|
'The Casting of Shadows'
Easton, ME
Saying: Rather, in "Buddhist," "Muslim," and "gay," I met Jesus, I met the excluded God - I met myself.
Once, a church member visited a fellow member. She said, "Our new pastor, I'm puzzled by. There are persons he welcomes without a word of condemnation, persons our previous pastors said are damned and going to hell and so need our warning to repent. How can he treat them in such a welcoming way, so differently than our past pastors?" Came the reply, "Because he sees others as he is, while others see the same as they are."
* * *
In writing this work on the heart and inclusion, the mind went back to when I first encountered those revolving doors at stores, those that you step into quickly - they keep spinning. They do not open and close, only keep swinging, and you step into the openness. Then, you turn with the door until you step out the other side. The door keeps moving around and around.
The heart in love with the world is like that - a spontaneous openness. The Self does not open and close; instead, there is unceasing welcome through simple presence.
You do not grow to this openness; you grow back to it. You discover the heart is, always has been, natural welcome. Hence, listening heartfully, we learn to discern the false, debilitating agendas of those who spread hate, chaos, and foment distrust among us through the dissemination of incorrect information, including conspiracy theories, meant to pit person against person, race against race, religion against religion, political party against political party, nation against nation, ... rather than urge us to reverence all as equals among equals.
So, we must be honest about how much religion and government have been - are - principal actors in seducing many into a false belief of superiority. Hence, discrimination is based on wealth, economics, faith, race, ...
And could it be time we each admit the change begins with the change within us? That is, trying to transform social structures and common thought on equality is not enough? For example, it is one thing to protest for social justice, another for that to live deep within oneself, for one to become that which she speaks forth for. We need to touch that deep within us before seeking its realization outside us. We cannot just contend for equality; we must become that which breathes within us for everyone's life.
* * *
A saintly woman prayed, "My Lord, show me how much you love everyone." Later that night, she had a vision in her sleep. She was looking at herself in a mirror. While staring in the mirror, she heard a voice, "See, that is how much."
* * *
The following I wrote in March 31, 2006. I was a Christian pastor, having just been appointed to an unltra-conservative church and community in Florida.
I have a dear Buddhist friend. He was once in Christianity. As he knew it, Christianity did not allow a place for the deep spiritual practices Christ had led him into. He left the church and became a Buddhist teacher of Shambala training. One day he and I met at the church I served as pastor, and we prayed and meditated together. He is one of the most Christ-like persons I know. He is a man of the Love of God in Christ. He is filled with the Holy Spirit. He is a sacramental presence. I thank God for this wonderful man, my brother spiritually, always and forever.
I met a wonderful Muslim young lady in medical school. She had no sympathies with Muslim extremists, anymore than she would with Christian extremists. She was a humble, Christ-like woman. Her spirit was wonderful, was beautiful; she was a woman of love, though she suffered much and at a young age from an incurable disease. She is a sacramental presence.
I have a gay friend. He has the gift of humor. He is one of the kindest, most Christian persons I know. He is a man who loves his family much. He is humble, admitting his need for communion and true love shared with others. He is more Christ-like than many who claim to be Christian and who would say he is going to hell. I thank God this man is my friend and my spiritual brother. He is a sacramental presence.
Again, to sense the sacramental of the other, we need to enter the inner sanctuary and sense the sacramental - the sacred, Sacred - innate to our own selves. In this sense, meditation is one means to learn better how to be-with the world in our heart. And we discover our heart is the heart of everyone.
* * *
The Eastern Orthodox, Bishop Kallistos Ware (b. 1934), in his The Orthodox Way -
The "original sin" of man, his turning from God-centeredness to self-centeredness, meant first and foremost that he no longer looked upon the world and other human beings in a eucharistic way, as a sacrament of communion with God. He ceased to regard them as a gift, … So he no longer saw other persons and things as they are in themselves and in God, …
* * *
"Dear Buddhist friend" and "wonderful Muslim young lady" and "gay friend" were not permitted in my cultural and religious upbringing. I was taught not to see God-within them. In fact, as an evangelical pastor in a strongly conservative area in Florida, it was a risk to my reputation and career to admit the welcome of such "non-belongers." For me, it was more a risk to deny what my heart knew to be true. The heart knew better than I had been taught - the heart always knows the truth.
* * *
The puritanical exclusion of the "non-fitters-in" is one reason I, finally, dissociated from the institutional church and identifying as a Christian. I could not reconcile the exclusion most evangelicals taught with Jesus in the Gospels or with common sense. Rather, in "Buddhist," "Muslim," and "gay," I met Jesus, I met the excluded God - I met myself. Some may say it is ironic that love of Jesus from childhood and respect for the Gospels, which I was immersed in from a small lad, contributed to my leaving the church and institutional, nationalistic evangelical religion.
Hence, the late pastor, theologian, and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman, in his Jesus and the Disinherited, writes -
It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other. That is one reason why, again and again, there is no basic relationship between the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life and the ethical pretensions of our [Christian] faith.
It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings. I say this without rancor, because it is not an issue in which vicious human beings are involved. But it is one of the subtle perils of a religion which calls attention - to the point of overemphasis, sometimes - to one's obligation to administer to human need.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have heard a sermon on the meaning of religion, of Christianity, to the man who stands with his back against the wall. It is urgent that my meaning be crystal clear. The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed. What does our religion say to them?
When I see a wealthy, bombastic, bitter, older-aged, wealthy white man, who identifies as an evangelical Christian, ranting on and on before the nation for he could not succeed in helping overturn a presidential election in favor of white supremacist evangelicals, what do I see religion is saying to those whose backs are still against the wall? What am I to think when seeing that shiny cross attached to the collar, as he defames the nation and faith he claims to devote himself to? I see the impotence of much Christian religion in American to embody and encourage the radical social inclusiveness of the one these "Christians" claim to follow - Jesus. Yet, I also see a vast movement growing of persons who no longer will respect such a faith tradition that places racial specialness over human dignity. And in dehumanizing the other, one degrades herself; one becomes less human in treating others as not fully, equally human with oneself. In Christian terms, the church recrucifies Christ in the ill-treatment, the belittlement, of those with the back against the wall. And can any among us stand apart claiming to be innocent of this?
* * *
Inclusion is not merely a matter of an ideal, a noble, moral aspiration of goodness, decency, and correctness. Inclusion is only partly taught. In a sense, socially, inclusion is caught. When inclusion is in the environment, persons pick up this spirit of welcome naturally, for it accords with their true nature - that is, to say "I" is to say "We." We suffer as persons and society when denying equal rights, not merely for equal rights is right, so we should act with equality, but for to deny equality to another is a violation of our own selves.
* * *
Some black children rode our otherwise all-white-children school bus back in the 1960s. We had this one black family in our community, a family of five. The three children were Elijah, the oldest, Lilie Mae, the middle, and the youngest, Alberta. One day coming home from school on the crowded bus, someone threw a fake snake into the front right seat. It was made of rubber. This was intentional, an act of racial aggression. In that seat sat daily Elijah, Lilie Mae, and Alberta. Alberta jumped up, screaming aloud. Many of the white kids on the bus began laughing. To them, seeing this screaming, black child in terror was funny. Like I, they had been raised in a culture and religion that saw blacks as an inferior race. Somehow, this was not funny to me. I was shocked at this display of racial disrespect and toward, of all, a small child like I was.
Apparently, based on what we white children were taught, the "God" of our childhoods loved everyone equally. Still, "he" did not wish us to treat everyone equally. I could not see how the evangelical church of the South had championed a "God" and a "Jesus" who looked and thought like the prevalent culture of white, Christian, nationalistic superiority. Indeed, I could look on the wall of the church weekly to see the white, handsome Jesus - with flowing black hair reaching below his ears, when we were taught such length of hair was a sin -, looking more like a caucasian hippy in San Francisco than a Jewish rabbi walking the streets of Jerusalem and with an Aramaic parchment held reverently in his dark, Mediterranean-toned hands.
* * *
Thurman, living amid the struggle for racial justice in America, recognized for social justice, we must have a change of heart. Inclusion is not only something we need to integrate into society at all levels. While we hear much now about systemic racism, we need to envision and work together toward systemic inclusion. That is, inclusion has to be practical; it must get out of our head and arise out of our heart, then into our streets, government, schools, religious institutions, ... We cannot intellectualize ourselves to a world where persons are seen and treated as equals. And seeing others as equal to us is a step before treating them as equal to us. The seeing is of the heart, not the eyes.
* * *
So, it is not enough to take to the pen or the streets to champion equality. Thurman contends Jesus in the Gospels, not as popularly portrayed in the churches, pointed those about him in the First Century - under the tyranny of Roman rule -, to find the way to live justly amid injustice through finding the Sacred within oneself. We must discover equality within ourselves. And this is where our spiritual practice is involved - any healthy wisdom path will lead us to challenge our biases and welcome the heart opening to what before it saw as a threat, the enemy, and the non-belongers.
Still, we must learn to live with injustice before we can see ourselves to justice. Wise guides teach not merely to change the world but also to embody the world to become in the world as it now is - Jesus spoke of this inner place as "the kingdom of God" or "the kingdom of heaven." This arises from within, not outside us. In living with injustice, we get out of the head, of ideals and plans, into the embodiment of mutual-feeling. The injustice all around may lead us to the point of desperation; yet, this can lead us to the heart, where the answers are.
However, our private time in spiritual practice can become a hiding-away. Yet, if we are true to the Way, such time apart seeds the heart with kindness for all. We need not expect all prejudice will be gone from within us - some of it we may never see; still, every incremental step of welcome is a sign of how simply walking the Way, with honesty, not hiding, opens us more to living a spontaneous welcome. We find the inner-and-outer in harmony.
* * *
I am thankful to the above three acquaintances who welcomed me into their lives and blessed me to do the same regarding them. They blessed me to see them as they are, not as they appeared to be. They are not a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a gay, as I am not a male, a white, or anything anyone says. They are what I see when looking in the mirror. I found through these persons, and many more excluded from the cultural-religious dogma of my past, I most know who I am by knowing those who appear unlike me, even as I know them, not in denial of what they appear to be but through what they appear to be.
So, to say, "I welcome you" is to say "I welcome myself." That is treating the other as a sacramental presence - a living, walking, breathing temple of the one Light of Life.
* * *
We can recognize and feel the joy of movements toward inclusion. When I heard our Vice President, Kamala Harris, speak after she and President Biden were elected, I could not stop crying. I saw the women, people of color, and female children listening to her. For the first time in history, they could hear a newly elected Vice President's acceptance speech, one of color, a woman, and a child of immigrants. The tears were of joy and sorrow. This woman represented the opposite of the outgoing administration and much religion that has shaped America's mind. Her presence and words represented before the world the dead-dying past of exclusion, anti-immigration, Christian nationalism, racial hate, and white superiority in American. She reminded me of the past and of the future. Her presence said to me, "We've come a long way, and we have a long way to go." In seeing these gradual shifts to justice for all and equal reverence for everyone, we are encouraged not to lose heart.
* * *
In conclusion, to experience this inner awakening to our native equality, this arises within us. The actual feeling of unity comes from the heart. The heart is the only place we can go to realize, enjoy, and share this communion as sacramental presences living together in mutual-grace. This is Love. In this Love, we grow beyond toleration of others. We do not merely accept others; we reverence them. They become for us indicators of "God": Buddhas, Christs, holy beings walking Earth in variegated disguise.
* * *
*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
|
