, our potential is clear. In the present moment, our potential is alive and ready to flow. When we are present to one another and our focus is on healing, the way to act – what to do next – is easy. Following Jesus is easy in the present; it’s not a mystery and it’s not an impossible challenge. It’s just the realization of my potential in and as Creation.

This Advent, the work has shifted from seeking to acceptance and application. The way is given. There is nothing to seek. Mary and Joseph have arrived at Bethlehem. Love prepares again to reveal itself. Will you accept it? Will you share it? This time will you choose again the way of love and not forget?