Creativity

   Where does it come from

   How does it appear

   Who is in charge of it

   Is everyone creative

What if no one places us in mental prison but us

   Or spiritual prison

   Or a life sentence of sadness

If that were true there wouldn’t be any blame

   For our parents trapped in their own jails of limitation

   For our teachers trapped in thoughts of what good education has to be

   For our spiritual leaders trapped in defending god

   For our spouses trapped in unfulfilled dreams

   For us trapped in other’s definition of who we are

What would life be without blame

   Creative

   Free to be made in the Great Being’s Image

   Surprised by who we are

What if our prison doors are unlocked

   What if we are free to walk

   What if we are free to feel

   What if we are free to think

Could this be where creativity begins

   Would we dare to open the door of our prison if this were true

   To walk by our jailers supposed limitations for us

      Sentences not meant to be carried out in our lives

         All because the only judgments in life are our own

   Now we are free to embrace what is left

      Creativity

                                                          Katrina Revisited

Doubting has really gotten a bad name in most Community of Believers.  Now that I am older I have discovered doubt is often the very doorway to faith.  A good example of this has been my first hand experience in Hurricane Katrina and the life of New Orleans.  My family and I stayed in one of the local hotels as Katrina devastated our beloved city.

After the first few days of no response from FEMA and other government agencies we began to doubt in God.  We were praying for help, but no one came.  Our fears continued to mount and we pleaded with God.  Still the response if any was very slow.  What is the use of prayer if God doesn’t act?  Little did we know God was using our growing doubts to reveal our faith and its power in our life.  We were putting our trust in our government rather than God.  The largest natural disaster in the history of our country was too big for FEMA to handle and rightfully so.

Slow but sure God answered our prayers and used our doubts to lead us into faithfulness.  Church organizations of all types, sizes and shapes responded.  They came as workers with supplies to help us rebuild.  They provided shelter to the homeless.  They spoke words of hope in what appeared to be hopeless situations.  Individuals continue to come to enable us to restore our lives, even though it is four years later.  They have shown us that when we doubt God it is often because we are expecting God to come in a way that is limiting rather than life affirming.  When we truly say “Your Will be done!” we are suddenly touched by the power of God.   Prayers are answered in the Realm of that which cannot be Seen, not in the realm of that which can be seen.

Obviously God created the human condition filled with doubts.  I believe this happened so that we could learn how to see how faith really works.  This is what Katrina taught me and continues to teach me.

Dear Spiritual Companions,

This morning I was reading Neal Donald Walsch’s book “Home with God in a Life that never ends.”  I came across these startling words from God in reference to Walsch’s words about leaving this earth once he finished what he came to do, “It’s not something you have to do, it is something you choose to experience.”  I stopped and let those words roll over my spirit.  I have come to this life to experience not to do.  Could this be true?  Let’s see where this may take us.

Sometimes I am so busy doing life that I miss the experience of living it.  If I had a chance to experience the adventure called living what would I want to encounter?  I like the sunrises on my morning walks.  I love an opportunity to chat with someone as they meet their spirit birthing life.  I enjoy listening to good music.  I find great meaning in walking with the widow and orphan in God’s Service.  I am moved every time I sit down to this keyboard and watch God create through my fingers.  When I look at life experientially it comes alive with the Love of God.  That Love comes through my heart to create what I have decided to live in this human lifetime.

But what about the experience of suffering and pain.  Did I come to this time in history to encounter that also?  Obviously the answer is yes because it has and is happening from time to time.  I have met the disappointment of unfulfilled relationships.  I have lived through the deaths of those I have loved greatly.  I have seen cancer and illness as not the final word, but just an experience of being human.  I have been frustrated by my inability to make things better for myself and those I love.  I have walked with unforgiven people in the deepest parts of my being unable to let them go.  I have met unjust comments related to my innocent words or actions.  The underbelly of life is often the place where I experience God’s Love most powerfully.  I have often been tempted to do something to make these situations better than what they are, but have been usually met with defeat.  I have come to experience the wisdom of knowing this life is about letting it be what it is, not trying to fix it.  As I do that than life encourages me to pray or listen to the estranged and lost.  By doing nothing I find God’s Words forming in my heart to be spoken or lifted in Silence.  That is an experience worth having once or twice during this lifetime!

Recently I read some words from a 94 year old person in the Upper Room Daily Devotional Guide.  She said she was looking back over her life and asked herself this question, “When I die, will the world be a better place because I have lived or because I have died?”  I was struck by her words.  If I run around doing this or that, fixing this problem or that one – does that mean the world will have been a better place?  If like the monks in monasteries, at least those who sit and experience life with God, will the world be a better place because they have lived?  Or is sitting with God in or out of a monastery just a waste of time – does this mean the world is better because they have died?  If you really want to jump off the bridge, is the world a better place when the real pains in the butt die?  Or maybe they are the ones who help us the most to experience life in it’s fullest sense – meeting God in the worst moments of our lifetimes.  Life would have been so empty without their endless invitations to center in God.

Maybe the answer to the 94 year old woman’s question is both.  I think of Jesus.  Certainly life became better because of what he taught through his being in our midst.  Also his encounter of death, one of the most  unjust dying experiences, has taught us so much about the fact dying for your enemy opens Love to its fullest definition.  Truly being with one’s life and death reveals God at God’s most Powerful – a Being who dares to share our most fulfilling and challenging moments.  Real doing seems to come from Real Being in God.  Now that is something I hope to experience in the living of life.  What do you think?

Peace

Gary

Lighten up

   I hear my spirit speaking

Oh no not another diet

   Not even close

   This is not about the outer

   This is about the inner

Alright so are we talking about getting rid of something

   No we are talking about accepting everything

   Shining an inner light on the darkened parts of you

I am not sure this will work

   You may not like what you see in me

      I will be cast back into the inner darkness

Never happen

   For I created the darkness

      So why would anything be unacceptable

I always felt like You had set me up for failure

   Never being good enough

   Never doing it quite right

   Never being perfect as You are Perfect

Let me throw that away for you

   Into the fiery pit

Aha I knew it

   There had to be a hell

No you have it wrong

   No hell just a purifying fire

   Where everything is turned into Love

Without a hell there is no fear

   Right you are

      Now you have been lightened up

Dear Spiritual Companions,

In my devotional time I have a picture of Jesus that I look at for five minutes.  Sometimes we chat and sometimes we are simply quiet together.  It is one of the spiritual disciplines I use and it is called the practice of darshan.  This morning Jesus and I had a conversation which, as always, took place in my thoughts.  Jesus was telling me that He is a Giver and I am a receiver.  Pretty simple and to the point, but as usual that which is simple can also give us a lot to ponder in our spirit.  

It isn’t much a of a stretch to see Jesus as a Giver.  He gave us so many insights of how to live life to the fullest.  There are so many teachings recorded in the Bible – Love your enemies, be the light of the world, provide for the widow and orphan and so much more.  Jesus also gave His Life so we could all live.  He, and for me this is His most significant teaching, turns our thinking upside down.  What we thought is one way actually is another.  You must be born anew, not meaning going back into our mother’s womb, but rather to live in a new way.  This tells me I need to be a receiver  to begin to understand Jesus’ Message.

One of the hardest things about being a receiver is to let the other person or Being give to us.  When they pass the plate, for any worship event, we need to take rather than to give.  What would happen in our Holy Places if this happened?  Let’s be honest, so much of our giving is done for recognition.  We are trying to prove to ourselves or others that we are worthy to be alive.  How silly?  If God is a Giver, and God is One in all World Religions, then we just need to accept what is given to us.  Part of this human adventure is to accept life as gift.  There is nothing we need to do to claim a place on this earth.  We are already here and we didn’t do anything to get here.  Two individuals we didn’t even know got together in love and created us.  Yes we were then born and started receiving care right away.  In no time at all, however, we began to be fed the idea we need to do something to earn our gifts.  Say something, smile, wave hello, walk, give a hug etc.  Ever since we have been told the same story over and over again.  No wonder we have such a hard time believing we are here to be a receiver.

As I mentioned earlier Jesus, and in fact all spiritual leaders, are inviting us to see our existence in new and different ways.  Life simply is not the way it appears to be.  What seems to be bad can often turn into the most beautiful event in our life time.  What we think was caused by our action or inaction is simply the way life is.  What we think is an Act of an angry god, like a hurricane, is actually an act of nature.  When we become receivers it is like moving the curtain of life and the way things have always been to see what is actually going on behind the scenes.  Now we can see how being a receiver stops us from having to run around fixing everything and everyone.  We let life be what it is because we have seen behind the curtain of physical life to see into God’s Spiritual Reality.  There is no Wizard of Oz fixing life there, but rather a God simply sharing our lives.  It is true what is said in this benediction, “Pray continuously, give thanks no matter what happens, for by God’s Grace nothing can utterly defeat you!”

We are promised a life of no longer being responsible for fixing things.  The pressure of the human existence has been lifted so now we can take our receiving position of simply accepting life as it comes.  We now give as receivers.  That may sound like a paradox, but in truth the receivers of God have a much easier time knowing when to act and when to let life be.  There are times to speak and times to say nothing.  In our silence God the Giver can now speak without our help.  The only help we provide is by being still with another so they can hear God, which by the way can be much more difficult for us then rushing in to save the day.  20 years into my marriage I came home from the office and my wife was telling me about the problems she had been having.  I immediately started to offer her possible ways to solve her problems.  It was as if I ripped open my shirt and there it was written, “Super husband – Here I am to save the day!”  She just looked at me and said, “Can you just shut up?”  I said, “You don’t want me to do anything.”  She said, “No, just listen!”  I can listen and suddenly life was so much easier.  I didn’t have to fix her problems, but rather listen and be with her through them.  Being a receiver of her life is more demanding because I need to truly be there, rather than somewhere else figuring out how to make things better, which by the way never worked! 

God gives us life and we receive it as it is.  Now we experience every moment as it is.  We no longer live in the past or future trying to fix past mistakes or future problems.  We are born anew to this moment and everyone following it.

Peace,

Gary

I sit in a boat that has sprung a leak

   I pray to God

      Please save me and fix this problem

I wait

   Nothing happens except the water rises

I pray once more for help

   Still nothing happens except the water rises

I cry out to God

   How long Oh Lord

      Still nothing but now the water covers the boat

I can continue to pray

   Or I can swim to shore

      Wisely I swim to shore as I pray for strength with every stroke

I am able to swim faster than ever before

   As I sit on the beach I ask God

      Why didn’t you answer my prayer

God replied I did

   But the boat sank I said

God replied it is too easy to save boats

   A little magic and poof

But it is harder to swim to shore together God added

   Why I asked

      Because I needed your help God replied

So the boats of life will continue to sink I said

   Yes the challenges of life happen to everyone God replied

      But they don’t matter as much as us working together

   I don’t cause the problems of life God said

      Although I created their possibility

Why I asked

   No answer just mystery God said

      But if you walk with Me through them

Swim to the shore together I said

   Yes and God smiled mysteriously

      Now you can see how we are always One

It is nice sitting on the shore with You God

   I agree God said

      We sat in silence for a long time

Dear Friends,

I wrote this letter to my church family right before Katrina hit New Orleans.

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high…..”  I have always loved that song from the Broadway Musical “Porgy and Bess.”  Little did I know that one day I would be in the area where those words fit perfectly.  Summertime has always been my favorite time of year.  It started with my school summer vacation and ended with the wonderful vacation trips my family would take every year.  I am the kind of person who does not like to be cold so the warmer weather suited me fine.  Playing baseball, swimming and taking it life easy was my cup of tea.

As we find ourselves in another hot summer my spirit is rejoicing.  Things slowing down a bit, even in the church, gives me an opportunity to be with God in various ways.  My daily walks on the levee doing my intercessory prayers are filled with the beauty of God’s World.  Heavy humidity, the muggies as we call them, cause me to walk a bit slower.  Pouring rain with potential flooding, as well as the endless threat of a hurricane remind me of the fragility of life.  Running from air conditioned homes to air conditioned cars to air conditioned offices and restaurants remind me of how life runs hot and cold.  Isn’t it interesting how our surroundings speak to us when we look at them?  We can even see God speaking through them to say, “How do you like this life I have given to you?”

Wondering thoughts like these remind me of the wandering we do through life.  Where does it lead us?  What is it all about?  Are there even any answers to this thing we call life?  Are we trying to figure it out to make sense from our experiences or can we see our experiences making sense of us?  That last question is a spiritual one.  It is like a Zen Koan.  It leads us not to an answer, but to a lived life.  How can we not live life you may ask?  By centering on old hurts or future worries.  By hanging on to long gone lived moments.  By not letting be that which simply is.  How many times have we tried to change ourselves, another or life itself?  We don’t like what we  have so we fix it to be something else.  Suddenly living isn’t easy and the fish aren’t jumping but we are sure are jumpy.  Unease is now what we feel.

So what do we do with this God?  “Come to me all who are heavenly laden and I will give you rest.”  Rest from having to fix this thing we call life.  Rest from running around doing so many different things.  Rest from those endless judgmental thoughts running through our minds.  Rest……  Live with it this summertime when you are too hot to do anything.  Live with it when life is uncontrollable.  Live with it when there are no other options.  When I have dared to live in that way I have found a God who continues to rest from God’s creative labors.  God doesn’t rush around fixing everything and everyone.  Sometimes God lets life be what it is.  No wonder that first Creation Story ended with a day of rest.

What does this leave us with? – “Summertime and the living is easy……..”

Peace,

Gary

P.S.  I sit here four years later reflecting on the effects of Katrina.  It was uncontrollable.  We took one thing at a time.  We still have a long way to go.  BUT and that is the big word – BUT God is still doing a new Creative Thing in New Orleans.  We are putting not only the physical reality of our city back together, but we are en example of how “Disaster is gift!”  I have met more wonderful people,  from all over this wonderful country, since Katrina that I never would have met.  I have seen a spirit and energy in New Orleans that disaster could not defeat!  I have seen God using us as an example for everyone who has met with disaster in their lives, which by the way is everyone.  We are only defeated when we see ourselves that way.  The living is Easy in the Big Easy because we trust in a power greater than us – God by whatever Name you call God.  Easy not in the sense of not having problems – NO we have problems, but Easy in the sense of God helping us to overcome all things.  An old Spiritual said, “We shall overcome one day.”  I believe we overcome every day we show up for life – no matter what happens or what season of life we find ourselves.

Dear Spiritual Companions,

I read something in my morning devotional time.  Someone once said, “Something isn’t a problem unless you make it a problem.”  I bent down and picked up my socks because that statement knocked them off.  Recently my Red Sox lost in the playoffs.  All the worry and concern I have put into them winning went for naught.  Problem or no problem?  Alright most people won’t see the seriousness of this issue unless they take sports seriously.  How about this one – my pants seem to be a little tighter around my waist.  I do the laundry so I can’t blame it on washing my pants in hot water and them shrinking.  Problem or no problem?  Again some people may think this is a pretty superficial issue.  How about this one – my wife of 43 years was diagnosed with breast cancer this summer.  She had a lumpectomy and is almost done with her radiation treatments.  Problem or no problem?

We all have problems. at least according to the usual way of defining the challenging events of life as problems.  What we do with them is what counts.  Take the Red Sox defeat.  A pitcher who has not given up one earned run in the previous 27 innings of pitching in the playoffs of previous years, gave up three runs this year which allowed the other team to win.  When he walked off the field some of the fans booed him.  Obviously they saw what he did as a problem.  How often do we boo ourselves when we don’t do things perfectly even though 98% of the time we have?  How often do we do the same thing to someone we love because they have not been perfect and their action or inaction has hurt us?  Even worse is when someone does something right and gets accused of wrong doing.  President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize and people accuse him of not deserving it or receiving it because of some political motive! Obviously it is possible to make a problem out of something that is good.  I am fairly sure we have done this to ourselves.  In other words this behavior is called “never good enough.”  No matter what we do or someone else does we can always find some kind of issue with it.  This is definitely finding a problem when there isn’t one.  Sort of like my pants fitting a bit tighter than usual.

Now comes the challenging one – the event in our life which is definitely a problem.  How can I not see my wife’s cancer as anything but a problem?  It has been painful, it has disrupted our lives, it isn’t fair that such a good person has cancer and it has threatened her very existence!  All of that is true, but why define it as a problem?  Could it not as easily be defined as an opportunity?  An opportunity to see how pain does not have the last word.  Maybe one can see how it is alright to acknowledge pain and learn how to take care of oneself.  We are often very good at taking care of others, but not so good at taking care of ourselves.  Or how about an opportunity to see how natural it is to have one’s life disrupted.  It happens all of the time.  We plan to have a picnic and it rains.  We plan to have a wonderful vacation and the weather isn’t right.  We plan to have a job go just so and it doesn’t.  Disruptions in life happen all the time, so why do we think it so awful when things don’t go the way we planned?  The answer is found in the way we expect life to be.  When it doesn’t go the way we want it to we can see certain  circumstances in life as a problem.  Could it possibly be easier to see disruptions as an opportunity to accept life on its terms?  I believe we are much less upset with life if we choose the latter, which then allows us to take care of the real opportunity - to learn how to care for ourselves when life doesn’t go the way we planned.  If we take this a step further we can see this idea also fits life being unfair.  If life being the way we want it to be is our definition of fairness we will find ourselves being unhappy a lot of the time.  For example, cancer happens.  There is no fairness or unfairness in it.  It is what we do with it when it happens to us that counts.  Again by not centering on the unfairness of cancer we can now take care of ourselves.  It is not easy having cancer.  There is the pain, the fears, the reality of life being turned upside down.  These are the opportunities that await anyone who has cancer.  Contained in this is of course is the possibility of death.  From time to time in life we are given opportunities to deal with the end of this life.  The older I become the more I see those times as gift.  I do not want to go kicking and screaming into the night when I die, but rather peacefully as I make my transition back into full consciousness of God’s Love.

When we accept problems only being problems when we choose them to be we are faced with the ultimate threat – Responsibility!  Our life is what we choose it to be.  I am talking about our inner responses to outer experiences.  No matter what occurs in life, good or bad, we are the only one responsible for how we will deal with it.  I can choose to be really upset with the Red Sox losing, my pants being tighter or my wife having cancer or NOT.  By staying upset I am running away from being able to respond to what has happened.  There is a natural amount of time to be upset depending on our inner needs, but to stay there is running away from responding.  Once I have responsibly dealt with my pain. I can say there is always next year for the Sox.  I can do something about the tightness of my pants by choosing to change my eating habits or getting bigger sized pants.  I can now deal with my feelings and thoughts about my wife’s cancer so that I can be there for her.  Those are responsible choices which show me that life isn’t a problem, but rather an opportunity to live a fuller and richer existance.  I am not saying this is easy, for it does entail hard inner work.  BUT it may be easier than to complain and choose to see life as endless problems where someone else or something else is responsible for my life.  To give our power away is to give our life away.

What do you think?

Gary

Judgment

   What is your first thought

   What is your first feeling

There are all kinds of judgments

   The one at the end of a trial

   The one related to what one needs to do

   The one about how another acts or looks

   The one we use on ourself

      What is your first thought about these judgments

      What is your first feeling

Now the biggy

   God’s Judgment of us

      What is your first thought

      What is your first feeling

How about this thought

   God does not judge us

      Now or at our time of death

If we dare to believe this then

   Judge not less you be judged makes sense

      For the only one sitting in judgment is us

So why do we judge

   Because rationally it seems logical

So what

   From God’s spiritual perspective life isn’t logical

So we are free

   Free at last

      Time to live full of grace

Dear Friends,

The month of June is a very interesting month.  There are graduations to attend.  The heat is on with all the wonderful humidity in the New Orleans area.  There is also Father’s Day.  So many things to be aware of in our lives.  I was watching Family Feud recently and the question 100 hundred people had to answer was, “What is the most sad and happy time in a child’s life?”  The number one answer for most people was graduation.  Interesting isn’t it?  I invite you to ponder the meaning of this in your life.  Back to June.  Some of us like the heat and humidity,  Others though find this time of year very stressful.  Father’s Day brings its own issues.  Great joyful memories fill some of us, while others are sad over the loss of an opportunity to be close with someone very important in our lives.  On a recent week of retreat I read these words from Scott Peck, “To have a loving relationship with one’s spouse and children is a great blessing.  Not many people can say that about their lives.”

Where am I going with these thoughts?  When I sit down to write I rarely know what I am going to say.  It is a special time I have to connect with God who moves my fingers over the keyboard forming words that come from my heart in God.  I watch God unfold before my eyes and look up to see what appears on the screen.  Earlier in my life, if I was going to do anything like public speaking, I thought I needed everything written out ahead of time.  That thought and resulting action was good for one period of time in my life.  Now things have changed.  I think and contemplate what I am going to say ahead of time and then right before I am ready to speak or write I pray and say, “Let Your spirit lead me Oh God.”  I have also found this a helpful spiritual discipline in living life itself.  By no means am I saying this is the way for everyone.  How presumptuous that would be on my part!  What I am saying though is life seems to work much better when we let God direct it.

Now let’s see how this fits into the month of June.  What happens when there are major transitions in our lives like graduations?  Do we look at them as an ending or a beginning, or both?  How do we handle weather situations that make us uncomfortable?  Is it the same as the life conditions that make us uneasy?  What do we do with unmet expectations of those we love like Fathers?  What do we do with unmet expectations of life?  The answers to those questions tell us how much suffering we are encountering in our daily life.  Jesus encouraged us to suffer for our faith not for expectations unmet.  We certainly can suffer when we stand up for who God is and the way God operates in life.  It is a challenge to let God be God.  It is an even greater challenge to let life be what life is.  By doing that we live in the moment.

As the Buddha said, “The suffering we unnecessarily feel comes from unmet expectations or as He would call it attachments to things or outcomes in life.”  But just as importantly it can come from losing this moment.  Graduation is wonderful when we don’t have to worry about the past or future, when we can rejoice in the moment of culmination of hard work for someone we love.  Heat and humidity is bearable when we deal with the now rather than seeing  June as just the beginning of another beastly hot summer in Louisiana.  Father’s Day is good when we can let our Fathers know not only of the best moments we have spent with them, but also the pain from the lost or hurtful moments.  This kind of sharing creates an opportunity to not repeat past mistakes with our own children.  Forgiveness now can even become a reality with our Fathers dead or alive.

Just a few thoughts from my spirit to yours.  What do you think?

Peace

Gary