Advent Travels: Hidden by Storm Clouds

I like this story.

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph.
He said, “Abba Joseph,
as far as I can say,
I do my little office,
and I read my psalms.
I fast a little and pray
and meditate.
I live in peace with others and,
as far as possible,
I purify my thoughts.
Tell me, Father, what else –
what more – can I do?”

And the old man, Abba Joseph,
stood up and stretched his hands
toward heaven, and his fingers
became like ten lamps of fire.
He said to Abba Lot, “my child,
if you will,
you can become all flame.”

Of course I like this story. I’ve projected myself onto Abba Joseph. Not only do people come to me for my wisdom, they can also read the Psalms in the light given off by my fingers. I am the one.

But even Abba Lot is an empathetic character. In a pinch, I can project myself there as well. A good brother doing everything he can to reach the Lord, studying and practicing with faith and diligence, ever seeking how to do better. What a good student! What a devout monk! He doesn’t have magic fingers . . . but he could. Everybody has to start somewhere.

The projection is hard to sustain, though.

Abba Joseph is a fourth century desert father. He gave up all the comforts of the world so he could pray in more sustained and intense ways. Imagine living in 4th century Egypt and deciding it was too comfortable and full of distractions for a meaningful prayer life.

On the other hand, imagine living in 2024 and thinking you yourself are only a couple of Our Fathers away from being a living flame. What would Abba Joseph say? For that matter, what would Abba Lot say?

Whatever they would say, it would come out of their rigid commitment to austerity. They were ascetics. Always fasting, never sleeping, drinking fetid water . . . To me, that kind of self-imposed suffering – they literally endangered their health and welfare – seems brutally dysfunctional.

And yet, I like that story, and other people like it, too, because it gets passed around a lot. And the thing in that story that matters is the fire. The fire is why we pass it around. So we have to understand the fire. Let’s begin by considering the relationship between human beings and fire, which begins –

– or maybe not?

I remember not feeling at home in the Vermont Zen Center many years ago, and the reason was, it didn’t matter how much you read or how thoughtfully you could speak abou Buddhism. Only zazen mattered and that was a thing you did, not a thing you talked about.

But if I say that the fire is a metaphor, and if I also say that what it points to cannot be known in words but only in a practice – and if I accept that for Abba Joseph that practice was asceticism and reading the Psalms but not discoursing on the psalms . . .

Where does that leave me?

There is another story about Abba Joseph.

Abba Poemen went to Abba Joseph
and asked the venerable old man –
how does one become a monk?

Abba Joseph answered, “my brother –
if you want to find rest
here and hereafter
then in all circumstances say “who am I?”
and do not judge anyone.

Oh. Oh.

I crave the fire. I love writing how Advent is a journey through darkness into light. For days the words of Abba Joseph have lived in my mind, bringing me back to something. Last night, on my knees in the snow, stars hidden by storm clouds, God said gently, “Sean, ‘will,’ not ‘fire’ is the word you are being invited to study.”

I rose then and went about evening chores, wondering what, if anything, I could say to you, or you to me, at this stage of our travels that would help.

Eight / Ten

Advent Travels: Relationship All the Way Down

Nancy reminded me when I mentioned this Advent writing project that whenever two or more gather in Jesus’s name, Jesus is with them. Historically, this is understood in ecclesial terms. We gather in and as a church which both keeps Jesus and makes him accessible (on terms and contions it sets as Jesus’s keeper).

But in the Matthean text in which that promise appears, it’s less about ecclesiology and more about justice. How do we judge another? How do administer judgment in a way that binds us as community?

Matthew’s Jesus walks us through a series of escalating approaches to judgment which culminate in treating the sinner the same way we would treat a pagan or a tax collector, e.g., they aren’t one of us. There’s the door, don’t let it hit you on the way out.

The promise is, if at least two of us gather in Jesus’s name to condemn a brother or sister, we can rest assured Jesus shares in both the judgment and the disposition.

Which, of course, is silly. There is no historical basis for arguing that Jesus excluded anybody, and lots of evidence – across multiple academic disciplines – that his practice was radically inclusive, which accounts for its popularity among marginalized people. Women, especially, were drawn to it.

(Writing exercise: what would a “radically inclusive” practice like that look like today? Who would it appeal to most? And, why aren’t we practicing that inclusivity?)

This inclusivity accounts for why – as the Jesus movement spread and became popular – local ruling classes (political, religious, economic) – worked so hard to coopt the movement and water down the message, culminating in the tragedy of the First Council of Nicea. Matthew is obviously putting words in Jesus’s mouth that serve Matthew’s objectives, not Jesus’s. Not Love’s.

But what interests me is less repairing the Matthean (and Nicean) confusion around that promise, and more reflecting on why we have chosen to reinterpret that phrase of Jesus against its theological and historical context.

In other words, Nancy was wrong in a literal sense but right in a much deeper and more helpful sense (which of course she knows).

I first heard the “two or more” phrase in a memorable way in Captain and Tenille’s “Wedding Song,” which includes these lyrics:

The union of your spirits here
has caused him to remain
For whenever two or more of you
are gathered in his name
There is love, there is love

I’m not defending the song so much as pointing out a popular example of a radical revision of the Matthean text. “Two more more” is about feeling the love of Jesus when we pair up in His name. It’s not about finding a rationale to kick someone we don’t like off the island.

And the revision is what most of us think about when we think about that line from Jesus.

It’s as if, on some level, we intuitively understand that Jesus would never condemn a brother or sister and would never endorse a community rule that privileges one person or group of persons over another.

For Jesus, Love was decentralized because God the Father both had all of it and gave all of it. The invitation he made was to see how this was true and then consent to be changed by that seeing so that Love might continue to extend more broadly and less conditionally.

That was the gift the Holy Spirit offered: to see the Lord and be remade in the Divine Image, effectively by realizing that Creation does not abide the judgment by which distinctions arise. Which is a paradox, right? There is no “image” of the Lord because you can only make an image through exclusion and God does not abide exclusion. As I said recently, the Pietà is not only the shape we see, but also what we don’t see, without which, no shape could exist at all.

What both has, and cannot ever have, form?

It’s helpful to see clearly that a body can’t not judge. A mind can’t not judge. You’re doing it right now and so am I. Bodies and minds world build. They make shit up.

Which is not a crime against God or nature! But there is another way, one that leads to peace and happiness for all of us.

That other way begins when we are faced – as in Matthew’s fear-based dogma, the bland legality of Nicea and the overwrought cry for help that is A Course in Miracles – with separation, and clumsily but surely stumble in the other direction towards Love.

We are so beautiful – we are so so beautiful – and I love us so much.

We really are lovers, not fighters. Peace, not conflict, is our mode. The kids are right – Netflix and chill is the way. But we only know this when we come together! We have to do the work of being able to join, we have to do the work of joining, and we have to do the work of sustaining and nurturing the resultant union.

It’s relationship all the way down.

It’s not Jesus who shows up when we gather in his name. It’s us. We remember who we are when we gather in Jesus’s name. And what we are together pierces the illusion of separate interests, and unifies what is held apart in the mistaken belief that existence is contingent on exclusion and division.

Today, in Advent, I remember the way we are together Christ.

Seven / Nine

Advent Travels: A Cool Drum Solo

I’ve edited this post and comment thread to remove a personal reference that upon reflection was inappropriate and unhelpful. I apologize to anyone hurt or confused by my actions. I will do better going forward. Thank you always for your patience.

It’s hard sometimes to think helpfully about the void. I have a lot to learn myself.

I don’t think the void is a question of belief, but I am glad there are folks willing to wonder if it might be. They simultaneously remind me of my spiritual poverty and justify the optimism that allows me to not fear that poverty but open to its creativity and healing. And I could always be wrong!

Human beings are limitations! I can’t see colors the way butterflies do, and ticks can’t smell as much as I can. Our cognition stops well shy of omniscience. Not only do we not know everything, we don’t even know what we don’t know.

That’s the void. The void is what you don’t know, don’t sense, and can’t sense or know. And it’s always right there.

I appreciate very much not wanting to go into all of that. It is the void which teaches us that choice is an illusion and free will a shallow con courtesy of evolution. We control nothing. People do die upon learning this; some people die instead of learning it. Some people kill to avoid going into it.

When you see all this clearly, fully for the first time, it’s like you’re already dead. It’s like you’re already dead and you’re going to die.

The void is alive. Like the Face of God (hint hint) once it has been glimpsed, it cannot be forgotten. You will think about it regularly, you will sneak back to it, you will toss something in – a friendship, an afternoon, a value system – to see if it floats or what comes back.

But here’s the thing. The void is not the problem. The existential crisis the void presents – and it absolutely presents an existential crisis – is the problem. The existential crisis is a defense against Love.

I don’t know if it was an advantage but I was tossed into the void often at an early age. Later, in my late teens and through a good chunk of my twenties, I routinely threw myself in, often dragging others along, whether they wanted it or not.

Sometimes people fished me out of the void, and I’m grateful to them. Friends, sponsors, therapists, lovers. I am grateful to them all! But sometimes there was another way out of the void that I seemed to find alone. Or maybe it found me?

It’s hard to say! But decades later, when it was time to consider the void in a non-self-destuctive way, I came to it differently. I was resigned, not scared. I was curious. As Tara Singh said, the point is to see what is – not change anything or refuse anything or even prefer anything. A kind of “hello darkness my old friend/I’ve come to talk with you again” vibe attended. I knew how bad it could get but was there anything on the other side? I wanted to know.

Spiritual poverty is when we let go of the comforting ideas and phrases and rituals in order to meet God with as few distractions as possible. It’s not chosen (ha ha) so much as accepted. I get it’s not for everyone. All God’s critters got a place in the choir and I will absolutely die on that hill.

But still.

One of the ironies of the Christmas mythology – especially its emphasis on gifts – is that God needs nothing and as His children neither do we. The man gifted at birth with rare spices, soothing shepherds and a cool drum solo explicitly told us to consider the lilies and the birds of the field and live accordingly. That was how God designed us.

For many reasons I have understood poverty well in this life. It doesn’t scare me, it’s a freedom not a restriction. What has been less clear and less dynamic – despite being just as and even more pervasive, and arguably more helpful – is optimism.

I really do believe in the power of Love to heal us, body and mind, and deliver us from the nightmare of separation. My commitment to this belief and its manifestation in the world can appear naive and even dangerous. Love does that to us!

I understand the rationale for optimism – and the fear it inspires in me and others – but I’m not as fluent or skilled in its application as I am with poverty. Optimism isn’t interested in wordiness or pedagogy, which are kind of my thing. But kites don’t want to conversate about aerodynamics – they want to be flown.

Anyway.

I was mumbling about all this with the horses this morning. Wind blowing at 4 a.m., trucks leaning on their jake brakes a mile or so away. They listened – the horses always listen – but they didn’t seem especially interested.

The horses don’t share my concerns about the void. Nor do the stars overhead, nor the sparrows and juncos who sing waking up in the hedges and raspberry bracken.

These brothers and sisters don’t say it with words but with a way of life, a way of being in the world: let go, let go, let go. Simplify, simplify, simplify. The One you seek is here, teaching you. Be happy and at peace!

Sometimes it is just that clear! Sometimes it is. I bowed to the horses, the stars and the birds, and went back inside to write, this.

Six / Eight

Advent Travels: The Final Step

0 The Mirage

Yesterday, shoveling a path to the horses – following tracks in the snow my daughters had made earlier – I was visited by God.

What do I mean by this?

1 The Oasis

Many years ago, during my first run-through of the ACIM lessons – some time after the devastation wrought by Lessons 79 and 80 – I was visited by God.

It was two or three a.m., late January, and I was sitting alone on the porch watching snow and the moonlight couple in a luminous – an ethereal – way. I was lonely – I am often lonely – but also happy.

I was happy because I was grateful for the beauty, grateful for the idea of God, and grateful for the way it all somehow coalesced in me. “It’s enough,” I whispered. And I meant it. In that moment, it was enough.

The world disappeared then, and there was only God. I’m not allowed – because I wouldn’t know how – to say more about that. I don’t know how long the moment lasted but I know exactly how it ended: I called it mine.

As soon as I tried to possess it, the moment was gone. I did not experience that grace again for almost thirteen years.

2 The Desert

When I remember that God is both the absence of difference AND everything signified BY difference, then something opens up in me and God pours through. Light pours through.

By “light” I mean the light in which everything – including darkness, including abstractions like math and philosophy – actually appears.

By “God” I mean that from which this light emerges and into which it returns.

The rule is, you can’t claim the experience because the law is, you don’t control the experience.

Which in application sugars out as, you don’t even understand the experience, maybe stop making up rules and laws for it?

3 The Mirage

In A Course in Miracles, we say that “God takes the final step.” It means that we get ourselves to the place where God can reach us, and that’s it. We don’t get to decide the when, where or anything else. God takes the final step.

Therefore, all that matters is readying myself. And the way I do that is by giving attention to the One Relationship presently still manifesting as many relationships, including ours.

The many relationships all point to the One Relationship. The One Relationship points to God. That’s what I know. I was shoveling snow, halfway between the horses and the house, and I was visited by God.

When the moment of unity ended – because I found in it an absence, yours – I was sad and lonely. When will Love finally come to stay?

Snow flurries whirled in the cold air; sunlight turned them prismatic.

“Soon,” you whispered across the precise distance fear insists we keep. “Not yet,” you whispered. “But soon.”

Five / Seven

Advent Travels: The Posture of a Guest

I stepped outside last night at about eight or so and the snow had already begun. Douglas used to say, you’ve got the writing part down. The question is, what do you want to do with it?

I had hoped for a quiet snow gently falling so I could use “sussuration” in today’s writing, but cold winds howled blowing the snow into spirals and sheets. Even down by the hemlocks, where the world always slows and quietens, the weather verged on riotous, denying me.

The lesson is, never assume you speak the language of the Lord, always adopt the posture of the guest.

Douglas didn’t have rules about writing so much as a sense that order was explicable, and if you couldn’t explain what you were doing and why, then you were at risk of losing the whole project. He had earned the right to say that, that way. I was grateful listening.

I remember talking to him about Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died,” which is one of my favorite poems ever. He said that reading O’Hara closely taught him writing was more about what you didn’t say, rather than what you did.

Imagine Michaelangelo’s Pietà in terms of the marble that is not there. Actually look for it! What is absent defines what is present; it makes what is present possible.

The void is always present; it is the only way that form can appear at all. If I study the hemlock tree, I can only do by separating it from the cosmos and naming the part I want to focus on “hemlock.” The rest is . . . gone. It’s void.

At least until it’s called forth – until it’s desired – into some new form.

Because, critically, that which is not hemlock remains – is fully present – as the void from which the hemlock was drawn and into which it will return when my attention drifts elsewhere. There is no other way for there to be a hemlock in the first place.

This is true for literally every formal thing from a passing thought to a flake of snow to a spiral galaxy.

What we seek is always a form – Jesus, a friend, a hot meal, a hand on our shoulder, a kind word et cetera. But in desiring the form (which you cannot not do, which is a really important insight) we reject – separate from – everything the form is not.

Separation is not realizing – as George Spencer Brown wrote, here paraphrased – that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. We see the hemlock literally by denying the rest of the cosmos.

The suggestion is: notice what you do not ordinarily notice. Notice noticing: what even is noticing?

I remember working through this exercise with James a long time ago, both of us walking in circles around Upper Highland Lake for most of a day. He asked me if I thought Jesus did something similar, and my answer was, I don’t know but yes. We both laughed.

One way or the other, we have to see the void. It was the void that taught me the way choice was an illusion, and free will as simple a fantasy as Santa Claus ramming himself down chimneys. It was the void that allowed me to begin to accept that “the personal” was merely a perspective, no different than any other and thus not actually worth attention.

The void is the remedy for “me and mine,” because it undoes the ground of all the questions we ask as spiritual seekers, students, healers, stumblers, et cetera. Law and logic falter. Psychology falters. Even language falters. There’s nothing there. Also? Everything is there.

When I awaken, and after writing a bit, I go outside. It’s dark yet. Snow is still falling but the wind is gone. I wander to the sideyard lilac and listen to flakes of snow graze its leaves falling. How still the world can become! How happy I am in the darkness and cold!

And how diligently I write, word after word, as if seeking the perfect one, as if I were incomplete without these sentences, as if something – but what – could not possibly otherwise be.

Four / Six

Advent Travels: Happy Servants All Evening

What do I have to give to Jesus?

What does Jesus want?

Or are those the wrong questions?

An Advent journey ends at the manger in Bethlehem, with a gift for Jesus. But what if it doesn’t?

What if, halfway to Bethlehem, one of the wise men falls in love and bails on the journey?

What if we stumble and don’t make it in time? Or get lost? The desert is vast and the trail faint.

What if – halfway to Bethlehem – we realize that we don’t actually need to get to Bethlehem? Jesus is everywhere all the time! Or we change our mind altogether? I’m going to be a Buddhist after all!

What is a good question and what is a distraction?

It is clear to me and has been for a while that our minds have to change. I don’t mean change as in swap in a new set of tapes – listen to Rupert Spira instead of Ken Wapnick or whatever.

Nor do I mean changed as in, become more optimistic or less jealous.

I mean that the tendency of a mind to coalesce around identity, where identity is yoked to a body in culturally-conditioned ways – that has to change.

In my experience, minds can change at deep levels. I am a better listener today than I was twenty years ago; there is a lot more space for you and your story. I see reason for hope.

Mind is pliable and creative. In my experience – contra Ken Wapnick and other neo-Platonic thinkers and teachers (I really need to write about this) – it is not separate from the world or the body.

Driving home yesterday (through snow squalls and fading light – it really does feel like winter) Chrisoula and I talked about the form of relationship (any relationship that intends to be holy rather than special) in terms of its capacity to extend Love on terms and conditions others recognize.

That is the change of mind I think we are being called to consider and – through acceptance – create together.

We were happy servants all evening.

Yet in soft dreams – a kind of gold light, a kind of gentle drift – I continuously heard a voice warning me not to become casual or comfortable. It was as if I were about to fall again for a familiar lie, and the voice didn’t want that to happen.

I woke thinking: the goal is to awaken, not fall into a cozier sleep. The happy dream is less dream. Therefore, be alert; be vigilant.

And came downstairs to write.

Part of my Advent writing process is apparently to start writing and then – at a juncture that announces itself as “almost finished” – go outside with my coffee and poke around.

This morning I was barefoot on the porch which was dusted with snow. The stars were so clear and bright that parts of me melted on the spot. I prayed a little, hopping from one foot to the other, laughing at what an idiot I can be, and yet how happy.

It’s good to laugh at ourselves. It’s good to laugh.

Back inside, finishing the writing and making a second cup of coffee, I turned to Jesus and asked: what do I have to give you? What do you want?

And the question was so silly! I laughed at it. Happiness is a kind of light; laughter a kind of prayer. Is it possible I arrived at Bethlehem early? With Chrisoula last night in the car as we talked? Or after, as we happily quietly kept house for the Lord?

Or maybe this morning outside – so eager to see the stars and say good morning to Jesus – that I forgot to put shoes on? In December? In snow?

What am I asking that’s already been answered?

And: is there something I should ask that I haven’t yet?

Three / Five