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Amish Homestead. Easton, ME
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Farid ud-Din Attar (b. 1100s), Muslim-Sufi poet -
Sometimes you're chased away from the Kaaba;
at other times mysteries are revealed to you
in a heathen's temple.
* * *
A Wayfarer sees the Beloved in everything,
looks at a pagan temple and sees only the Beloved's home,
hears and listens to the Almighty's words
and finds strength only through that Great One.
*The Conference of the Birds. Trans. Sholeh Wolpe.
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beliefs divide
Love unites
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From my rearing in evangelical Christianity, I received in loving Jesus and affirming his love for me and everyone a place from which to grow to welcome my brothers and sisters in all wisdom paths. This emergence out of the intolerance of religious fundamentalism was a decades-long flight and oft painful, at times agonizing. I often felt alone, unaccompanied. Yet, trust in divine Presence and the grace of integrity never deserted me. To feel and know a Love reaching beyond the intolerance of my past to include all lovers of truth and Truth was well-worth the pain, ostracism, and losses - including career, finances, relationships. I could say that often I was heartbroken, yet my heart was never broken - the heart was too much in love with Love to be broken, even though it oft felt a deep wounding.
There is so much to taste, so to speak, so much truth to know outside any one way, any version of reality. Likewise, love flows into us the more we open ourselves to the ones who appear different from us. Yet, exclusion is where much of humanity is, caught in restricting ideologies - cultural, religious, political, ... We have been trained to fear what appears unlike us, including the beliefs unlike ours. The pride reeking in so much exclusion is the mask of fear. Only Love heals the fear; only Love opens a closed heart.
However, no need to judge. Only love. We each are on a sacred quest, whether or not we are awake to that. Truth is already seeking us; Love is already finding us. The otherness in the other is a mirror of the otherness within ourselves waiting to be lovingly embraced as belonging.
I ask ...
Why live on a small island,
when you can live there
and everywhere else in the world?
* * *
Thomas Merton, the most esteemed Christian contemplative of the 20th century, writes of an experience in Sri Lanka. It occurred on the pilgrimage in which he died six days later, after speaking at a conference on interfaith dialogue.
The path dips down to Gal Vihara: a wide, quiet, hollow, surrounded with trees. A low outcrop of rock, with a cave cut into it, and beside the cave a big seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. The vicar general, shying away from 'paganism,' hangs back and sits under a tree reading the guidebook. I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing ... without trying to discredit anyone or anything - without refutation - without establishing some other argument.
*The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton.
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When moving once, I placed the large, hand-carved, from-Thailand Buddha in a plastic trash bag. He had traveled here-and-there with me for over fifteen years. This Buddha got me in trouble - Jesus did, too.
I was a progressive, inclusive Christian pastor, serving evangelical churches. I, likewise, served as a professor for a time in a conservative evangelical Christian college. And many Christians could not fathom how a Jesus-loving man could appreciate the Buddha, including carrying a Buddha image around - and some would not tolerate it.
Not by mistake, in 2006 did my Clinical Chaplain Supervisor identify on her final assessment that my faith was Baptist Buddhist. A little, rural Southern Baptist church in Tylertown, Mississippi, had ordained me a professional Christian minister in 1984. Later, I held joint-membership as Baptist and Episcopal. I, long before this - in the 1990s - had started studying Buddhism and engaging its practices. I never claimed to be anything plus Buddhist, and I was okay not being identified with any religion. If someone wanted to call me Christian, or Buddhist, or nothing, or nobody, that was fine.
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Now, as to Buddha getting me in trouble, or making me a trouble-maker ... I have written of the United Methodist congregation in Florida that split, as we say down-the-middle, one side against me and one supportive. - I was serving that church under my Baptist ordination ... strange, I know, but true. Well, there was a woman in there whom I will call Janice. Janice had been the national leader of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She was a good organizer and had led protest marches. The Mothers Against Drunk Driving leader became the Some Church Members Against Pastor Brian protest leader.
Janice organized a protest march, which proceeded to march around the church property in full-public view. Possibly, it was meant to humiliate me. I do not know. I found it humorous but acted respectfully about it by kindly ignoring it when the line of protestors marched by me.
Margaret, a dear friend and member of the congregation, told me what had really upset Janice. I had church members over for a prayer gathering in my home. I had an altar with Christian images and a fountain. A Buddha image was there - the Thailand Buddha. Janice, somewhat tolerant of her progressive Jesus-loving pastor, could not tolerate him being a Buddha-adoring pastor. So, the fight to oust me began, lasting for months. I did not fight. They fought and fought. I just went about providing ministry, not letting their actions deter me, serving those receptive.
Margaret contacted me several years later. She said Janice was sorry about some things she had done during that time. I have no idea what those things were, and I did not ask. I did not need to know. And a decade later, here I write before an altar - Kuan Yin to the left, the plastic-bag Buddha to the right, and Jesus in prayer looking into the clouds in the center.
I still love Jesus. I still adore Buddha. I love Truth. I am no longer in the church, and that is okay. However, I am thankful for that Gospel of love taught in the Baptist church of my upbringing. Without that, I might never have been challenged to embody that Christlike love by opening the heart beyond the intolerance of my youth. No, I am not saying I have fully embodied such love. But I have been inspired to intend to, and, hopefully, I partially do and sometimes fully do. I do not know - Love knows.
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And now back to the Buddha in the plastic bag that day of moving ... - as I carried the Buddha to place him in my truck, I commenced laughing. I realized the Buddha really would not mind putting him in the bag. Anyway, I covered him well to ready him for storage until I would find a place to rent. Buddha would be just fine in a bag in storage. And when I covered him, I did so reverently, and that laughter was reverent, too.
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Merton grew from an early myopic Catholicism to inclusion, which relished the truth in Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism. Once, on that trip to Asia, after standing before a huge Buddha image, he wrote of having found, finally, what he had always longed to discover. His Catholicism could not contain the longing of his heart - fortunately for him. Likewise, the Muslim Sufi Attar's Beloved - our Beloved - could not be held in Islam; he met his God outside the fences of orthodox Islam, for Presence is fully present in what many would assign as off-limits to those in love with Grace.
The heart communes with Life
where others say
no-Life
The heart is interested
in neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy -
only loves Truth
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When you grow deeply in any spiritual path, it opens beyond your personal or group religious or spiritual preferences and, so, prejudices. In that case, the way opens from beliefs to truths and, eventually, to Truth beyond all truths.
The Truth is not a destination. It reveals Itself moment-to-moment, in a diversity of disguises. Even a single truth can unveil depths we never dreamed lived inside and outside it.
When we choose truth,
which is to choose love,
we never know where
we are headed - yet, an adventure,
it is!
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
*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.
*To contact Brian, write to LotusoftheHeart@gmx.com .
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