Something that has been spinning in my mind lately. If you look to my April 16 blog, there is a lot about rest - about Sabbath. As I looked through the bible a few weeks later, I realized that the biblical injunctions to rest included a relatively expansive list: You are to rest, your family, your animals, your servants, and any stranger and alien within your gate. Since you, your animals, and your servants are resting, therefore so does the land. Everything is given time to rest, sacred rest.
I think that one of the most meaningful and important ways we could apply this scripture today is to think of an energy rest. One day a week (and, if a week is too much, one day a month) set aside to be kept holy, sacred. A day (sundown to sundown) in which we use no energy, whether it is petrol or electric. We rest our cars, our appliances, our clocks, our air conditioners (if there is no danger to one's physical health in so doing), etc. We unplug everything. But we don't just make it a day of abstention. We take the time we would normally be driving, watching tv, listening to music, etc., and we sit with each other. We share meals, with families, with communities, with ourselves. We take time for reflection, for meditation, for going out to visit nature - a lake, a creek, a field. We don't make it an ascetic practice, but a way of honoring the beauty of the world without any electronic distractions. On the pragmatic side - imagine the massive impact upon carbon emissions if even half of the people of this country stopped driving and using electric power for ONE day a month, or moreso, one day a week, sundown to sundown. We sit in candlelight (I would allow for my own sabbath to be blessed with candlelight) and honor time together for sacred communion, reflection, and celebration. I encourage you all to think about it, and make it a day of beauty. Try one. Don't think about one day a week, or even a month. Try one day, Friday night to Saturday night. Make your meals in advance, plan what you will do. Have people over. Stock up on candles - ones that are kind to our world. See what joy you can have, playing games, writing letters, not being constantly obsessed by what time it is, what you have to get done. Etc.
Just try it. Then tell me what you think. Email your experience(s) to me, no matter when you do it. I want to hear what it is like. jonathan@thewayofpeace.net
I want people to pass this on to their faith communities. I want to see this take root. I am with you on this, I still have to try this, to see how it goes for me, for my wife, for our time together. To think about how it will affect things to live in the heat we live in now, and the cold we might live in one day. Even in the latter case, we could be creative. Families could gather and spend time together at a home with a fireplace. It could be a day of hot chocolate (water or milk boiled over the fire), blankets, etc. etc.
Blessings.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
If It Is Not Too Dark
Go for a walk, if it is not too dark.
Get some fresh air, try to smile.
Say something kind
To a safe-looking stranger, if one happens by.
Always exercise your heart's knowing.
You might as well attempt something real
Along this path:
Take your spouse or lover into your arms
The way you did when you first met.
Let tenderness pour from your eyes
Let tenderness pour from your eyes
The way the Sun gazes warmly on the earth.
Play games with some children.
Extend yourself to a friend.
Sing a few ribald songs to your pets and plants -
Why not let them get drunk and wild!
Let's toast
Every rung we've climbed on Evolution's ladder.
Whisper, "I love you! I love you!"
To the whole made world.
Let's stop reading about God -
We will never understand Him [sic].
Jump to your feet, wave your fists,
Threaten and warn the whole Universe
That your heart can no longer live
Without real love!
- "If It Is Not Too Dark" from I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz By Daniel Ladinsky, 2006.
This is a poem that inspired me to some of the below sentiments. Wish I could add anything to it, but I'd rather just leave it to speak on its own.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
More
I am a little taken by how easy it is to approach those who have money or those who do damage to the environment without love or compassion - with a dehumanizing spirit that becomes hyper focused upon the goal - tunnel vision, and therefore oblivious to the humanity of the person who becomes an "enemy." I think everything in the spiritual path I seek to walk cries out against this. I cannot abuse people with ecology, any more than I should have ever abused people with "the Bible" (as I read it). Love needs to embrace all beings, even those who we might feel justified in demonizing. Compassion helps us see the fear behind affluence, the emptiness that lurks behind possessions and wealth (even in my own life, which is far from affluent by U.S. standards) - compassion helps us seek a way of healing that fear so that we might all move forward into a new future together. It helps us bridge the lines of bifurcation that have kept us split into camps - oppositional parties who keep distance from each other and stand justified through dehumanizing/demonizing the other party, firmly entrenched, not needing to listen or compromise.
I have much more to say on this topic, but my movie date with my wife calls to me. May we not forfeit the love of God for some perceived "goal" or "project" that we might feel God has called us to. I think God has called us to love, care, and compassion, for the planet, but also for the wealthy. We must not seek to change them because they hurt the environment, but also because they hurt themselves, just as we see our propensity to hurt ourselves through our greed, pride, fear and prejudice. We seek to help them change, because we care deeply for them, we seek, as thich nhat hanh puts it, "through compassionate dialogue" to help others renounce fanatacism, and also destructive ways of living and being in the world. We seek to help others, not as masters who have the answers in hand for dissemination, but as fellow journeyers also seeking to make sense of the world and live faithfully to a deeper purpose of being, renounce ways that are destructive to life in all of its interconnectivity. We cannot demonize, because demons cannot (according to popular myth) be redeemed. And we must all seek redemption, together. There is a t-shirt I want to get that says this: One World, One Karma. Amen.
I have much more to say on this topic, but my movie date with my wife calls to me. May we not forfeit the love of God for some perceived "goal" or "project" that we might feel God has called us to. I think God has called us to love, care, and compassion, for the planet, but also for the wealthy. We must not seek to change them because they hurt the environment, but also because they hurt themselves, just as we see our propensity to hurt ourselves through our greed, pride, fear and prejudice. We seek to help them change, because we care deeply for them, we seek, as thich nhat hanh puts it, "through compassionate dialogue" to help others renounce fanatacism, and also destructive ways of living and being in the world. We seek to help others, not as masters who have the answers in hand for dissemination, but as fellow journeyers also seeking to make sense of the world and live faithfully to a deeper purpose of being, renounce ways that are destructive to life in all of its interconnectivity. We cannot demonize, because demons cannot (according to popular myth) be redeemed. And we must all seek redemption, together. There is a t-shirt I want to get that says this: One World, One Karma. Amen.
Long Overdue.
Well the semester is at long last over, and my journey through Dr. Clayton's Ecotheology class is at an end. Everything else is at its beginning. Really I'd just rather not think about beginnings or endings. I am where I am. Always beginning; always ending.
It is hard to look ahead to what it will be like to continue this journey "on my own," meaning, apart from the amazing classroom experience that I have shared with my peers these past 15 weeks. Not only that, but apart from the immediacy of the Claremont in general. I struggle for ways to become more authentic in my journey, and begin to put things into practice. Two things on the immediate agenda - to follow through with long delayed plans of partaking in the LA South Central Farming Cooperative, purchasing a box of vegetables once every week (or more likely, every two weeks) for 15 dollars, which is delivered to a drop off spot on Sundays, conveniently about 4 major blocks from our apartment. Another is to begin thinking (amidst the search for more stable and full time employment) about purchasing a bike to replace the fume spewing car I drive around (actually gets like 30 mpg, but that still means I'm chugging a gallon of gas every 25-30 miles, more as the car gets older!). This is something I am excited about, and I am praying that I can find work that is within reasonable biking distance (i.e., not Claremont!).
The next, and perhaps most important thing, is to begin to reenter - softly, so as not to become too overwhelmed or falsely passionate (this is a problem of mine) - a community that can sustain, not only a passionate commitment to the environment as a site of sacred experience, but also a deep and transcendent (yes, Claremont folk, I used the "T" word) spirituality that is able to buoy the heaviness of my heart under which I would otherwise collapse. As I read a couple poems by the great Sufi master Hafiz this morning, I was struck by how meloncholy, despairing, and bleak the world can look when you are not able to step back and celebrate the life that teems in it and around it and beyond it.
Lately I have made the horrible mistake of searching for the "answers" to my theological/spiritual questions in the writings of thelogians and philosophers. These only bring on more questions. When I am lost and in need of God, it is not to the theologians that I turn, but to the poets. To Rumi and Hafiz and Kabir. This is where I find my heart now, in these pages.
Friday I hope to attend a temple service at the Pasadena Jewish Temple, and I might begin to explore going to All-Saints Episcopal Church again, though the liturgy feels strange and foreign to me, and calls me to participate in a Christology I simply don't share. I feel kind of outside, alienated, until the sermon - which draws me deeply in. The important thing right now is to remember that a little done from the center is more than a lot done from the fringes. The Tao Te Ching, again: "The ordinary person does many things, yet many things remain to be done. The master does nothing, yet nothing is left undone." I wish I had more conversation partners in the process of integrating this softness - this Aikido/Tai Ch'i wisdom into engaging the outside world. It is so easy to become just another type of dogmatic fundamentalist, spewing guilt and condemnation and false perfectionism everywhere I go. Just an eco-dogmatist, a fundamentalist environmentalist. This too, is false.
More in the above post. Peace.
It is hard to look ahead to what it will be like to continue this journey "on my own," meaning, apart from the amazing classroom experience that I have shared with my peers these past 15 weeks. Not only that, but apart from the immediacy of the Claremont in general. I struggle for ways to become more authentic in my journey, and begin to put things into practice. Two things on the immediate agenda - to follow through with long delayed plans of partaking in the LA South Central Farming Cooperative, purchasing a box of vegetables once every week (or more likely, every two weeks) for 15 dollars, which is delivered to a drop off spot on Sundays, conveniently about 4 major blocks from our apartment. Another is to begin thinking (amidst the search for more stable and full time employment) about purchasing a bike to replace the fume spewing car I drive around (actually gets like 30 mpg, but that still means I'm chugging a gallon of gas every 25-30 miles, more as the car gets older!). This is something I am excited about, and I am praying that I can find work that is within reasonable biking distance (i.e., not Claremont!).
The next, and perhaps most important thing, is to begin to reenter - softly, so as not to become too overwhelmed or falsely passionate (this is a problem of mine) - a community that can sustain, not only a passionate commitment to the environment as a site of sacred experience, but also a deep and transcendent (yes, Claremont folk, I used the "T" word) spirituality that is able to buoy the heaviness of my heart under which I would otherwise collapse. As I read a couple poems by the great Sufi master Hafiz this morning, I was struck by how meloncholy, despairing, and bleak the world can look when you are not able to step back and celebrate the life that teems in it and around it and beyond it.
Lately I have made the horrible mistake of searching for the "answers" to my theological/spiritual questions in the writings of thelogians and philosophers. These only bring on more questions. When I am lost and in need of God, it is not to the theologians that I turn, but to the poets. To Rumi and Hafiz and Kabir. This is where I find my heart now, in these pages.
Friday I hope to attend a temple service at the Pasadena Jewish Temple, and I might begin to explore going to All-Saints Episcopal Church again, though the liturgy feels strange and foreign to me, and calls me to participate in a Christology I simply don't share. I feel kind of outside, alienated, until the sermon - which draws me deeply in. The important thing right now is to remember that a little done from the center is more than a lot done from the fringes. The Tao Te Ching, again: "The ordinary person does many things, yet many things remain to be done. The master does nothing, yet nothing is left undone." I wish I had more conversation partners in the process of integrating this softness - this Aikido/Tai Ch'i wisdom into engaging the outside world. It is so easy to become just another type of dogmatic fundamentalist, spewing guilt and condemnation and false perfectionism everywhere I go. Just an eco-dogmatist, a fundamentalist environmentalist. This too, is false.
More in the above post. Peace.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Ecology as Worldview
Dr. Clayton voiced a concern (though I don't think that is quite the right word - perhaps 'an eager awareness and desire for all of us') in class on Wed. that he isn't sure if the ecological understandings we have been exploring these 14 weeks has yet gotten down to the level of a worldview. I have been thinking about what it means to have a worldview. Is it a way of looking at the world? I think so, but I am concerned that this translates for most people into a way of 'thinking' about the world (only). And I don't think that's true. I think of Thich Nhat Hanh saying, "My actions are my true belongings." Indeed. And perhaps they are our true worldviews. It seems that the ways to change a world view are multiple.
This whole semester I have worked to perform (to live) my life differently, step by step, aware of how alienated I am as a result of my upbringing on social and religious levels. Now what does it mean to make it a holistic world view? A way of looking at the world on all levels, not just intellectualizing, but inclusive of the mind and intellect as an absolutely essential part. To use a tai chi metaphor, I am just now beginning to realize how much tension i hold in my body in virtually everything i do. The question is, how do i live in such a way as to transform that way of being into a way more consistent with tai chi. I ask this now and will continue to ask it ecologically. What does it mean for my relationship to specific animals, trees, blades of grass, insects, fellow homo sapiens? What does it mean for my choices in food, clothing, housing, means of transportation, choice of living location, travel plans, visiting my family (cost of one long flight averages to 2.2 tons of carbon emissions per person!), etc.
What does it mean for my view of God, myself, the world, salvation/liberation, love...? How does this change my relationship to wealth/poverty, to women, to the underclass, the 2/3 world - everything.
More on this later, as my final project comes together. As a preview I will say that mindfulness is center stage. My actions are my true belongings. Breathing is my essential action, mindfulness of it is my essential practice. Soon I learn as I attend to my own breath that my boundaries blur, and I am not so separate from the world around me. In fact, as a world of living beings, we interbreathe. We pass our breath to the trees who pass theirs back to us. When I destroy trees I am damaging my breath, because there is no breath without interbreath. There is no breath on this world without trees, nor without their animal counterparts. We are one together - this must lead to other precepts of buddhism evolving to include this awarness of our eco-beingness. Right view, right action, etc. I can no longer drive a car without realizing that I suffocate myself, and in the suffering of trees and plants, the dirt on which they depend and by which they are sustained and nourished, in the suffering of the ozone and the polar ice caps (and therefore the polar bears and other ice dependent beings) I also suffer.
All this is challenged by the fact that I still eat animal food - but am more and more particular about how much and what kind. And I must say I still see something unique about humanity that I value quite deeply. One thinker says we are those beings in the universe who have evolved the ability to be self aware in a unique way. We are the universe becoming conscious of itself, observing itself. I still swat mosquitos. And I go back to mindfulness. I can't just think this, but must also think it. Breathe. Think. Breathe. Think. Practice. Live. Do. Be.
This whole semester I have worked to perform (to live) my life differently, step by step, aware of how alienated I am as a result of my upbringing on social and religious levels. Now what does it mean to make it a holistic world view? A way of looking at the world on all levels, not just intellectualizing, but inclusive of the mind and intellect as an absolutely essential part. To use a tai chi metaphor, I am just now beginning to realize how much tension i hold in my body in virtually everything i do. The question is, how do i live in such a way as to transform that way of being into a way more consistent with tai chi. I ask this now and will continue to ask it ecologically. What does it mean for my relationship to specific animals, trees, blades of grass, insects, fellow homo sapiens? What does it mean for my choices in food, clothing, housing, means of transportation, choice of living location, travel plans, visiting my family (cost of one long flight averages to 2.2 tons of carbon emissions per person!), etc.
What does it mean for my view of God, myself, the world, salvation/liberation, love...? How does this change my relationship to wealth/poverty, to women, to the underclass, the 2/3 world - everything.
More on this later, as my final project comes together. As a preview I will say that mindfulness is center stage. My actions are my true belongings. Breathing is my essential action, mindfulness of it is my essential practice. Soon I learn as I attend to my own breath that my boundaries blur, and I am not so separate from the world around me. In fact, as a world of living beings, we interbreathe. We pass our breath to the trees who pass theirs back to us. When I destroy trees I am damaging my breath, because there is no breath without interbreath. There is no breath on this world without trees, nor without their animal counterparts. We are one together - this must lead to other precepts of buddhism evolving to include this awarness of our eco-beingness. Right view, right action, etc. I can no longer drive a car without realizing that I suffocate myself, and in the suffering of trees and plants, the dirt on which they depend and by which they are sustained and nourished, in the suffering of the ozone and the polar ice caps (and therefore the polar bears and other ice dependent beings) I also suffer.
All this is challenged by the fact that I still eat animal food - but am more and more particular about how much and what kind. And I must say I still see something unique about humanity that I value quite deeply. One thinker says we are those beings in the universe who have evolved the ability to be self aware in a unique way. We are the universe becoming conscious of itself, observing itself. I still swat mosquitos. And I go back to mindfulness. I can't just think this, but must also think it. Breathe. Think. Breathe. Think. Practice. Live. Do. Be.
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