Dear Spiritual Companions,

In the Christian World this is Holy Week.  It is our opportunity to reflect on the gift of powerlessness.  This thought is of course counter cultural.  Our culture lives with the thought that we are in power.  It is an illusion and a very harmful one.  To think we are in control of our lives means we have to control the world around us.  Impossible!  Can’t be done!  To think otherwise creates endless sorrow.  As the Buddhist say, suffering comes from our attachments and there is none bigger than the thought we are all powerful.

The gift of the life of Jesus, as found in this week, is discovering who God is.  Try this question on for size – If God is All Powerful can God make a rock big enough that God can’t move it?  This is the description of powerlessness.  God created everything and then let it BE!  No more interference, in the sense of fixing things.  In a sense God tied God’s Hands!  Jesus does not call down the angels of heaven to free Him from the Cross.  If people try to kill Him and His message so be it.  You have to do what you have to do is the message of life!  Unlike human parents who when asked why the child has to do something and then says, “Because I said so!” – God gives us free will.  Like a baby learning how to walk who falls often, we too have to fall a lot of times in our spiritual journey to finally be able to take God’s Hand.  The Hand is always there, but we are not always willing or able to take it.

It is hard to let life be what it is.  It is even harder to let others do things, or say things that harm us when it isn’t true.  Life sometimes isn’t fair!  As much as we would like it to be otherwise, it simply isn’t fair.  If we are unable to accept this fact, we spend our lives being fixers.  We try to fix others.  Surely if I explain what they are doing is harmfuul to me, they will come to realize what they are doing is wrong and change their behavior!  Jesus’ response is different, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Or we try to fix the situations in our lives.  I didn’t do anything to receive this kind of treatment or to have this happen in my life so if I fight against it or say it isn’t so then it will change!  Jesus’ response, “Into Your Hands I commit my Spirit.”  Life simply is what it is.  To change that fact is to spend one’s life in powerless endeavors.

I came to a realization recently, or as I have come to define it – a resurrection.  By watching  God’s powerlessness, not calling down the angels to save God’s son, or simply letting life be what it is for me, I saw True Power!  The most powerful person is not the one who can makes things happen or change people - fix things.  No Power comes from accepting life as it is.  We no longer spend our lives in the illusion of being a Fixer.  Now we are the person who is free to be with life and others in the most trying circumstances and not have to change it .  It takes great strength to be with another in their pain instead of being busy fixing it.  As Ram Dass said, “It is morally and ethically immoral to take someone else’s pain away.”  If God doesn’t take our pain away, why do we think we are supposed to or can.  The World and the Religious leaders cried out to Jesus on the cross, “You healed others and declared yourself to be God so save yourself by jumping down off the cross.”   The world tries to the bitter end to Fix things.  Religion says if you believe this or do that you will not have pain.  It doesn’t work and that is what Jesus teaches us as he dies on the Cross.

There is a Resurrection coming if we dare to change our thinking and join God in being powerless!

Peace

Gary