Advent Journal: Hinterlands Full of Apostles and Prophets

Holiness undoes the stranglehold of identity. It shifts the locus of identity from the body to the collective, and from the collective to God, Whom Jesus knew as a Father.

For me – maybe for you, too – holiness is mostly an invitation to tell a different story and, in doing so, to realize who is telling the story. We are doing this to our own self (T-27.VIII.10:1) is a diagnosis containing within it the solution to self-imposed suffering. Become creative and in your creativity, remember liberation.

“First person singular,” as James Hillman noted (in, I believe, The Thought of the Heart but don’t hold me to it) is neither first, nor a person, nor singular. Dylan was fond of quoting Rimbaud: “I is another.” Did Sean meet the woman at the well? Or did I? And who will say?

A little after four a.m., wind billows through the neighbor’s chimes and a delicate melody floats into the house and through my heart. Winter came hard and fast this year, all at once, much the way J. left, and I find myself sad and a little alarmed, as if waiting for news that can’t help but be bad.

I think we have to be responsible about Jesus. Between the rigorous cross-disciplinary work of historians since about the sixties, and the eschatalogical nature of women like Mary Daly and Elisabeth Fiorenza, we have the clearest sense of the man since that first Easter. If you aren’t beginning with the history, then you are beginning with something other than the Holy Spirit, and that way lies dragons.

Jesus was not about personal fulfillment, not about mind-body dualism and not – he was not – interested in the metaphysics of identity. He knew who he was, and he knew who God was, and – for him anyway – that meant he knew who everyone else was. And nobody has to accept that he knew those things, or take his teaching seriously – by all means shake the dust of your shoes – but you shouldn’t try to turn him into something he wasn’t. You shouldn’t put concepts and ideas on his lips that were not, you know, actually ever on his lips. Jesus didn’t say squat that aligns with A Course in Miracles. Now what?

Well, it’s not possible for us to interact with a Jesus who isn’t a projection of some kind. But the suggestion is, that projection has to start with what we know. Anything else is just ego.

Holiness means acceptance. But holiness is never resigned. It’s creative. It’s a way of being present without insisting that anything conform to some pre-determined conditions we set. Being present means remembering what is true and, eventually, being remembered by what is true.

Last spring, God said clearly to me, you don’t know what you want and you want too much. I disappeared for most of the rest of the year, first to understand what he was saying, and then to figure out how to respond.

Part of what God was saying was, want happens. Desire is a part of the human condition. But also, you can be intentional about that experience. You can investigate the nature of want, of desire. You can study its nature and effects. You can see it clearly, and clear seeing is the fundament of all holy relationships, because clear seeing is what enables authentic response.

Have you seen desire clearly? Have you identified the spectrum of its effects? Is there – should there be – another way?

I get up to wander the dark house with what’s left of the coffee. The darkness and quiet are a sensory blessing. My heart settles and my mind opens, at range in hinterlands full of apostles and prophets. I’m happy, against long odds. I’m grateful more than I can say. Where would I be without you?

Identity is not a crisis nor even a problem. It’s an effect of certain beliefs about what bodies are, what the world is, and what’s the best way to navigate this big old experience. Most of us don’t go into all that – it doesn’t feel amenable to investigation, and it doesn’t feel amenable to change. Why bother? Most of our core beliefs, the ones that seem to cement identity and mandate suffering, hide behind some version of “it is what it is.”

Five or so years ago – in a bright office twenty stories up, in a city I have not visited since – somebody said that to me. “It is what it is.” I said in reply – really I was split open to allow reply – “I reject that profanity.”

I’ve been confused about that for a long time, even as the directive remained clear. I do reject the profanity of “it is what it is.”

This morning, the confusion cleared. The coffee went cold, as often happens when he’s near. I forget a lot. Don’t need a lot?

Morning passing, day beginning, again.

Advent Journal: The Single Note and the Song

I

“Suddenly it’s okay I want to disappear.” I wrote that sentence a week or so ago and don’t remember did I use it in anything.

I used to wonder about it, the desire to disappear, and worry was something wrong. Is it okay to want to disappear? Nobody talked about it. But it lands differently now, this impulse, less as a death wish and more as a life wish. Something obscures the light of justice and love and I want that something to disappear. If that happens to be a self to which I am attached, then okay. We can let the self be gone.

But mostly it’s not the self that’s being released so much as the many prerogatives that self insists on. I am allowed to be angry, vengeful, distant, uncooperative, judgmental, greedy et cetera. I’m allowed to feel those feelings and act on them. It’s okay if I’m doing it. But Jesus says no. That’s not okay. You can’t privilege yourself over or against anybody. Everybody serves everybody. And he practices what he preaches.

It’s hard to change your mind but you can grit your teeth and not say the mean thing. You can do the dishes even though it’s not your night, grumbling all the way. But it’s funny. If you alter your behavior, your mind clears a little. There’s more space for the light to enter; there’s fewer blocks it needs to navigate. Change your mind and your ass will follow or move you ass and your mind will change seem to sugar out the same way. It’s like there’s no separation anywhere.

II

I learned lessons I wish I hadn’t, and unlearning them was hard. Is hard?

For example, I know what it means to be punished. It was possible to be wrong or bad – I was both, often – and punishment was always the response. Punishment meant losing something – a snack, a meal, a book, a visit with friends – or it meant being hit or forced to stay in your room or having your mouth washed with soap or whatever. The pain was intentional – it was supposed to be how you learned your lesson. Nor was it proportional or consistent. The idea was, if you smack a dog hard enough and frequently enough, the dog will stop doing the bad or wrong thing. But that’s not fair to dogs, even if technically – sometimes – it seems to work.

I did not learn the lesson and instead developed a kind of masochistic approach to suffering. I interpreted it as noble. I welcomed punishment. This was a survival mechanism at first (never blame a child for the conditioning of the adult) but it became a sad and detrimental pathology. Being good at enduring suffering is a thing that happens but it’s not a good thing. There’s another way.

I identified with animals growing up. They paid a high price to be in the world, and nearly all of them left it early against their will. They are my brothers and sisters. Over a two-year period in the early aughts I wrote a sequence of short stories that were pretty biographical. R. read them and wrote me a long letter, the gist of which was, damn those animals you grew up with suffered . . . And I saw clearly in that moment my identification with animals and never wrote a short story again. I didn’t have to. I had spoken a truth, it had been received by another, and returned to me with even greater clarity. That’s art. Or, at least, it’s art for me.

III

The thing about Jesus – or a thing about Jesus – is that people think of him as an alpha. And I think in certain ways, he was a leader, yes. But the movement he founded – discerned through a careful poeisis that involves study, prayer and intentional activity – is more beta than alpha. Communion and service undergird a commitment to radical equality. The message to men is, you’re not in charge and there’s nothing inherent in your mind or body that mandates otherwise. But it’s not an order – like Jesus is bossing you around. It’s an observation about the nature of God’s Love and how it works. And honestly? Isn’t it a relief to let go of the illusion of your specialness in order to finally experience authentic relationship? Holy relationship? You really do have to put the other first. There is no other way to happiness and peace.

IV

T. always wants to correct me. He is very gentle and patient. “Sean,” he says. “There is no world.”

The blind horse whinnies for breakfast. Voices carry from the lumber mill, low rumble of pickups. The sky is heavy and dark, snow clouds obscuring the moon and stars. I can only just make out the hemlocks behind the barn, the bare forsythia on its eastern side.

The metaphysics don’t interest me anymore. There is no world, fine, but there is relationship and relationship is context. The work is to bring oneself into coherence in the relationship. “Into coherence” means a kind of harmony, where the note you are and the note the other is becomes a melody (like the two-note sing song of chickadees). And that melody intersects with other melodies to become a song. How are the single note and the song separate? Can the one exist without the other?

None of this is theoretical! It might start there – you might linger there a long time – but eventually you have to enter the relationship. You have to discover and remember the note you are and then offer yourself up in creativity and play. It takes no time at all to be exactly the way God created you. It’s all given and it’s this: this this.

Jesus says, give it away. He doesn’t invent a new religion, doesn’t set up a healing practice in Galilee, doesn’t set a price. Nobody has to earn or pay for the love of God. Personally, I’m pretty good at this with the animals. I can love a dog or a horse with a lot of purity. I’m polyamorous with chickadees and crows. But people are harder. They tell you you’re wrong or bad or whatever. They set you up to suffer.

Jesus says, don’t argue, let it go, and I don’t argue and I mostly let it go. Mostly. Later – in morning prayer – I tell him that his project is beautiful but unrealistic. Unconditional love? Total equality? The end of suffering?

Come on. It’s impossible.

He is very gentle and patient. “Sean,” he asks. “For whom?”

Advent Journal: The Way to Freedom for All of Us

There are phases to a life, like there are phases to the moon. Flavors to a season of writing, the way Halloween had a flavor as a child, or Christmas. In Advent, I am happy and a little reckless. When you know the way God is alive and Christ afoot, then the work changes. It stops being work, really. It takes no time at all to be as God created you, and God does not make mistakes, nor drafts that need editing or other changes. Happiness is serious, inclusive and disciplined, naturally so. Have you met Jesus?

I ask that seriously. In Advent – this season of readying ourselves for his arrival in the world, which signifies a new way of being in time together – what I don’t quite say is, you can learn how to see Jesus. Seeing him is like seeing justice or a birthday or a pet. Not until I could see Jesus, clearly and unequivocally, did the change begin. And even then it took some time. Takes time? All he asks is that I be a willing learner.

Last year, I don’t remember the precise date, but Jasper read something on my substack and said, brother, one of these days, you’re going to have to come out to these folks as Catholic. And in the slant-wise nature of truth (lauds and praise, Sister Emily, lauds and praise), I haven’t thought about much else since. I haven’t been to church for myself in what? A quarter century now?

And yet.

Morning deepens – three o’clock, now four, now five. Soon the day will begin. The prayer cycles closer to amen, as it must.

Jesus doesn’t call me to church but to writing and, by extension, to teaching. This is our shared calling; we are here together. Teaching – like psychotherapy, to which it is closely related – is an expression of honesty. Whatever formal role it assumes, its whole function is to bring us together to honesty. But honesty about what? And the answer is, honesty about talking about what is missing and how to live in its absence. But what is missing? Well, you tell me. Because for me, increasingly, nothing is missing. Not even the haunting, hard-to-scratch sense that something is missing is missing. And yet here we are.

When you know nothing is missing (even if you still kind of suspect that something is missing), and you know that God is alive and Christ afoot, then the tides of ego obscuring both moon and sea, soften a little. You see the moon and the sea, and know the tide as an effect. A predictable effect, a measurable effect. “We are in this together” means something a little different. It doesn’t mean there’s a crisis and we’ll solve it together. It means that learning situations abound and this is one of them, yet again. What do you want to learn? I ask myself this question constantly. So does Jesus. Constantly.

What do you want to learn is related to what do you want to teach. We can sharpen that a little. What you want to teach is related to what you want to give away – and what you want to give away is related to what you think you need. Generally, the various answers to all these questions sugar out in the concept of relationship. Beyond the specificity of form – we are lovers, we are friends, you are my therapist, I am your teacher, we use familial lingo like “brother” and “sister,” whatever – lies relationship. A word pointing to a concept that points to . . . what exactly? And why are we all fighting over it?

I joined the battle when and the way I did because I didn’t want to be an object. I insisted on subjectivity. Nor did I consider time a friend or ally. I was a child! And so decades passed in an expanding compounding error (related to subjectivity and objectivity) that I could not see and, on the rare occasion when I did catch a glimpse, I didn’t understand. I thought the mind and the body were separate; I thought it was possible to move through the world unattached and unaffected; I thought the rules changed according to social status; and I thought these things were desirable because they were fundamentally right in some way, over and against anything else.

A turtle or so down then, the problem was my conviction it was possible to be right at all with respect to remembering God’s Love. God’s Love burns the right/wrong binary (e.g., the lovelessness of “I get it and you don’t”) to ash! Really, the problem was my misinterpretation of somebody else’s misinterpretation all the way back to the garden. That’s what saved me, by the way – the realization that the world I was living in was my misinterpretation of the misinterpretation of others – parents, teachers, priests, gurus, whatever. Jesus corrects that interpretation. Or rather, learning how to see Jesus allows me to correct that interpretation, which really really means just noticing that it is an interpretation. When I saw that, I saw the way to freedom for all of us. It was obvious; it was simple; it was given.

“Obvious, simple and given” because you are given. You are always given. You are always here, ready to listen, ready to remind me to rest, ready to go over what I’m learning in order to purify and perfect it, ready to remind me that “purify” and “perfect” are tricky and often slip us up. Et cetera. You are you – a reader, a fellow traveler, a distant observer taking notes for later, or something else altogether. To share in the way we do eclipses time and space, bringing both to the holy instant where they gently dissolve in relationship. I write and you read but something – but what – is fully present now, for both of us. The writing isn’t it but the writing does reflect it – but what “it” is can only be present, can only be reflected the way it is, because we both know it and consent to its presence. Together we create it. This is it.

Advent Journal: In the Country of Sins

Eventually, you reach the sins. You make contact with material that’s so bad even God turns away. I hail from a long line of sufferers, folks who destroyed themselves rather than face the possibility God doesn’t love them. They died bravely but forsaken, hard deaths I don’t wish on anybody.

Paradoxically, looking at my unworthiness in the eyes of God required humility. I had to stop emphasizing status in the world, and I had to let go of the interior emphasis on blaming others. It was the only way to get close to the interior monstrosities. I don’t understand why.

And it’s funny because “stop emphasizing status in the world” and “let go of the interior emphasis on blaming others” are really good tips for living in holy relationship. When we commit to living that way, when we make it a practice, we really do begin to perceive others the way God perceives them. Our shared holiness becomes a vibrant symbol of love.

Looking at my sins was hard but it was easier when I was also percieving in others – in their relationship with the world – the broad outline of God’s Love for them, which was total and unconditional. And I understood – at first intellectually only, but then in an inegrated and coherent way – that I could not be excepted from that Love. God’s Love for you was proof of God’s Love for me.

So the gaze at myself as a sinner was joined to the gaze at myself as an innocent child of God, beloved of their father in heaven. Is that clear? The problem and the solution arose together (and in relationship).

People in our circle don’t like the word “sin.” I’m often having certain lines from A Course in Miracles tossed at me, especially those reminding me that sin is an “error” not a moral wrong or ethical violation. That’s absolutely correct in ACIM terms and, in the context of the course, very helpful.

But the course is a beginning (think of it as an entry-level exam that allows you to begin a course of study and practice) that adapts itself to the student. Self-study means there’s going to be a lot of personal variation. The word “sin” is not foreign to me and – in other circles where I sometimes move – my “story” is pretty fucking grim. I can’t even handle all of it. One way or the other, that needs to be responded to.

When I began to reach that desolate country (The Country of Sin, the Land of the Forsaken), I realized I was not alone. And to realize you are not alone is also to realize that the ambit of God’s Love includes you, whether you want to accept that or not. Non-acceptance is an option! But denial is not. Do whatever you want with God’s Love – that’s the nature of God’s Love – but don’t pretend it’s not love.

So that becomes the work then – going to the places (within and without) that you believe love won’t go, maybe can’t go, and so are yourself terrified of visiting. But honestly it is a great relief to face the ghosts, name the monsters, and map the haunts. You realize how much effort goes into sustaining the illusion of “places where love won’t go.” You see the illusion. You see the collaborative nature of it, the way we are doing this to ourselves, together.

In the Country of Sins I was neither alone nor unforgiven. In the place that love doesn’t go, love was waiting.

This is my witness.

Advent Journal: How Lonely One Becomes in Victory

1

There was a sense that something big was going to happen, something important. Maybe even something miraculous.

I was going to do this big thing, or the big thing was going to happen to me. Somehow I was integral to it. Its effects were going to be transformative, world-changing, definitely for the better. People would be glad I was alive.

And so I waited. And waited.

And waited.

2

I can’t sleep. The usual tricks don’t work so I’m up and about in the middle of the night. Not it’s two, now it’s three, now it’s half past. Trying to be quiet and failing. Trying to avoid the Byzantine spiritual inquiry, the endless psychological excavation. I was determined to be a subject, not an object, and I won certain early conflicts in that struggle, never realizing how lonely one becomes in victory.

Conflict entails loneliness. You can’t go to war without making holes in your life, some of which you will learn too late cannot be filled. I was a fighter early because I had to be and later, when I tried later to transform myself into a lover, certain habits and scars lingered as impediments.

Life gets dark, then darker. We are none of us excepted.

3

A long time ago four a.m. became holy to me. I don’t know why. I was always alone at that hour, usually outdoors with the dogs, and whatever was missing was either unnecessary or easily recoverable. Not missing at all? Prayer flowed and when it didn’t the Lord was forgiving. Who needs to talk when you can listen? But now four a.m. finds me mute, distracted, unsure. I asked for too much without knowing what I wanted, and this is what happened. I don’t know where to lay my head. Wouldn’t lay it anyway?

Well, something deeply wrong crying out for healing anyway. Something deeply healing saying don’t deny what’s wrong?

4

“You have to do this part alone.” Who taught me that? Who taught them? I learned the lesson so well it generalized recklessly. “You’ll be doing all of this alone.” What God would insist on such a penance? What kind of creature would consent to it? My life recedes now in images, like Polaroids skimming off the table in an unexpected breeze. Who left the window open? Who stacked the photographs just so? What did they mean by “this part” and why – at such a late and getting later juncture – am I still unable to answer these questions?

5

Oh but then I go outside with my coffee. Crunchy snow, gusting breath. The river a low murmur beyond the pasture. The waning moon blurred by clouds, yellowish and dim. Thank Christ for Advent at four a.m. on the seventh of December. The beauty of it – the here-and-nowness of it – is a familiar gift, a practical blessing. My lungs open to the world and something inside settles. “There’s another way,” you whisper, from that bower in my chest you share with Jesus. You’re right, of course, and I know you’re right. I know where to find you and how to close my eyes.

I stay outside a moment or two longer, though. A gift to us? What else could the world be for? You don’t find Jesus; Jesus finds you. Nor can you be estranged again. Love is here; this is love.

I want to do something with my hands – or open my mouth to sing maybe – but the stillness and silence reflect God better than I can. Become less. Less and less. Even without me what is sacred continues. I’m like a child in his father’s house, playing hide and seek. Now you see me, now you don’t. Now I do. Now I am, again.

Advent Journal: Edenic, Heavenly, Utopian, You Name It

I’m up early as usual. There is no moonlight in the kitchen making coffee. Nor can I pray exactly. Last night I wrote for almost four hours, coming away with seven scrawny paragraphs. Nothing sits well; I feel rough and difficult. “What’s wrong?” he asks gently, there in the darkness.

I can’t lie to him. That’s one way you know it’s Jesus you’re talking to. I tell him I don’t want to write about A Course in Miracles anymore but I’m scared to stop. “Okay,” he says. “But why?”

I go into it. Its emphasis on mind / body dualism, especially its hierarchical ordering of mind over body, is not only incorrect but the error isn’t harmless. A Course in Miracles reinforces the very separation it intends to undo. It hides this error behind a quasi-new age / self help facade that’s fundamentally racist and misogynistic. And when the cracks and seams do show, they’re written off as evidence that we’re wrong. It’s incoherent and dysfunctional. I’m embarrassed I bought into it as long as I did. Years went to waste.

He listens. He knows these arguments better than I do – he’s the one who taught them to me. But then he interrupts.

“No,” he says. “what I meant was, why does stopping writing about the course scare you? Write about it or don’t, I don’t care. But the fear . . . “

Morning opens into a swale, the bottom of which I’ve never found. I step outside to get away, ground myself, whatever. The sky is low and full of heavy clouds. The blind horse whinnies down by the run-in. Feed me. I know the feeling.

Listen, I say. I’ll do whatever you want. You want me to write about ACIM? Say the word. You want me to write about something else? Say that word.

He laughs, amused as always at my propensity for spiritual drama, my stubborn insistence on playing a role. “I have already said the word,” he says.

And then he is gone.

The kitchen brightens when I come inside. Snow outside the east-facing window looks blue in the dim light. I get lost a little in the loveliness of it. Distracted by the loveliness? Sawicki teaches you how to see Jesus but Jesus teaches you how to love the other as your own self, which is otherwise (so far as I can tell) impossible. He imagined (with others – never forget this) a world – a way of being together – that was utterly antithetical to the fear-based, survival-based, scarcity-based, suffering-based world in which we are still – still – fatally dithering.

Advent deepens, becomes wintry.

Over the past year I have seen The Skull. Do you know it? The skull is death but death is just a symbol of not knowing. The skull represents the uncertainty inherent in our experience. It does not speak. It has no argument. Its silence is its message.

The skull appeared when I realized that A Course in Miracles was not only not my path but was an intentional avoidance of that path. I had fallen into a dream of following Jesus because I was too scared to actually follow Jesus.

It is an old story.

Marianne Sawicki pulled me back from that abyss, and showed me how to avoid falling into it going forward. But that was all. We can be taught how to see Jesus, but once we do see him, we’re on our own. It makes sense though, right? It’s a relationship. It’s a dialogue. You talk, he talks. Questions are asked, questions are answered. What else is there?

Day begins before I finish writing. I carry kitchen scraps to the outside compost, wading through snow. My daughters’ voices from the barn float through cold air like bird song or garlands strung by angels. I can’t quite make out the words but it doesn’t matter. It’s not me they’re talking to. A little snow begins to fall. I remind myself not to forget to bring Christmas decorations down from the attic for later.

When you stop being scared of the skull, the cross on which Jesus was crucified looks different. You can walk away from it; you can let him die on it. That was his calling, not yours. Yours is here, in this world, with these people. The skull teaches you to forget about time and its effects and instead focus on what you can do in this moment to be helpful to others. Often that means clarifying some interior confusion, forgiving an old grievance, or practicing a new way of responding to this or that condition. But it has to sugar out in service; it has to sugar out in the familiar (the family-like) radical vision of peace and joy. Jesus was taught to do a work, he did it and taught others how to do it, and here we are. What are you doing? How can I help|?

Chores finished, I come upstairs to write by the bedroom window. Snow has changed to sleet; voices in the kitchen float through the floorboards. I’m happy, against long odds. I was supposed to die alone a long time ago. Nor am I finished trying to get it all right. I still believe in him, in his claim that a world premised on love rather than fear is possible. I fucked up but I’m still here. As Leonard Cohen said, “I’m broke but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet.”

But a few sentences into the writing – I’m riffing off Gerd Theissen’s comment in The Historical Jesus that, for Jesus, “the rule of God . . . was already a hidden reality in the present” (175). I think I can make it clear to you how that sugars out in application, in a radical way of knowing and loving one another that’s Edenic, Heavenly, Utopian, you name it. I think we are very close, I think –

– “Sean?” he says.

Yes, Jesus? I ask, a little annoyed that he’s interrupting. I’m in the flow now; I’ve found the words. I’m doing the work.

“Do you owe her an apology?” he asks. He asks it gently but it stops me. He’s not judging me, nor is he angry or even disappointed. It’s an old story and he’s been at it a long time. He’s a teacher, not a cop or a lawyer. He’s a healer, not an executioner.

Morning opens into a swale I have never found the bottom of. I do, I say. I do.

And begin.