Consider those in a church who look around and assess the character of those in proximity and take comfort. Pity those who find strength and feel “fellowship” or succor there. For consider that working with such poor material that they will weave. They will accept and extrapolate these “facts” and “observations” before them and surmise things and fear things and “know” things of the moral and spiritual deficiencies and depravities of the world outside. (Including, of course, practitioners who believe differently elsewhere).

For, verily I tell thee, any with any degree of integrity in the interface of the spiritual and the physical will not be found near an organized established religion; they will avoid it and go quietly and humbly but not willingly when obligated. Pity those who see “integrity” and “spirituality” and “goodness” and even “reality” confined among the ranks where it patently is not.

Beware those who act to order the world around them to embrace and assimilate to this “standard” and, ultimately, to enforce and mandate upon the world around them their “superior” “values”. Keep a healthy and wary fear of those who strive to conserve this dichotomy. Have utmost compassion for women who fall prey to the delusion and acqueise and are willing welcoming party to the conservation of an altogether other dichotomy of misogyny which lives and breathes life in such environment, bindings bolstered by some ersatz ‘word’.

How am I grateful?
Let me not count the ways.

For they are many and as multitudinous as the ways that I love.

Let me reminisce . . .

There are sundry, numerous and specific ways in which I my ego would make the world to be. But I don’t allow myself to dwell on any of them. The world as it is, is already partly a creation of my making, just as it is an equal share of all the creations of all the perspectives of all the people, very few of them American, actually. And even less of them white. I consider both of those facts a good thing. A goodly half aren’t even men. And I consider that a very, very, very good thing. Because the world is as we created it – some in opposition to others, some in spiritual agreement, some on a quest to eliminate the world of rivals, through proselytization or through sheer meanness and control of the “rules” or through a more direct means of violence or through the more indirect means of neglect and belittlement – I am of the certain belief that the world as is is as it is meant to be created by such a varied and kaleidoscopic creativity of force. So I don’t even aspire, dream, or try to change it, except by deliberate unceasing incremental exemplary ways of being and doing. My faith is boundless. My love and energy have no limits. I don’t pray in groups or alone in the traditional ways of aspirational or directed and/or targeted or even bespoke prayer. I am a living prayer. I am spirit and not earth-bound or physical at all.

Want to effectively blind yourself to spiritual radiant reality? Open your physical eyes in a physical church.

Here’s another way of describing the sacred purpose of life.  To awaken to and to experience what’s already there:  the universal spirit, whom some appropriate and identify as Christ.  To allow that spirit to flow.  To live experience the unknowable subtleties to the fullest.  To allow oneself to be happy.

For Americans and lesser-privileged westerners, there is more.  And more specific.  One must encounter those who would beyond doubt place Richard Rohr in hell. One must develop subtle ways to engage.  One must learn from these engagements and encounters, accidents and incidents.  One must tolerate the committed faith and stubborn emotional intellectual knowing of their condemnation.  One must not antagonize or torment.  One must learn to engage with subtle respect.  One most oppose them with everything one has, drawing upon every reserve and resource, but without becoming or playing the role of enemy.  One must learn subtlety from this experience.  One must learn the art of gentle persuasion and tirelessly practice its nuances. One must hope to educate and thus little by little to dissuade them, to disabuse their delusion, perhaps to bring them to purpose or at least to soften them up a bit for the next incarnation. One must develop patience, one must practice happiness.  The successful one has honed the art of joy.

And in the end, [‘when the love you take is equal to the love you make’], when one has inevitably aroused the ire and the projected hate and intolerance of the emotionally faithful all too many times, one must not despair at the apparent dearth of avail.  For one has tried one’s best.  Sustained, that is the very exemplar of devotion.  The world and its wicked ways has been changed, even if in imperceptible ways.  Be joyful.  It is success.

We are all [or have the innate wherewithal to be] a cosmic prayer wheel.

We are put on this earth to smile; & yet our cycles of lifetimes are a school, the curriculum karma, the tuition dharma. Detach and graduate!

Any time you have ever looked into a pair of eyes with pure love, it is a pure eternal love that is joyfully celebrated and lives forever — indeed is magnified many times over — in the eternal joy of Kingdom of Heaven. And this is despite anything that might have ensued afterwards – be it awkward, cold, cruel, regrettable, you name it, that you might think might have occurred, or come out of it, or took place, you name it (And you know you do). In other words, no matter how badly (or goodly) you think it all turned out, it didn’t. That complication of negativity, doubt or fear is of no consequence in the eternal store of treasures where it really counts. Why would anybody ever, then, hold themselves back? From purity, that is. We all should hold back from brash physical assertiveness, a quest for possession masquerading as a caring protectiveness (with or without 2nd Amendment gunnery), or whatever presumed noble goodness else. You know, all the euphemisms and projections of control, especially of the overly manly sort. No amount of violence can change this. How does that grab you?

All that ever is is. All that ever was is. It is. Truly, it is all that is.

A virtual friend posted the beatitudes early this morning and I was grateful. I literally hadn’t thought about them lately. I realized how much this teaching from our belovèd rabbi reaches me, teaches me, and means so much to me.

I actually had an epiphany. There is something very unsettling, not about them, but about the rest of it as compared to them. I could never explain it clearly. I’ve always known but also didn’t know just what it was.

I had a moment of clarity. I almost posted a blithe one-sentence ‘comment’ to that post. It was my impulse. It would have been so easy. I’ve done things like this in the past. Something that might seem so clear and ring so obvious a bell to me can readily look opposite sitting out there naked and exposed. And that’s not to mention completely out-of-context. Certainly it would have been markedly opposed to all ‘reasonable’ expectations as to appropriateness and aptness.

Yet to me it would have been clear. It would have been brutally honest. It would have short-cut carried so much clarity of sincere meaning and devotion.

And I’m so glad I didn’t. Not that I regret all the other times I have done similar to this (or exactly this). I always know what I mean.

I will post that actual one-line blithe response to reflect the clarity of my epiphany at the end of this ‘essay’. It is just possible that my meaning and devotional admiration might well be clear (after the context of all this explanation). It should also be crystal clear why such remarks by me cause such ruckus. It should be readily demonstrated that constraint and timely silence is very valuable and works wonders.

Meanwhile, I’m going to ramble away with my explanations. None of this is truly “planned”. And I don’t have to do it, but I want to. I want to demonstrate that I do want to be proactive and take measures needed to be understood in the hopes that I might impart an unexpected level of enlightenment on someone where I would instead have seemed to have sowed discord. I honestly think that, because of the way my mind processes, and because of the lack of skill I have in responding to things that resonate me, people simply think I take special glee in causing discord. It is far from true.

Most times that people (meaning me) take the time to explain something, it is in give-and-take ‘answer’ to something. They (I) can easily and readily come across as “defensive”. By taking the initiative to present this proactively – however unsolicited – as I have, I can also possibly add to healthy dialogue and present my devotional sentiments in some unattached way. I truly have no dog in no fight [sic]. I feel great that I’m not being defensive – as I know I would have been had I been explaining this after the post and the repercussions.

Now, I’m in the territory of “what the hell is he talking about?” again. So, I’ll try and keep this brief and to the point that I originally intended this ‘confessional’ to be. None of the above was truly planned or intended, as pregnant as it is. I’m just sitting here listening to the very boring NFL draft and freelance writing as I bide time. My hopes, as usual, are to be helpful, to serve, to advance understanding, believe it or not. Or else, don’t believe me. Okay. Focus.

My posting my epiphany would not have come across well.

I would have ‘apparently’ ‘high-jacked’ someone’s post with ‘hurtful’ ‘sarcasm’.

Feelings would have been immediately hurt. I would have been questioned pretty quickly. Had I not been around to assure quickly that no, I am not contradicting the sentiment, the original poster would have been quite offended and ‘defended’ by a supportive coterie of others very offended at my rudeness.

People would have been shocked at my brazen twisting of innocent goodness.

I would have gotten some attack for being so angry and for straying from and squandering my good upbringing.

(Those latter two have actually happened more often than I ever would ever have liked).

And for the five or so people who reacted, an unknown ‘multiplier’ factor of many times more silent judgers would have been incensed at my hate.

You might think this is some exaggeration. I assure that maybe it is not.

I would have fixed it, of course. But fixing lasting impressions and the once-again-met expectations of let-down is not necessarily as fixable as one might hope it is. I would, though, have assuaged and soothed. Time has a way of healing all wounds – or, as John Lennon has famously said: of wounding all heels!

So there is a bridge. There is water. See the water flow. From that vantage it is water under the bridge.

But this is fundamentally what I really mean when considering the beatitudes: to me they are the essence of religion. They are the essence of faith in Christ. They capture the mystic reality of what this human fellow, Jesus, was truly about. The beatitudes are as different from the rest of the New Testament as could be. The rest is a mess. A big conservative political mess. The beatitudes are all one needs. The beatitudes are where it’s at, in my estimation. Nothing else matters. And intercourse if it did.

The beatitudes and the rest of the New Testament are as strangely different and opposite of what the masses understand as is the “Song of Songs” within context of the Old Testament. You get the sense of “where the heck did this come from?!” You may axe yourself, “how did he get this?” “Song of Songs”, of course, when one examines it in close literature study, is a sensual feminist writing. It couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to the male-dominate, woman belittling, woman discounting, woman controlling material that surrounds it than is clear, cool water from a barren desert of dry waterless sands. Look for anything sensual in the rest of the Old Testament and all you’ll find is the conquest fantasy of misogyny. Look it up. Read it in context. It is all rapine property ownership. This is a far cry from anything celebratory or feminist at all. It is what it is. But do note this too: “Song of Songs” does also convey and slyly disclose the narrative of misogynist reactive action, with commensurate understated lament.

As is the comparison of barren desert and cool, clear water is also the comparison of beatitudes with the rest of the New Testament material. At least in my experience and intuition. Say I’m deluded. Say I’m mistaken. But don’t question my sincerity. Don’t knock my devotion. Now, there are indeed some other good mystical materials. They are hit and miss. The mysticism of the Book of John and the infinitesimal true part of Paul’s actual mystical experience are things of beauty. But the good parts are like flecks of true gold in mounds and mounds and mounds of worthless dirt. The Book of John is infused with mendacious anti-Semitism. The Paul material is both co-opted and politically re-told and written over, re-written and ghost-written. It is conservatively supportive of political empire to a degree deliberately denied in favor of a fever-dream of “the world is out to get us” martyr-mongering and highly political fear-mongering. There is way more faux-Paul than you think there is. I’m not here to argue. I simply love the beatitudes and I am content to find ALL of my religion in them. I truly see Christ in them. (And in the mysticism, literally and figuratively).

So that’s that. My impulse [non] post:

Not blessèd are the conservatives