Awakening

My friend Alex finally has it taped. Full, as usual of his exuberant excitement, he announced, "These people don't receive bacause they don't give. There's this church in San Franscisco that has people following the 2,4,7,10 routine. Church twice a week, ( forget), (forget), and give10%! They get £144. (I'm pretty sure he forgot this is £144 every two weeks. Surely?) That's enough to live on, they just waste it ... " Mike stopped him, and brought the reflection time back on track. I had just spent a harrowing thirty minutes with a homeless alcoholic who'd arrived at this place after being forced to watch her son be tortured and raped. Sometimes, this work is just too hard. I had no words for her, I just held her, and let her sob. I wasn't paying much attention to Alex.

That was yesterday. Today I am warm and comfortable, and having done all I can to let Michelle's nughtmare pass, I am returning to Alex's formula for getting street people into church.

I see several rather obvious flaws in his argument. If it had been a matter of arithmetic, wouldn't Jesus have thought about it first?

"You are Peter, and upon this abacus I will build my church!" No. The whole point of the gospel is to wake people up to the wholeness and fullness of life that is the discovery of the Kingdom of God (heightened awareness, full consciousness) that is within us all. You don't get there by acquiring a set of religious brownie points. You open yourself up to your suffering and to the suffering of others and let it teach you what is true. This is the foolishness of the cross. This is the heart of Christian teaching.

I do try playing the numbers game, and I always lose. Pray every day, go to confession once a month, and, and - all the other musts and shoulds that afflict religious people. Such nonsense just brings failure with attendant guilt and feelings of unworthiness and hopelessnes. Which might be preferable, come to think of it, to the pride and superiority that would ensue from succeeding ... Jesus was tender towards we failures, but awful towards the proud. I have to think of some way of letting Alex know I think he's talking out of his arse. I will, perhaps, tell him a story:

"About a year ago I met a funny looking young man who bore an uncanny likeness to Matt Smith. 'He's gone to park the Tardis' I remember saying when someone commented on his disappearance one day. He was burning with this vision for street people. He carried a notebook with him everywhere, he was determined to discover what our people needed. He wrote down what they said. He was listening.

Then he discovered a church in San Fransico who found a magic formula. He wrote it in his notebook, and now he he is telling people what they need. He has stopped listening."

 

 

 

The Contemplative Mind

I am probably the least qualified to contemplate the contemplative: I plash about in the shallows with a grudging acknowledgement that I need to get a lot more serious about it  to make a real difference to my life. So I say, but I look back at that sentence and begin to laugh, because the striving to do better, get more, reach a goal - even that of becoming a saint - really isn't what it's all about. No, not at all. Nevertheless, I made an important point, I don't know a lot. So you won't find any great wisdom here, just chatter. 

I am thinking about non-dual thinking. A gem of the contemplative, and a key to unlocking imaginary prisons as well as taking down some serious barriers. I have been exposed to this teaching for about five years, coming in at the time I needed it most.( Long story, never mind. )

I once held very firmly to some ideas. I was staunchly left-wing. I was a particular brand of Evangelical Christian, I had strict views on how to do this, and accomplish that. I made a habit of making other people's causes my own. I jumped onto bandwagons (providing they were heading in the 'right' direction.)  I was, all-unknowing, schooled by my upbringing, to react in a certain way to certain stimuli. I knew who the bad guys were. My thinking mind was set to automatic , and my responses were of the knee-jerk variety. 

I am no longer a staunch Evangelical Christian. So quoting St Paul here is going to seem a little counter-intuitive, but I tell you, if you sift St Paul, and don't take everything he says as gospel, there's some thunderingly good stuff in there. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." He writes, which is to say, find a practice that you are comfortable with ( and there are myriad to choose from) that stops you thinking the same old crap just because it's what you do. Wonderful. Then there's my signature verse, Paul's letter to the Galatians. Chapter 5 verse I: It is for freedom that Christ has set you free, so do not therefore subject yourselves once more to a yoke of slavery." 

Now leaving Christ out of it for a moment, no offence meant, but here is a great invitation to realise you CAN be free from thought patterns and behaviours that keep you miserable, and you  can also return to them if you don't stand guard over your heart and mind. 

For YEARS - and here's a prime example of pre-programmed-thinking - I didn't get the irony of evangelisation that promises 'freedom from sin and death ' and then immediately loaded the new convert down with a list of do's and don'ts longer than your arm. Some freedom.

I am letting my fingers tap away without me again. Non-dual thinking: no knee-jerks. Do you think in black and white? Well here's the thing, your brain isn't called 'grey matter' for nothing. Contemplatives don't judge or pre-judge. Everything is as it is.  the key question is never,"Is this position/person/point of view right?" Rather, "How much of this is right?" Hold the judgement. 

I haven't  put that well. Way back when Adam and Eve were living up in the garden, they were told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge."Right?  Well, no, they weren't. They were strongly advised not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There's a difference. The wisdom hidden in this myth, is: stay away from the battle-lines. Don't take sides. Don't judge. Stay whole, stay balanced.

I watched a guy on You-tube today rant for ten minutes on the illegitemacy of Obama's Presidency because of the persistent myth that he has a forged birth certificate. Rant rant rant ... This person's obsession, which was beyond hatred, fuelled by  his conviction of his 'rightness' had quite obviously poisoned  his life. I left him a message:

"Your behaviour is irrational. Stop trying to be right, start trying to be happy."

There! That's it. 

  

Quizzing at 'The Jolly Brew'

My friend Wendy and I know A LOT about much that would be of little interest to most people, and were confidant enough to put our knowledge to the test at the Monday Night Quiz at The Jolly Brewmaster, which is a nice little pub off the Bath Road in Cheltenham.  Sometimes we came first, usually when we'd managed to dredge up from somewhere the winner of the Belgian Grand Prix in 1985, or the identity of the current possessor-Continent of the Ryder Cup.

History and Literature we aced, Geography we were about as good as anyone else at, it was always Sport that proved our Achilles Heel. (Yes, we know our Greek Mythology too.) However, it was a lot of fun, and for a while there, we were the team to beat. (A very short while, I add, in the interests of veracity.)

Between sipping our wine, adressing the sartorial short-comings of our fellow drinkers, and putting the world to rights, Wendy and I would find a few minutes to be thankful.

I suppose being thankful is more usually considered to be an activity reserved for churches. Nevertheless, we made time for it because we were in the mood, and secular gratitude is as good for you as the sacred kind. I expect you are wondering what we were grateful FOR, and as you have borne patientky with me this far, I am going to get all serious on you and let you know. 

We were thankful that we live in a society where we, two women could walk safely in the streets at night, sit down in a pub and compete in an intellectual exercise on equal terms with men. We were grateful for the past struggles of others that meant that we had grown up without the fear of illness or hunger. We were indebted too, for safe childbirth and flushing toilets, and a thousand other things of greater or lesser importance in the wider scheme of things. 

We didn't always like the government, but appreciated the fact that it wasn't going to throw us into prison for what we thought. We are indifferently religious, on aggragate, and celebrated the fact that we didn't have to conform to anybody else's notions of right of wrong, and did not have someone else's beliefs and practises foisted on us if we chose to ignore them. 

I guess History (with a capital H) teaches us to take a longer view. Two hundred years ago, our lives would have been very different. After all, it's not so long ago that women were chattels, no more than wombs handed on from father to husband with an unthinking disregard for individual rights.

If I try to carry on, I shall get flustered, and lose sight of any point. I'm trying to make, which is anyway, made better by Stephen Pinker. Things were bad, and in many places still are, but there IS an evolution in human consciousness that is making them better. 

Commonplace injusticies of the past are unthinkable now.  At least here, in England, today. Our British history teaches that subject peoples who do not own even themselves can, with courage, tenacity and perseverance,  win through to freedom. The proof of it is here: two free, independent-minded, feisty women sitting in a pub with a glass of wine pitting their fading wits against others on equal terms, and, occasionally, winning. 

Stephen Pinker:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0W9sSqeJnA&sns=em

http://youtu.be/KJ9Ad6s8g7I